Rock Art

Grunge Is Dead weaves together the definitive story of the Seattle music scene through a series of interviews with the people who were there. Taking the form of an “oral” history, this books contains more than 130 interviews, along with essential background information from acclaimed music writer Greg Prato.

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.

Ever since the Beatles’ British Invasion, numerous rock bands and singers have created albums that still have many fans’ love and devotion today. Was it raw talent, or was there something below the surface that transformed these dreamers into Hollywood legends? Icons of Rock invites music lovers to discover the truth behind their favorite artists and how they created the best songs of all time. Investigating the psychology and chemistry behind artistic inspiration, you will find how much an unconscious influence can change not only one person’s life, but the entire world.

"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.

As an A&R man at Epic Records, Tom Werman helped introduce the world to REO Speedwagon, Boston, Ted Nugent, and Cheap Trick; he also discovered KISS, Rush, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but his record label passed on all of them. Then, as an independent producer, he oversaw landmark albums by Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, Lita Ford, Jeff Beck, Poison, and many more. All in all, his record-making resume includes twenty-three gold- or platinum-selling albums and cumulative sales of more than fifty-two million copies.

The Punk Rock Manifesto by Jinx is a radical philosophical work that challenges modern society's systems of control and conformity. This isn't just an analysis of punk culture—it's an intellectual assault on how power structures shape human consciousness through fear, comfort, and manufactured meaning.

Unlike all previous versions of rock 'n' roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects 10 songs recorded between 1956 and 2008 and then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out - a new language, something new under the sun.

Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen’s hugely successful album The River should have been the hit-packed Born in the U.S.A. But instead, in 1982, he came out with an album consisting of a series of dark songs he had recorded by himself, for himself. But more than forty years later, Nebraska is arguably Springsteen’s most important record—the lasting clue to understanding not just his career as an artist and the vision behind it, but also the man himself.

Stones have furnished our earliest technologies and our first art materials. As jewelry and talismans, they have accompanied us in our journeys into the afterlife. We have carried stones over vast distances, erecting temples with them where we gathered to worship our gods. The earliest scientists ground and processed minerals in a centuries-long quest for a mythic stone that would prolong human life. Michelangelo climbed mountains in Tuscany searching for the sugar-white marble that would yield his sculptures.

On New Year's Eve, 1970, Paul McCartney told his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London, effectively ending The Beatles. You might say this was the last day of the pop era. The following day, which was a Friday, was 1971. You might say this was the first day of the rock era. And within the remaining 364 days of this monumental year, the world would hear Don McLean's "American Pie", The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar", The Who's "Baba O'Riley", Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", and more.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote there are no second acts in American lives. Miles proved him wrong. Miles was back in New York City and good health in 1955. In the summer of 1955, Miles performed a noted set at the Newport Jazz Festival. His performance, especially his solo on the Thelonius Monk tune Round Midnight was widely praised, prompting critics to welcome the "return of Miles Davis." Columbia Records executive George Avakian approached Miles and offered a contract with the label if he could form a regular band with a steady lineup. Miles assembled his first regular quintet to meet a ...

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.

Iggy Pop's legendary career has been tumultuous, reaching great heights with mega-hits and then hitting rock-bottom lows in jail and mental institutions. Along the way, he's become a cult-rock hero, an inspiration for dozens of other famous rockers, and has had a pretty good time of it, too. But the image of Iggy Pop versus the man behind that image, James Newell Osterberg, Jr., is surprisingly contradictory.

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.

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.

In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie Van Zant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band to play covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds, and the country and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming their band after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee Senior High School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiring musicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties, and bars throughout the South.

Math rock sounds like blueprints look: exact, precise, architectural. This trance-like progressive metal music with indie rock and jazz influences has been captivating and challenging listeners for decades. Bands associated with the genre include King Crimson, Black Flag, Don Caballero, Slint, American Football, Toe, Elephant Gym, Covet, and thousands more. In an online age of bedroom producers and sampled beats and loops, math rock is music that is absolutely and resolutely played: men and woman in rooms with instruments creating chaos, beauty, and beautiful chaos.

Steely Dan's songs are exercises in fictional world-building. No one else in the classic-rock canon has conjured a more vivid cast of rogues and heroes, creeps and schmucks, lovers and dreamers and cold-blooded operators-or imbued their characters with so much humanity.

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.

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.