"A frank, intriguing memoir."
--People "Painfully shrewd, and written with real delicacy and pathos."
--The New York Times Book Review "Home reflects the very qualities that first made the working-class English singer a star 45 years ago: intelligence, gentle humor, and a clear, sweet, surprisingly powerful voice . . . In warmly nostalgic later chapters, the book begins to glow."
--Entertainment Weekly "A delightful remembrance of her own childhood, and an engrossing prelude to her cinematic career . . . Andrews is an accomplished writer who holds back nothing while adding a patina of poetry to the antics and anecdotes throughout this memoir of bittersweet backstage encounters and theatrical triumphs."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Frank and fascinating . . . Andrews comes across as plainspoken, guilelessly charming and resoundingly tough."
--Time In Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, Julie Andrews takes her readers on a warm, moving, and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America.

The quintessential Mod band, notorious for their theatricality and destructiveness on stage, The Who rate alongside the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones as one of the most successful and innovative rock bands of the sixties and seventies, who captured the voice of youth. Following on from the successful Led Zeppelin Revealed and Pink Floyd Revealed, this new, glossy, visually stimulating coffee-table book covers all the major events in their 20-year career accompanied by revealing and evocative images.

Legendary Grammy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated record producer George Martin shares tales from his life and musical career with the Fab Four.

George Martin spotted the Beatles' talent, and recorded and produced The Fab Four from the start right through to The Beatles Anthology. Often called “the fifth Beatle,” Martin not only produced but also arranged some of the band’s most iconic and distinctive songs, including “Yesterday.” In this witty and charming autobiography, Martin describes exactly what it was like to work in the studio with the Beatles―from their first audition (and his decision to scrap Pete Best on drums) to the wild experimentation of Sgt. Pepper, complete with sound effects, animal noises, and full orchestras in evening dress at the direct request of Paul McCartney.

All You Need Is Ears is an intimate insider’s look at the most important pop group of all time, and how they made the music that changed the world: it’s an inimitable look at the Beatles’ creative process, and at the interplay of genius and practical improvisation that gave them their sound. It’s an indispensable read for Beatle lovers and anyone interested in how the world of popular music really works.

Elliott Smith was one of the most gifted songwriters of the nineties, adored by worshipful fans for his subtly melancholic words and melodies. The sadness had its sources in the life. There was trauma from an early age, years of drug abuse and a chronic sense of disconnection that sometimes seemed almost self-engineered. Smith died violently in Los Angeles in 2003, under what some believe to be questionable circumstances, of a single fatal stab wound to the chest. By this time fame had found him, and record buyers who shared the listening experience felt he spoke directly to them from beyond: lonely, lovelorn, frustrated, fighting until he could fight no more. And yet, although his achingly intimate lyrics carried the weight of truth, Smith remained unknowable. In Torment Saint, William Todd Schultz gives us the first proper biography of the rock star, a decade after his death, imbued with affection, authority, sensitivity and long-awaited clarity. Torment Saint draws on Schultz's careful, deeply knowledgeable readings and insights, as well as on more than 150 hours of interviews with close friends, lovers, bandmates, peers, managers, label owners, and recording engineers and producers. This book unravels the remaining mysteries of Smith's life and his shocking, too-early end. It will be an indispensable examination of his life and legacy, both for Smith's legions of fans as well as readers still discovering his songbook.

Keith Hatschek tells the story of three determined artists: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Iola Brubeck and the stand they took against segregation by writing and performing a jazz musical titled The Real Ambassadors. First conceived by the Brubecks in 1956, the musical's journey to the stage for its 1962 premiere tracks extraordinary twists and turns across the backdrop of the civil rights movement. A variety of colorful characters, from Broadway impresarios to gang-connected managers, surface in the compelling storyline. During the Cold War, the US State Department enlisted some of America's greatest musicians to serve as jazz ambassadors, touring the world to trumpet a so-called "free society." Honored as celebrities abroad, the jazz ambassadors, who were overwhelmingly African Americans, returned home to racial discrimination and deferred dreams. The Brubecks used this double standard as the central message for the musical, deploying humor and pathos to share perspectives on American values. On September 23, 1962, The Real Ambassadors's stunning debut moved a packed arena at the Monterey Jazz Festival to laughter, joy, and tears. Although critics unanimously hailed the performance, it sadly became a footnote in cast members' bios. The enormous cost of reassembling the star-studded cast made the creation impossible to stage and tour. However, The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation caps this jazz story by detailing how the show was triumphantly revived in 2014 by Jazz at Lincoln Center. This reaffirmed the musical's place as an integral part of America's jazz history and served as an important reminder of how artists' voices are a powerful force for social change.

