Barney Hoskyns – författare

Starting out as a backing group for Ronnie Hawkins, before being propelled on to the world stage by Bob Dylan, The Band literally changed the course of music with their first two albums. Retreating from the psychedelic circus of '60s rock, these four Canadians and one Arkansas boy hid away in upstate New York and steered rock 'n' roll back to its funky rural roots. Today The Band's soulful fusion of country, R&B, gospel, jazz and vaudeville is more revered than ever, exerting a massive influence on everyone from Uncle Tupelo to Ryan Adams. Across the Great Divide is a vivid and rollicking account of the group's journey. Spanning the entire course of American rock, and boasting a supporting cast that includes Dylan, Janis Joplin and U2, it brilliantly captures the raw magic and complex personalities of these 'musicians' musicians'.

The country side of southern soul_______________________In the American South, black and white musicians have been influencing each other's music for generations, from the hymns of the 18th century to the soul music of the 60s. Rock and roll was born in the South, spawned from the legendary blues artists who grew up there - but who were the people behind this remarkable cultural interplay, and how did they make their music in a time when oppressive racist laws and segregation were ubiquitous?Fascinated by the collision of country and soul music in the Southern States, renowned music journalist Barney Hoskyns and photographer Muir MacKean set out on a journey through the American South to explore the phenomenon of primarily black singers and primarily white musicians joining forces in the 1960s to create musical magic in an era of racial tension.Travelling from Memphis to Muscle Shoals to Nashville, Hoskyns and MacKean went in search of the artists behind the iconic music of the South, sitting down with dozens of the architects of what's come to be known as Country Soul. Uncovering never-before-heard details and wild stories of the music scenes that helped shape music as we know it today, they capture a story that is as inspiring as it is historically important.

The story of a remarkable time and place: Los Angeles from the dawn of the singer-songwriter era in the mid-Sixties to the peak of The Eagles’ success in the late Seventies.‘Hotel California’ is an epic tale of songs and sunshine, drugs and denim, genius and greed, and is the first in-depth account of the LA Canyons scene between 1967 and 1976.Hoskyn's history of this vital period in the development of today's great musical influences spans the rise of Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, The Eagles, James Taylor and Jackson Browne, and focuses on the brilliance and determination of David Geffen, the man who linked them all.Covering genius, drug-crazed disintegration, and the myriad relationships between these artists and the songs that issued from them, and drawing on extensive interviews with countless stars, singers, writers, managers, executives and scenesters, ‘Hotel California’ is a pop-culture classic.

From the Beatles to Beck, Sinatra to Sam Smith, a parade of era-defining artists have passed through the doors of the Capitol Records Tower, one of Hollywood’s most distinctive landmarks and home to one of the world’s most defining labels for the past 75+ years.To commemorate this extraordinary history of recorded music, TASCHEN presents this official account of Capitol Records, from its founding year of 1942 to today. With a foreword by Beck, essays by cultural historians and music and architecture critics, as well as hundreds of images from Capitol’s extensive archives, we follow the label’s evolution and the making of some of the greatest music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Through pop, rock, country, classical, soul, and jazz, the photographic and musical history includes the label’s most successful, cool, hip, and creative stars, as well as the one-hit wonders who had their all-too-brief moments in the spotlight.Along the way, we encounter the likes of Miles Davis, Nat King Cole, the Kingston Trio, and Frank Sinatra in Capitol’s first 20 years; the Beach Boys, the Band, and the Beatles in the 1960s; global rock magnets Pink Floyd, Wings, Steve Miller Band, Bob Seger, and Linda Ronstadt in the 1970s; Beastie Boys, Duran Duran, Radiohead, and Bonnie Raitt in the 1980s and 1990s; and such contemporary stars as Coldplay, Katy Perry, and Sam Smith. An unmissable milestone for music lovers, Capitol Records is a live and kicking celebration of the mighty giant of the industry that created the soundtrack to generations past, present, and future.

