Pop Books - Page 3

Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an Angry Young Man

Hank Bordowitz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Good synopsis but not definitive 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

For me, the period of time from "Turnstiles" to "Nylon Curtain" was the ultimate Billy Joel. He was in his element and his trials and tribulations with his first wife Elizabeth were reflected in his art. Joel is as much tin pan alley as he is a rocker. (Among his many influences were Ray Charles, The Beatles, Procol Harum, Hendrix, Traffic, etc) This book reflects on Joel well but it is not a balanced portrait. I suspect the truth maybe between the two biographies. Joel has been burned so many times that he has a deep mistrust of outsiders and I suppose thats intertwined with his relationships with the opposite sex. Joel has been oft quoted as saying "Why would anyone want to read about me?" He definitely is an interesting enigma wrapped up in a riddle but these books wont peel past those layers. That being said, Bordowitz does a good job of cobbling together the early years and the infamous "suicide" attempt. The level of detail is appropriate up until the "Innocent Man" era. At that point, Bordowitz steps on the gas pedal and we are fast forwarded to about 2004. All things being equal though, this a good attempt but not the last word by any means. I suspect Joel still has the profound ability to create great work in any idiom. His is driven by his passion for those he loves (Listen to "Lullabye" or "Downeaster Alexa") and equal parts insanity ("I go to Extremes") and these are the hallmarks of most great composers. If anything, Joel wears his heart on his sleeve and we have admired him for it.

Editorial Review:

"Billy Joel" takes an in-depth look at the singer-songwriter, from his middle-class Long Island, NY childhood to his breakthrough album "Piano Man", when his story becomes one of unstoppable success. The book explores his big moments and his personal struggles. It's based on numerous interviews, and gives a detailed picture of the man and his music. Billy Joel is touring the UK in July 2006. The concert venues include: NEC Birmingham, Wembley Arena, Rose Bowl - Southampton, Sheffield Arena, MEN Arena - Manchester, SECC Glasgow and Croke Park Stadium, Dublin.

The Autobiography of Donovan: The Hurdy Gurdy Man

Donovan Leitch

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Donovan's autobiography charts his life from a post-war, Glaswegian childhood to the height of an international career as one of the leading figures of the 1960's music scene. Always feeling like an outsider, he found relief through music and poetry. The book reveals how he came to be influenced by Buddhist teachings, and the music of Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez. The book explores the significance of falling deeply in love with the woman who was to become his muse, and the profound sense of loss he felt when their relationship came to an end, and how the loss affected him both personally and creatively. A leader of the folk revival in both Britain and America, the book recounts how he rose to be an international star, releasing songs such as "Mellow Yellow" and "Catch the Wind", and his most successful album, "Sunshine Superman". Donovan is acknowledged as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 1960's. The book provides a frank account of his early experiments with drugs and his search for self. He reveals the story of how he developed friendships with Baez, Dylan and the Beatles, with whom he a shared spiritual sojourn to meditate with the Maharishi in India. Donovan's autobiography offers first-hand insights into his music and poetry, recollects his rise to fame and the way in which destiny was to play a hand by re-uniting him with the lost love of his life through a chance meeting.

Take It Like a Man: The Autobiography of Boy George

Boy George, Spencer Bright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

a page turner 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This is a great example of how to do an autobiography the right way. So many celebrity bios and autobios I have read in the last few years flirt with the truth but never face it head on. It seems most celebrities feel they have so much to lose by just being honest with their fans that they won't open up and tell it like it is. George is refreshingly candid, incredibly funny, and seems to have learned a great deal from his past mistakes. Some might argue that George's waning popularity since the heyday of Culture Club is the reason for this revealing, warts and all autobiography. That maybe he wouldn't be so forthright if he still had massive celebrity at stake. I would wholeheartedly disagree with that, as he has always been pretty honest about who he is and where he comes from. Who can forget his infamous Grammy acceptance speech for Best New Artist ("thank you, America...you've got style, you have taste, and you know a good drag queen when you see one!" ) and the collective GASP! that was America's response. I am of the opinion that that moment was the begining of the end for Culture Club,partly because the dreaded Best New Artist Grammy Curse, and partly because America at that time just wasn't ready for an openly homosexual, cross dressing soul singer. ( I still doubt they would be now, but that's not really the point. ) If you've no interest in Culture Club, or "Boy" George O'Dowd, then I doubt this book is really for you. But if you're a fan ( and if you've gotten this far, you must be at least curious ) I can highly recommend this book. It is at turns bitingly funny, deliciously camp and sometimes sad. A great read.

Editorial Review:

The androgynous leader of the eighties' pop band, Culture Club, offers a candid look at his life, including his relationship with his drummer, his heroin addiction, his famous cross-dressing, and his fluctuating fame. Reprint. 50,000 first printing. $20,000 ad/promo.

