An updated version of Loud 'n' Proud: Fifty Years of Nazareth, drawing on copious images and items of memorabilia, this large format 240-page book is a treasure trove for Nazareth devotees — crammed full of live and off stage shots that portray the band’s journey through the decades. It also includes loads of super cool memorabilia including backstage passes, gig posters, media adverts and much more, all reproduced on high quality art paper. From the early days of the seventies through to the current day, nestling alongside the wonderful imagery, the band’s whole career is documented by esteemed rock writer Martin Popoff who was assisted through the whole narrative by Nazareth’s founder and only remaining original member Pete Agnew. Popoff also interviewed Agnew for the book in addition to previous interviews the author has conducted, not only with the bass player extraordinaire but with many other band members past and present, all neatly laid out in a timeline, making this the essential go to Nazareth book.

(FAQ). Unlike any Sabbath book thus far, Black Sabbath FAQ digs deep into quirks, obscure anecdotes, and burning questions surrounding the Sabs. In a fast-moving, topical format, this book covers a tremendous amount of information, delectable to any Sabbath fan, but hard to find in a traditional biography. This rich history lives and breathes and shouts right here. And the voice behind it could not be stronger: Martin Popoff is a heavy metal expert who has authored over 30 books on the subject, including Doom Let Loose, which is widely considered the definitive biography of the band. In Black Sabbath FAQ, Popoff is like a rabid detective unearthing (and sometimes debunking) ancient lore, valiantly covering new ground, applying academic rigor, but then wildly sounding off with lurid opinion. The pendulum swings, and, though disoriented, the serious Sabbath studier is better for it come the book's doomy conclusion. Dozens of images of rare memorabilia make this book a must-have for fans.

This new tome by the hugely prolific Canadian author Martin Popoff is a detailed re-write and expanded edition of his 2005 publication English Castle Magic. In fact the book is 50% bigger, a whopping 120,000 words and 318 pages including two swell colour photo sections. Sensitive To Light is without doubt the most comprehensive Rainbow biography to date and is based around multiple interviews the author has conducted with most of the key band members over many years including Ritchie Blackmore, as well as Roger Glover, Tony Carey, Graham Bonnet and Joe Lynn Turner, along with those who are sadly no longer with us, namely Cozy Powell Ronnie James Dio, Jimmy Bain and Craig Gruber. Loads more research has also gone into this new publication which is brought bang up to date with the Ronnie Romero era live shows and new songs, following Blackmore’s decision to rejuvenate Rainbow in 2016, almost twenty years on from the last incarnation that had concluded in 1997. From the raw and fiery Dio years, through the criminally under-rated Down to Earth album, the smooth crooning Joe Lynn Turner era and into one final somewhat forgotten record fronted by Doogie White, it’s all examined here, track by track, fascinating tale by trick. Ritchie Blackmore and his reputation is legion. But is it warranted? This is the book you should read to find out why as we look at the man’s career as reigning lord over the constantly evolving consortium of monster talents known as Rainbow.

They were the envy of all the more "earthly" rock acts scrambling to make it in the world of '70s hard rock, each and all aspiring to the success levels of Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, Styx and Angel label mates Kiss. But the story of Angel is of a band out of time, playing regal progressive heavy metal and then changing to try reach radio, in either guise, not quite clicking with enough Kiss fans-Kiss were the devils in black and Angel were the good guys in white-nor the fans of progressive rock or, later, those more inclined to Foreigner, Journey and Cheap Trick. Along the way, the band went first class, with the best gear, a killer stage show and tons of promotion from Neil Bogart and Casablanca until they had racked up a million dollars of debt by the end of their blessed run, the guys often oblivious to what lesser bands had to go through. Indeed, this is a story of a band hailed as rock stars and indeed often headlining like rock stars, without the record sales to justify the crazy spending that a believing Bogart threw at the band. Then it was all over and we heard virtually nothing from any of them (save for keyboardist Gregg) after 1981 until... well, both Punky Meadows and Frank DiMino stormed back with solo albums. And then, appearing outta nowhere like they did in their famous stage show, Angel returned in 2019 with a blindingly white and quite sprightly new album called Risen. Come celebrate what it was like to live as the alter-ego to Kiss as we examine the band's five studio albums of the original run, the crushing concert album, Live Without a Net, as well as where it all went wrong and the inspiring return of Frank and Punky through the spirited hard rocker that is Risen.

