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Widely hailed as a genius, Arthur Lee was a character every bit as colorful and unique as his music. In 1966, he was Prince of the Sunset Strip, busy with his pioneering racially-mixed band Love, and accelerating the evolution of California folk-rock by infusing it with jazz and orchestral influences, a process that would climax in a timeless masterpiece, the Love album Forever Changes.

Shaped by a Memphis childhood and a South Los Angeles youth, Lee always craved fame. He would achieve his ambition with a mixture of vaulting talent and colossal chutzpah. Drug use and a reticence to tour were his Achilles heels, and he succumbed to a dissolute lifestyle just as superstardom was beckoning.

Despite endorsements from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, Lee’s subsequent career was erratic and haunted by the shadow of Forever Changes, reaching a nadir with his 1996 imprisonment for a firearms offence. Redemption followed, culminating in an astonishing post-millennial comeback that found him playing Forever Changes to adoring multi-generational fans around the world. This upswing was only interrupted by his untimely death, from leukemia, in 2006.

Writing with the full consent and cooperation of Arthur’s widow, Diane Lee, author John Einarson has meticulously researched a biography that includes lengthy extracts from the singer’s vivid, comic, and poignant memoirs, published here for the first time. Einarson has also amassed dozens of new interviews with the surviving members of Love and with many others who fell into the incomparable Arthur Lee’s flamboyant orbit.

‘One of the best biographies you’ll ever read.’ – Robb Flynn, Machine Head

Today, Metallica are known as consummate musicians, but it wasn’t always that way. Their early career is marked by a gradual evolution from garage thrash to sophisticated, progressive heights – an evolution driven by their bass player, Cliff Burton, who pushed the band to new heights with his songwriting ability and phenomenal bass skills across the band’s first three albums, including their undisputed masterpiece, Master Of Puppets.

Cliff’s life was short but influential; his death at the age of 24 in a tour bus crash on a Swedish mountain road was sudden and shocking. Following his passing, Metallica went on to huge global success, but by their own admission they never pushed the creative envelope as radically as they had done during the first four years of their career.

The cult of Burton grows year on year, and so too the list of bassists acknowledging his influence in metal and beyond. Published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Metallica’s debut album, Kill ’Em All, this revised and updated edition of To Live Is To Die adds a new chapter that looks at Burton''s enduring legacy from a fresh perspective and includes commentary from current Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo and Aquaman star Jason Momoa, as well as an eyewitness account of the opening of the Cliff Burton Museum in Ljungby, Sweden, in 2022. There is also a brand new preface by Testament bass master Steve Di Giorgio, who shares his memories of meeting Burton as a teenager and then watching on from close quarters as Metallica began to take off.

‘I think they’re easily one of the best rock trios anywhere. I don’t think they’ve been equaled.’ Andy Summers (The Police)

‘They were really ahead of their time. If you listen to the music that followed, they really figured things out that took many bands ten more years to figure out.’ Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins)

Countless accolades have been bestowed upon King’s X over the years, and, since their formation in 1980, they have grown to become one of the most universally admired in hard rock and heavy metal. But their story is one of many ups and downs, trials and tribulations, and periods of good and bad luck.

This authorized biography examines and explores all aspects of their history, both personally and professionally. Comprised of extensive interviews conducted by author and longtime King’s X fan Greg Prato, King’s X: The Oral History allows the band’s three members—singer/bassist Doug Pinnick, guitarist Ty Tabor, and drummer Jerry Gaskill—to tell their full story for the first time. It also opens the floor to friends and collaborators, plus some of the many top rock names who are also fans of the band, including Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil, Pantera’s Rex Brown, Mötley Crüe’s Mick Mars, and many more.

In addition, King’s X explores the stories behind every single song the band has recorded over the years, while also detailing the creation of each of their twelve albums and offering insight into the influence of religion on their work. It also features memories of the band’s tours with some of rock’s biggest names including AC/DC, Pearl Jam, and Mötley Crüe and the events that led to their show-stopping performance at the mammoth Woodstock ’94 festival. Packed full of rare and never-before-seen photographs from throughout their career, King’s X is the definitive companion to the band and their music.

