I’m a singer/songwriter and I grew up in a rock’n’roll household. My family has always traded great books about music between us, memoirs, biographies, scientific studies, deep dives into subcultures, industry exposes – I love them all and find a good music book impossible to resist. I always get excited when I find books written by other obsessive music-loving kindred spirits––if I can feel the love I’m right in there with them. I especially love the behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the work and fascinations that helped forge an artist’s career.
A tender meditation on all the disparate threads, sounds, loves, conversations, and lessons that meld together to create an artist. Watching Bob trying to throw off the accolades and labels that want to pin him down like butterfly and explore whatever takes his fancy is my favorite part of this trip, weaving through all the stolen records and ghosts and signposts and colored lights beckoning.
Building on the success of Bob Dylan in His Own Words, an autobiographical portrait of the acclaimed musical performer recounts personal and professional experiences and features black-and-white photography. 250,000 first printing.
I wrote my first cover story on climate change circa 1996, when the computer modeling made clear what would happen. Then I began to see clear physical evidence that the planet was warming, and not much was being written about it outside academic circles. That led to the book Feeling the Heat. I recruited a bunch of experienced environmental journalists, sent them around the world, and they came back with very detailed and important reporting based on what they’d seen—melting glaciers, rising seas, changing ecosystems.
This is one of many Wild West autobiographies posted in various formats at the invaluable and for the most part free to use Archive.org. The book is remarkable because it’s one long excuse for the author’s many murders. Hardin—far from the sympathetic figure portrayed in Bob Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” (with an extra “g”)—comes across as a vicious racist and dissembler. He maintains that the people he shot all but begged him to finish them off. Remarkably, he became a lawyer before being plugged himself.
In an era and an area notable for badmen and gunslingers, John Wesley Hardin was perhaps the most notorious. Considered by many of his contemporaries to be almost illiterate, he nevertheless left for publication after his death in 1895 this autobiography, which, though biased, is remarkably accurate and readable.
Hardin was born in 1853 in Bonham, Texas, the son of a Methodist preacher. His first brush with the law came at the age of fifteen when he killed a Negro during an altercation typical of the strife-torn Reconstruction era. In the ten years between his first killing in 1868 and…
I’m a poet, literary critic, translator, and biographer, and I grew up partly in France. I became obsessed with Max Jacob when I was twenty. Max Jacob—mystic, poet, painter, and suffering lover—took hold of me, and I found myself writing poems to him, in his voice, in my sketchbooks. They were among my first published poems: he redirected my life. A few years later I stumbled into writing his biography, never imagining that it would take thirty-five years: it came out from W. W. Norton in 2020, along with my most recent book of poems So Forth. I teach Comparative Literature in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
Rimbaud is the inescapable, volcanically talented, revolutionary poet of late 19th century France, the boy who had mastered the classical idioms and forms of the art by the time he was fifteen, and by age eighteen was reinventing poetic language both in the prose poems of Illuminations and in visionary irregular lyrics. He stopped writing poetry at age twenty, but the poems he left behind helped to open the door to modern poetry around the world.
A new translation of the best and most provocative work by France's infamous rebel poet.
Poet, prodigy, precursor, punk: the short, precocious, uncompromisingly rebellious career of the poet Arthur Rimbaud is one of the legends of modern literature. By the time he was twenty, Rimbaud had written a series of poems that are not only masterpieces in themselves but that forever transformed the idea of what poetry is. Without him, surrealism is inconceivable, and his influence is palpable in artists as diverse as Henry Miller, John Ashbery, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith. In this essential volume, renowned translator Mark Polizzotti…
Who would have thought that the teenage Robert Zimmerman, later known as Bob Dylan, belonged to his high school Latin club? Richard Thomas, who found the evidence, was
not so surprised.
A Professor of Ancient Greek and Roman poetry at Harvard and a long-standing fan, he has traced Dylan’s increasing use of classical
allusions. The singing Nobel prizewinner’s favorite is Ovid, whose phrases he
has used over 30 times in his lyrics. “Ancient footsteps are everywhere,” to
quote his song “When I Paint My Masterpiece.”
