Music

A lively chronicle of the year that shaped popular music forever, with an all new Spotify appendix!

More than half a century ago, friendly rivalry between musicians turned 1965 into the year rock evolved into the premier art form of its time and accelerated the drive for personal freedom throughout the Western world.

The Beatles made their first artistic statement with Rubber Soul. Bob Dylan released Like a Rolling Stone, arguably the greatest song of all time, and went electric at the Newport Folk Festival. The Rolling Stones's Satisfaction catapulted the band to world-wide success. New genres such as funk, psychedelia, folk rock, proto-punk, and baroque pop were born. Soul music became a prime force of desegregation as Motown crossed over from the R&B charts to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Country music reached new heights with Nashville and the Bakersfield sound. Musicians raced to innovate sonically and lyrically against the backdrop of seismic cultural shifts wrought by the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, psychedelics, the Pill, long hair for men, and designer Mary Quant's introduction of the miniskirt.

In 1965, Andrew Grant Jackson combines fascinating and often surprising personal stories with a panoramic historical narrative.

What was it like to be John Lennon? What was it like to be the castoff child, the clown at school, and the middle-class suburban boy who pretended to be a working-class hero? How did it feel to have one of the most recognizable singing voices in the world, but to dislike it so much he always wanted to disguise it?

Being John Lennon is not about the whitewashed Prince of Peace of "Imagine" legend--because that was only a small part of him. The John Lennon depicted in these pages is a much more kaleidoscopic figure, sometimes almost a collision of different characters.

He was, of course, funny, often very funny. But above everything, he had attitude--his impudent style somehow personifying the aspirations of his generation to question authority. He could, and would, say the unsayable. Though there were more glamorous rock stars in rock history, even within the Beatles, it was John Lennon's attitude which caught, and then defined, his era in the most memorable way.

There are many books about John Lennon's life and about the music of the Beatles. What is often overlooked is the extraordinary solo work that John produced in the final decade of his life, 1970 to 1980, between the end of the Beatles and his murder in New York in December.

Lennon's life in these years was eventful and fascinating, as was the development of the music he wrote during this period. For the first time, we will be able to showcase the stories behind every one of his solo songs, alongside the lyrics, which have only been printed in song books until now.

The first ever biography focused on the formative and highly influential early years of "rock's first supergroup" (Rolling Stone) Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young--when they were the most successful, influential, and politically potent band in America--in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock and the formation of the band itself.

1969 to 1974 were true golden years of rock n' roll, bookmarking an era of arguably unparalleled musical power and innovation. But even more than any of their eminent peers, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young channeled and broadcast all the radical anger, romantic idealism, and generational angst of their time. Each of the members had already made their marks in huge bands (The Hollies, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds), but together, their harmonies were transcendent.

The vast emotional range of their music, from delicate acoustic confessionals to raucous counter-culture anthems, was mirrored in the turbulence of their personal lives. Their trademark may have been vocal harmony, but few--if any--of their contemporaries could match the recklessness of their hedonistic and often combative lifestyles, when the four tenacious, volatile, and prodigal songwriters pursued chemical and sexual pleasure to life-threatening extremes.

Including full color photographs, CSNY chronicles these four iconic musicians and the movement they came to represent, concentrating on their prime as a collective unit and a cultural force: the years between 1969, when Woodstock telegraphed their arrival to the world, and 1974, when their arch-enemy Richard Nixon was driven from office, and the band (to quote Graham Nash himself) "lost it on the highway."

Even fifty years later, there are plenty of stories left to be told about Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young--and music historian Peter Doggett is here to bring them to light in the meticulously researched CSNY, a quintessential and illuminative account of rock's first supergroup in their golden hour for die-hard fans, nostalgic flower-children, and music history aficionados alike.

As told by Dolly Parton in her own inimitable words, explore the songs that have defined her journey. Illustrated throughout with previously unpublished images from Dolly Parton's personal and business archives.

Mining over 60 years of songwriting, Dolly Parton highlights 175 of her songs and brings readers behind the lyrics.

- Packed with never-before-seen photographs and classic memorabilia
- Explores personal stories, candid insights, and myriad memories behind the songs

Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics reveals the stories and memories that have made Dolly a beloved icon across generations, genders, and social and international boundaries.

Containing rare photos and memorabilia from Parton's archives, this book is a show-stopping must-have for every Dolly Parton fan.

- Learn the history behind classic Parton songs like Jolene, 9 to 5, I Will Always Love You, and more.
- The perfect gift for Dolly Parton fans (everyone loves Dolly!) as well as lovers of music history and country

Add it to the shelf with books like Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton, The Beatles Anthology by The Beatles, and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.