Spanning Tom Waits' extraordinary 40-year career, from Closing Time to Orphans, Lowside of the Road is Barney Hoskyns' unique take on one of rock's great enigmas. Like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Waits is a chameleonic survivor who's achieved long-term success while retaining cult credibility and outsider mystique. From his perilous "jazzbo" years in '70s Los Angeles to the multiple-Grammy winner of recent years - by way of such shape-shifting '80s albums as Swordfishtrombones - this exhaustive biography charts Waits' life step-by-step and album-by-album.Affectionate and penetrating, and based on a combination of assiduous research and deep critical insight, this is a outstanding investigation of a notoriously private artist and performer - the definitive account to date of Tom Waits' life and work.

A unique look at the history, adventures, myths and realities of this most legendary and powerful of bands, it is a labour of love based on hours of first-hand and original interviews. What emerges is a compelling portrait of the four musicians themselves, as well as a fresh insight into the close-knit entourage that protected them, from Peter Grant to Richard Cole to Ahmet Ertegun, giant figures from the long-vanished world of 1970s rock.Featuring many rare and never before seen photographs, it is also the first book on Led Zeppelin to cover such recent events as their triumphant 2007 O2 Arena gig and Robert Plant's Grammy-winning resurgence of recent years.

Think 'Woodstock' and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival. But Woodstock itself was over sixty miles away, and already a key location in the rock landscape as a community of brilliant, dysfunctional musicians, opportunistic hippie capitalists, scheming dealers, and freaks dazed and confused by the search for spiritual truth. Central to this was the power and presence of Albert Grossman - manager for Dylan, Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, The Band and Todd Rundgren - who turned Woodstock into his own personal fiefdom. Drawing on first-hand interviews with all the remaining key players, Small Town Talk is a classic study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.

No city in the western world exerts such a fascination as the glamorous, debauched Los Angeles, and there is no city with more of a draw to musicians. Defined by the music of Brian Wilson, The Doors, NWA, jazz, funk, soul, hip hop, and fulled by drugs, alcohol, sun, sex and surf, LA has seen it all. Barney Hoskyns tells the definitive story of L.A.'s post-war music scene and spent nearly a decade researching this account of music which developed into a culture of its own. "A hilarious, chilling, thoroughly scabrous history of post-war pop music in Los Angeles fascinating." - "Los Angeles Times Book Review". "Beautifully written" - "Melody Maker". "Fabulously authoritative and grimly compelling." - "Sunday Times". "Magnificent. His enthusiasm for the subject is not only tangible but infectious, and will have you rifling through forgotten areas of your record collection with renewed passion." - "VOX". "A terrific, sprawling, hugely ambitious study of the city's rock 'n' roll history, Hoskyns skilfully straddles his role as detached historian and gushing enthusiast in this tremendous book." - "NME"."Impressive a chronicle of how the city of dreams has so often turned itself into a city of nightmares. Hoskyns writes with awesome command." - "Time Out".

"The Sound and the Fury" gathers some of the best and most entertaining rock writing of the last forty years, coming at rock and roll from several different angles and spanning four decades of Good, Bad and Ugly. Among the pieces are: Al Aronowitz documenting The Beatles' arrival in America; Glenn O'Brien dishing the dirt with Madonna; Nick Hornby reappraising pop deities Abba; Caroline Coon witnessing the birth of punk; Will Self sparring with Morrissey; Jon Savage entering the fractured mind of Kurt Cobain; Lenny Kaye riding Grand Funk Railroad Plus Greil Marcus on The Band, Mary Harron on Warhol, Vivien Goldman at the Wigan Casino, John Mendelssohn in South Central LA and many others.