On February 16 1969, John McLaughlin flew into New York, from London, in a snowstorm. The following day, Miles Davis, his hero, invited him to play on a record. Two years later, on the path of Bengali mystic Sri Chinmoy, John launched the Mahavishnu Orchestra—an evocation in music of spiritual aspiration and extraordinary power, volume and complexity, far beyond anything else in jazz or rock.

Curiously, it was also a huge success. John McLaughlin brought rock music to its pinnacle, the end point in an evolution from Mississippi blues through Coltrane, Hendrix and the Beatles. And then, in November 1975, he hung up his electric guitar and walked away from the stadiums of the rock world for an on-going, restless career in music of other forms.

To most of the world, John McLaughlin looked like an overnight success, with a backstory going back only as far as that February in 1969. Yet he had been a professional musician since 1958, experiencing all the great movements in British music—trad jazz, rock’n’roll, R&B, soul, modern jazz, free jazz, psychedelic rock—a guitar for hire at the centre of ‘Swinging London’, a bandmate of future members of Cream, Pentangle and Led Zeppelin, but always just under the radar.

Drawing on dozens of exclusive interviews and many months of meticulous research, author and music historian Colin Harper brings that unrepeatable era vividly to life. This landmark new work retrieves for the first time the incredible career of John McLaughlin before he conquered the world—and then chronicles how he did so.

Bathed In Lightning includes more than 80 photographs of McLaughlin and his collaborators, including many previously unseen images. The extended ebook edition adds 100,000 words of extra material—bonus features, if you like—including detailed discographies and concert listings that cover every known McLaughlin recording and live performance from 1963–75.

Driven to the brink of madness by cocaine, overwork, marital strife, and a paranoid obsession with the occult, David Bowie fled Los Angeles in 1975 and ended up in Berlin, the divided city on the frontline between communist East and capitalist West. There he sought anonymity, taking an apartment in a run-down district with his sometime collaborator Iggy Pop, another refugee from drugs and debauchery, while they explored the city and its notorious nightlife.

In this intensely creative period, Bowie put together three classic albums—Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger—with collaborators who included Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, and Tony Visconti. He also found time to produce two albums for Iggy Pop—The Idiot and Lust For Life—and to take a leading role in a movie, the ill-starred Just A Gigolo.

Bowie In Berlin examines that period and those records, exploring Bowie’s fascination with the city, unearthing his sources of inspiration, detailing his working methods, and teasing out the elusive meanings of the songs. Painstakingly researched and vividly written, the book casts new light on the most creative and influential era in Bowie’s career.

In his first book, Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster takes readers on an idiosyncratic journey through the past and present of popular music: from Bob Dylan to Cat Power, from AC/DC to Nana Mouskouri, from The Saints to Franz Ferdinand.

With 30 years experience as a recording artist and performer and an undimmed love of popular music, Forster’s observations about his fellow artists balance the enthusiasm of a fan with an insider’s authority. He is that rare thing, a musician who can write about music, and he brings to this collection of critical essays the erudition, wit and craft of his songwriting.

Originally published in Australia in 2009, The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll was praised for its “fresh insights by a genuine master” (Courier Mail) and for providing an “assured guide to recent pop music from the perspective of a songwriter who has willingly kept up” (Weekend Australian). This revised and updated edition features new material not included in the original book, as well as short fiction and two moving tributes to Forster’s fellow Go-Between, Grant McLennan.

Singer, bassist, and songwriter Glenn Hughes is a living, breathing embodiment of British rock, and his is a compelling story.

Starting out in the 60s with beat combo Finders Keepers, he formed acclaimed funk-rock band Trapeze, then joined Deep Purple at their commercial peak. Flying around the world in the band’s own jet, Hughes enthusiastically embraced the rock’n’roll lifestyle. He played on three Purple albums, including the classic Burn.

When Deep Purple split up in 1976, Hughes embarked on a series of solo albums, collaborations, and even a brief, chaotic spell fronting Black Sabbath. Along the way he battled crack addiction and cocaine psychosis, before surviving a clean-up-or-die crisis and recovering to rebuild his solo career.

Hughes recounts his adventures and misadventures with honesty and humour, bringing us up to date with the formation of rock supergroup Black Country Communion.