Thomas’s book is personal and easy
to read, casting new light on the enigmatic 82-year-old. As a committed fan
myself, I can safely say it is the best Dylan book yet, leaving out the ones he
authored himself.
A GUARDIAN AND INDEPENDENT BEST MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR
'At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan' Mary Beard
'Thomas's elegant, charming book offers something for everyone - not just the super-fans' Independent
When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan, the literary world was up in arms. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter in his Seventies, who wouldn't even deign to make an acceptance speech?
In Why Dylan Matters, Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers that question with magisterial erudition. A world expert…
I started reading and listening to memoirs in preparation for writing my own, and they inspired me to be honest and vulnerable about my story in ways that helped me overcome sexual shame. I lived a fascinating lifestyle as a sugar daddy for a few years, but talking about it was scary as hell. Reading other men who admitted their fears and failings gave me the courage to be radically honest and lay it all out there. Writing the book was cathartic in ways decades of therapy failed!
As the founder of Rolling Stone magazine, Jann recounts decades of being at the forefront of musical, film, and political history.
But it’s his personal admissions of his arrogance and, most importantly, decades of being in the closet as a gay man that make reading or listening to this absolutely fascinating.
In this New York Times bestseller, Rolling Stone founder, co-editor, and publisher Jann Wenner offers a "touchingly honest" and "wonderfully deep" memoir from the beating heart of classic rock and roll (Bruce Springsteen).
Jann Wenner has been called by his peers “the greatest editor of his generation.”
His deeply personal memoir vividly describes and brings you inside the music, the politics, and the lifestyle of a generation, an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond. The age of rock and roll in an era of consequence, what will be considered one of the great watersheds in modern history.…
This book re-deepened my lifelong devotion to all
things Dylan.
Part humorist, unsurpassed musicologist, and full-time narrative
genius, Marcus’s deep dives into seven of Dylan’s most iconic songs left me
re-listening to each one as if they had been newly remastered.
Who knew Bob Dylan could write a song with
three faces? Trust me, you need to be
introduced to each of them.
Acclaimed cultural critic Greil Marcus tells the story of Bob Dylan through the lens of seven penetrating songs
"The most interesting writer on Dylan over the years has been the cultural critic Greil Marcus. . . . No one alive knows the music that fueled Dylan's imagination better. . . . Folk Music . . . [is an] ingenious book of close listening."-David Remnick, New Yorker
Named a Best Music Book of 2022 by Rolling Stone
"Further elevates Marcus to what he has always been: a supreme artist-critic."-Hilton Als
Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of…
At the age of 23 I brought Bob Dylan to the Isle of Wight to play the 1969 festival. In my naivety when making the bid I knew nothing about the sixties superstar but by the time he accepted the invitation I had soaked up all that was generally known of his music and backstory. Through the decades since I have closely followed Dylan’s remarkable career and written about his indispensable place in the counterculture. I am an architect and author working in Oxford.
A timely anthology of 35 essays by an interestingly diverse array of contributors. A correspondingly diverse selection of aspects of the multi-dimensional Bob Dylan and his remarkable six-decade career is subjected to forensic scrutiny. No Dylan book peaks beneath the cloak of so many of the mysteries surrounding the enigmatic ‘song and dance man’.
2021 marks Bob Dylan's 80th birthday and his 60th year in the music world. It invites us to look back on his career and the multitudes that it contains. Is he a song and dance man? A political hero? A protest singer? A self-portrait artist who has yet to paint his masterpiece? Is he Shakespeare in the alley? The greatest living exponent of American music? An ironsmith? Internet radio DJ? Poet (who knows it)? Is he a spiritual and religious parking meter? Judas? The voice of a generation or a false prophet, jokerman, and thief? Dylan is all these and…
Stuart Coupe is an Australian music journalist, author, band manager, promoter, publicist, and music label founder. He's best known for his work as a rock writer with Roadrunner, RAM (Rock Australia Magazine), The Sun Herald, and Dolly magazine; the music labels, GREEN Records and Laughing Outlaw; and the author of books including The Promoters, Gudinski, Paul Kelly and Roadies. Coupe is a former manager of the Australian bands the Hoodoo Gurus and Paul Kelly and is currently a presenter on Sydney radio stations 2SER and FBi Radio. He's also known for his writing as a reviewer of crime fiction for the Sydney Morning Herald and for founding the Australian crime fiction magazine, Mean Streets.
