Paul Brannigan – författare

FULLY UPDATED AND REVISED, INCLUDING TWO NEW CHAPTERS TO BRING THE STORY UP TO DATE ‘Someone called and said Kurt died. I just f*****g lost it.’He has sold over 50 million albums. He’s been in bands that have changed popular music forever. He saw his best friend commit suicide. He starts supergroups. He’s the nicest guy in rock.From Nirvana to Foo Fighters, from brotherhood to bitter rivalry, from breathless highs to lifeless lows, Paul Brannigan gives an unparalleled, intimate and extraordinary account of the life and times of Dave Grohl.In 1990, little-known punk-metal upstarts Nirvana added a new drummer to the band. They were soon to become a global phenomenon – but as we all know, things went wrong. Dave's friend Kurt, frontman of Nirvana, took his own life, plunging the band and their future into chaos. His friends’ grief was mirrored by worldwide sorrow to an unprecedented degree.Defying expectations, a knack that was soon to become his trademark, Grohl refused to see it as the end. In 1995 his new band, the Foo Fighters, rose to join the pantheon of rock deities.The 'wonder years' were by no means calm. The spotlit existence imposed by his celebrity status, the bellowed vilification by his critics and his high-speed lifestyle proved a dangerous cocktail.With an account of Grohl’s life that is more personal than anything written before, more startling, more thrilling, more heart-rending and more inspiring, Paul Brannigan reveals Dave fully for the first time.This is the story of the man who changed music forever. And he’s not finished yet.

Metallica have sold in excess of 100 million albums and won seven Grammys. Their journey from scuzzy Los Angeles garages to the stages of the world's biggest stadia has been an epic and often traumatic one, and one of the few truly great rock 'n' roll sagas.No music writers have been afforded greater access to Metallica over the years than Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood, two former editors of Kerrang. Having conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with the band, they have between them gained an unparalleled knowledge of the group's history and an insiders' view of how their story has developed: they have ridden in the band's limos, flown on their private jet, joined them in the studio, been invited to the quartet's 'HQ' outside San Francisco and shared beers and stories with them in venues across the globe. There are countless memorable stories about the band never before seen in print, tales of bed-hopping and drug-taking and car-crashes and fist-fights and back-stabbing that occur when you mix testosterone and adrenaline, alcohol and egomania, talent and raw ambition.Perceptive, emotionally attached, and intellectually rigorous, Birth, School, Metallica, Death will be the essential and definitive story of this extraordinary band. Volume I takes us from the band's inception through to the recording and eve of release of their seminal, self-titled, 1991 album.

As they embark upon the fourth decade of the career, Metallica's legacy is as unique as it is remarkable: having sold over 100 million albums their status as the biggest Metal band of all time is indisputable. Following the acclaimed first volume, which chronicled the band's rise to international stardom, the authors now explore the challenges and tensions that ensued for the band. From the phenomenal, breakthrough, success of 1991's 'Black' album to the band's reinvention with the 'Load/Reload' albums; bassist Jason Newsted's shock exit in 2001 and the group's subsequent meltdown, as laid bare in the unvarnished fly-on-the-wall documentary Some Kind Of Monster, to the divisive 'St. Anger' and 'Lulu' sets (recorded with Rick Rubin and in collaboration with Lou Reed respectively), they brilliantly capture this unique bands epic, louder than life saga.

From the record-breaking success of 1991's 'Black Album' to the band's reinvention with the Load/Reload albums; from bassist Jason Newsted's shock departure to the group's subsequent meltdown as laid bare in the documentary Some Kind of Monster; from the Lulu album with Lou Reed to their hugely expensive feature film Through the Never, the second half of the Metallica story has been as eventful and controversial as it has triumphant.

'The game changing guitar legend gets the biography he deserves ... Diligently researched, perceptive and well-written.' 8/10, Classic Rock'An affectionate and unflinching portrait of metal guitar's Mount Everest.' MojoArriving in California as a young boy in the early 1960s, Edward Van Halen and his brother Alex were ripe for the coming musical revolution. The sons of a Dutch, saxophone-playing father, the brothers discovered the Beatles, Cream and others.From the moment their hugely influential 1978 debut landed, Van Halen set a high bar for the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, creating an entirely new style of post-'60s hard rock and becoming the quintessential Californian band of the 1980s. But there was also an undercurrent of tragedy to their story, as Eddie's struggles played out in public, from his difficult relationship with the band's original singer, Dave Lee Roth, to substance abuse, divorce and his long-running battle with cancer.With unique insights, Paul Brannigan's Eruption reaches beyond the headlines to explore the cultural and social contexts that shaped this iconic guitarist, while also turning up the dial on a life lived at volume eleven.

Titled in tribute to the gloriously theatrical lyric from 'Immigrant Song', Valhalla!: The A to Z of Led Zeppelin aims to illuminate and unpack the mythology and majesty of the greatest hard-rock band of all time.Utilising a similar tone and structure to Mark Blake's wildly entertaining, critically acclaimed Magnifico!: The A to Z of Queen, this book seeks to re-animate Led Zeppelin for a global audience in a digestible, accessible and authoritative format. Liberated from the constraints of a conventional biography, the alphabetised entries will include eyewitness anecdotes and analytical mini-essays, as well as original critiques of the music of Plant, Page, Jones and Bonham ­­- and, crucially, what their songs reveal about the men who crafted them.Among the book's irreverent pages, readers will find out just how much money the quartet invested in Monty Python and exactly why Barack Obama felt compelled to host them in a room with 3-inch-thick windows and a secret-service presence. Yet this meticulously researched guide also provides a comprehensive overview of the group's game-changing rise to ascendancy and the subsequent fallout as three creatively restless musicians struggled to process the devastating loss of their dear friend and esteemed bandmate John Bonham.Packed with insightful trivia to delight Led Zep loyalists and casual fans alike, this is the rock and roll story of all the good times and bad times.

Titled in tribute to the gloriously theatrical lyric from 'Immigrant Song', Valhalla!: The A to Z of Led Zeppelin aims to illuminate and unpack the mythology and majesty of the greatest hard-rock band of all time.Utilising a similar tone and structure to Mark Blake's wildly entertaining, critically acclaimed Magnifico!: The A to Z of Queen, this book seeks to re-animate Led Zeppelin for a global audience in a digestible, accessible and authoritative format. Liberated from the constraints of a conventional biography, the alphabetised entries will include eyewitness anecdotes and analytical mini-essays, as well as original critiques of the music of Plant, Page, Jones and Bonham ­­- and, crucially, what their songs reveal about the men who crafted them.Among the book's irreverent pages, readers will find out just how much money the quartet invested in Monty Python and exactly why Barack Obama felt compelled to host them in a room with 3-inch-thick windows and a secret-service presence. Yet this meticulously researched guide also provides a comprehensive overview of the group's game-changing rise to ascendancy and the subsequent fallout as three creatively restless musicians struggled to process the devastating loss of their dear friend and esteemed bandmate John Bonham.Packed with insightful trivia to delight Led Zep loyalists and casual fans alike, this is the rock and roll story of all the good times and bad times.