In the late 60s and early 70s the inherent weirdness of folk met switched-on psychedelic rock and gave birth to new, strange forms of acoustic-based avant-garde music. Artists on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, Pearls Before Swine and Comus, combined sweet melancholy and modal melody with shape-shifting experimentation to create sounds of unsettling oddness that sometimes go under the name acid or psych folk.

A few of these artists—notably the String Band, who actually made it to Woodstock—achieved mainstream success, while others remained resolutely entrenched underground. But by the mid-70s even the bigger artists found sales dwindling, and this peculiar hybrid musical genre fell profoundly out of favour. For 30 years it languished in obscurity, apparently beyond the reaches of cultural reassessment, until, in the mid-2000s a new generation of artists collectively tagged ‘New Weird America’ and spearheaded by Devendra Banhart, Espers and Joanna Newsom rediscovered acid and psych folk, revered it and from it, created something new.

Thanks partly to this new movement, many original acid and psych folk artists have re-emerged, and original copies of rare albums command high prices. Meanwhile, both Britain and America are home to intensely innovative artists continuing the tradition of delving simultaneously into contemporary and traditional styles to create something unique.

Seasons They Change tells the story of the birth, death and resurrection of acid and psych folk. It explores the careers of the original wave of artists and their contemporary equivalents, finding connections between both periods, and uncovering a previously hidden narrative of musical adventure.

“If you know what you want, I’ll get it for you. If you don’t know what you want, I’ll do it for you.”

Few record producers possess the musical facility to back up such a bold promise, but in over forty-plus years behind the glass, Todd Rundgren has willed himself into becoming a not only a rock guitar virtuoso, an accomplished lead vocalist and vocal arranger and visionary keyboard player, not to mention a serviceable drummer.

But Rundgren’s greatest instrument of all is the recording studio itself. After learning his craft with Nazz, Rundgren engineered The Band’s Stage Fright album and soon became the producer of a string of noteworthy albums for Sparks, Grand Funk, The New York Dolls, Badfinger, Hall & Oates, Meat Loaf, Patti Smith Group, Cheap Trick, The Psychedelic Furs and XTC. Meanwhile, Rundgren played almost every instrument on his solo albums such as Something/Anything?, A Wizard A True Star, and Hermit Of Mink Hollow while collaborating on a series of albums by his band, Utopia.

A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio is a fascinating and authoritative trip through the land of flickering red lights inhabited by a studio wizard – and true star – who has rarely enjoyed a proper victory lap along the many trails that he has blazed. Researched and written with the participation and cooperation of Rundgren himself, Myers also draws upon exclusive new interviews with Robbie Robertson, Patti Smith, XTC, Sparks, Daryl Hall and John Oates, Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman, Cheap Trick, Grand Funk, The Psychedelic Furs, The Tubes, Steve Hillage, all members of Rundgren’s legendary band, Utopia, and many other key Rundgren associates.

Nirvana are one of the most influential bands in rock history, and even now, nearly 20 years after Kurt Cobain’s death, the reverence in which they are held is undiminished.

Books have been written about Nirvana before, but they tend to concentrate on the band’s superstar period and Kurt Cobain’s demise, while skating over the early years. In Entertain Us, Gillian Gaar redresses the balance by examining in forensic detail the band’s rise to fame, and their first album, Bleach.

Seattle native Gaar was one of the first journalists to write about Nirvana, and she covered the band’s career closely, offering her a unique perspective to write this book. Drawing on extensive interviews with the key characters in the story—including bassist Krist Novoselic, drummer Chad Channing, and producers Jack Endino and Butch Vig—the book charts the band’s formation and early years as well as their role at the center of the grunge gold rush.

By critiquing every song the band recorded in this period, tracing influences and unpicking complex relationships between band members, associates, and record labels, Gaar gets to the heart of a compelling story.

In 1992, Johnny Cash was battered and bruised. In constant pain through heart problems, broken bones and the aftermath of a second bout of drug addiction, his career wasn’t in much better shape than his body. One of his last singles for CBS, before they dumped him in 1986 after nearly 30 years, had been ‘Chicken In Black’ – in the video he appeared as a superhero fowl, dressed in cape, yellow shirt and tights. At the age of 60, all the signs were that Cash was ready for the museum. In fact, he was building one. Already an exhibit in the Country Music Hall of Fame, when he wasn’t playing small, shabby venues like Roadie’s Roadhouse, Mississauga, Ontario or Butlins Southcoast World in Bognor Regis, he was preparing to open the Cash Country theme park in Branson, Missouri.

