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Dusk Music (Paperback)
Rob Chapman
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R293
R264
Discovery Miles 2 640
Save R29 (10%)
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When teenage guitar prodigy Keith Gear shares a stage with Jimi
Hendrix in mid 60s Soho he forms a bond with his hero and embarks
on a journey that will take him a long way from his South London
roots. Reluctantly thrust into the spotlight with his band
Dominion, he plays the fame game briefly and finds it wanting. With
Jimi he enjoys acid trips in London, jam sessions in New York and
reflective evenings in Morocco. In the decades that follow he
experiences cult fame as a solo artist and sees a close friend
become an unlikely star on the alternative comedy scene. By the
1990s a psychopathic celebrity killer is on the loose and the
ageing and battle-worn Gear is largely forgotten. In the midst of
all this a chance encounter at the Avalonia festival opens up
unexpected pathways for Gear's future. With dark humour Rob Chapman
creates an elaborate mosaic that gradually reveals the outsiders
and uncompromising spirits who roam the fringes of popular culture.
Despite just a three-year tenure with the band, co-founder Syd
Barrett’s influence on Pink Floyd was profound and long-lasting.
If his guitar gave the early Pink Floyd a distinctive hallucinatory
sound, his often obscure and surreal lyrics were perhaps even more
intoxicating. The complete lyrics of Syd Barrett – 52 songs
written for Pink Floyd and during his subsequent solo career –
are presented together for the first time, along with rare photos
and artwork, to form this beautifully illustrated book. Compiled in
collaboration with the Syd Barrett estate, and featuring a foreword
from former Pink Floyd manager Peter Jenner and a comprehensive
introduction by biographer Rob Chapman, The Lyrics of Syd Barrett
delves deep into one of rock’n’roll’s most imaginative and
searing minds.
A Guardian, Mojo and Rough Trade Book of the Year Fifty years on
from the psychedelic summer of love, acclaimed music writer Rob
Chapman explores what was really going on during those heady times.
In America he traces the multi-media history of the Light shows,
Happenings, Be-Ins and Acid tests, and illustrates the thriving
avant-garde scene that existed long before the Grateful Dead and
the Fillmore Auditorium came into being. In the UK, he shows an
entirely different history, never before explored in such
breath-taking detail, where the sublime and the silly co-existed
side by side in a peculiarly British take on flower power that drew
inspiration as readily from fairy tales, fairgrounds and music
halls, as it did from LSD. With a fascinating new perspective on
the role of the Beatles, Psychedelia and Other Colours documents a
cultural phenomenon, in psychedelia's seminal text.
Syd Barrett was the lead guitarist, vocalist, and principle
songwriter in the original line up of Pink Floyd. During his brief
time with the band (1966-68) he was the driving force behind the
unit. After he left the band he made just two further solo albums
which were both released in 1970, before withdrawing from public
view to lead a quiet, and occasionally troubled life in Cambridge,
the town of his birth. Rob Chapman's book is the first
authoritative and exhaustively researched biography of Syd Barrett
that fully celebrates his life and legacy as a musician, lyricist
and artist, and which highlights the influence that he continues to
have over contemporary bands and music fans alike.
A new edition as part of the Faber Greatest Hits - books that have
taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the
twenty-first century. Syd Barrett was the lead guitarist, vocalist,
and principle songwriter in the original line up of Pink Floyd.
During his brief time with the band (1966-68) he was the driving
force behind the unit. After he left the band he made just two
further solo albums which were both released in 1970, before
withdrawing from public view to lead a quiet, and occasionally
troubled life in Cambridge, the town of his birth. Rob Chapman's
book is the first authoritative and exhaustively researched
biography of Syd Barrett that fully celebrates his life and legacy
as a musician, lyricist and artist, and which highlights the
influence that he continues to have over contemporary bands and
music fans alike.
"I don't think I'm easy to talk about. I've got a very irregular
head. And I'm not anything that you think I am anyway."--Syd
Barrett's last interview, "Rolling Stone, "1971 Roger Keith "Syd"
Barrett (1946-2006) was, by all accounts, the very definition of a
golden boy. Blessed with good looks and a natural aptitude for
painting and music, he was a charismatic, elfin child beloved by
all, who fast became a teenage leader in Cambridge, England, where
a burgeoning bohemian scene was flourishing in the early 1960s.
Along with three friends and collaborators--Roger Waters, Richard
Wright, and Nick Mason--he formed what would soon become Pink
Floyd, and rock 'n' roll was never the same. Starting as a typical
British cover band aping approximations of American rhythm 'n'
blues, they soon pioneered an entirely new sound, and British
psychedelic rock was born. With early, trippy, Barrett-penned pop
hits such as "Arnold Layne" (about a clothesline-thieving
cross-dresser) and "See Emily Play" (written specifically for the
epochal "Games For May" concert), Pink Floyd, with Syd Barrett as
their main creative visionary, captured the zeitgeist of "Swinging"
London in all its Technicolor glory. But there was a dark side to
all this new-found freedom. Barrett, like so many around him, began
ingesting large quantities of a revolutionary new drug, LSD, and
his already-fragile mental state--coupled with a personality
inherently unsuited to the life of a pop star--began to unravel.
The once bright-eyed lad was quickly replaced, seemingly overnight,
by a glowering, sinister, dead-eyed shadow of his former self,
given to erratic, highly eccentric, reclusive, and sometimes
violent behavior. Inevitably sacked from the band, Barrett
retreated from London to his mother's house in Cambridge, where he
would remain until his death, only rarely seen or heard, further
fueling the mystery. In the meantime, Pink Floyd emerged from the
underground to become one of the biggest international rock bands
of all time, releasing multi-platinum albums, many that dealt
thematically with the loss of their friend Syd Barrett: "The Dark
Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, "and "The Wall" are all, on
many levels, about him. In "A Very Irregular Head," journalist Rob
Chapman lifts the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the legend of
Syd Barrett for nearly four decades, drawing on exclusive access to
family, friends, archives, journals, letters, and artwork to create
the definitive portrait of a brilliant and tragic artist. Besides
capturing all the promise of Barrett's youthful years, Chapman
challenges the oft-held notion that Barrett was a hopelessly lost
recluse in his later years, and creates a portrait of a true
British eccentric who is rightfully placed within a rich literary
lineage that stretches through Kenneth Graham, Hilaire Belloc,
Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, John Lennon, David Bowie, and on up to
the pioneers of Britpop. A tragic, affectionate, and compelling
portrait of a singular artist, "A Very Irregular Head" will stand
as the authoritative word on this very English genius for years to
come.
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