The Beat Goes On: Music Books for Fall 2014

The state of the music industry may be ever in flux, but musicians’ biographies and memoirs are going strong. David Rosenthal, president and publisher of Blue Rider Press, says of the perennial popularity of these titles, “Readers’ appetites for music books is enormous—musicians’ songs stay in our heads, we associate them with life’s big moments, and we’ve all fantasized about what it would be like to be rock star.” Although “music trends don’t change so dramatically from year to year,” according to Bennett Graff, senior editor at Rowman & Littlefield, “one definite trend has emerged in the last few years: major folk and rock acts that dominated the music scene of the 1960s and 1970s have been rushing memoirs into print as they come to the end of their careers or have found enough time to take a good look back.”

Of late, bookstore shelves have welcomed memoirs from rockers such as Pete Townsend, Rod Stewart, Graham Nash, and Neil Young. As it turns out, Young’s Waging Heavy Peace (Blue Rider, 2012), which, according to outlets tracked by Nielsen BookScan, has sold more than 143K in hardcover and almost 31K in trade paper, was just the beginning of his story. He returns this fall with a new installment, Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life and Cars (Blue Rider, Oct.), which is part memoir and part environmental tract. In it, Rosenthal says, Young “recalls key incidents in his life and how they correspond to the huge variety of classic cars he has owned and driven.” Young reflects on the damage that automobiles, including his own, have inflicted on the environment—even recording the specific carbon footprint of each model in his collection—and how this motivated him to help design a car that operates on biofuel and electricity.

Young has good company in sharing the details of his life and his music with fans. Grammy-nominated percussionist and singer Sheila E. has performed with artists as diverse as Herbie Hancock, Diana Ross, Lionel Richie, and Stevie Nicks. She tells her story of personal struggle and the healing power of music in the moving The Beat of My Own Drum (Atria, Sept.). In one of the memoir’s highlights, she discusses her romance with guitarist Carlos Santana, which took place when she was 18 and he was 36, and the resulting devastation that followed her discovery that he was married. Perhaps the elusive Santana will share his side of the story in The Universal Tone: My Life (Little, Brown, Nov.), which his publisher describes as a “sensory and sensual autobiography.” With a 300,000-copy first printing, this is the big musical memoir event of the season.

In Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac (Little, Brown, Oct.), Mick Fleetwood recalls the heady successes and the challenges of leading Fleetwood Mac as it evolved from its blues roots into a supergroup in the 1980s. The 75,000-copy first printing will coincide with the band’s fall tour through the U.S.

Much like Fleetwood, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry started a band that reached dizzying heights of fame, plagued along the way by the excesses of the rock-and-roll life. In Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith (S&S, Oct.), Perry draws back the curtains on the legendary stories associated with the band, revealing his often contentious, relationship with Aerosmith cofounder Steven Tyler. As he writes, Rocks is the “loner’s story, the band’s story, the recovery story, the cult story, the love story, the success story, the failure story, the rebirth story, the re-destruction story, and the post-destructive rebirth story.”

Gary Wright, best known for the 1975 multiplatinum song “Dream Weaver,” lived the rock-and-roll dream, from his early days as the founder of the group Spooky Tooth and his successful career as a solo artist to his keyboard work on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. In Dream Weaver: Music, Meditation, and My Friendship with George Harrison (Tarcher/Putnam, Oct.), Wright looks back on his music career as well as his long friendship with Harrison and their commitment to music, gardening, and Indian philosophy.

The rock and roll of the 1970s splintered into punk and heavy metal, and the music of the 1980s grew more diverse, ranging from anthemic pop ballads and slash-and-burn metal to power rock and punk-pop stomp; that diversity is reflected in the season’s offerings. Billy Idol moves from his high-octane performances on the stage to the page with Dancing with Myself (S&S/Touchstone, Oct.), named for a song he recorded both as a member of the band Generation X and as a solo artist. Lita Ford, lead guitarist of the Runaways—and once dubbed “heavy metal’s leading female rocker” by Rolling Stone—gives her perspective on the late-1970s and ’80s musical scene in Living Like a Runaway (HarperCollins/It, Sept.), which arrives on the heels of Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways by Evelyn McDonnell (Da Capo, 2013).

Anthrax founding member Scott Ian is likely to delight fans of the instrumental thrash metal band with the memoir I’m the Man: The Official Story of Anthrax (Oct.); given the 50,000-copy first printing, Da Capo appears confident in the continuing popularity of the band. From another corner of ’80s music, force of nature Grace Jones provides an in-depth account of her career in music and film, and the details behind her signature look, in Miss Grace Jones (S&S/Gallery, Oct.).

Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” the theme to 1982’s Rocky III, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide; Jim Peterik, one of the band’s founding members, tells the story of the band’s struggles and of his atypical rock-and-roll life in Through the Eye of the Tiger: The Rock ’n’ Roll Life of Survivor’s Founding Member (BenBella, Sept.). Although Bruce Cockburn’s first album hit stores in 1970, he rose to prominence in the 1980s with his activist music, and his songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Jerry Garcia, Judy Collins, and k.d. lang. In Rumours of Glory (HarperOne, Nov.), Cockburn opens up about his faith and his fears and guides readers on a musical journey through the late 20th century.

Lending Their Voices

Not all musicians can, or want to, tell their own stories, so others step in to chronicle their lives and music. This fall, Elvis Presley will stage a comeback of sorts, in print. Historian Joel Williamson uses Presley’s rise to stardom as a lens through which to view mid-20th-century U.S. culture in Elvis Presley: A Southern Life (Oxford, Nov.). In Elvis Has Left the Building: The Death of the King and the Rise of Punk Music (Overlook, Aug.), Dylan Jones examines the rapid rise of punk rock in the U.K. and U.S. during Presley’s decline. And Ginger Alden tells an intimate tale of the final months of the King’s life in Elvis and Ginger: Elvis Presley’s Fiancée and Last Love Finally Tells Her Story (Berkley, Sept.).

Just as authors continue to mine the life of the King of Rock and Roll, they seem never to tire of writing about the Crown Prince of Folk, Bob Dylan. This season, Jacob Maymudes, the son of Dylan’s former tour manager, offers an insider’s look in Another Side of Bob Dylan (St. Martin’s, Sept.), which timed to coincide with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the seminal album of the same name. Subtitled a “personal history on the road and off the tracks,” the book “is like opening a time capsule and being transported back to Greenwich Village in the early ’60s when Dylan and Victor Maymudes were arriving in New York and finding their feet in the folk music scene,” says St. Martin’s editor-in-chief George Witte. “The book evokes those early days and the decade as a whole.” Ian Bell, in the second volume of his exhaustive two-part biography, Time Out of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan (Pegasus, Oct.), covers Dylan’s more recent work.

Jerry Lee Lewis (aka the Killer), who has performed with everyone from Elvis to Keith Richards, tells tales from his life—about his seven marriages and the IRS raid that left him with only a piano, among others—to Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Rick Bragg in Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story.

No season of music books is complete without a book or two about arena rockers Led Zeppelin. According to Rowman & Littlefield’s Graff, “Led Zeppelin is a revered rock act, but like most super-bands of this sort, the vast majority of books on them are either sensationalistic bios or fanboy takes.” In Experiencing Led Zeppelin (Rowman & Littlefield, Oct.), Gregg Akkerman conducts readers on a tour of the group’s major hits and top-selling albums, looking at the reasons behind the group’s popularity. Dave Thompson offers a new look at the man whose primal voice gave Zep its unmistakable sound in Robert Plant: The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelin (Backbeat, Oct.).

In 2011, piano man Billy Joel, having granted exclusive interviews to Fred Schruers, pulled his autobiography from publication. Schruers used those conversations as the basis for his biography of the performer, Billy Joel, which Crown Archetype will publish in October.

By many accounts, Brian Jones was the visionary behind the Rolling Stones, though he gets little of the credit. Paul Trynka puts the multi-instrumentalist at the forefront in Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones (Viking, Oct.). Another musician with close ties to Mick Jagger, David Bowie, is profiled in celebrity biographer Wendy Leigh’s Bowie (S&S/Gallery, Sept.).

In 1999, David Ritz cowrote Aretha Franklin’s autobiography, Aretha: From These Roots. Building on that earlier effort, and drawing on interviews with Franklin, her family, and her friends, Ritz offers an emotionally charged portrait of the Queen of Soul that covers her life and career through the present in Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (Little, Brown, Nov.), which has a first printing of 100,000 copies.

Places and Spaces

The first time fans see a musician or a band live, they may later recall the venue just as fondly as the performance. In Live at the Fillmore East and West: Getting Backstage and Personal with Rock’s Greatest Legends (Globe Pequot/Lyons, Dec.), John Glatt resurrects the storied rock club and the music that filled their halls before legendary promoter Bill Graham shuttered them in 1971. “The Fillmore East and the Fillmore West were very intimate places where audiences saw the gods and goddesses of popular music—Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane, among tons of others—performers whose music the baby boomer generation continues to cherish and has handed down to other generations,” says Keith Wallman, editorial director at Lyons Press.

