A John Lennon Biography: All I Want Is the Truth
I am old enough that the Beatles were a current and very hot band when I started tuning into the radio. This was around the turning point in their music, when they stopped playing pop songs with catchy tunes and uninspired lyrics and moved into more creative and dangerous territory. Sgt. Pepper was the first...
George Harrison: Living In the Material World
This George Harrison biography, written by the former Beatle’s widow, Olivia Harrison, draws upon his collection of photographs, letters, journals, and other documentation. She follows Harrison’s life from his boyhood in Liverpool, where he grew up poor and learned to play guitar, through his incredible career with the Beatles, and on to his subsequent career...
Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga
Led Zeppelin was arguably the biggest, most successful, most influential band of any genre (rock, jazz, disco, whatever) in the 1970s. For rock music, they were almost as iconic in the ‘70s as the Beatles had been in the ‘60s. Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga is a great account of the rise,...
Keith Richards: The Biography
It seems that in any biography about a rock & roll great from the ‘60s and ‘70s, a problem with drug abuse is inevitable, and legal troubles and violence are an optional feature present at least half the time. That certainly is true of this story of Keith Richards, who along with Mick Jagger wrote...
Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll
The Western world entered a new era at the end of World War II, and that was true in its music and pop culture as much as in its politics and international relations. The years after the war saw the birth of many things, and one of them was rock & roll. One DJ, Alan...