Cut to a little under two years later. December 1993. Cash is playing the Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard in front of 150 of the hippest people in America. He is introduced by Johnny Depp; the audience includes Sean Penn, Juliette Lewis and assorted Red Hot Chili Peppers. They cheer him to the rafters for the full ninety minutes. His big bass baritone gets a whole song to itself on Zooropa, the new U2 album, while he has just completed recording his landmark American Recordings, made with Midas-like hip-hop and metal producer Rick Rubin. He won a Grammy for that record and a fistful more for his five other American Recordings albums. He played an unforgettable Glastonbury set in 1994 and was feted by one and all, from Nick Cave and Bono to Trent Reznor and Joe Strummer. From thereon until his death in 2003 (and beyond), Cash was, once again, the epitome of hip. Big Daddy cool.

What happened?

The Resurrection Of Johnny Cash tells the story of perhaps the most remarkable turnaround in musical history. As well as acknowledging Cash’s drug, drink and religious travails in the fifties and sixties, the book digs much deeper, focusing on a lesser known but no less remarkable period of his life: the inglorious fall post-1970 and the almost biblical rebirth in his later years. Homing in on the ten-year period between 1986 and 1995 The Resurrection Of Johnny Cash features dozens of exclusive new interviews, including conversations with Rosanne Cash, Will Oldham, U2’s Adam Clayton and Nick Lowe. It tells in detail the story of Cash’s sometimes humiliating fall from grace and his unprecedented revival; his struggle with a cruel variety of illnesses; his ongoing battles with addiction; his search to find direction in his career; the reaffirmation of his core traits as both an artist and a man; and his hugely influential legacy.

When Cream broke up in 1968 it was by no means a foregone conclusion that it would be Eric Clapton who would enjoy continued commercial success. After all, it was Jack Bruce who had the looks, and who co-wrote and sang all the band’s major hits, including ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’, ‘I Feel Free’ and ‘White Room’. But he was a singular talent who wanted to be a pioneer, not just a pop star, and he was never happy resting on his reputation.

Bruce’s formative years set the tone for a musical journey that has twisted and turned through the decades, moving through and combining many genres and styles. His background is in classical music and jazz; at 10 he was winning classical song contests, at 12 composing string quartets and improvising on piano. Then he fell in love with Thelonious Monk and Charlie Mingus and left home at 18 to find his fortune as a jazz bass player. He found his way into the London blues scene and played with luminaries such as John Mayall and Graham Bond before first tasting chart success with Manfred Mann. Then there was Cream, one of the most influential rock bands of their time, who sold 35 million albums during their two-year existence. Cream split in their prime but their influence endured, and when they reformed in 2005 tickets were selling for nearly £2,000 on eBay.

In the 40 years since Cream split Bruce has continued his musical adventures with the likes of John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, Carla Bley and Mick Taylor, never quite achieving the success and recognition he deserves. It has been an often troubled life — heroin addiction, management rip-offs, family tragedy, and a failed liver transplant, all of which he speaks about frankly in this book, telling a story that is sometimes funny, sometimes bleak, and always honest.

Return Of The King tells the story of a tumultuous period in the life of Elvis Presley. By 1967, The King Of Rock’n’Roll was all but washed-up, thanks to a string of bland movie roles and lackluster records. But within a year he had roused himself, loosened the creative shackles imposed by his grasping manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, and reconnected with the rock audience through a riveting TV special. There followed a glorious but all too brief artistic flowering, in which he made some of his most enduring records, including ‘Suspicious Minds’ and ‘In The Ghetto.’

This meticulously researched and elegantly written book, based on a string of new interviews with colleagues, friends, fans, and observers of The King, sheds new light on the events of Elvis’s great comeback.

Beatles For Sale details the ups and downs of The Beatles from their inception, as they promoted, advertised, and sold records, played concerts, produced tacky merchandise, made films, and set up publishing and record companies. It shows that The Beatles did not cope with their ever-growing business ventures because Lennon, McCartney, Epstein, Aspinall and co. had a clear vision of what they should be doing. On the contrary, their business acumen amounted to little more than making things up as they went along.

