Paul Woods – författare

By the time The Fall released `I Am Damo Suzuki’ in the mid-1980s, the elusive legend to which the song paid tribute had returned to music. Since making his name as the vocalist of the great German band Can, Kenji `Damo’ Suzuki has united a vast range of musicians across the globe through The Damo Suzuki Band and Damo Suzuki’s Network.Now in his seventh decade, Damo is as contemporary a figure as ever. I Am Damo Suzuki encompasses his personal travelogue, his spiritual journey and the life-force that has allowed him to twice rise above life-threatening illness. Paul Woods’ narrative – drawing on interviews with Suzuki himself, family members, bandmates and friends – evokes the decades-long odyssey of a musical enigma.

This straight-talking, fun book is aimed at fresh graduates planning a career in the creative industries. It gives them the tools to identify and navigate the right path. Filled with practical tips and exercises, and illustrated with 'how to' flow charts and diagrams, it focuses not just on the creative skills needed for a successful and lucrative career but a great lifestyle too.

Limited to 1000 copies, this Hardback book with slipcase contains an exclusive compilation CD and a certificate signed by Damo Suzuki himself.When the anarchic vocalist of Can left the celebrated German band in late 1973, the ensuing decade-long absence was taken by many to be the end of his personal story. But it was just the beginning. In I Am Damo Suzuki, Kenji Damo Suzuki and co-author Paul Woods illuminate a life in music driven by the principle of randomness.The book spans the influence of western music on Suzuki growing up in post-WWII Japan, his rejection of national traditions and a lifelong journey of exploration. After his hippie-influenced beginnings as a provocative street musician, Suzuki s story took an unlikely turn after a chance recruitment into Can, one of the most innovative bands of the seventies. A stint of family life and the role of Japanese salaryman preceded his return to the music world with The Damo Suzuki Band and later with Damo Suzuki s Network, an international vehicle for musical communication using sound instead of words.With contributions from family members, lifelong friends, musical collaborators and Damo s long-term partner, I Am Damo Suzuki is an absorbing portrait of a musical catalyst and enigmatic icon.

Five brutal murders shocked London in the summer and autumn of 1888. They have never been forgotten.The Jack the Ripper case has never been solved - the killer remains a blood-spattered silhouette. Although 'Jack' as an entity was almost certainly invented by an unscrupulous journalist, he became an archetype - decked in the top hat and cloak of a Victorian melodrama villain, stalking the fog-wreathed streets of the old East End. The numerous Ripper theories which emerged at the time tell us more about Victorian attitudes than they do about the killer's true identity.In Jack the Ripper the authors follow the grim homicidal trails that have permeated popular culture since the Whitechapel murders of 1888. It tells the victim's stories in all their desperate poignancy, and explores the theories and suspects of the burgeoning field of 'ripperology'. Conspiracy theories and myths that swirl around the case to this day, from black magicians to the royal family, are considered, as is the modern forensic view of the Ripper murders as sex crimes, with reference to disturbing modern cases such as that of the 'Plumstead Ripper'.Terrifying and unignorable, this is the ultimate book on Jack the Ripper.

A war hero, a mass murderer and a Gothic legend the world has never forgottenVlad the Impaler is one of history's most compelling and brutal characters, with a bizarre afterlife as a cult horror sensation. A hero to his countrymen, Vlad Dracula is a byword for dread. Not just for generations of Western fans of Gothic fiction and film, but also for an appalled and fascinated 15th-century readership, for whom contemporary accounts of Dracula's atrocities became the world's first horror bestsellers. Combining historical research and dramatic reconstruction with contemporary reference, here is Vlad the Impaler's dramatic career, from pampered captive of the Ottoman Sultans to exterminating angel of Christian vengeance. But in reality, was he the embodiment of unbridled cruelty or model ruler of an embattled realm?Prince Dracula also examines the role of psychological warfare and black propaganda in international politics, from the medieval torture chamber to the headlines of the modern age, and shows Vlad as an unwitting pioneer of the modern world.Plying a grisly course through medieval bloodbaths and contemporary horrors, Gavin Baddeley and Paul Woods leave no tombstone unturned in this extraordinary history.