Rock History

Lisa Robinson has interviewed the biggest names in music--including Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Patti Smith, U2, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Jay Z and Kanye West. She visited the teenage Michael Jackson many times at his Encino home. She spent hours talking to John Lennon at his Dakota apartment - and in recording studios just weeks before his murder.

High Drama explores rock climbing's transformation from a pursuit of select anti-establishment vagabonds to a sport embraced by competitors of all ages, social classes, and backgrounds. Climbing magazine's John Burgman weaves a multi-layered story of traditionalists and opportunists, grassroots organizers and business-minded developers, free-spirited rebels and rigorously coached athletes. Deeply reported and compellingly told, this is a celebration of climbing and the pivotal figures who made its growth possible....

Can't Give It Away on Seventh Avenue: The Rolling Stones and New York City explores the history of the group through the prism of New York. It is a highly detailed document of the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between the world's most famous band and America's most famous city as well as an absorbing chronicle of the remarkable impact the city has had on the band's music and career.

Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1940, grew up an outsider despised by his peers. But he formed a band, and had a number-one hit with "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He quickly became the top producer of early rock and roll and the originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes. Hit followed hit, and for all of them he used a new recording style called the "wall of sound". But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop music was doomed, and Spector spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior.

Throughout her career, spanning more than two decades, Jessica Hopper, a revered and pioneering music critic, has examined women recording and producing music, in all genres, through an intersectional feminist lens. The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic features oral histories of bands like Hole and Sleater Kinney, interviews with the women editors of 1970s-era Rolling Stone, and intimate conversations with iconic musicians such as Björk, Robyn, and Lido Pimienta.

The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me offers an eye-opening and frank assessment of the state of classic rock, assessing its past and future, the impact it has had, and what its loss would mean to an industry, a culture, and a way of life.

The Great Book of Rock Trivia contains hundreds of riveting facts about your favorite rock songs. Whether you’re interested in what your favorite musicians like to do in their spare time, where they get the ideas for their music, or which artist had an exorcism in his home, you’re in for a treat. This book will satisfy your curiosity and help you impress your friends with your rock and roll knowledge.

If you were a fan of popular music in the 1960s and early '70s, you were a fan of the Wrecking Crew - whether you knew it or not. On hit record after hit record by everyone from the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and the Monkees to the Grass Roots, the 5th Dimension, Sonny & Cher, and Simon & Garfunkel, this collection of West Coast studio musicians from diverse backgrounds established themselves as the driving sound of pop music - sometimes over the objection of actual band members....

Iggy Pop's legendary career has been tumultuous, reaching great heights with mega-hits and then hitting rock-bottom lows in jail and mental institutions. Along the way, he's become a cult-rock hero, an inspiration for dozens of other famous rockers, and has had a pretty good time of it, too. But the image of Iggy Pop versus the man behind that image, James Newell Osterberg, Jr., is surprisingly contradictory.

England's Dreaming is the ultimate book on punk, its progenitors, the Sex Pistols, and the moment they defined for music fans in England and the United States. Savage brings to life the sensational story of the meteoric rise and rapid implosion of the Pistols through layers of rich detail and exclusive interviews. This fully revised and updated edition of the book covers the legacy of punk 25 years later and provides an account of the Pistols' 1996 reunion as well as a completely new introduction.

The world of musical theater has a rich and diverse history, spanning multiple genres and styles. One genre that has significantly influenced the landscape of musical theater is the rock musical. Combining the energy, rebelliousness, and catchy melodies of rock music with the storytelling and theatricality of the stage, the rock musical has captured the hearts of audiences around the world.

Pamela Des Barres, the world’s foremost supergroupie, here offers an all-access backstage pass to the world of rock stars and the women who love them. Having had her own affairs with legends such as Keith Moon and Jimmy Page--as documented in her bestselling memoir I’m with the Band--Pamela now turns the spotlight onto other women who have found their way into the hearts and bedrooms of some of the world’s greatest musicians.

Stones have furnished our earliest technologies and our first art materials. As jewelry and talismans, they have accompanied us in our journeys into the afterlife. We have carried stones over vast distances, erecting temples with them where we gathered to worship our gods. The earliest scientists ground and processed minerals in a centuries-long quest for a mythic stone that would prolong human life. Michelangelo climbed mountains in Tuscany searching for the sugar-white marble that would yield his sculptures.

A retired Space Program Planning manager takes on a daunting challenge to recover the property that was stolen from Paul and Linda McCartney one night in 1973 while they were out for a walk in Nigeria, Africa. Husband and wife Kevin and Penny work together to attempt a mission that will reach back decades to find Rock History Treasure. Kevin will have to dig deep to figure out how to beat the crooked collectors at their own game so he can recover Rock History Treasure and meet his music hero!

Rock and roll was birthed in basements and garages, radio stations and dance halls, in cities where unexpected gatherings of artists and audience changed and charged the way music is heard and celebrated, capturing lightning in a bottle. Musician and writer Lenny Kaye explores ten crossroads of time and place that define rock and roll, its unforgettable flashpoints, characters and visionaries, how each generation came to be, how it was discovered by the world.

Captain Arturo Sanders was having a bad day. First the routine destruction of some ancient automatic defense batteries became a disaster, when his ship’s screens failed, and he had no choice to abandon ship. Then he had to rescue two left behind crew people, which meant he missed the main shuttle evacuation leaving him and his two companions in a shuttle on their own at the rear.

More nations have vanished from this Earth than exist today. It is hard to imagine that Scotland or India will one day not exist, yet history is the graveyard of nations. This is the story of one such country, because like a once mighty ship who has sunk into the ocean of history, its wreckage and remains are meager. It is the story of a Kingdom called Alt Clut that existed for 600, perhaps 700 years, and is now almost unheard of. The story of Alt Clut only survives in archaeological finds, linguistic whispers, the chronicles of its neighbors and enemies, poetry, and legends.

The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock altered the course of history. Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe.

From the number-one New York Times best-selling coauthor of No Easy Day comes a thrilling World War II story of the American airborne soldiers who captured a Japanese-held island fortress.

Leaving school and starting his career at Decca Records in 1958 at the age of sixteen, Tony King would soon find himself becoming close friends with Elton John, rekindling John Lennon and Yoko Ono's relationship, mediating a quarrelsome Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and spending time with Freddie Mercury in his final days - a far cry from his childhood days in Eastbourne. Living in an era of seismic social, technological and cultural transformation, King experienced these defining moments as a stalwart in London and New York's gay scenes.