Music Bargain Book Box

Music Bargain Book Box

Sly Stone waited fifty years to explain himself. When he finally did, it won Music Book of the Year.

That's the kind of company this box keeps. Tricky, holding nothing back. Nikki Sixx on the two decades before anyone had heard of Mötley Crüe. P.P. Arnold, who sang behind Ike and Tina and in front of half of Swinging London, telling it herself for the first time. Carlos Santana on Tijuana, Woodstock, and everything after.

Then the people standing just off-stage, who saw more than anyone: Tony King, sixty years alongside Elton, Lennon, and Jagger. Nicki Chapman, who steered Take That and the Spice Girls and Amy Winehouse. Bob Stanley on where pop actually began — the decades most histories skip. Jamie Collinson on the musicians who were sacked weeks before it all took off.

Plus Taylor Swift era by era, forty years of British pop told through a compilation series, and a guitarist who changed American music without most people noticing.

Read one and you'll want the records out.

• Taylor Swift: Era by Era — The Unauthorized Biography — Caroline Sullivan | ISBN: 9781789296860 | RRP: $45.00
  A Sunday Times bestseller charting Taylor Swift's career album by album, era by era — the songwriting, the reinventions, the industry battles, and the extraordinary machinery of the most successful pop career of the century.
• Soul Survivor: The Autobiography — P.P. Arnold | ISBN: 9781788705783 | RRP: $49.99
  The remarkable memoir of a singer who left Los Angeles as an Ikette, landed in Swinging London, and worked with the Small Faces, the Rolling Stones, Barry Gibb, and Roger Waters. A story of survival, exploitation, and an extraordinary voice that refused to be silenced.
• Hell Is Round the Corner: The Unique No-Holds-Barred Autobiography — Tricky | ISBN: 9781788702294 | RRP: $29.99
  The Bristol trip-hop pioneer tells his own story with startling candour — the family history, the drugs, the grief, the paranoia, and the music that came out of all of it. Unvarnished and completely his own.
• The Story of NOW That's What I Call Music in 100 Artists — Michael Mulligan | ISBN: 9781409179948 | RRP: $49.99
  Four decades of British pop told through the compilation series that documented it. A genuinely clever way into the history of chart music — nostalgic, well-researched, and considerably more interesting than the concept suggests.
• So Tell Me What You Want — Nicki Chapman | ISBN: 9781408732304 | RRP: $55.00
  A music industry memoir from someone who was in the room — working with Take That, the Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse, David Bowie, and Prince. Nicki Chapman writes about the business of pop with warmth, discretion where it counts, and very good stories.
• The Rejects: An Alternative History of Popular Music — Jamie Collinson | ISBN: 9781408717967 | RRP: $65.00
  The history of pop told through the people who got kicked out just before it happened — Pete Best, Dave Mustaine, and dozens more. A brilliantly conceived book about talent, timing, and the arbitrary cruelty of being in the right band at the wrong moment.
• The First 21 — Nikki Sixx | ISBN: 9781408716120 | RRP: $32.99
  A New York Times bestseller covering the twenty-one years before Mötley Crüe — the childhood, the abandonment, the move to Los Angeles, and the sheer determination that got him there. More reflective and better written than the genre usually manages.
• Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) — Sly Stone | ISBN: 9781399601580 | RRP: $24.99
  The Sunday Times Music Book of the Year. Sly Stone's own account of the rise of Sly and the Family Stone, the records that reshaped American music, and the long disappearance that followed. Extraordinary and long overdue.
• The Tastemaker: My Life with the Legends and Geniuses of Rock Music — Tony King | ISBN: 9780571371938 | RRP: $45.00
  Six decades in the music industry alongside Elton John, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and Freddie Mercury. Tony King was the man behind the scenes for almost everything, and his memoir is as warm, funny, and gossipy as you'd hope.
• Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist Who Changed the Sound of American Music — Philip Watson | ISBN: 9780571361663 | RRP: $49.99
  A superb biography of one of the most quietly influential guitarists alive — a musician whose work runs through jazz, country, rock, and film scoring. Philip Watson writes about music with real precision and genuine love for the subject.
• Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop — Bob Stanley | ISBN: 9780571320257 | RRP: $59.99
  Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley traces popular music from the sheet music era through to the arrival of rock and roll — the decades most pop histories skip entirely. Encyclopaedic, opinionated, and enormously readable.
• John Grant: The Illustrated Lyrics — John Grant | ISBN: 9780349147307 | RRP: $75.00
  A beautifully produced collection of John Grant's lyrics, illustrated throughout — presenting one of the sharpest and most emotionally exposed songwriters of his generation as a body of work on the page.
• The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light — Carlos Santana | ISBN: 9780316244923 | RRP: $49.99
  Carlos Santana's autobiography — Tijuana, San Francisco, Woodstock, and the decades since. Spiritual, expansive, and unmistakably in his own voice.
• Twilight of the Gods — Steven Hyden | ISBN: 9780062657138 | RRP: $27.99
  A funny and genuinely thoughtful examination of classic rock as its founding generation reaches the end. Steven Hyden writes music criticism that argues with itself and takes the reader along for it.
• Live Forever: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Oasis — John Robb | ISBN: 9780008760960 | RRP: $34.99
  From a writer who was there for the Manchester scene that produced them, this is the full arc — the ascent, the collapse, the feud, and the reunion. John Robb knows this territory better than almost anyone writing about it.