Dusty!: Queen of the Postmods

Annie J. Randall

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Dubbed the "White Queen of Soul," singer Dusty Springfield became the first British soloist to break into the U.S. Top Ten music charts with her 1964 hit "I Only Want To Be With You"--a pop classic followed by many others, including "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and "Son of a Preacher Man." Today she is usually placed within the history of the Beatles-led "British Invasion" or seen as a devoted acolyte of Motown. In this penetrating look at her music and career, Annie J. Randall shows how Springfield's contributions transcend the narrow limits of those descriptions and how this middle-class former convent girl became perhaps the unlikeliest of artists to achieve soul credibility on both sides of the Atlantic.
Randall reevaluates Springfield's place in sixties popular music through close investigation of her performances as well as interviews with her friends, peers, professional associates, and longtime fans. As the author notes, the singer's unique look--blonde beehive wigs and heavy black mascara--became iconic of the mid-sixties postmodern moment in which identity scrambling and camp pastiche were the norms in swinging London's pop culture. Randall places Springfield within this rich cultural context, focusing on the years from 1964 to 1968, when she recorded her biggest international hits and was a constant presence on British television. The book pays special attention to Springfield's close collaboration and friendship with American gospel singer Madeline Bell, the distinctive way Springfield combined US soul and European melodrama to achieve her own musical style and stage presence, and how her camp sensibility figured as a key element of her artistry.

A Cure for Gravity: A Musical Pilgrimage

Joe Jackson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A renowned composer and one-time pop star's charming, funny, inspiring memoir of becoming--and evolving as--a musician. Since the release of his first smash bestselling album Look Sharp in 1979, Joe Jackson has forged a singular career in music through his originality as a composer and his notoriously independent stance toward music business fashion. He has also been a famously private person, whose disdain for the rituals of celebrity has led some to call him effete and self-important.That reputation is bound to be shattered by A Cure for Gravity, Jackson's enormously entertaining and self-revealing memoir of growing up musical, from a culturally impoverished childhood in a rough English port town to the Royal Academy of Music, London's punk and new wave scenes, and the brink of pop stardom. Jackson describes his life as a teenage Beethoven fanatic; playing his first piano gigs to audiences of glass-throwing skinheads; and life on the road with long-forgotten club bands. Throughout, he finds a hundred excuses to share his thoughts on musicians past and present, on record companies and critics, on why music is like both sex and religion (and why it isn't), why he loves Shostakovich and The Prodigy and hates Brahms and Brian Eno, and how music saved him from becoming "one of those sad bastards you see milling around outside the pub at closing time, looking for a fight."In 1992, Jackson decided to "retire from the pop world." This book evolved as he tried to figure out what to do next. Far from a standard-issue celebrity autobiography, A Cure for Gravity is an intelligent, passionate book about music, the creative process, and coming of age as an artist.

Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons

Ben Fong-Torres

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Georgia Peach 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Been listening to Gram's music for years and when I saw this book I ordered it and having read it I enjoyed it a lot , I do wish that it had a few more photos but the overall bio was very good I thought....well written and a breeze to read...for those who don't know of Gram , find out about the most unsung hero of the 60's and 70's music scene...for those of you who do know Gram , read it and be entertained....

Editorial Review:

Gram Parons lived hard and died young, and left behind a musical legacy that has influenced generations of rock and country legends. Ben Fong-Torres's moving account of his story--from his poor-little-rich-kid childhood; through his seminal time with the Byrds and his own bands, the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Fallen Angels; to days and nights spent with the likes of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Emmylou Harris--is a classic of rock biography. This newly expanded edition updates the text and discograph, adds rare new photographs, and concludes with an intriguing epilogue that answers some lingering questions about Gram's untimely death--and raised a few more.

Tori Amos: Piece by Piece

Tori Amos, Ann Powers

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

An intimate, eye-opening look inside the life of one of the most unique and adored performers of contemporary rock music

From her critically acclaimed 1992 debut, Little Earthquakes, to the recent hit, Scarlet’s Walk, Tori Amos has been a formidable force in contemporary music, with one of the most dedicated fan bases in the industry. In Tori Amos: Piece by Piece, the singer herself takes readers beyond the mere facts, explaining the specifics of her creative process—how her songs go from ideas and melodies to recordings and passionately performed concert pieces.

Written with acclaimed music journalist Ann Powers, Tori Amos: Piece by Piece is a firsthand account of the most intricate and intimate details of Amos’s life as both a private individual and a very public performing musician. In passionate and informative prose, Amos explains how her songs come to her and how she records and then performs them for audiences everywhere, all the while connecting with listeners across the world and maintaining her own family life (which includes raising a young daughter). But it is also much more, a verbal collage made by two strong female voices—and the voices of those closest to Amos—that calls upon genealogy, myth, and folklore to express Amos’s unique and fascinating personal history. In short, we see the pieces that make up—as Amos herself puts it—“the woman we call Tori.”

With photos taken especially for this book by the photographer Loren Haynes, Tori Amos: Piece by Piece is a rare treat for both Tori listeners and newcomers alike, a look into the heart and mind of an extraordinary musician.


