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A Tale of Survival: Long Road: Pearl Jam and The Soundtrack of a Generation
“When I entered the eighth grade in the fall of 1992, it felt like Pearl Jam was the biggest band in the world,” writes Steven Hyden in his new book about the legendary band, Long Road: Pearl Jam and The Soundtrack of a Generation (Sept. 27). Hyden wasn’t too far off. In 1992, the band was still riding the high of their 1991 debut Ten, now, three decades later, known as one of the seminal works of the alt-rock canon and one of the greatest-selling albums in all of rock ‘n roll. A comprehensive look from the perspective of a devoted (if not sometimes concerned) fan, this book is organized like Hyden’s favorite Pearl Jam mixtape, into chapters corresponding to a specific song and then elaborating from there, taking the reader to many fascinating, surprising places that aren’t well-known abou...
Dave Alvin’s New Highway: Selected Lyrics, Poems, Prose, Essays, Eulogies and Blues
“Some of the stuff that’s in [the book] was written knowing that I may never play music again,” says Dave Alvin, chatting from his home in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood. “Or I may…. I may be dead.” The book is New Highway: Selected Lyrics, Poems, Prose, Essays, Eulogies and Blues, a collection by the musician. There are stories of growing up in working-class Downey, a little southeast of L.A. There are songs included from his time as the primary writer and lead guitarist of the Blasters, which he co-founded with his brother Phil (“Marie, Marie” “Long White Cadillac,” the manifesto “American Music”) and from his solo career (“Fourth of July,” his quasi-theme “King of California”). There are colorful tales of road life and youthful daring, odes to the communal joys of music and...
Fall Out Boy’s Joe Trohman Excavates His Inner World in None of This Rocks
When you think of Fall Out Boy, the first name you think of probably isn’t Joe Trohman — and he’s perfectly fine with that. But things weren’t always that way for the heavily tattooed guitarist who co-founded the band with Pete Wentz when he was a teenager and has since spent most of his life in Fall Out Boy as they morphed from a scrappy Chicago punk act to one of the biggest pop-rock bands in the world. While Trohman’s memoir, None of This Rocks, deals with him coming to terms with his role in Fall Out Boy and their obligatory career highlights, the book isn’t a rock biography as much as it is a psychological study of the guitarist. It’s the story of someone who’s dealt with clinical depression for most of his life and had a complex relationship with his mother, who also struggled with s...
George Michael: A Life Tells The Story Of A Gifted, Tortured Soul
James Gavin already has three acclaimed biographies to his credit, books about Lena Horne and Peggy Lee, and his Chet Baker book, Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker, was translated into more than a dozen languages. George Michael: A Life is the writer’s most intimate biography of all, and, he told me, the most difficult to finish. “The George Michael book has a much more widespread, strong interest than anything I’ve written before.” Gavin says he’s drawn to “stories of people in pain and people struggling and taking all of that turbulence and translating it into beautiful art.” With George Michael, Gavin portrays a talented artist, full of fear, and someone who’d built a cage for himself. And yet, his music was almost the antithesis of that—with seemingly coded lyrics tha...
Eternally ‘Grateful’: Peter Shapiro Is Helping Keep Jam-Band Music Alive, One Trip at a Time
Peter Shapiro has worked both on and off the stage with the biggest names in music history and has overseen some of the most beloved venues in the United States. But after more than 25 years in the business, he’s still a super-fan at heart who loves nothing more than rocking out with and talking shop about the artists who’ve shaped his life. Shapiro, 49, chronicles his remarkable career in his new Hachette book, The Music Never Stops: What Putting on 10,000 Shows Has Taught Me About Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Magic, co-written with longtime collaborator Dean Budnick. Structured as 50 different chapters about specific shows and experiences, the book details a Eureka moment at a 1993 Grateful Dead concert in Chicago (when he was a film student at nearby Northwestern University) that s...
Chris Blackwell: The Man, the Myths and the Legends
The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond, the newly released Gallery Books memoir from pioneering music executive and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, would have been an amazing read even if it had stopped before Blackwell discovered a teenage Steve Winwood blowing minds in a London club in 1964, happened upon a struggling Jamaican musician named Bob Marley in the early 1970s or overcame initial doubts about the commercial potential of a nascent Irish rock group named U2 and signed it to a record contract. Indeed, Blackwell’s early years growing up between Jamaica and London feature one “I can’t believe this really happened” anecdote after another, from being punched by actor Errol Flynn in a jealous rage to befriending James Bond author Ian Fleming and being hired as a production ...
