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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsBest Rock Biographies?
Being a music lover, I've read quite a few. I know it sounds cheesy, but I love reading about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. These are a list of the biographies/autobiographies I've read about musicians/bands:
Dee-Dee Ramone (good)
Aerosmith (great)
Motley Crue (great)
Tommy Lee (fair)
Nikki Sixx (great)
Kurt Cobain (great)
Scott Weiland (good)
Keith Richards (great)
Anthony Kiedis (awesome)
That's about all I can remember at the moment. Looking for something to get on my Kindle----most people say Hammer of the Gods is the best. It's pretty lame I haven't read it yet since it came out when I was in high school.
My taste is pretty versatile---wasn't a huge Crue fan (although I had a few albums/cds) but imo, they were more wild than Aerosmith--which is pretty crazy.
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)JAGGER: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue
Amazon Barnes & Noble Borders IndieBound Books A Million iTunes
Mick Jagger Biography
For decades, Rolling Stones fans and critics have debated Mick Jaggers commitment to rock-and-roll. Many assumed that Keith Richards was the only true believer of the two. Did Mick, with his middle-class upbringing and parental support, have ulterior motives for being a rock star above and beyond a love for the music? Micks swagger, bed-me eyes, and intellectual prowess were certainly essential to the Stones early success. After their early 70s peak, however, Micks celebrity persona and notorious womanizing, started to perhaps obscure his considerable talent as a songwriter and musician. His partner, Keith, has, in this time, laid claim to the heart and soul of the Worlds Greatest Rock and Roll Band. Until now, no one has really challenged this claim.
Veteran music journalist and author Marc Spitzs sharp, funny and bold look at rocks premiere front man, Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue (Gotham Books; September, 2011) reveals that Mick is truly the only Rolling Stone who has never gathered moss. He was androgynous and beautiful like the bands late founder Brian Jones, but never as fragile. He was sybaritic, like Keith, but rarely self-destructive. In a band that based its early lyrics on the idea of freedom, Mick would emerge from the 60s, the only truly free Stone; defying expectation, often to the chagrin of the other Stones and the bands fans. Jagger was a lovely bunch of guys, theyd crack. But these poses, chronicled anew in Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue, somehow perfectly defined their times and solidified Jaggers place as a rock n roll trail blazer.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the fabled Glimmer Twins have a love/hate conflict that is nearly as old as rock and roll itself. As Spitz notes, it has its roots in their early years as boys in the middle-class London suburb of Dartford, where the two lived, literally and figuratively, on different side of the tracks. Later, while most of the pre-Stones band mates shared an apartment and lived on little more than potatoes and their love of the blues, Jagger always kept a foot in two worlds, attending the London School of Economics and stealing to his parents home for an occasional hot meal and clean laundry. Jaggers reputation as the less hardcore and serious artist of the two has been fostered ever since, while Keiths myth has only deepened. But it was Mick who considered becoming a radical, anti-War movement leader, Mick who made the still peerlessly perverse cult film Performance, and Mick who has always kept his ear to the ground and pursued new sounds that kept the Stones from being the blues rock war horse they might have been. Even his Knighthood, and refusal to stop shaking his behind at 67, can be seen as progressive acts along these original lines.
Drawing upon in-depth research and reporting, Jagger includes many brand new interviews with those whove worked with him (childhood friend and original Rolling Stones member Dick Taylor, Youre So Vain singer/songwriter Carly Simon, Albert Maysles, director of the legendary documentary Gimme Shelter, 70s-era Rolling Stones records chief, Marshall Chess, Neil Innes of the Rutles, and Vernon Reid of Living Colour), those whove praised him (activist Tariq Ali, who marched with him in protest of the Vietnam War, and 69 tour manager Sam Cutler, who first called the Rolling Stones The Worlds Greatest Rock N Roll Band) and those who, like Keith, have also questioned some of his choices (punk writer Mick Farren, and Exile in Guyville rocker Liz Phair and Bittersweet Symphony songwriter Richard Ashcroft of the Verve). With emphasis on two dozen key moments from Mick Jaggers life and times, rather than a cumbersome day by day format, Spitz creates an appropriately brisk and unique portrait of a true rock and roll searcher and survivor. Its not a pro-Mick spin job and hardly an Anti-Keith book, but rather a natural, contrarian view, designed to restore some balance to the Glimmer Twins and allow us to see Micks one of a kind life from a new perspective.
more at link:
http://www.mickjaggerbiography.com/mick-jagger-biography/
RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)I've seen the Stones a couple times. Keith didn't speak too highly of Mick in his.