'Oh friends, not these sounds, let us instead strike up ones more pleasing and more joyful'. Written during the corona of 2020 and stretching into 2021, the sounds and words of music are here given a deeper and wider meaning. The words quoted above were Beethoven's own in the lockdown of his own deafness and just before letting the chorus loose to proclaim that 'all people become brothers'. The sounds he refers to are those of despair, exuberance, and utopian peace that his symphony has just portrayed. For him, and for us, the Ode is less the vision of an alternative world than an expression of a constant need to seek a joy which, beyond happiness and once-in-a-while cheerfulness, is a sense of doing something worthwhile with and, where possible, for others.

The first scholarly discussion on the band, Pearl Jam and Philosophy examines both the songs (music and lyrics) and the activities (live performances, political commitments) of one of the most celebrated and charismatic rock bands of the last 30 years. The book investigates the philosophical aspects of their music at various levels: existential, spiritual, ethical, political, metaphysical and aesthetic. This philosophical interpretation is also dependent on the application of textual and poetic analysis: the interdisciplinary volume puts philosophical aspects of the band's lyrics in close dialogue with 19th- and 20th-century European and American poetry. Through this widespread philosophical examination, the book further looks into the band's immense popularity and commercial success, their deeply loyal fanbase and genuine sense of community surrounding their music, and the pivotal place the band holds within popular music and contemporary culture.

Written with grace, humor, and affection, Last Train to Memphis has been hailed as the definitive biography of Elvis Presley. It is the first to set aside the myths and focus on Elvis' humanity in a way that has yet to be duplicated. A New York Times Notable BookWinner of the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award "Elvis steps from the pages. You can feel him breathe. This book cancels out all others." --Bob Dylan From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley is the first biography to go past that myth and present an Elvis beyond the legend. Based on hundreds of interviews and nearly a decade of research, it traces the evolution not just of the man but of the music and of the culture he left utterly transformed, creating a completely fresh portrait of Elvis and his world. This volume tracks the first twenty-four years of Elvis' life, covering his childhood, the stunning first recordings at Sun Records ("That's All Right," "Mystery Train"), and the early RCA hits ("Heartbreak Hotel," "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel"). These were the years of his improbable self-invention and unprecedented triumphs, when it seemed that everything that Elvis tried succeeded wildly. There was scarcely a cloud in sight through this period until, in 1958, he was drafted into the army and his mother died shortly thereafter. The book closes on that somber and poignant note. Last Train to Memphis takes us deep inside Elvis' life, exploring his lifelong passion for music of every sort (from blues and gospel to Bing Crosby and Mario Lanza), his compelling affection for his family, and his intimate relationships with girlfriends, mentors, band members, professional associates, and friends. It shows us the loneliness, the trustfulness, the voracious appetite for experience, and above all the unshakable, almost mystical faith that Elvis had in himself and his music. Drawing frequently on Elvis' own words and on the recollections of those closest to him, the book offers an emotional, complex portrait of young Elvis Presley with a depth and dimension that for the first time allow his extraordinary accomplishments to ring true. Peter Guralnick has given us a previously unseen world, a rich panoply of people and events that illuminate an achievement, a place, and a time as never revealed before.

This second updated edition of Notes from a Jazz Life includes Digby Fairweather's career since the year 2000 as a jazz cornetist, band leader, educator and broadcaster, working with George Melly and leading his band the Half-Dozen. The book has much to offer to people who are even marginally interested in jazz in all its wide variety of forms as well as providing insights for regular jazz readers. The author provides revealing reflections on the personal life and career of a musician and, with a wealth of warm, hilarious anecdotes, he writes honestly about all the challenges, frustrations and rich rewards of being part of the jazz world.

This book explores an album of popular music with a remarkable significance to a violent wave of postcolonial tensions in the Netherlands in the 1970s. Several "actions" were claimed by a small number of first-generation descendants of ca. 12,500 reluctant migrants from the young independent state of Indonesia (former Dutch East Indies). Transferred in 1951, this culturally coherent group consisted of ex-Royal Dutch Colonial Army personnel and their families. Their ancient roots in the Moluccan archipelago and their protestant-christian faith defined their minority image. Their sojourn should have been temporary, but frustratingly turned out to be permanent. At the height of strained relations, Massada rose to the occasion. Astaganaga (1978) is a telling example of the will to negotiate a different diasporic Moluccan identity through uplifting contemporary sounds.

