Secondhand Music Books

"Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote." Irving Berlin, 1942. This book provides both the story behind the making of...

In 1994 punk rock trio Green Day were on top of the world with DOOKIE, their massive hit album. They were loud, fast, bratty, pissed off, hopeless, truthful, drunk, maybe...

Sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, love, discovery and death - this is the journey mapped through music taken by us all. Here, writers, artists, poets and players, makers of films and young...

From the author of the million-copy selling Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation and the bestselling John Lennon: The Life comes a revealing portrait of George Harrison, the most undervalued...

A Times Summer Read 2023A Guardian 50 Best Holiday Reads 2023'This really is a wonderful book for pop kids everywhere' - RICHARD OSMANUsing the arrival of the Spice Girls as...

Dancer, award-winning choreographer, show producer, stand-up comedienne, TV/Film actress and author, Norma Miller shares her touching historical memoir of Harlem's legendary Savoy Ballroom and the phenomenal music and dance craze...

Pete Townshend wrote 'Hope I die before I get old' in 1965 and took the Who to the top of the world in 1969's smash hit Tommy. He was inducted...

The remarkable autobiography of the last great wartime icon. Born Vera Welch on 20 March, 1917 in the East End of London, Dame Vera Lynn's career was set from an...

Grammy Award-winning singer Angelique Kidjo is known for her electrifying voice and fearless advocacy work. In this intimate memoir, she reveals how she escaped Communist Africa to make her dreams...

Anthony Reynolds' fascinating and detailed biography draws on scores of new interviews conducted with Cohen's band members past and present, his business associates, editors, friends, fans, producers, colleagues, enemies and...

Mozart's famous opera is the starting point, though not always the destination, for this collection of specially commissioned essays on the Don Giovanni story. This is not an "academic" book,...