Bennyboy
(10,440 posts)the first Keith book is so good, way better than his last. (sadly it is out of print now) And Jagger UNAUTHORIZED is a great read.
In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)[img][/img] [img][/img]
RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)How are you?
In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)Wandering around in other forums on DU.
Tryin' to have fun without getting into trouble. imo: impossible dream.
and ... How is your day?
Sedona
(3,769 posts)RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)Got backstage with quite a few bands in my time.
Thanks though!
Sedona
(3,769 posts)RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)Love U2. Thanks!
Aristus
(66,388 posts)Bio of Jim Morrison, obviously. Very good, if not great.
RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)Ages ago--forgot about that one. It was great.
Aristus
(66,388 posts)reported in "No One Here Gets Out Alive" that turned out to be false, inaccurate, or mis-remembered.
Iggo
(47,558 posts)...I use the Ray Manzarek method: "You wanna learn about The Doors? Listen to our albums!"
That said, I've heard real good things from a lot of sources about Nikki Sixx's book. So if that's your thing, I'm thinking that's probably a good bet.
RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)It was insane. Granted it's not that long, but I read it in a day.
olddots
(10,237 posts)who knows how accurate any of these books are or cares ? for that reason I like the Keith Auto Biog and the Angela Bowie book because face it Bowie and Richards are strange interesting people even if you don't like their music .
RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)Thanks--I love him.
avebury
(10,952 posts)by Lesley Ann Jones
This is the definitive biography of Freddie Mercury. Written by an award-winning rock journalist, Lesley-Ann Jones toured widely with Queen forming lasting friendships with the band. Now, having secured access to the remaining band members and those who were closest to Freddie, from childhood to death, Lesley-Ann has written the most in depth account of one of music's best loved and most complex figures. Meticulously researched, sympathetic, unsensational, the book - like the forthcoming film - will focus on the period in the 1980s when Queen began to fragment, before their Live Aid performance put them back in the frame. In her journey to understand the man behind the legend, Lesley-Ann Jones has travelled from London to Zanzibar to India. Packed with exclusive interviews and told with the invaluable perspective that the twenty years since Mercury's death presents, Freddie Mercury is the most up to date portrait of a legendary man.
amazon.com
RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)Funny, was listening to Queen this morning while cleaning. That's a definite----thanks! I read an article in Rolling Stone about him after he died (which was so sad) but it was a great read. I love him.
EvilAL
(1,437 posts)RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)But funny!
EvilAL
(1,437 posts)maybe a little mean...
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)Bennyboy
(10,440 posts)the best. the story before he invented the rock concert is incredible and then the stories after that are some of the best ever. The Stones, the dead, Woodstock, Altamont, the Last waltz. :ed Zeppelin etc are given and honest treatment....
Bennyboy
(10,440 posts)Excellent, if at times shrill, book about THE BAND.
Bennyboy
(10,440 posts)My favorite of the Bob bios. A very very interesting book about a very very interesting man.
velvet
(1,011 posts)No masterpiece but a good read if you're a Kinks fan. Kudos to Ray Davies for trying something a bit different, placing his memoirs into a fictional future setting.
Detailed review here: http://wfmu.org/~davem/docs/xray.html
An excerpt:
This rather thin meta-story doesn't intrude much on Ray's reminiscences (which don't go very far beyond the late sixties, to the undoubted relief of Kinks fans everywhere), and ends up being a clever vehicle for Davies to speak in both the first and third person, making observations about his own personality that would be impossible in a straight autobiography. Still, the main thrill is having the normally reticent Davies spill the details on Kinks mysteries that have been the subject of speculation for years: his childhood, his nervous breakdown(s), the band's notorious management problems, and most of all, their years-long ban from America.
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)Frank Cannon
(7,570 posts)I'm not big into rock biographies, but that one was a fun read. Those guys, and their managers and other entourage, were completely nuts.
Paladin
(28,264 posts)bluedigger
(17,086 posts)I just finished it this week - pretty good and no ghost writer.
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)Somebody to Love by Grace Slick
The Real Frank Zappa Book by Frank Zappa and Peter Ochiogrosso.
All You Need is Ears by George Martin
harmonicon
(12,008 posts)but there's apparently an entire US tour which Robert Smith (of The Cure) simply does not remember.
I guess they sometimes have sort of meet ups of past band members, and at one of these Andy Anderson swore that he'd played with Simon Gallup on some tour or album or other (he hadn't, but he did play on that tour which Smith can't remember, so that probably explains something).