I choose to fight my battles through my music . . . I was born a feminist. And then at age five, when my strict Christian grandmother punished me, I realized, I’m not penetrating here. I’m just pissing people off. So I had to find another way to penetrate. I had to redefine what that word means. That word now is really about an opening, an entering into a separate space. And after the first phase of my life, I realized that it was okay to enter that space without having to be invaded . . . I like the idea of just being able to be inside. Not using penetration as a violent word. The idea of being able to find keys . . . music, using keys to get into a space that we couldn’t before . . .

Now, backstage at an undisclosed arena where the sweat of athletes is still perfuming my makeshift dressing room, my many conversations with Ann Powers have begun . . .

“You come from the journalist side. I come from the artist side. It can become offensive. I’m sure from your side as well as from mine.”

“Well, it’s true everyone expects us to be enemies. And in some ways we are. My job is interpretation. Yours is art, which often benefits from mystery . . .”

Ann and I decided to strip our roles back to basics. We are both women born feminists in the 1960s. We are both married. We are both mothers. We are both in the music industry. Traditionally we are enemies. But for this project to be effective, I had to allow Ann to expose Tori Amos. And Tori Amos’s inner circle. And me.”

– from the Introduction

BUY TORI AMOS’S LATEST RECORDING, THE BEEKEEPER, ON EPIC RECORDS

Out of Sync

Lance Bass

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Editorial Review:

At sixteen, Lance Bass received a phone call from Justin Timberlake that would change his life forever. Soon after, he left his small-town home in Clinton, Mississippi, to join an emerging musical group called *NSYNC. Two years later *NSYNC was inspiring Beatles-esque mania around the world, becoming the face of the new MTV generation, and earning the all-time record for most album sales in a single day (more than one million) and in a single week for No Strings Attached.

He's remained in the spotlight ever since, and here he talks in depth for the first time about his childhood, his astonishing experiences as a young man and Christian growing up in one of the biggest bands in the world, his shock and frustration at the band's eventual dissolution, and his subsequent career, including his four months in Russia, training to become a cosmonaut.

He also frankly discusses life as a gay man -- his first same-sex relationship at twenty-one, his struggle to keep his sexuality hidden from *NSYNC's fans in case it jeopardized the band's success, and the true circumstances that led to his decision to publicly come out at the age of twenty-seven.

Full of fascinating behind-the-scenes lore and revealing insights from a pop star who, until now, has been notoriously private, Out of Sync is the book that millions of fans have been waiting for.

I'm Still Hungry

Carnie Wilson, Cindy Pearlman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

so so 2 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I really enjoyed reading about Carnie's experience because I have also had WLS. She offers great ideas, although I caution you that one should always talk to his/her own Dr. and not just taking her advice. Anyway, my complaint with her book is that she is sooooo inlove and sooooo happy all the time. It seems as if this was a panacea. Yes, I am happy and I have had great results from WLS, but it isn't all peaches and cream. In fact, there are many days that I don't even want to face the world. She seems to glamorize the surgery too much and she talks about her wonderful, fantastic, amazing husband too much! Enough already- we get it you're happy!

Editorial Review:

As the daughter of Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson, Carnie Wilson grew up in the fast lane and has had a lifelong struggle with obesity. Here, she picks up on her previous title "Gut Feelings", showing the progression of weight loss through a personal diary and detailing how she got her head in the right place as she lost more than 150 pounds. Carnie goes on to discuss how she re-established her career as an actress and singer in Hollywood, as well as her minute-by-minute description of posing for "Playboy" Magazine. Finally the last part of the book reveals the specific weight-loss plan that Carnie still uses to keep slim. However, she points out that this is certainly not the end of the road yet. She honestly admits that she's "still hungry" for knowledge, love, acceptance - and yes, a piece of chocolate or two.

Madonna: Like an Icon

Lucy O'brien

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Material Girl. Immaculate sexpot. Kabbalah enthusiast. British mum.

She has defied categorization for three decades and remained one of our greatest living pop icons

Madonna: Like an Icon is a groundbreaking biography that finally solves the mystery at the heart of Madonna's chameleonlike existence. Extensively researched and perceptively written by journalist Lucy O'Brien, it explores the complex personality and legendary drive that has made Madonna the most famous female pop artist of our time. O'Brien draws upon scores of interviews with producers, musicians, collaborators, lovers, and friends—many of whom have never spoken so candidly—to examine Madonna's fascinating life. From her mother's premature death to her dynamic arrival on the New York club scene to her training for Evita and beyond, every stage of her life is illuminated.

Unlike any previous Madonna biographer, O'Brien deconstructs the stereotypes that have plagued the star, whether it was being labeled a self-indulgent siren for her book Sex or criticized for exploiting her celebrity status to adopt baby David in 2006.

O'Brien provides an incisive portrayal, from Madonna's early days dancing at gay clubs in Detroit to the producers and musicians she both alienated and amazed in her uncompromising quest to seize on the next cultural wave.