Joni Mitchell has only visited the U.S. Top 40 singles chart four times in her long recording career - and the Top 20 just once. So much for "stoking the starmaker machinery behind the popular song", as she sang in her 1974 song 'Free Man in Paris'.What Joni has done, on the other hand, is record a handful of masterful albums - Blue, Court And Spark, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns for starters - that prove she is right up there with the big boys: with Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson and Stevie Wonder. Few women can hold a candle to her oeuvre: maybe Aretha Franklin, maybe Kate Bush, Bjork, Joanna Newsom. Airs and graces she may have, but airs and graces backed up by 'Woodstock', 'The Arrangement', 'A Case Of You', 'Help Me', 'Dog Eat Dog' and 'The Magdalene Laundries' are forgivable. Some of Mitchell's songs are great art. Almost all are emotionally complex and musically gripping.Reckless Daughter collects some of the most incisive commentary on Joni's music - and some of the most candid conversations she has had with journalists through her long career. From a review of her first performance at L.A.'s legendary Troubadour in 1968 to a career-sweeping 1998 interview by MOJO's Dave DiMartino, this anthology of almost 60 articles charts every stage of Joni's extraordinary journey as a singer, songwriter and artist.

'This book could save your life' John Crace'An unblinking account of living with - and more importantly, beyond - addiction. Brave, clear-eyed and inspiring' John Niven'A rich, uplifting memoir: Hoskyns portrays how painful inadequacy, masked by drugs, can be replaced by the messiness of ordinary life' Oliver JamesA few months after graduating with a 1st class honours degree from Oxford University, Barney Hoskyns sat in a damp Clapham basement and asked his best friend to inject him with heroin. From that moment on, for the next three years, Hoskyns is hopelessly hooked. This is the searingly honest story of what brought him to this place - and how he got himself out of it. Barney Hoskyns is one of the leading music writers of our time: his books have ranged the musical landscape from Led Zeppelin to Tom Waits, from Laurel Canyon to Woodstock. His articles have appeared in NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and Vogue, and in 2000 he founded Rock's Backpages. Hoskyns beautifully describes the relationship between music and addiction, between love and infatuation. Never Enough is Hoskyns's raw, uncompromising and utterly compelling account of the highs and lows of life under the needle. Interspersed with photos and diary entries, Hosykns examines why he so willingly gave himself up to the death-grip of heroin, and what it took to finally free himself from it.

'An indispensable compendium for Steely Dan fans' The WireAt its core a creative marriage between Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, Steely Dan are one of the defining and bestselling American rock acts of the last half-century, recording several of the cleverest and best-produced albums of the '70s - from the breathlessly catchy Can't Buy a Thrill to the sleekly sinister Gaucho.In the '90s they returned to remind us of how sorely we had missed their elegance and erudition, subsequently recording Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go during the following decade. They have sold close to forty-five million albums.'A lot of people think of them as the epitome of boring '70s stuff,' novelist William Gibson said in 1993, when Becker and Fagen toured for the first time in nineteen years. 'They don't realize this is probably the most subversive material pop has ever thrown up.'Now fully embraced by the 'Yacht Rock' generation - semi-ironic devotees of '70s Southern-California slickness - Steely Dan no longer polarize lo-fi punks and studio geeks in the way they used to. In 2001 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.Major Dudes collects some of the smartest and wittiest interviews Becker and Fagen have ever given, along with insightful reviews of - and commentary on - their extraordinary songs. Compiled by Rock's Backpages editor Barney Hoskyns, the book's contributors include Charles Shaar Murray, Robert Palmer, Ian MacDonald, Bud Scoppa, Penny Valentine, Fred Schruers, Sylvie Simmons and Michael Watts.