A tell-all biography of the epic in-fighting of the Grateful Dead in the years following band leader Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.
The Grateful Dead rose to greatness under the inspired leadership of guitarist Jerry Garcia, but the band very nearly died along with him. When Garcia passed away suddenly in August of 1995, the remaining band members experienced full crises of confidence and identity. So long defined by Garcia's vision for the group, the surviving "Core Four," as they came to be called, were reduced to conflicting agendas, strained relationships, and catastrophic business decisions that would leave the iconic band in utter disarray. Wrestling with how best to define their living legacy, the band made many attempts at restructuring, but it would take twenty years before relationships were mended enough for the Grateful Dead as fans remembered them to once again take the stage.
Acclaimed music journalist and New York Times bestselling author Joel Selvin was there for much of the turmoil following Garcia's death, and he offers a behind-the-scenes account of the ebbs and flows that occurred during the ensuing two decades. Plenty of books have been written about the rise of the Grateful Dead, but this final chapter of the band's history has never before been explored in detail.
Culminating in the landmark tour bearing the same name, Fare Thee Well charts the arduous journey from Garcia's passing all the way up to the uneasy agreement between the Core Four that led to the series of shows celebrating the band's fiftieth anniversary and finally allowing for a proper, and joyous, sendoff of the group revered by so many.

A New York Times Best Seller

A February IndieNext Pick

Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by Buzzfeed, Nylon, The A. V. Club, CBC Books, and The Rumpus. And a Winter's Most Anticipated Book by Vanity Fair and The Week

Starred Reviews: Kirkus and Booklist

"Warm, immediate and intensely personal."--New York Times

How does one pay homage to A Tribe Called Quest? The seminal rap group brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create masterpieces such as The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders. Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group's history and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as the rap group itself.

Abdurraqib traces the Tribe's creative career, from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context of the broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws that forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record labels' shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact. Whether he's remembering The Source magazine cover announcing the Tribe's 1998 breakup or writing personal letters to the group after bandmate Phife Dawg's death, Abdurraqib seeks the deeper truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that--like the low end, the bass--are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.

It has been twenty-five years since Kurt Cobain died by his own hand in April 1994; it was an act of will that typified his short, angry, inspired life. Veteran music journalist Charles R. Cross fuses his intimate knowledge of the Seattle music scene with his deep compassion for his subject in this extraordinary story of artistic brilliance and the pain that extinguished it. Based on more than four hundred interviews; four years of research; exclusive access to Cobain's unpublished diaries, lyrics, and family photos; and a wealth of documentation, Heavier Than Heaven traces Cobain's life from his early days in a double-wide trailer outside of Aberdeen, Washington, to his rise to fame, success, and the adulation of a generation. Charles Cross has written a new preface for this edition, giving readers context for the time in which the book was written, six years after Kurt's death, and reminding everyone how fresh that cultural experience was when the interviews for the book were done. The new final chapter will update the story since, regarding investigations into Cobain's death, Nirvana's induction into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, and how their place in rock history has only risen over the decades.

What do George Clooney, Zooey Deschanel, Ryan Gosling and James Franco all have in common? Answer: they all play the ukulele and now, with this easy step-by-step guide, you can too! With just this book and your ukulele in hand, you'll learn basic music skills, how to care for your instrument, and how to play some simple tunes. Whether you're looking to impress your friends with spontaneous singalongs, or just want to strum solo, How to Play Ukulele is the perfect entryway to the wonderful world of ukulele.

This blazingly intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was.

Janis Joplin's first transgressive act was to be a white girl who gained an early sense of the power of the blues, music you could only find on obscure records and in roadhouses along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. But even before that, she stood out in her conservative oil town. She was a tomboy who was also intellectually curious and artistic. By the time she reached high school, she had drawn the scorn of her peers for her embrace of the Beats and her racially progressive views. Her parents doted on her in many ways, but were ultimately put off by her repeated acts of defiance.

Janis Joplin has passed into legend as a brash, impassioned soul doomed by the pain that produced one of the most extraordinary voices in rock history. But in these pages, Holly George-Warren provides a revelatory and deeply satisfying portrait of a woman who wasn't all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it. She was a woman who pushed the boundaries of gender and sexuality long before it was socially acceptable. She was a sensitive seeker who wanted to marry and settle down--but couldn't, or wouldn't. She was a Texan who yearned to flee Texas but could never quite get away--even after becoming a countercultural icon in San Francisco.

Written by one of the most highly regarded chroniclers of American music history, and based on unprecedented access to Janis Joplin's family, friends, band mates, archives, and long-lost interviews, Janis is a complex, rewarding portrait of a remarkable artist finally getting her due.