Music : Rock

This volume examines the powerful ways in which identity can be shaped by rock music. Through the music, imagery and discourse surrounding one of the most innovative and commercially successful rock bands ever, Susan Fast probes such issues as constructions of gender and sexuality, the creation of myth and the use of ritual, the appropriation of Eastern musics and the blues, the physicality of the music, and the use of the body in performance. The band's influence is examined through socially-situated musical analysis, as well as an ethnographic study of Led Zeppelin fans. Fast draws on academic and journalistic writing as well as a new interview with band member John Paul Jones. Specific pieces examined include "Dazed and Confused," "Kashmir," "Stairway to Heaven," and "Whole Lotta Love."  more...

Price: $60.00

For more than a quarter century, Philip Norman's internationally bestselling Shout! has been unchallenged as the definitive biography of the Beatles. Now, at last, Norman turns his formidable talent to the Beatle for whom belonging to the world's most beloved pop group was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, here is the comprehensive and most revealing portrait of John Lennon that is ever likely to be published. This masterly biography takes a fresh and penetrating look at every aspect of Lennon's much-chronicled life, including the songs that have turned him, posthumously, into a near-secular saint. In three years of research, Norman has turned up an extraordinary amount of new information about even the best-known episodes of Lennon folklore—his upbringing by his strict Aunt Mimi; his allegedly wasted school and student days; the evolution of his peerless creative partnership with Paul McCartney; his Beatle-busting love affair with a Japanese performance artist; his forays into painting and literature; his experiments with Transcendental Meditation, primal scream therapy, and drugs. The book's numerous key informants and interviewees include Sir Paul McCartney, Sir George Martin, Sean Lennon—whose moving reminiscence reveals his father as never before—and Yoko Ono, who speaks with sometimes shocking candor about the inner workings of her marriage to John. Honest and unflinching, as John himself would wish, Norman gives us the whole man in all his endless contradictions—tough and cynical, hilariously funny but also naive, vulnerable and insecure—and reveals how the mother who gave him away as a toddler haunted his mind and his music for the rest of his days. more...

Price: $34.95

Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them. And some have the misfortune to go to school with Bono. Everyone wants to be famous. But as a young punk in Dublin in the 1970s, Neil McCormick's ambitions went way beyond mere pop stardom. It was his destiny to be a veritable Rock God. He had it all worked out: the albums, the concerts, the quest for world peace. There was only one thing he hadn't counted on. The boy sitting on the other side of the classroom had plans of his own. more...

Price: $11.99

Living Through Pop explores pop's history and the ways in which it has been produced by musicians, broadcasters, critics and fans. more...

Price: $39.95

A member of Elvis Presley's "Memphis Mafia" describes his long-time friendship with the legendary singer, tracing their relationship from his first meeting as a child, through his years of living and working with Presley, to Elvis's tragic death. more...

Price: $26.00