Beatles For Sale offers the facts and figures behind this story, and explains how it helped shape the music business as we know it. It is a story of naivety and greed, inexperience and luck, gullibility and ingenuity. It is the story of every aspect of how The Beatles made money—and how virtually every successful group since then has followed in their footsteps.

In 1958 Gibson introduced an electric guitar called the Les Paul Standard, a solidbody electric with mahogany body, two pickups, and a three-colour sunburst maple top, priced at $280. About 1,500 were made before production ceased in 1960 of what was—at the time—a not-particularly-successful model. But when guitar heroes such as Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page began to play examples in the 1960s, the legend of the ‘burst’ began. The guitars became among the most desirable ever made, and to buy one now you’d be looking at paying what it would cost to purchase and furnish a decent sized family home, and put a car in the garage.

So how did that happen? Who are the musicians who play these hallowed instruments and who are the collectors who’ll pay hundreds of thousands for them? And is there actually a $1 million dollar Les Paul? Through a series of interviews with players, collectors, guitar-makers, dealers, and others, leading guitar historian Tony Bacon mulled over these questions, and, in Million Dollar Les Paul, he offers some answers. It is a unique book, combining investigative journalism, music history, and a dash of guitar geekery in an almost mystical quest to penetrate the secrets of a hidden world —a world where science and superstition meet, and where the dusty case under the bed just might turn out to hold the guitar equivalent of the Holy Grail.

The Walker Brothers were the US counter-strike to the British invasion of the mid-60s. While The Beatles, the Stones and many others were busy colonising the US charts, three tall, handsome American men went into voluntary exile in a freezing London bedsit and launched their quest for pop stardom.

Not actually brothers, John (Maus), Gary (Leeds) and Scott (Engel) succeeded against the odds, becoming one of world’s biggest bands of 1966/67. With that came hit records—including two British chart-toppers, ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’ and ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’—and all that success entails: screaming girls, package tours, and intense interest in their private lives. The pressure of success eventually caused them to split, and the Walkers went their separate ways. Of the three, Scott is now the most prominent, having embarked on a mysterious solo career that has since become the stuff of myth, but Gary and John have recorded varied and interesting work, too. All three drifted into obscurity before reforming in 1976 and releasing the classic ‘No Regrets’ single. They concluded their recording career with one of the decade’s most influential records, 1978’s Nite Flights, about which Brian Eno recently exclaimed: “We haven’t got any further than this. It’s a disgrace.”

The Impossible Dream is an in-depth biography that traces the career of one of the most successful bands in pop history. In addition to assessing and analysing the talent and appeal of the enigmatic Scott, the author also covers the history and contributions of the other ‘brothers’, John and Gary, and provides a thorough analysis of all three men’s careers both as individual artists and as a group, from 1963 to 1978. Drawing on decades of archive interviews with the band (some previously unpublished), and many new interviews with backing musicians, record label staff, and producers, this is the definitive telling of The Walker Brothers’ story.

Read & Burn is the first serious, in-depth appraisal of one of the most influential British bands to emerge during the punk era.

If Wire were briefly a punk band, however, it was largely by historical accident. Yet they seem never to have quite escaped the label—despite the fact that they had complicated and transformed it almost before they’d begun.

Wire’s story—which honours punk’s original but quickly forgotten commitment to the new—is one of constant remaking and remodelling, one that stubbornly resists reduction to a single identity. Their insistence on always doing something different has intensified the challenge of balancing artistic endeavour and commercial viability—a task made all the more difficult by the complex creative relationships between the band-members.

Tracing Wire’s diverse output from 1977 up until the present, Read & Burn does justice to their restlessly inventive body of work by developing a sustained critical account of their shifting approaches. It combines analysis and interpretation with perspective drawn from extensive interviews with past and present members of the group, as well as producers, collaborators, and associates.

“We’ve sort of flirted with greatness,” R.E.M.’s Peter Buck admitted. “But we’ve yet to make a record as good as Big Star’s Third.”

