(Book). Although together for only five years, The Yardbirds exerted tremendous influence on the music and style of the '60s and for decades beyond. Their impact has been felt throughout the rock genre, from psychedelia to blues-rock, heavy metal, and the music of today's jam bands. The Yardbirds came from middle-class England, embraced the soulful music of the African-American South, and helped re-import it back into the States as the embryo of heavy metal music. In the process, the band produced three guitar greats: Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Every fan of The Yardbirds, or of '60s-derived music in general, will revel in this book (which includes more than 50 photos from the group's heyday, plus a detailed diary of every gig, recording and broadcast they did) and enjoy reading the stories old and new as much as Clayson enjoys telling them.

French born New Yorker, Edgard Varese sound-tracked industrial society just as Debussy had more pastoral settings.

Frank Zappa's boyhood hero, inspiration to The Grateful Dead, Chicago and Laurie Anderson, revered by Stravinsky, Stockhausen, Cage and Charlie Parker, Varese saw music as an "art-science" in which machines, not instruments would extend the sonic vocabulary.

Ionization (1933), for percussion and sirens, Deserts (1954), Density 21.5 for platinum flute, The One All Alone, a science fiction opera, and Espace, written in aid of Spanish Civil War revolutionaries brought critical acclaim. Then followed 15 "wilderness years" which ended in 1958 when his symphony, Poeme Electronique was played through 400 revolving loudspeakers at the Brussels Exposition.

Paul McCartney's name came second in the famed Lennon-McCartney credits on so many masterful tunes, but he has always had his own unique image and talent. Alan Clayson captures the qualities that made him so popular in this fact-based biography that covers his scrappy early years through the stormy successes of his tenure with the Beatles to more recent projects that have kept him in the limelight.