In 1974, Willie Nelson appeared on the pilot episode of Austin City Limits, launching what has become the longest-running live music show in the history of television. Drawing on interviews with a broad range of musicians and producers, Tracey W. Laird chronicles the impact it has had on the ways we listen to music in Austin City Limits: A History (Oxford, Oct.).

Classical, Country, and All That Jazz

While memoirs and biographies of rock musicians dominate the fall season, there are plenty of books to satisfy other musical tastes. “Music titles continue to be popular for a variety of reasons,” says Norton senior editor Maribeth Payne, “including fascination with the lives of the artists and the mysteries of the creative process.”

Ellen T. Harris’s George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends (Norton, Sept.) draws heavily on the letters, diaries, financial accounts, and wills of the people closest to the composer, and chronicles Handel’s involvement in the politics, religion, and charitable causes of early- and mid-18th-century London. Rimsky-Korsakov: Letters to His Family and Friends by Tatiana Rimsky-Korsakov and edited by Malcolm J. Crocker and Margarita Maksotskaya (Amadeus Press, Nov.), is a rare biography of the influential Russian composer, written by his granddaughter and rich with correspondence and other primary source material.

Opera takes the stage in Charles Affron and Mirella Jones Affron’s Grand Opera: The Story of the Met (Univ. of California, Sept.), which uses unpublished archival materials to bring the story of the New York institution to life. In 50 Moments That Rocked the Classical Music World (Trafalgar Square/Elliott & Thompson, Nov.), authors Darren Henley and Sam Jackson celebrate the key events that have shaped the way we play and listen to classical music today. And Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles, 1940–1954, edited by Tim Page (Library of America, Oct.), revisits the golden age of classical music through Thomson’s witty and adventurous reviews.

Several books this season return readers to country music’s roots. C. Eric Banister’s Johnny Cash FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Man in Black (Backbeat, Sept.) delivers a comprehensive look at the artist’s releases, and examines his immense legacy. Country singer Glen Campbell’s career spans rock, pop, and country, and in Life with My Father Glen Campbell (Overlook, Sept.), Campbell’s daughter Debby, with coauthor Mark Bego, provides a glimpse of the life of the country music legend and his descent into the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.

In the latest offering from the University of Texas Press’s American Music Series, John T. Davis provides an in-depth history of one of the premier Americana roots bands in The Flatlanders: Now It’s Now Again (Oct.). Fiona Ritchie, Doug Orr, and Darcy Orr explore the evolution of bluegrass and country music from their origins as ballads in Scotland and Ireland in the heavily illustrated Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia (Univ. of North Carolina, Sept.)

In Possibilities (Viking, Oct.), pianist Herbie Hancock weaves episodes from his personal life into an exploration of numerous genres, from classical and R&B to funk and hip-hop, and gives readers a glimpse into the role of music in his life. The tumultuous days of pop and jazz singer and songwriter Peggy Lee remain shrouded in a bit of mystery; James Gavin sheds some light in Is That All There Is?: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee (Atria, Nov.)

Ol’ Dirty Bastard, hip-hop superstar and a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, died a decade ago. His childhood friend Buddha Monk gives his straight-talking take on the rapper in The Dirty Version: On Stage, in the Studio, and in the Streets with Ol’ Dirty Bastard (Morrow/Dey Street, Nov.). Reggae producer Doctor Dread offers fans a behind-the-scenes self-portrait in The Half That’s Never Been Told: The Real-Life Adventures of Doctor Dread (Akashic, Dec.). And in Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man[/em] (St. Martin’s, Nov.), which is the first full biography of Scott-Heron, Marcus Baram traces the musician’s journey from his early childhood homes in Chicago and Tennessee to New York City, the flowering of the musical genius that earned him the nickname “Godfather of Hip-Hop,” and his decline into a world of drugs.

Honorifics like “godfather” hint at the close relationship fans feel to the musicians who earn them. As Rob Kirkpatrick, senior editor at Thomas Dunne Books, points out, music books “help readers relive their formative years. There’s always a strong audience for memoirs and biographies of artists who have created the soundtrack of our lives.”

Longtime PW contributor Henry L. Carrigan Jr. writes about music and music books for No Depression, Engine 145, and American Songwriter.

Below, links to related articles in this feature package.

Several books this season focus on the person who sits at the soundboard, refines an artist’s distinctive sound, and turns them into stars.

This season several books delve into the stories behind the lyrics; others collect interviews with songwriters that describe their process.

Rick Bragg's latest book is Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story.