Although Big Star were together for less than four years and had little commercial success, the influence of their three original albums—#1 Record, Radio City, and Third—continues to grow. Big Star bucked all the musical trends of the 70s. In an era of glam and prog rock they wrote catchy, radio-friendly power-pop tunes that remain influential today. Artists as diverse as Primal Scream, R.E.M., The Bangles, The Posies, Teenage Fanclub, Jeff Buckley, and Wilco have spoken about the Big Star legacy.

In the decade since the original version of this book was published, Big Star have made a belated fourth album, In Space, and released an acclaimed four-disc retrospective, Keep An Eye On The Sky. The band have also lost two original members, an influential producer, and the photographer of their iconic logo. But interest in the group is as high as ever in the 21st century, with new bands such as Yo La Tengo and Hot Chip—and even pop superstar Katy Perry—carrying the flame.

Now fully updated, and drawing on firsthand interviews with the band, family members, friends, and the major players at Ardent Records, this is the definitive history of rock’s forgotten band.

Devo may have become synonymous with the crass commercialism of 80s new wave, but many of their guiding principles are firmly rooted in the idealism of the 60s. Taking a wilfully non-traditional approach to the surprisingly conservative world of rock music, they sought inspiration instead from Dada and Pop art to comic books and homemade electronics, in the process crossing paths with everything from late 60s psychedelia to punk, krautrock to new wave.

Recombo DNA is the first book to evaluate in the proper context the innovations and accomplishments of this truly groundbreaking band. Opening with the transformative effects of the May 4 1970 shootings at Kent State University—the aftershocks of which are felt throughout the book—author Kevin C. Smith traces the sounds and ideas that Devo absorbed and in turn brought to prominence as unlikely rock stars, dropping in along the way on studio sessions with Brian Eno, post-apocalyptic filmmaking with Neil Young, and a Jamaican odyssey with Richard Branson. For anyone who has ever wondered where ‘the band who fell to earth’ came from, here is the answer.

“When ‘Laughter In The Rain,’ ‘Bad Blood,’ and ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’ all reached number one in 1975, they said, ‘Sedaka’s back.’ It was a thrilling ride for me that signaled the end of a long, hard climb back to the top. I want to thank Rich Podolsky for accurately capturing those years in this wonderful book.” Neil Sedaka

“A fascinating book on a fascinating subject. I couldn’t wait for the next chapter. Not only is Neil Sedaka an outstanding songwriter and artist, he has lived an astonishing life. This is better than fiction. You couldn’t make this up.” Music historian and broadcaster Paul Gambaccini

From 1958 to 1963, Neil Sedaka sold 25 million records—more than anyone except Elvis Presley. He thought he could do no wrong, but a year later he was all but off the charts, swept away by The Beatles and the British Invasion—a blow he never saw coming. The deejays stopped playing his records, and the public stopped buying them.

For 12 agonizing years, Sedaka battled to get back on the charts—back to respectability. He tried everything: working with hip, young songwriters, playing on demo sessions, and even enduring the rough and tumble of working men’s clubs in remote corners in the UK. Then, one magical night, he performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London. His new songs, including ‘Solitaire,’ were greeted with thunderous applause.

Shortly thereafter, Elton John, the biggest rock’n’roll star of the decade, stopped by to see him and offered to sign Neil to his new label, Rocket Records. “Great songwriters always re-establish themselves,” Elton writes in the foreword to this book, “because they don’t stop writing great songs.”

And that was it. In October 1974, ‘Laughter In The Rain’ showed up at number 95 on Billboard—Sedaka’s first appearance on the charts in over a decade. Sixteen weeks later it reached number one, sealing one of the most amazing comebacks in music history. This vivid and authoritative book, written with full access to Sedaka and those closest to him, tells the absorbing story of how he overcame one obstacle after another to become the ultimate rock’n’roll survivor.

Suddenly, this skinny, longhaired kid who had been lounging against the wall inside sprang forward to confront me, rolling and popping his eyes, intensely vibing me with his own personal voodoo. He looked electric, on fire—as if he was about to jump out of his own skin.

He was the very image of the young Tim Buckley—same sensual, red-lipped mouth, same sensitive, haunted, blazing eyes. He was a beautiful boy: so charismatic, so handsome, his chiseled face both angelic and demonic.

This was obviously Jeff Buckley.