The publication of Martin Popoff's Uriah Heep: A Visual Biography is something of a bitter-sweet pill given recent events. Following the sad loss of Lee Kerslake in September 2020, Popoff - having interviewed various band members over the past few years - was all set to conduct another interview with Ken Hensley in mid November when the tragic news of Ken's sudden departure reached Heep fans around the world. Undeterred, the decision that had already been made to immortalise Uriah Heep with a comprehensive visual biography remained. Popoff's celebrated and detailed timeline takes us through more than fifty years of massive rock history from this much-loved band. From the early days with legendary front man David Byron, through the John Lawton years; the John Sloman and Pete Goalby fronted periods and from 1986 with Bernie Shaw taking centre stage; all eras are comprehensively covered. This differs from previous Uriah Heep books through the inclusion of so many previously unpublished photos, along with rare memorabilia and artefacts that makes this an indispensable addition to the vast Uriah Heep catalogue.

Quite simply, Martin Popoff’s Sabotage! Black Sabbath in the Seventies marks the most intensive analysis of Black Sabbath’s first eight albums ever attempted. This is a big book—129,000 words long, every song analysed in detail, loads of first-hand interview footage from close to 50 interrogations. In the baking, Popoff interviewed all of the principles—Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward—repeatedly, along with myriad other folks who are part of this remarkable tale. Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, Vol 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage, Never Say Die and Technical Ecstasy… these are the building blocks of heavy metal, and within these awesome audio chapters, Popoff breaks down each and every song on each of these reverberating and cannonating records, while Geezer offers explanation of the lyrics, Bill poetically explains why these songs resonate and Tony and Oz look on with their characteristic sense of bemusement. Also touched upon are the band’s torrid troubles with money and management and drugs and booze, as well as tour tales, album cover stories and production tips ‘n’ tricks. Also included are two four-page sections of colour plates. All told, it’s everything needed to send the reader back to the catalogue, headphones on, for a second listen of this landmark run of records spanning 1970’s self-titled debut to 1978’s Never Say Die, the shambling, controversial last gasp before Ozzy’s shocking ouster from the ranks.

The first book ever on the classic British rock band UFO. Based around the author's many interviews with all the key players such as Phil Mogg, Pete Way & Michael Schenker. Noted author Martin Popoff takes you through the Schenker era in great detail; album-by-album, song by song along with touring anecdotes and of course, tales revolving around the wild and excessive behaviour that was very much a part of the band. Rounding if off is a full discography.

Yes: A Visual Biography I: 1968 - 1981 documents the progressive rock pioneer's first twelve years from the release of their eponymous debut album through to 1980's Drama: A suitable name for a band whose career has been full of drama as documented in Popoff's narrative that charts Yes's ups and downs as the band glided out of the sixties with a full-on assault on the seventies music scene that saw them become one of the biggest global acts-selling out venues around the world from New York's Madison Square Garden to London's Wembley Arena. Popoff takes you on a journey from the early days of the band with original members Chris Squire, Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford, Peter Banks and Tony Kaye; to the hugely successful seventies when the likes of Steve Howe, Patrick Moraz, Rick Wakeman and Alan White all added their individual stamps on the band's identity. Then the surprise union with The Buggles that saw Yes enter the eighties a world apart from the way they had entered the seventies but continuing to delight their legion of fans.

Megadeth's run of thrash classics from the mid eighties through to the nineties continue to be celebrated in the metal community long after leader Dave Mustaine's band mates have been discarded to the sands of time-save one, Dave "Jr" Ellefson. Along the way there's Mustaine's pathology with his ex-friends in Metallica but also a hell of a lot of killer metal as the band works its way up through Peace Sells and So Far, So Good... So What! through to the superlative metal classics, namely Rust In Peace and Countdown To Extinction. Later came Cryptic Writings and Risk that threatened to kill the band but the reconstitution of Megadeth after its demoralising decline and then deflating dispersal at the destructive hand of Mustaine is a story untold... until now. But it's a tale worth telling for its instructiveness on how to rebuild and maintain a career. Quite simply the recent Megadeth story spanning the albums The World Needs A Hero through to Super Collider includes some of the beast and heaviest Megadeth ever committed to record. Celebrate Mustaine's vision track-by-track with top author Martin Popoff. With over sixty books to his name, Popoff applies his tried and tested methodology to a head-crunching canon of work that is truly as strong at the recent end of the spectrum as it is with the classics you all know and love.