The subtitle tells you all you really need to know. Kreutzmann was a founding member of the Grateful Dead and there for the whole long, strange trip and – to date – the only band member to pen an insider’s account of exactly what it’s like to be a member of The Grateful Dead. He tells a good story and if the Grateful Dead loom as large in your life as they do mine – well, just image a memoir written by Ringo Starr or Charlie Watts. Drummers sit there doing their stuff – and they see everything.
The Grateful Dead are perhaps the most legendary American rock band of all time. For thirty years, beginning in the hippie scene of San Francisco in 1965, they were a musical institution, the original jam band that broke new ground in so many ways. Bill Kreutzmann, one of their founding members and drummer for every one of their over 2,300 concerts, has written an unflinching and wild account of playing in the greatest improvisational band of all time. Everything a rock music fan would expect is here, but what sets this apart is Bill's incredible life of adventure that was…
I’m the author of five books on subjects ranging from comedy and music to sports and pants (specifically, blue jeans). I’m a longtime Boston Globe contributor, a former San Francisco Chronicle staff critic, and a onetime editor for Rolling Stone. I help develop podcasts and other programming for Sirius and Pandora. I teach in the Journalism department at Emerson College, and I am the Program Director for the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival and the co-founder of Lit Crawl Boston.
I devoured this book on the recommendation of my friend Otis Gibbs, a songwriter with a particular interest in the great tradition of songs of, by, and for the working class. “Educate – Agitate – Organize,” reads the Joe Hill mural painted on the side of a rare books store in Salt Lake City, where the Wobbly songwriter was sentenced to death by firing squad in 1915. In The Man Who Never Died (2011), journalist William M. Adler contextualizes the vital importance of songs like Hill’s to the union movement, and he uncovers new details about the activist’s controversial conviction.
In 1914, Joe Hill, the prolific songwriter for the Industrial Workers of the World (also known as the Wobblies), was convicted of murder in Utah and sentenced to death by firing squad, igniting international controversy. In the first major biography of the radical historical icon, William M. Adler explores an extraordinary life and presents persuasive evidence of Hill's innocence. Hill would become organized labor's most venerated martyr, and a hero to folk singers such as Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. His story shines a beacon on the early-twentieth-century American experience and exposes the roots of issues critical to the twenty-first…
An academically trained historian, I'm a Music Obsessive/History Geek/Southerner/Guitarist/Public Historian/Teacher/Interpreter/Writer/Fan who studies the intersection of music, culture, history, and place. I grew up devouring Mom’s Beatles and Dad’s country records. My life changed in 6th grade when I got my first guitar and discovered the blues. In 7th grade I wrote a research paper on the hippies. That’s when I fell in love with the counterculture. Throughout my life I’ve interwoven my love of the blues, punk rock, the Allman Brothers Band, and the Jam Depression collective as a historian, fan, and musician. My enduring passion culminated in a Ph.D. and the publication of Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East.
Flowers in the Dustbin uses an approach I dearly love: the vignette. Miller deftly selects stories that tie together a larger narrative of “where rock & roll came from—and what it came to do.”
The book begins with the birth of rhythm & blues through one of its earliest stars, Wynonie Harris. Subsequent stories in chapter one weave together the impacts of technology, the Great Migration, racial dynamics, a booming economy, and an emerging youth culture. It culminates in Elvis’s earliest recordings, the so-called birth of rock & roll. All in the first chapter!
In the story that follows, Miller demonstrates why rock & roll emerged and how it reflected and shaped the social, cultural, and political landscape.
A prizewinning historian and journalist who has covered the pop music scene for more than three decades, James Miller brings a powerful and challenging intellectual perspective to his recounting of some key turning points in the history of rock. Arguing that the music underwent its full creative evolution in little more than twenty-five years, he traces its roots from the jump blues of the forties to the disc jockeys who broadcast the music in the early fifties. He shows how impresarios such as Alan Freed and movie directors such as Richard Brooks (of Blackboard Jungle) joined black music to white…