Touched By Grace is a revealing account by the legendary guitarist and songwriter Gary Lucas of the time he spent working with Jeff Buckley during Jeff’s early days in New York City. It describes their magical first performance together at the Greetings From Tim Buckley concert in 1991, the creation of their landmark songs ‘Grace’ and ‘Mojo Pin,’ their plan to take on the world together in Gary’s band Gods and Monsters—and then the moment when Jeff pulled the plug, opting instead to pursue a solo deal with Columbia Records, the very label that had recently cut short its contract with the original incarnation Gods and Monsters. In this fascinating and revelatory new book, Gary Lucas writes with heartfelt honesty about the highs and lows of this unique creative collaboration, providing an eye-opening insight into a world of music, passion, betrayal, and more.

“I have been seeking P.F. Sloan, but no one knows where he’s gone” ‘P.F. Sloan’ by Jimmy Webb

“Absolutely none of ’em could beat ol’ P.F.” Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone magazine

What’s Exactly The Matter With Me? is a first-person account of an extraordinary life and pilgrimage through the most fascinating years of American and English musical culture. This is a story of dreams, success, destruction, and miraculous resurrection; the incredible, heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring story of one of the greatest songwriters in American music—and also one of the most elusive and mysterious.

P.F. Sloan was one of the most prolific and influential geniuses to emerge from the golden age of the 60s, and a pioneer of folk-rock. Between 1965 and 1967, 150 of his songs were recorded by major acts, and 45 of those made the charts. No other songwriter has ever come close to achieving so great number of hits in such a short period of time.

From his little studio at Dunhill Records, P.F. Sloan was a veritable hit-machine, writing for The Mamas & The Papas (that’s Sloan’s infectious guitar lick on ‘California Dreamin’’), Jan & Dean (the falsetto you hear on most of their hits is Sloan’s), Barry McGuire (the brilliant and controversial ‘Eve Of Destruction’), Johnny Rivers (‘Secret Agent Man’), The Turtles, The Fifth Dimension, and many, many more.

He wrote so many songs, in fact, that Dunhill sold him as seven different acts. Unsurprisingly, he wound up exhausted and broken, thus beginning a long journey into the wilderness—a journey of UFOs and psychiatric hospitals, healing and survival, and, ultimately, redemption.

At a time in rock and pop history when almost everything has been done before, few artists have proved as restlessly innovative as Beck.

Since bursting onto the scene in 1994 with ‘Loser’, he has zigzagged his way across the contemporary music landscape, consistently remaining one step ahead of expectations and doing things his own way, shape-shifting from indie icon to pop crooner, from folk hobo to Latino-rap hipster, balancing big-budget chart highs with low-key, introspective acoustic albums.

Beck’s early shows saw him clearing the stage with a leaf-blower, and his enthusiasm for the experimental has not diminished with age. In the twenty-first century, he founded the Record Club, which brought together disparate artists to record cover versions of whole albums in a single day for release online. Then he took a troupe of doppelgänger marionettes  out on tour and made the brave decision to release Song Reader as a set of sheet music, challenging buyers to record and play their own versions of his new songs.

Drawing on new interviews with friends, family, collaborators, and bandmates—as well as conversations with Beck himself—Throwing Frisbees At The Sun is a carefully crafted, career-spanning retrospective befitting the many twists and turns of this intriguing performer’s path through life and music.

Beginning with the creation of Bauhaus’s seminal debut hit ''Bela Lugosi’s Dead'', David J. Haskins offers a no-holds-barred account of his band’s rapid rise to fame and glory in the late ''70s, their sudden dissolution in the ''80s, and their subsequent and often strained reunions. In between, he explores his work as a solo performer, and with acclaimed trio Love And Rockets culminating in the devastating fire that ripped through the sessions for their 1996 album Sweet F.A. He also delves deep into his exploration of the occult, drawing together a diverse cast of supporting characters, including William S. Burroughs, Alan Moore, Genesis P-Orridge, and Rick Rubin.

Bristling with power and passion, music and magick, Who Killed Mister Moonlight? is a rock’n’roll memoir like no other. This revised and updated edition adds an extensive Bauhaus timeline, plus a selection of rare photographs not included in the original book.