Dublin's Thin Lizzy have become one of the most revered cult acts of all time, studious and discerning fans of hard rock the world over revelling in the storytelling acumen of the legendary Phil Lynott and the craft and class of his band. Through numerous interviews with most of the principals involved and a mountain of painstaking research Emerald; Thin Lizzy's Golden Era examines the band's career up to 1976 culminating in the superlative and sparkling Jailbreak, home of such hits as 'Cowboy Song', 'Emerald', 'Jailbreak' and 'The Boys Are Back In Town' and followed by Johnny The Fox that included the hit single 'Don't Believe A Word'. Along the way, alcohol and drugs wreaked havoc between band members, producers and managers, but despite line-up changes and a mostly grinding, rock scrabble existence, Ireland's favourite sons persevered, finally achieving the smash hit record they'd deserved for so long. Immerse yourself in Popoff's celebrated record-by-record methodology and emerge a rejuvenated Lizzy fan, newly appreciative of the deep album tracks hiding within this singular band's often forgotten early years. A revised and expanded version of Popoff's previous Dublin To Jailbreak Emerald; Thin Lizzy's Golden Era is based on interviews the author conducted specifically for the book with band members Eric Bell, Scott Gorham, Brian Downey, Gary Moore and Brian Robertson; managers Terry O'Neill and Ted Carroll; producers Nick Tauber and Ron Nevison; Nigel Grange from Vertigo; road manager Frank Murray and cover artist Jim Fitzpatrick. Revealing Phil Lynott in all his dastardly guises Emerald; Thin Lizzy's Golden Era, is an essential read for the devoted Lizzy fans.

In 1974, Alice Cooper shocked the rock world, scooped up his makeup kit and went solo. Consummated by a legal name change from Vincent Furnier to Alice Cooper, "the man behind the mask" never looked back, writing and recording fully 21 studio albums across a roller-coaster career that is now nearly 60 years on in the business, with almost 50 of that on his own, calling the shots as a man and brand with a plan, often guided by manager Shep Gordon, one of the best in the biz. Feed My Frankenstein: Alice Cooper, the Solo Years charts this action-packed era for Alice, beginning with the smash success of the Welcome to My Nightmare album and tour and hitting a nadir with the blackout years of the early '80s, where Alice nearly died from booze and hard drugs before being brought back by his faith in God and by the good graces of his wife Sheryl. Next came Alice's third wave of major success with Trash and Hey Stoopid, followed by a settling into regular record-making and touring duties, culminating in some of his best work quite recently, with Dirty Diamonds, Along Came a Spider and 2021's Detroit Stories. All of this is celebrated in Feed My Frankenstein, meticulously charted with timeline entries that are extensively explained and corroborated by a gallery of Alice's band members throughout the decades. Helping bring the story to life is a smorgasbord of imagery, from live photography through to all manner of memorabilia, underscoring how visceral the visual has always been for this legendary showman. Get on board and get a sense of how each and every one of Alice's 21 solo albums work, along with an understanding of how absolutely and insanely jam-packed life has been for Alice since 1974 when he and Shep rolled the dice, pooled all their resources and took us on an all-guns-blazing tour of Alice's sleeping brain. Indeed, once rolling, it just never stopped. Next station was Hell, followed by a visit to the asylum and then, down the road apiece, Brutal Planet, Dragontown and finally Michigan for some Detroit Stories. It's all here in red, black and blue - bring your camera.

The astonishing run of albums unleashed upon an unsuspecting public within the span of five years created the legend of Alice Cooper that lives on to this day. But we're talking about the original Alice Cooper group here, a band called that with a lead singer also going by that name. In other words, the legend was built by Vincent "Alice Cooper" Furnier, Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway and "platinum god" Neal Smith. It is all of them working together - along with producer Bob Ezrin - that created the mystique of songs like "I'm Eighteen," "Is It My Body," "Desperado," "Under My Wheels," "Be My Lover," "Elected" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy." And it is all of them working together - along with crack management in Shep Gordon and Joe Greenberg-that created the shock rock buzz that kept the newspapers full of indignation about this band set out to destroy human civilization. Easy Action: The Original Alice Cooper Group tells the story in meticulous chronological detail, from the band's early days in Phoenix as The Spiders, through being broke on the Sunset Strip, followed by a career-reviving relocation to a notorious party house on the outskirts of Pontiac, Michigan. Corroborating the improbable sequence of events is a plethora of stories from the band themselves, who explain how the original Alice Cooper group went from politely ignored pariahs in Los Angeles to international Public Enemies No. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Listen to the guys and their good-natured explanations behind the mayhem, and it soon becomes apparent that the ghoulish makeup around the singer's eyes and the boa constrictor around his neck - not to mention the head-choppings, the hangings and the hard rock - were all served up in good fun. Now it's time for you, dear reader, to join in the fun and see why Alice Cooper was, for a golden moment in time fully 50 years ago now, the most feared and revered act in all of rock 'n' roll.