Olivia Harrison: “I Wanted People To Know About George”
More often than not, the identities of wives/girlfriends/partners of famous musicians are defined in association with their notable counterparts. Olivia Harrison, widow of George Harrison, incorrectly falls into this category. Prior to becoming romantically attached to George, the Mexican-American Los Angeles native worked for his label, Dark Horse Records. They fell in love and he took her back to England to his historic home, Friar Park. Harrison recounts this ceremonial move in her poem, “My Arrival,” one of 20 in her latest book, Came the Lightening: Twenty Poems for George. Unlike her previous books: Concert for George (the companion to the Grammy Award-winning film of the same name) and George Harrison: Living in the Material World (the companion to the two-time Emmy-winning Mar...
Nabil Ayers Searches for Identity, Explores Race and Family in His New Memoir
Nabil Ayers has always been surrounded by music. He played drums in Seattle indie rock band The Long Winters, co-founded Seattle’s Sonic Boom Records, and is currently the U.S. president of the Beggars Group, which distributes 4AD, Rough Trade Records, Matador Records, XL Recordings, and Young. It’s his last name, however, that has always attracted attention. In his memoir, My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family, Ayers traces his unorthodox upbringing. His mother, Louise Braufman, met and had a child with jazz musician Roy Ayers — with the understanding that he would never have to be involved in his son’s life. The younger Ayers chronicles impersonal meetings with his father, like watching him at a show in Massachusetts, sharing an uncomfortable en...
Don’t Worry About Him: After 50 Years of Hitmaking, Kenny Loggins Is Still Alright
Kenny Loggins may forever be associated with his era-defining contributions to the soundtracks for such ’80s classics as Caddyshack, Footloose and Top Gun, but they are just a few of the countless milestones in his eventful, 50-plus-year career in music. Already a folk-rock superstar by his early 20s as part of the duo Loggins & Messina, the artist went on to inadvertently pioneer yacht rock thanks to his own late ‘70s solo work and a series of hit collaborations with Michael McDonald (“What a Fool Believes,” “This Is It”). He spent the following decade as one of the most commercially successful artists in the world and has rarely stopped working since, dabbling in everything from country, children’s and holiday music and winning new fans at every step of the way thanks to his willingn...
Kim Kelly Unites Metal and Labor Rights in Fight Like Hell
“This is the cutest thing, but I was interviewing Ihsahn from [Norwegian death metal band] Emperor and I thought I’d recorded it,” Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor author Kim Kelly says with a laugh, “I realized halfway through — he was in Norway and this is in the early 2000s — that my recorder wasn’t working. He just says, ‘Oh, it’s okay, I will just speak very slowly and you can write down what I’m saying’.” It’s early afternoon, and Kelly is in between interviews for her book’s release. Her story about Isahn is just one of many memories from her years working in the music industry. Fight Like Hell, on the other hand, is a book about intersectional labor movements throughout history — a collection of stories painstakingly researched and expertly told. These days, Ke...
Shane MacGowan’s The Eternal Buzz and The Crock of Gold
We are rarely permitted a visual glimpse into a rock icon’s psyche the way we are with Shane MacGowan’s new book, The Eternal Buzz and The Crock of Gold. To be released on April 29, it showcases six decades of the English-born Irish singer’s unpublished writing, unseen handwritten lyrics, and drawings and sketches from MacGowan’s childhood and through the years. In an auspicious turn of events, MacGowan’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke discovered her mother had been holding onto Shane’s artwork, unbeknownst to them.“When we were making The Crock of Gold documentary, Julien Temple wanted some of Shane’s drawings so I asked my mum to have a look and see if she had any. She sent me a bin bag full of drawings and lyrics that I had asked her to look after 25 years ago, we didn’t even know it existed...
Dan Charnas’s Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm
For music journalist Dan Charnas, telling J Dilla’s story was a personal quest. Dilla, the highly influential rap producer, died in 2006. “In the 15 years since his death, journalists and academics have written about him, and musicians have extolled his work,” Charnas says. “But no one had put it all together in a definitive statement: That this beatmaker who worked out of a basement in Detroit literally pioneered a new rhythmic time-feel, one that traditional musicians and electronic producers around the world now use. So, I felt a sense of urgency to recount that story, that innovation, and make that argument so he can have his rightful place in history.” Charnas began his work on Dilla Time in 2017 with a course he taught at the Clive Davis Institute at NYU. “The reporting and research ...
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