Melizzy

What's your favorite rock-n-roll book? Mine has to be Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-Roll Monsters. It's a collection of Rolling Stones articles, essays and interviews. Pretty good stuff.

Taggart

I haven't read many books on Rock'n'Roll. I enjoyed a book someone lent me that was written by Eric Burdon. I forget the name of it, but it had legendary stories told in it.

Also another book I borrowed but forget the name of was written by David Crosby, again with very candid anecdotes.

I also liked Randy Bachman's book. It told of Randy studying guitar with Lenny Breau, of his initial time with The Guess Who and Bachman Turner Overdrive, and of the problems re-uniting The Guess Who.

Melizzy

Now this sounds like a book I need to check out. I am always interested in books about rock-n-roll told from a candid point of view. I like hearing just how crazy it can get. And after reading some of those stories, I'm like, "Dang, how'd they survive that?"

HoopyFrood

The only remotely rock and roll book that I own is Scar Tissue, which is Anthony Keidis' autobiography and also...I think it's called Californication, which is the Red Hot Chili Peppers official biography.

I haven't actually read either, yet though. I'm not a fan of biographies...give me copious amounts of fictional books any day

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RoxyMoron

I think almost every punk kid has one of my favorites, "Punk: The Definitive Record of a Revolution." I'm sure it covers every punk and punk-like band of the 70s-early 80s. There was a book at Border's with a lot of really good bands and musicians that I wanted, I'll have to get back to you on that because I hope they haven't sold out!

nangel78

I am going to check out some of these books. They sound really good. I have not read many rock and roll books before.

littlemissattitude

Actually, David Crosby has two books out. The first, which I'm re-reading at the moment, is Long Time Gone. The newer one, just published last year, is Since Then: How I Survived Everything and Lived to Tell About It. I'm re-reading the first one in preparation for reading the new one. Both were co-written with Carl Gottlieb.

There's also a good biography of Neil Young out, Shakey, by Jimmy McDonough.

I've also just recently read Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends, by Barney Hoskins. It is also a new book, just published in 2006. It is about the southern California folk/country rock/singer-songwriter music scene in the 1960s and early 1970s. It's a bit gossipy, but it also shows a lot of the connections between the participants and how they influenced each other.

In sort of the same vein are two books about Gram Parsons, a participant in that scene who was a Byrd, a Flying Burrito Brother, and made two classic albums (solo, but featuring Emmylou Harris, in some of her first recorded work, on harmony vocals) of what he called Cosmic American Music before he managed to overdose at the age of 26, in 1973. The boy was a mess, but he was also a visionary. Anyway, the books are Grievous Angel: An Intimate Biography of Gram Parsons, by Jessica Hundley and Polly Parsons (Gram's daughter), published in 2005, and the earlier Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons, by Ben Fong-Torres (1991). The Fong-Torres book is a bit harsher on Parsons, his addictions and his behavior, while even though Grievous Angel (which was also the title of Parsons' final album) was co-written by his daughter it still doesn't pull any punches about his short and turbulent life. Both are good books that I would recommend.

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RoxyMoron

Lately, at the library, I've been finding really good books about the 60s and 70s, which came right on time. Right now I'm about to start a book about the Beat Generation, which has been a new fascination.

Kingmob

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of US Punk
(Covers everything from the Doors and Burrows, through the MC5's and the Stooges right up to NY and CBGB's, interviews just about everybodu worth speaking too).

The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
(Motley Crew bigography, hysterical)

Get In The Van
(Rollins' Black Flag Tour Diaries)

RoxyMoron

Those sound like interesting reads...time to log in to my library website and see if they have any of those!!!