History & Criticism

In this intimate and open account—nothing like any rock-and-roll memoir you’ve ever read—Alex Van Halen shares his personal story of family, friendship, music and brotherly love in a remarkable tribute to his beloved brother and band mate.

On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, and roared into his new rock hit, "Like a Rolling Stone"....

The follow-up to The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1, the most complete work on the life and work of Paul McCartney ever published. Volume 2 continues to paint the portrait of one of the world’s greatest musicians, his work post-Beatles, and his life from 1974 to 1980.

Legendary rock journalist Mick Wall delivers definitive insight into America's bestselling band of all time, exploring their meteoric rise to fame and the hedonistic days of the '70s music scene in LA, when American music was taking over the world....

Discovered at last, the legendary lost manuscript of Grateful Dead co-founder and primary lyricist Robert Hunter, written in the early 1960s—a wry, richly observed, and enlightening remembrance of “the scene” in Palo Alto that gave rise to an incredible partnership of Hunter and Jerry Garcia.

From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture....

Revised and updated with new material for fans of the band and this beloved rock classic, Hammer of the Gods is the gold-standard biography of the band Led Zeppelin.

In this first of a groundbreaking multivolume set, THE MCCARTNEY LEGACY, VOL 1: 1969-73 captures the life of Paul McCartney in the years immediately following the dissolution of the Beatles, a period in which McCartney recreated himself as both a man and a musician....

David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological, is now updated with a new chapter on digital curation.

From the author of the definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, the story of three towering artists—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans—and how they came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue.

I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands....

From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music....

After more than two decades of research and travels, Christophe Lebold, who befriended the poet and spent time with him in Los Angeles, delivers a stimulating analysis of Cohen’s life and art.

Tune In is the first volume of All These Years - a highly-anticipated, groundbreaking biographical trilogy....

Ted Gioia's History of Jazz has been universally hailed as a classic - acclaimed by jazz critics and fans around the world....

An audiobook reflecting on the meaning of the revolutionary band Nirvana, their leader Kurt Cobain, and the band's personal, musical and cultural contexts in the '90s.

Alex Ross reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics - an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence....

Real rock stars do truly insane thing and invite truly insane things to happen to them: murder, drug trafficking, rape, cannibalism and the occult. We allow this behavior. We are complicit because a rock star behaving badly is what's expected....

Jan Swafford's biographies have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life....

In 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal “Ode to Joy,” he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European Enlightenment for a new era of peace and freedom, a time when millions would be embraced as equals....

From the stylist behind David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust look, an electrifying memoir taking listeners behind the curtains during a legendary chapter of pop culture history.

By a pair of veteran music writers, an unprecedented history of the electric guitar, its explosive impact on music and culture, and the people who brought it to life....

A riveting look at the transformative year in the lives and careers of the legendary group whose groundbreaking legacy would forever change music and popular culture....

In Playin' Possum, listeners get an intimate look at country music legend George Jones through the eyes of his wife of thirty years.

Fleetwood Mac's classic 1977 Rumours album topped the Billboard 200 for 31 weeks and won the Album of the Year Grammy....

The Story of the Bee Gees pulls together every fascinating strand to tell the story of a group with the imagination of the Beatles, the pop craft of ABBA, the drama of Fleetwood Mac, and the emotional heft of the Beach Boys. Uniquely, the Bee Gees's tale spans the entire modern pop era—they are the only group to have scored British top-ten singles in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s—and includes world-conquering disco successes like "Stayin' Alive" and "More Than a Woman", both from the soundtrack of the hit film Saturday Night Fever.

In Live Dead, musicologist John Brackett examines how live recordings—from the group's official releases to fan-produced tapes, bootlegs to "Betty Boards," and Dick's Picks to From the Vault—have shaped the general history and popular mythology of the Grateful Dead for more than fifty years.

Si tuvieras que explicarle a un alien qué diablos es la música, ¿cómo lo harías? Nada fácil, ¿cierto? Porque la música está presente en nuestra vida desde que nacemos, con las canciones que marcan nuestro primer amor y ruptura, hasta las que algunos eligen para partir. La música nos recuerda los mejores momentos, todos esos lugares y personas que nos provocan tanta emoción que queremos cantar, gritar y subir todo el volumen. Lo sabemos: la música es el lenguaje universal, sin fronteras culturales ni idiomáticas, que toca nuestro lado más profundo.

Schwarze Messen, Satanismus, Teufelskult - das Satanische hat im Rock 'n' Roll seit jeher einen festen Platz. Jedenfalls warnen konservative Kräfte bereits seit den 1950er Jahren vor dem teuflischen Einfluss der Rockmusik auf Jugend, Kultur und Gesellschaft. Seit den 1970er Jahren kultivierte der Heavy Metal ganz bewusst sein Image als "Teufelsmusik" und zieht bis heute vielfältige kreative Impulse aus dem Satanischen. Der Teufel selbst begegnet in Musik, Texten und Artworks als schillerndes, vielschichtig besetztes Symbol.

Jazz is a relatively new art form. It's melodic and harmonic language has evolved throughout the past 100 years from one great innovator passing on his discoveries to the next as a kind of artistic baton passing. The piano has always lead the harmonic language of jazz, so in order to truly understand the evolution of this music, one must understand the lineage of the music's greatest piano players. In this book, Richie Beirach provides his incisive and at times inside knowledge of these 10 great piano players who defined the language of jazz.