Rock Art

The Allman Brothers Band’s Brothers and Sisters was not only the band’s best-selling album at over seven million copies sold, it was also a powerfully influential release, both musically and culturally, one whose influence continues to be profoundly felt.

Music journalist Mike Barnes (MOJO, The Wire, Prog, and author of the acclaimed biography Captain Beefheart) goes back to the birth of progressive rock and surveys the cultural conditions and attitudes that fed into, and were in turn affected by, this remarkable musical phenomenon.

Have you always felt a certain nostalgia to the 1980s even if you didn’t grow up in it? Were you a child, teenager, or young adult in the '80s and want to relive the best years of your life? Well now you can travel back in time and embrace your over the top fashion sense that’s dying to come out!

On June 4, 1984, Columbia Records issued what would become one of the best-selling and most impactful rock albums of all time. An instant classic, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. would prove itself to be a landmark not only for the man who made it, but rock music in general, and even the larger American culture over the next 40 years.

In 2018, during an interview with journalist Tanya Pearson, Shirley Manson lamented: "It’s a blanket fact that after September 11th, nonconformist women were taken off the radio.” This comment echoed a reality Pearson had personally witnessed as a musician and a fan, and launched her into a quest to figure out just what happened to these extraordinary female figures. Pretend We’re Dead seeks to answer two big questions.

To have been alive during the last 60 years is to have lived with the music of Paul Simon. The boy from Queens scored his first hit record in 1957, just months after Elvis Presley ignited the rock era. As the songwriting half of Simon & Garfunkel, his work helped define the youth movement of the '60s. On his own in the '70s, Simon made radio-dominating hits. He kicked off the '80s by reuniting with Garfunkel to perform for half a million New Yorkers in Central Park. Five years later Simon's album Graceland sold millions. And it doesn't stop there.

"Surely make you lose your mind . . ." So the Eagles warn us about the outrageous and ruthless lifestyle of the ambitious rock-n-roller. In fact, Don Henley could barely listen to the track "Life in the Fast Lane" when they were recording it. He was so high that it made him sick. The band that embodied the American dream with globe-straddling success, impossibly luxurious lives, and almost supernatural talent also descended into nightmare with betrayal, hate-filled hubris, the skeletons of perceived enemies, brutally discarded lovers and former band mates left unburied in the road behind them.

England's Dreaming is the ultimate book on punk, its progenitors, the Sex Pistols, and the moment they defined for music fans in England and the United States. Savage brings to life the sensational story of the meteoric rise and rapid implosion of the Pistols through layers of rich detail and exclusive interviews. This fully revised and updated edition of the book covers the legacy of punk 25 years later and provides an account of the Pistols' 1996 reunion as well as a completely new introduction.

Nine African American students made history when they defied a governor and integrated an Arkansas high school in 1957. It was the photo of one of the nine trying to enter the school a young girl being taunted, harassed, and threatened by an angry mob that grabbed the world's attention and kept its disapproving gaze on Little Rock, Arkansas.

A fitting tribute to the troubled genius who revolutionized electric bass playing and bridged the gaps between jazz, R&B, rock, and funk. From his early days in R&B club bands through his international stardom with fusion group Weather Report and on to his solo career and tragic death at age 35, this book portrays the life and music of Jaco Pastorius, the self-proclaimed "world's greatest bass player".

Take a Walk on the Dark Side is the ultimate book for today's rock and roll fan: a fascinating compendium of facts, fictions, prophecies, premonitions, coincidences, hoaxes, doomsday scenarios, and other urban legends about some of the world's most beloved and mysterious pop icons. Updating, revising, and expanding on material from his cult classic Hellhounds on Their Trail, Patterson offers up a delectable feast of strange and occasionally frightening rock and roll tales.

Merging memoir, anecdotes, and masterclasses on guitar, songwriting, and the artist's mindset, Lay It on the Line offers insight and perspective into the many roles Rik Emmett took on. "It" was always a parboiling, psychological gumbo: and this book attempts to finally share the recipe.

Kurt Cobain. GG Allin. Wendy O. Williams. Duane Allman. Travis Barker. Jimmy Page. Janis Joplin. Ozzy Osbourne. Chrissie Hynde. Dee Dee Ramone. Chris Cornell. Marc Bolan. Tommy Lee. Amy Winehouse. Jimi Hendrix. What do these artists all have in common? They’re rowdy rock stars whose over-the-top lifestyles spun out of control, landing them deep in Rock & Roll Nightmare territory. Rock & Roll Nightmares: True Stories, Volume 1 is a meticulously-researched, up-to-date, entertaining, and shocking book that rounds up the tragic tales from the 1960s to the present day.

The Great Book of Rock Trivia contains hundreds of riveting facts about your favorite rock songs. Whether you’re interested in what your favorite musicians like to do in their spare time, where they get the ideas for their music, or which artist had an exorcism in his home, you’re in for a treat. This book will satisfy your curiosity and help you impress your friends with your rock and roll knowledge.

Today, yacht rock is one of the most celebrated "yesteryear" styles of pop music, and has resonated with a new generation of musicians. But despite all the hoopla, there has never been a book that told the entire story of the genre. Until now. Featuring interviews with many of the heavy hitters of the genre, including John Oates, Kenny Loggins, and Don Felder, The Yacht Rock Book leaves no sail unturned. This is the definitive story of the yacht rock’s creation, rise, chart-smashing success, fall, and stunning rebirth.

With nearly 40 million record sales, three albums topping the Billboard charts, a Grammy win and a legion of fans, System Of A Down are one of the biggest metal bands on the planet. At their core has always been Serj Tankian, whose journey from the streets of Beirut to rock superstardom is as remarkable and unlikely as you'll get. By dint of luck, circumstance, struggle, and more than a little talent, Serj has had the chance to live an extraordinary life, and retraces this remarkable journey, exploring what it's taught him - about music, about art, about activism, and about himself.

Simply stated, Kurt Cobain changed the cultural conversation in his all-too-brief life, and even after his shattering death. With interviews and commentary from all corners of the pop culture universe, from the people who knew Cobain to those who continue to help his legend grow, Here We Are Now explores what a singular life meant, and how that meaning can be measured, when and if it can be.

This epic cultural and historical odyssey unearths the full influence of occult traditions on rock and roll - from the Beatles to Black Sabbath - and shows how the marriage between mysticism and music changed our world.

Shock and Awe offers a fresh, in-depth look at the glam and glitter phenomenon, placing it in the wider '70s context of social upheaval and political disillusion. It explores how artists like Lou Reed, New York Dolls, and Queen broke with the hippie generation, celebrating illusion and artifice over truth and authenticity. Probing the genre's major themes - stardom, androgyny, image, decadence, fandom, apocalypse - Reynolds tracks glam's legacy as it unfolded in subsequent decades, from '80s art-pop icons to 21st-century idols of outrage.

Most home studio engineers don't have a process to follow as they mix. As a result, they find themselves feeling unsure of where to begin, how to process individual tracks, make them all work together, and know exactly when their work is finished. Working like this can be frustrating since it often is time consuming and results in weak, lifeless mixes. That's where this book comes in handy.