From his early Liverpool days, through the historic decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his long solo career, The Lyrics pairs the definitive texts of 154 songs by Paul McCartney with first-person commentaries on his life and music. Spanning two alphabetically arranged volumes, these commentaries reveal how the songs came to be and the people who inspired them: his devoted parents, Mary and Jim; his songwriting partner, John Lennon; his "Golden Earth Girl", Linda Eastman; his wife, Nancy McCartney; and even Queen Elizabeth II, amongst many others. Here are the origins of "Let It Be", "Lovely Rita", "Yesterday", and "Mull of Kintyre", as well as McCartney's literary influences, including Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and Alan Durband, his secondary school English teacher. With images from McCartney's personal archives-handwritten texts, paintings and photographs, hundreds previously unseen-The Lyrics, spanning sixty-four years, is the definitive literary and visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

From the moment Patti Smith burst onto the scene, chanting "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine," the irreverent opening line to Horses, her 1975 debut album, the punk movement had found its dissident intellectual voice. Yet outside the recording studio -- Smith has released eleven studio albums -- the punk poet laureate has been perhaps just as revelatory and rhapsodic in interviews, delivering off-the-cuff jeremiads that emboldened a generation of disaffected youth and imparting hard-earned life lessons. With her characteristic blend of bohemian intellectualism, antiauthoritarian poetry, and unflagging optimism, Smith gave them hope in the transcendent power of art. Her interview archive serves as a compelling counternarrative to the albums and books. Initially, interviewing Patti Smith was a censorship liability. Contemptuous of staid rules of decorum, no one knew what she might say, whether they were getting the romantic, swooning for Lorca and Blake, or the firebrand with no respect for an on-air seven-second delay. Patti Smith on Patti Smith is a compendium of profound and reflective moments in the life of one of the most insightful and provocative artists working today.

If given another chance to write for the series, which albums would 33 1/3 authors focus on the second time around? This anthology features compact essays from past 33 1/3 authors on albums that consume them, but about which they did not write. It explores often overlooked and underrated albums that may not have inspired their 33 1/3 books, but have played a large part in their own musical cultivation. Questions central to the essays include: How has this album influenced your worldview? How does this album intersect with your other creative and critical pursuits? How does this album index a particular moment in cultural history? In your own personal history? Why is the album perhaps under-the-radar, or a buried treasure? Why can't you stop listening to it? Bringing together 33 1/3's rich array of writers, critics, and scholars, this collection probes our taste in albums, our longing for certain tunes, and our desire to hit repeat--all while creating an expansive "must-listen" list for readers in search of unexplored musical territories.

THE LEGENDARY GUITAR GOD WHO EXCEEDED ALL LIMITS AND LIVED TO TELL TAKES FANS ON A WILD RIDE THROUGH "KISS"TORY.
He was just a boy from the Bronx with stars in his eyes. But when he picked up his guitar and painted stars on his face, Ace Frehley transformed into "The Spaceman"--and helped turn KISS into one of the top-selling bands of all time. Now, for the first time, the beloved rock icon reveals his side of the story with no-holds-barred honesty . . . and no regrets.
For KISS fans, Ace offers a rare behind-the-makeup look at the band's legendary origins, including the lightning-bolt logo he designed and the outfits his mother sewed. He talks about the unspoken division within the band--he and Peter Criss versus Paul Stanley and Gene
Simmons--because the other two didn't "party every day." Ace also reveals the inside story behind his turbulent break-up with KISS, their triumphant reunion a decade later, and his smash solo career. Along the way, he shares wild stories about dancing at Studio 54 with "The Bionic Woman," working as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, and bar-flying all night with John Belushi. In the end, he comes to terms with his highly publicized descent into alcohol, drugs, and self-destruction--ultimately managing to conquer his demons and come out on top.
This is Ace Frehley. No makeup. No apologies. No regrets.

Legendary founding KISS drummer Peter "Catman" Criss has lived an incredible life in music, from the streets of Brooklyn to the social clubs of New York City to the ultimate heights of rock 'n' roll success and excess. KISS formed in 1973 and broke new ground with their elaborate makeup, live theatrics, and powerful sound. The band emerged as one of the most iconic hard rock acts in music history. Peter was the heartbeat of the group. From an elevated perch on his pyrotechnic drum riser, he had a unique vantage point on the greatest rock show of all time, with the KISS Army looking back at him night after night.
Peter Criscuola had come a long way from the homemade drum set he pounded on nonstop as a kid growing up in Brooklyn. He endured lean years, street violence, and the roller-coaster music scene of the sixties, but he always knew he'd make it. Now Peter tells of his eye-opening journey from the pledge to his ma that he'd one day play Madison Square Garden to doing just that. He also faced the perils of stardom and his own mortality, including drug abuse, treatment in 1982, near suicides, two broken marriages, and a hard-won battle with breast cancer. "Makeup to Breakup" is the heartfelt account of one of music's most iconic figures, and the importance of faith and family. Rock 'n' roll has been chronicled many times, but never quite like this. "A must-read for all past and present KISS fans and fans of no-holds-barred rock 'n' roll tell-alls."