A sympathetic but clear-eyed exploration of Paul McCartney’s work in the 1990s, arguably his most important since the rise of the Beatles. Paul McCartney’s 1990s was an era like no other, perhaps even the most significant decade of his entire career...

An in-depth exploration of the style and influence of Pat Metheny, a truly distinctive musical voice of our time. Guitarist and composer Pat Metheny, among the most acclaimed, visionary musicians of our time, has for five decades toured with his many...

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). 80 of the all-time best blues tunes in one jam-packed collection! Includes: Baby Please Don't Go * Caldonia * I'm a Man * Kansas City * Milk Cow Blues * Reconsider Baby * Wang Dang Doodle * You Shook Me * and scores more.

Shaw, Bernard (1856-1950)

A "hidden" instrument in the classical music world, the mandolin's repertoire of original music remains largely unknown. This book examines the lives and works of the mandolin's great composers and, together with Sparks's earlier The Early Mandolin...

Down On The Corner is the story of music performed on the streets, in subways, in parks, in schoolyards, on the back of flatbed trucks, and beyond, from the 1920s to the present day.One day around 1970, my father announced to me that he’d like to take me...

The critically acclaimed definitive biography of Kate Bush, revised and updated for 2024, with a new foreword by Sinéad Gleeson. Detailing everything from Bush's upbringing to her early exposition of talent, to her subsequent evolution into a stunningly...

Between Two Sounds follows the life of world-famous composer Arvo Pärt from his birth in Estonia in 1935 through 1980, when the Soviets forced him to emigrate because of the nonconformist and religious nature of his music.Based on years of research and...

Freshly revised and chock-full of new, vibrant stories, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life is the "lively and . . . necessary" (New York Times Book Review), and first and foremost definitive history of the musical outlaws who revolutionized the music...

Acid Detroit tells the story of Motor City through its revolutionary music past and present, in order to find the seeds of radical transformation among its ruins.Acid Detroit is an exhilarating, technicolour view of Detroit’s musical and social history...

Poets, Guitarists, Songwriters, TV Stars, Provocateurs, Riot Grrrl founders: the authors in this study challenge perceptions of punk music and politics. Viv Albertine, Alice Bag, Pauline Black, Carrie Brownstein, Kim Gordon, Nina Hagen, Chrissie Hynde,...

Arthel Doc Watson (1923-2012) is arguably one of the most influential musicians Appalachia has ever produced. A musician's musician, Doc grew up on a subsistence farm in the North Carolina mountains during the Depression, soaking up traditional music and...

Not many memoirs are generational events. But when Sly Stone, one of the few true musical geniuses of the last century, decides to finally tell his life story, it can’t be called anything else. As the front man for the sixties pop-rock-funk band Sly and...

“The only Lou Reed bio you need to read.” ―The Washington PostA Rolling Stone best music book of 2023 | One of Pitchfork’s ten best music books of 2023 | A Variety best music book of the year | A Kirkus Reviews best nonfiction book of 2023“There have...

Whenever a person engages with music--when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or a wedding guest gets down on the dance floor--countless neurons are firing. Playing an instrument...

Summer 1984. I’ve got the back lounge of this tour bus all to myself, partly because I’m the lead singer but more likely because it means the rest of the band won’t have to deal with me for the rest of the day. Just two years earlier I was flunking out...

"An affectionate portrait, one that recognizes Watts as musician, colleague, family man, obsessive collector and immaculate dresser."--Sunday Times "Sexton, a longtime Stones chronicler, tells Watts's story with warmth and diligence."--Observer The fully...

NEW AND EXPANDED EDITION, NOW WITH 58 SONGS Following his 2016 smash hit Anatomy of a Song, acclaimed music journalist Marc Myers collects fifty-five new oral histories of iconic songs from his popular Wall Street Journal column Songs that sell the most...