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Patti Smith was a poet, a punk prophet, a feminist icon, a living
work of art and the first woman rock-outsider to come from the New
York underground and become a star. From her confused and religious
upbringing to her early days as a poet, punk and rock 'n' roller,
Patti Smith redefined the role of artist, writer and female
performer. This major biography will rightly place Patti Smith as a
central figure in late twentieth century popular culture. Cited by
musicians young and old as a major influence, Patti Smith is as
fascinating an individual as she is a great artist. From a
religious childhood in South Jersey she escaped to New York
swearing she would become famous. Acting as muse first to Richard
Mapplethorpe and then Sam Shepherd, Patti began her career as a
performance poet and rock writer. She soon became the first punk
rockstar mixing her distinct voice and poetry with rock and roll
music. Yet in 1979 she gave it all up to live with her husband in
quiet, suburban Detroit until he died an alcoholic in 1994. As well
as placing Patti Smith at the centre of the New York underground
that included, amongst others, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed,
Blondie, Jim Carrol and William Burroughs, Victor Bockris's
biography investigates the private world behind the celebrity - the
confused childhood, the piss factory, torturous relationship with
men, the secretive retreat to Detroit and the slow and historic
comeback in 1995 as Patti returns to her rightful place as a
central character and icon of 20th century popular culture and the
queen of the New York Underground.
Victor Bockris's much admired biography of Keith Richards has been
constantly revised since its original publication, now with an
additional 12,000 words for a new edition of the Omnibus Press
paperback that brings the story up to the present day. First
published in eight countries in 1992, at that time Keith Richrds
had stood in the shadow of Mick Jagger for thirty years. Then, as a
result of Victor Bockris biography, Richards was put in the
spotlight and emerged as the power behind the throne, the creator,
the backbone, and the soul of the Rolling Stones.Here are the true
facts behind Richards' battles with his demons: the women, the
drugs and the love-hate-relationship with Jagger. His struggle with
heroin and his status as the rock star most likely to die in the
1970s. His scarcely believable rebirth as a family man in the
1980s. Illuminated with revealing quotes and thoughtful insights
into the man behind the band that goes on forever.
'A triumph' - Time Out Transformer is the only complete and
comprehensive telling of the Lou Reed story. Legendary songwriter
and guitarist Lou Reed passed away on the 27th October 2013, but
his musical influence is assured. Now discover the true story of
the Velvet Underground pioneer in this update of Bockris's classic
biography. Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story follows the
great songwriter and singer through the series of transformations
that define each period of his fifty year career. It opens with the
teenage electroshock treatments that dominated his memories of
childhood and never stops revealing layer after layer of this
complex and often anguished artist and man. Transformer is based on
Lou's collaborations with the hardest and most romantic artists of
his times, from John Cale, Andy Warhol, and Nico, through David
Bowie, Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson and the ghost of Edgar Alan
Poe. Rippling underneath everything he did are Lou's relationships
with his various muses, from his college sweetheart to his three
wives (and one drag queen). Leading Lou Reed biographer, Victor
Bockris - who knew Lou throughout the Rachel Years, from Rock 'n'
Roll Animal to the Bells - updates his original biography in the
wake of Lou's death. Through new interviews and photos, he reveals
the many transformations of this larger-than-life character,
including his final shift from Rock Monster to the Prince Charming
he had always wanted to be in the twenty years he spent with the
love of his life, Laurie Anderson . Except with Lou, you could
never really know what might happen next... Including previously
unseen photographs and contributions from Lou's innermost circle
and collaborators that include similarly esteemed artists such as
Andy Warhol and David Bowie, Transformer is as captivating and
vivid a read as befits an American master.
During the 1960s, Dennis Hopper carried a camera everywhere-on film
sets and locations, at parties, in diners, bars and galleries,
driving on freeways and walking on political marches. He
photographed movie idols, pop stars, writers, artists, girlfriends,
and complete strangers. Along the way he captured some of the most
intriguing moments of his generation with a keen and intuitive eye.
A reluctant icon at the epicenter of that decade's cultural
upheaval, Hopper documented the likes of Tina Turner in the studio,
Andy Warhol at his first West Coast show, Paul Newman on set, and
Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights March from Selma to
Montgomery, Alabama. From a selection of photographs compiled by
Hopper and gallerist Tony Shafrazi, this extensive volume, finally
back in print in a new edition, distills the essence of Hopper's
prodigious photographic career. Also included are introductory
essays by Shafrazi and legendary West Coast art pioneer Walter
Hopps, as well as an extensive biography and new afterword by
journalist Jessica Hundley. With excerpts from Victor Bockris's
interviews of Hopper's famous subjects, friends, and family, this
volume revives an unprecedented exploration of the life and mind of
one of America's most fascinating personalities.
The Velvet Underground is arguably one of the most influential
American rock bands ever. Based on interviews with former members
Lou Reed, John Cale, and Sterling Morrison, as well as others from
Andy Warhol's circle of artistic collaborators, Up-Tight is the
definitive oral and visual history of the band and its
revolutionary, often avant-garde music. Bockris and Malanga's
intelligent and entertaining approach-which does not shy away from
the drugs, sleaze, and controversy that enveloped the band
seemingly from its inception-provides compulsive reading.
Burroughs, the eccentric, brilliant artist who burned the bridge
with logic and wrote the classic Naked Lunch, has a court recorder
in Victor Bockris. Bockris has collected into a cogent whole the
man's most brilliant moments of conversation, thinking, and
interview repartee. This fascinating material, gleaned from the
fertile time at Burroughs's New York headquarters, the Bunker
(which was located on the Bowery, three blocks from CBGB),
encompasses the years 1974 to 1980, and also includes a 1991
Burroughs interview from Interview magazine. The Beats' devotion to
subjective experience has left readers with a profound amount of
objective material to analyze and debate. Choice public and private
utterances, hallucinatory and prescient diatribes such as these,
remain rich sources of literary history. As Americans we find the
Beats' approach to life romantic, even heroic. Tearing the walls
down in the name of freedom and spirituality strikes a particularly
pilgrimesque chord. With William Burroughs: A Report from the
Bunker is a fascinating compendium of Burroughs-speak, so complete
it can be considered a credo.
Here, accompanied by dozens of unique photographs, are the very
best of Victor Bockris's infamous interviews, essays, and
observations on the stars of downtown Manhattan in the 1970s and
1980s. The internationally acclaimed biographer Bockris was there
as a witness, friend, collabourator, and co-conspirator. Some of
the stars were founding members of Beat or Punk, others were just
passing through. But all of them,rockers, rebels, artists, and
intellectuals,revealed more to Bockris than they did to any other
writer: Allen Ginsberg, Richard Hell, Andy Warhol, Robert
Mapplethorpe, Debbie Harry, William Burroughs, Patti Smith,
Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Terry Southern, Martin Amis,
and Susan Sontag. Bockris's conclusion,that Punk owed the Beats a
big debt and that the Beats were in turn re-animated by the
Punks,is argued from the perspective of someone who was in the
thick of it, and who loved every minute of it.
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