It’s 1967, the Summer of Love, and Bob Dylan is holed up in Woodstock with a group of musicians once known as The Hawks, laying down a set of recordings that will soon turn the music world on its head. These recordings – the Basement Tapes – would not be released commercially by Dylan at first, but would emerge in the form of cover versions by acts such as The Byrds, Manfred Mann, and Peter Paul & Mary. Together, they would inspire a homespun, back-to-basics approach in the work of The Beatles, the Stones, the Grateful Dead, and many others, while also kick-starting the entire Americana genre.

In this fully revised and updated edition – published to coincide with the release of dozens of previously unreleased Basement Tapes recordings, a major new documentary about the period, and the T Bone Burnett-produced Lost On The River album – author and musician Sid Griffin is given unique access to a cache of more than 40 never-before-heard Basement Tapes recordings, allowing him to shine even greater light on this pivotal yet often misunderstood moment in popular music history.

‘If I had a name like Wyndham Wallace I would not associate or correspond with anyone with a simple name like mine. However, since you have lowered yourself to such depths, how can my old Indian heart (west not east) not respond favourably.’  Lee Hazlewood

In 1999, after years in the wilderness, Lee Hazlewood—the legendary but often neglected singer and songwriter best known for ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’’, the chart-topping hit he wrote and produced for Nancy Sinatra—launched a comeback that would last until his death in 2007. Lee, Myself & I offers an intimate portrait of how, during that time, Wyndham Wallace became Hazlewood’s confidante, manager, and even collaborator.

A lively and poignant account of their unlikely friendship, adventures, and conversations, Wallace’s unusual memoir tells the touching but true story of what it’s like to meet your hero, befriend him, and watch him die. Along the way, he captures the complex personality of a reclusive icon whose work helped shape the American pop-cultural landscape and continues to influence countless artists today.

“REBELLION IS A PART OF YOUTH. SOMETIMES IT’S DANGEROUS. INSTEAD OF A SWORD, I HOLD A GUITAR IN MY HANDS. I’M IN THE SAME, RIGID WORLD, BUT INSTEAD OF MOLOTOV COCKTAILS, I’VE GOT A COMPUTER. IT’S A MUCH MORE POWERFUL WEAPON.”

Confessions Of A Heretic is the forthright and erudite memoir of Adam Nergal Darski, the frontman and driving force behind the Polish extreme metal group Behemoth, currently at the top of their game following the release of their 2014 US Top 40 album The Satanist.

Presented as a series of interrogations by friends and associates, and with a foreword by Lamb Of God frontman D. Randall Blythe, the book reveals a complex man of great contrast—a health-conscious, highly personable intellectual known for his extreme views and even more extreme music—lifting the lid on everything from his clashes with the Polish Catholic Church to appearing as a judge on the Polish version of The Voice to his battle with leukaemia.

“I LIKE ACCIDENTS. I LIKE TO PUT MYSELF IN THE WAY OF MUSICAL HARM. I LIKE BEING AT THE WHEEL OF THAT MUSICAL CAR, AND AIMING IT AT THE WALL, JUST TO SEE WHAT SHAPE THE CAR’S GOING TO COME OUT. IT MIGHT COME OUT AN INTERESTING SHAPE THAT WOULD HAVE TAKEN ME FOREVER TO DECIDE ON OTHERWISE.” Andy Partridge

Complicated Game offers unique insight into the work of XTC founder Andy Partridge, one of Britain’s most original and influential songwriters. It is also an unprecedentedly revealing and instructive guide to how songs and records are made. Developed from a series of interviews conducted over many months, it explores in detail some thirty of Partridge’s songs—including such well-known singles as ‘Senses Working Overtime’ and the controversial ‘Dear God’—from throughout XTC’s thirty-year career, as well as an extensive interview dedicated solely to the art and craft of songwriting.

While the interviews cast new light on the writing of lyrics, the construction of melodies and arrangements, the process of recording, and the workings of the music industry, they are also filled with anecdotes about Partridge, his XTC bandmates, and their adventures around the world— all told with the songwriter’s legendary humour.

This fascinating book also includes pages from Partridge’s songwriting notebooks and reproductions of his original artwork designs; a guided tour of his hometown of Swindon; and a foreword by Steven Wilson, the guitarist, songwriter, and record producer best known as the founder and leader of Porcupine Tree.