'Present Tense is an anthology to savour . . . giving you as sharp a portrait of this unknowable band as you could hope for . . . Radiohead fans will love it' Classic RockA Rock's Backpages anthology of Radiohead, the most radical and fascinating rock band in modern music history, edited and introduced by Barney Hoskyns.For over 25 years, Radiohead have been the most radical and fascinating rock band in the world. Fearless in their desire to change and shape-shift, the Oxfordshire quintet has - through the nine studio albums from 1993's Pablo Honey to 2016's A Moon-Shaped Pool - consistently stretched the boundaries of what 'rock' means and does. Anchored in Thom Yorke's soaring voice and elliptical lyrics, and in the compositional genius of guitarist/keyboardist Jonny Greenwood, Radiohead continue to astonish as they approach their fourth decade.Present Tense collects the best writing on this most literate of pop groups, from the earliest local reports about On A Friday - Radiohead's first moniker - through the inspired commentary of Mark Greif and Simon Reynolds to the trenchant profiles of Will Self, John Harris and others. It's an anthology that goes a long way towards explaining what Rock's Backpages editor Barney Hoskyns describes as the band's 'seriousness, emotional grandeur and willingness to stare humanity's dystopian hi-tech future in the face'.

God Is in the Radio gathers 50 pieces from 40 years of writing passionately about music. A former mainstay of NME and MOJO and author of such acclaimed books as Hotel California and Small Town Talk - Barney Hoskyns hymns the artists that have thrilled and moved him most, from Frank Sinatra to Amy Winehouse, via the Cocteau Twins and Queens of the Stone Age. Together with acts as varied as Laura Nyro and Luther Vandross, Burial and Bobby Womack, these are the "unbridled enthusiasms" that - for Hoskyns - dissolve the rationalisation of feeling, producing a sense of rapture that borders on religious ecstasy.Spanning multiple decades and moments of music history, and containing personal reflections as well as recommendations, this is a poignant and evocative must-read book from one of the UK's foremost music writers.

A unique tribute from David Bowie’s official photographer and creative partner, Mick Rock, compiled in 2015, with Bowie’s blessing.In 1972, David Bowie released his groundbreaking album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. With it landed Bowie’s Stardust alter ego: a glitter-clad, mascara-eyed, sexually ambiguous persona who kicked down the boundaries between male and female, straight and gay, fact and fiction into one shifting and sparkling phenomenon of ’70s self-expression. Together, Ziggy the album and Ziggy the stage spectacular propelled the softly spoken Londoner into one of the world’s biggest stars.A key passenger on this glam trip into the stratosphere was fellow Londoner and photographer Mick Rock. Rock bonded with Bowie artistically and personally, immersed himself in the singer’s inner circle, and, between 1972 and 1973, worked as the singer’s photographer and videographer.This collection brings together spectacular stage shots, iconic photo shoots, as well as intimate backstage portraits. It celebrates Bowie’s fearless experimentation and reinvention, while offering privileged access to the many facets of his personality and fame. Through the aloof and approachable, the playful and serious, the candid and the contrived, the result is a passionate tribute to a brilliant and inspirational artist whose creative vision will never be forgotten.

A unique tribute from David Bowie’s official photographer and creative partner, Mick Rock, compiled in 2015, with Bowie’s blessing.In 1972, David Bowie released his groundbreaking album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. With it landed Bowie’s Stardust alter ego: a glitter-clad, mascara-eyed, sexually ambiguous persona who kicked down the boundaries between male and female, straight and gay, fact and fiction into one shifting and sparkling phenomenon of ’70s self-expression. Together, Ziggy the album and Ziggy the stage spectacular propelled the softly spoken Londoner into one of the world’s biggest stars.A key passenger on this glam trip into the stratosphere was fellow Londoner and photographer Mick Rock. Rock bonded with Bowie artistically and personally, immersed himself in the singer’s inner circle, and, between 1972 and 1973, worked as the singer’s photographer and videographer.This collection brings together spectacular stage shots, iconic photo shoots, as well as intimate backstage portraits. With a lenticular cover of different headshots, it celebrates Bowie’s fearless experimentation and reinvention, while offering privileged access to the many facets of his personality and fame. Through the aloof and approachable, the playful and serious, the candid and the contrived, the result is a passionate tribute to a brilliant and inspirational artist whose creative vision will never be forgotten.