Renowned rock author Martin Popoff's exhaustive and detailed timeline of Deep Purple milestones from 1980 - 2011, including some similar bands, influences, cultural milieu, tour stuff, recording sessions, charts, singles, certification news, break-ups, personal stuff, trivia for miles, and lots and lots of artist quotes to add to the entries, turning the book into a quasi-oral history loaded with factual matter. But as this is about family the text weaves in and out of the story of Purple proper, the dastardly diaries of Rainbow, Whitesnake, Gillan, Blackmore's Night, all the solo projects, guest slots, Gary Moore, Black Sabbath and Black Country Communion, always with contextual explanation plus rare and very cool archival advertisements of shows and records.

Having written the first book ever on UFO, 2005's long out-of-print Shoot Out the Lights, Martin Popoff, author of over seventy rock books, has now greatly expanded and rewritten the later years material from that title, bringing us now Lettin' Go: UFO in the `80s & `90s. Popoff brings to the project new interviews with the key members throughout the decades, along with a substantial amount of new research to offer what is now the only book to focus on the eighties and nineties era of the band that saw huge turbulence amongst the ranks. Utilising his celebrated one album per chapter method, Popoff analyses the complete catalogue from the period of the band where initially Paul Chapman takes over from the departed Michael Schenker for the albums. No Place To Run, The Wild, the Willing and the Innocent, Mechanix and Making Contact. The journey takes us through the albums following the departure of Chapman and bassist Pete Way and concludes with 1995's Walk On Water that sees the classic line-up reunited with Schenker back on guitar before he sensationally walked out on the band after just four shows of the supporting tour. In and around Popoff's famed meticulous analysis of the catalogue, look for lots of tour talk, revealing nightmares surrounding the band's business, and warnings about how the twin demons of drugs and alcohol can slow a band's progress on the way to the top.

Let's face it, without the larger-than-life character and imagination of the art that complements it, metal just wouldn't have had the same impact. From the colourful, outlandish, yet sophisticated use of visuals for album artwork and posters, to the immediately recognisable logos of such bands as Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motörhead, Metallica, Slayer, and a host of others across many subgenres, there's a close-knit relationship between the riffs that thunder from the guitar and the images that have come to represent the songs, anthems, and sheer nature of the beast. Does any other form of music immediately conjure up such evocative and distinctive images as the mere mention of the term "heavy metal" does? The answer is simple: no! From its inception in the 1960s through to today's giants, the art has been closely connected to the music. Every classic album brings to mind a readily identifiable album cover. Each great band has an immediately identifiable logo. All of the landmark gigs have a poster that quintessentially depicts the time, place, and passion of the event. It's all developed so far along the road that, today, the art that has been used to illustrate the music now stands on its own. There are exhibitions of the finest examples created by the truly outstanding artists. These works are collectible in their own right. What might have begun as a way of packaging metal has taken on a life of its own -- moreover, it's even possible to trace the way the genre itself has evolved, and changed, by looking at its art. This book explores the ways in which the art has helped define each of the crucial subgenres that make up the multifaceted and colourful centipede that is metal.

In This Means War: The Sunset Years of the NWOBHM, Martin Popoff and dozens of his UK rock buddies document the frenzied fruition years of the movement, namely 1981 and 1982, and then the many facets that caused the genre to implode by the end of 1984, with cracks in the armour beginning to appear the previous year. Why did metal disappear in Great Britain with the first hungover light on January 1, 1985? And where exactly did it go? The answers are enclosed, in the words of those who were there... and then nowhere fast! Utilizing his celebrated oral history method-rich with detailed chronological entries to frame the story-Popoff blasts through all of the big events from 1981 to 1984, in this action-packed book that serves as concluding volume to Wheels of Steel: The Explosive Early Years of the NWOBHM-same easy reading format, same attention to documenting the subject at hand with visuals from the glorious era. And by the way, this one's way more packed with historical images, with more substantive text as well. It's a beefy follow-up and conclusion to the well-received volume one, and the two together serve as a grand and exhaustive study of this momentous metal movement. So come join Martin, along with dozens of the rockers themselves, as they together tell the tale of this ersatz genre's maturity and demise, a demise that is ultimately laced with the pride that a platform had been created on which metal was to thrive for all of the rest of the loud `n' proud `80s.