Showing titles in Composers & Musicians

The once-in-a-generation memoir of a rock legend - the No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller. 'Electrifying' New York Times 'A masterpiece' The Word 'Funny, poignant, brutally honest' Sunday Telegraph 'Densely packed with incident... immensely readable' Sunday Times 'Once you begin this, wild, wild...

Frank Vincent Zappa (1940-1993) was an American composer, songwriter, guitarist, conductor, actor, satirist, filmmaker, and activist. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he additionally produced nearly all the 60-plus albums he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. His discography is characterized by nonconformity, improvisation, sonic experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. The following recording is from a 1990 interview.

Die beliebte Schauspielerin Andrea L'Arronge ließ ihr Leben Revue passieren und merkte, dass sie etwas von Grund auf ändern muss. Sie beschloss, ihrem Leben noch mal eine völlig neue Richtung zu geben, und trennte sich nach 33 Jahren Ehe von ihrem Mann. Jetzt folgt sie dem Ruf ihres Herzens und landet an einem Ort in Italien, der sie 30 Jahre zuvor schon einmal fasziniert hatte. Ein Buch, nicht nur für die zahlreichen Fans von Andrea L'Arronge, sondern für alle, die Mut und Lust haben, neue Wege zu gehen und sich gleichzeitig selbst treu bleiben möchten.

An intimate peek into the life of the soldier-turned-lyricist Anand Bakshi, from his formative years in undivided Punjab to eventually moving to Bombay and landing his first film Bhala Aadmi in 1958. Along the way, he lost his mother, his place of birth, and his home and wealth, but his...

How Music Works is David Byrne's bestselling, buoyant celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about. Drawing on his own work over the years with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and his myriad collaborators - along with journeys to Wagnerian opera houses, African villages, and anywhere music exists - Byrne shows how music emerges from cultural circumstance as much as individual creativity. It is his magnum opus, and an impassioned argument about music's liberating, life-affirming power.

An ode to the majestic life of the late Lata Mangeshkar, Lata: A Life in Music celebrates art in its totality and tells the life story of India’s most loved vocal artists. The result of Yatindra Mishra’s decade-long dialogue with the great singer, it also explores the lesser-known aspects of...

Frank Vincent Zappa (1940-1993) was an American composer, songwriter, guitarist, conductor, actor, satirist, filmmaker, and activist. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he additionally produced nearly all the 60-plus albums he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. His discography is characterized by nonconformity, improvisation, sonic experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. The following recording is from a 1990 interview.

La vida de aquéllos cuya historia intentaremos narrar en estas páginas fué casi siempre un martirio prolongado. Al frente de esta legión heroica, vemos, en primer lugar, al fuerte y puro Beethoven. Él mismo anhelaba, en medio de sus sufrimientos, que su ejemplo pudiera ser un sostén para todos los desvalidos, y que el desventurado se consolase al encontrar otro desdichado como él, que, a pesar de todos los obstáculos de la Naturaleza, había hecho cuanto de él dependía para llegar a ser un hombre digno de este nombre.

The first in-depth cultural history of one of the most famous American contemporary musicals featuring archival research and first-hand accounts from its creators and collaborators.

The long-awaited memoir by Cameron Crowe—one of America’s most iconic journalists and filmmakers—revealing his formative years in rock and roll and bringing to life stories that shaped a generation, in the bestselling tradition of Patti Smith’s Just Kids. If you’ve seen Almost Famous...

Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon is part memoir, part investigation, and unlike any creative portrait you’ve ever heard before. Recorded over a series of 30 hours of conversation between Simon, Gladwell, and Gladwell’s oldest friend and co-writer, journalist and Broken Record podcast co-host Bruce Headlam, the conversation flows from Simon’s music, to his childhood in Queens, NY, to his frequent collaborators including Art Garfunkel and the nature of creativity itself.

** Fasten your seatbelts, darlings, it's been one helluva ride. ** Liza Minnelli is one of the most iconic and enduring figures in entertainment history. Now, in her first and only memoir, Liza tells her story in her own words - and what a story it is. Born into Hollywood royalty, Liza was the...

Yo-Yo Ma was in his late forties when he decided he was truly happy being a musician. It was then he realized that he could use the cello to explore the world, to ask what it means to be human and how we can navigate the future together. Now, he has invited six friends to join him in answering these questions, to explore how they came to understand who they are, how they learned to love what they do in life, and how they would like to live in the world.

The strange tale of a boy named Flea starts in Rye, NY. It was all very normal. But soon his parents divorced and his mother Patricia remarried a jazz musician. Flea's stepfather frequently invited musicians to his house for jam sessions which sparked Flea's interest in music. The family moved...

In less than a year, Neil Peart lost both his 19-year-old daughter, Selena, and his wife, Jackie. Faced with overwhelming sadness and isolated from the world in his home on the lake, Peart was left without direction. That lack of direction lead him on a 55,000 mile journey by motorcycle across much of North America, down through Mexico to Belize, and back again.

As the lead singer of the Doors, Jim Morrison’s searing poetic vision and voracious appetite for sexual, spiritual, and psychedelic experience inflamed the spirit and psyche of a generation. Since his mysterious death in 1971, millions more fans from a new generation have embraced his legacy...

A quarter of a century after his death, Jimi Hendrix's popularity is undiminished, his place as the preeminent electric guitarist of the age unrivaled. Back in print, with a new introduction, a new epilogue, and an updated discography, The Jimi Hendrix Experience gives the whole story of his legendary life and career, the virtuosity and madness, the genius and the rush to self-destruction, as well as the fierce ongoing battle for control over his estate that has been waged since Hendrix's death.

We’re told women are good at listening, but we rarely examine what they’re listening to, what their worlds sound like, or how it feels to be expected to listen in a world of noise made by men. Like so many of us, Alice Vincent had become overwhelmed by the sensory overload punctuating our every moment. And then, a baby’s heartbeat arrived. A rapid, pulsing whoosh of white noise. An undeniable rhythm. Once again, Alice’s life became cacophonous – both with a new child, but also with the societal pressures that motherhood holds.

The Flame is a stunning collection of Leonard Cohen's last poems, selected and ordered by the author in the final months of his life. Featuring lyrics, prose pieces and illustrations, the book also contains an extensive selection from Cohen's notebooks, which he kept in poetic form throughout his life, and offers an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the life and mind of a singular artist and thinker.

In The Master of Drums, biographer Elizabeth J. Rosenthal crafts a celebratory, honest, and exhaustively researched portrait of a twentieth-century music legend. When he died, Gene Krupa may have left behind a world of grieving friends, colleagues, fans, students, and progeny, but as The Master of Drums proves, his dynamic musical and cultural influences live on.