Music

Sean O'Riada is one of the most fascinating and significant characters in twentieth-century Irish artistic life. In this wide-ranging account of his life and work, the author, a close friend...

Britain's most articulate singer-songwriter remains a complex individual whose lyrics opt for realism, opinion, waspish wit, irony, asexuality, melancholy and love. In this candid biography, Morrissey's friends and the members...

***With consultant editor Tony Visconti. 'An unearthed trove of Bowie treasure' - David MitchellDavid Bowie's story has never been told quite like this.Tracing the star's encounters with fellow icons throughout...

Opera is traditionally regarded as an elitist art form far removed from reality by its fantastical plots and melodramatic divas. This book shows that beneath the opulent sets and sumptuous...

In 1965, photographer Jerry Schatzberg, already well-established in the field due to his fashion and portrait photography for various publications, such as Vogue, Esquire and Life, listened to Bob Dylan...

Known the world over for her unique musical style, distinctive look and a voice that propelled her into the charts time and time again, Dusty Springfield was undoubtedly one of...

Tips and ideas from transport to tents and style to scrimpingFestivals come in every shape and size and cater for every type of music lover, but what unites them is...

The Great Drugs Bust has everything; sex, drugs, rock and roll and a huge slice of British social history. At its core are four pep pills, a Sunday tabloid, two...

This lavishly produced volume is the ultimate collection of songs for electric guitar. Carefully selected, meticulously transcribed and beautifully presented, these 24 songs represent some of the greatest songs ever...

Ray Avery has been involved with jazz music since the late 1940's, amassing a collection of photography that is an amazing chronicle of the genre and features some of the...

This title is updated to include the release of their fifth studio album "The Resistance" and their 2009/2010 world tour. "Out of This World" is the definitive story of Muse...

Rory Gallagher is revered as one of the world's greatest guitarists. He bounded across the stage with the swagger of a rock star, but offstage he was a shy, unassuming...

Shortlisted for the NME Best Music Book Award 2018THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'The definitive book on Bowie' The Times Dylan Jones's engrossing, magisterial biography of David Bowie is unlike any Bowie...

Read the first biography of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, whose music and career illuminate the journey and legacy of 1960s counterculture. 'Peter Doggett's book is a fascinating, rip-roaring and...

This updated edition takes the story into the summer 2008 with her success at the American Grammies, where she won five awards, Her Brit Award performance, the latest on her...

This new edition brings The Cure's story right up to date to include details of Robert Smith's personnel changes and the band's 13th studio album. Author Jeff Apter traces their...

When his first album made him an unlikely star in the late 1960s, Leonard Cohen was hailed as the new poet of song. His melodies were hauntingly melodic but his...

Der fliegende Hollander is the first of Wagner's operas considered to be representative of his mature style. It embodies one of the major themes that recur throughout his work, that...

Otello, Verdi's penultimate opera, was composed more than a dozen years after Aida, which he had intended to be his last work for the stage. He was persuaded by his...

A Midsummer Night's Dream was Benjamin Britten's seventh major opera and had its premiere at Aldeburgh in 1960. Britten and his partner Peter Pears prepared a condensed version of Shakespeare's...

Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg is the only comedy among Richard Wagner's mature works. Unusually for Wagner, it is set in a historically specific time and place, sixteenthcentury Nuremberg, and tells...

Puccini's masterpiece "La boheme" is one of the most beloved and enduring operas of all time. In this guide, William Ashbrook evaluates the opera's initial reception, the reasons for its...

Tosca, one of Puccini's greatest and most popular operas, is a supreme example of music's power to enthrall the audience. In his introductory essay to this guide, Bernard Williams discusses...

Verdi's Simon Boccanegra exists in two versions: that of the 1857 original and that of the 1881 revision. The texts of the libretto of both versions are included in this...

Mozart wrote Idomeneo when he was twenty-four years old, and the opera was described by Albert Einstein as 'one of those works that even a genius like Mozart could write...

Following the great successes of Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte was the last of the three operas that Mozart wrote with the librettist Lorenzo Da...

'Carmen' is one of the most enduringly popular of all operas and the most powerful of Georges Bizet's works. Following its premiere at the Opera-Comique in Paris in 1875, it...

Rossini's success in Italy in the early 1820s was certainly not echoed in France, where he was regarded as "an ill-bred parvenu, whose cheap popularity was an insult to a...

Unlike any other book of its kind, "Hit Singles" gives both the US and UK top 20 chart listings, side-by-side, to show at a glance what was happening in the...

From the romantic agonies of Hector Berlioz to the lonely labours of Anton Bruckner, and from the cosmopolitan triumphs of George Frideric Handel to the politically fraught career of Dmitri...

WINNER OF THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE 2018In the 1950s and 1960s, Memphis, Tennessee, was the launch pad of musical pioneers such as Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Al...

The Beatles' hair changed the world. As their increasingly wild, untamed manes grew, to the horror of parents everywhere, they set off a cultural revolution as the most tangible symbol...

The art of music-making has existed for thousands of years. This fascinating book begins with a history of music-making, posing the questions "What is music?" and "What is a musical...

'He achieves the miraculous,' the sculptor Auguste Rodin wrote of dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. 'He embodies all the beauty of classical frescoes and statues'. Like so many since, Rodin recognised that...

A breathtaking, never-before-seen glimpse into life on tour with David Bowie, by the late singer's official tour photographerIn 1983 David Bowie set out on the Serious Moonlight Tour, his biggest...

No photographer in the world took more - or better - shots of Iron Maiden than Ross Halfin. Having worked with the group since their emergence in the late 1970s,...

So much more than another best-ever roundup, here you'll find the reasons why these 100 albums deserve recognition for the way in which they transformed music. This work includes incisive,...

In his enthralling and revelatory This is Your Brain on Music Daniel Levitin unpicked the pathways of the brain to reveal how human beings have been hard-wired for music. Now,...

With sales of over 200 million albums, AC/DC is not just the biggest rock band in the world, it's a family business built by three brothers: George, Malcolm and Angus...

Lifting the lid on Lady Gaga aka Stefani Germanotta, find out all you ever wanted to know about the eccentric star. After being signed to and quickly dropped from Def...

Born out of West African and Western music traditions and rooted in the music of Blues, Jazz has, as Wynton Marsalis put it, 'all the elements, from the spare and...

This practical, easy to use new book covers every aspect of learning to play the guitar and will help every player of any discipline to make their way through the...

Recorded at Olympic Sound Studios, London, The Rolling Stones' seminal album of 1968, "Beggars Banquet", was regarded as marking a return to form for the group - going back to...

Featuring 360 chords, organised as a chord per page, this is a flexible, comprehensive solution for anyone learning or playing the guitar at any level. This no-nonsense, easy to carry,...