Top 10 Music Books

As it's coming up to Christmas we have selected our top 10 music orientated books. They make the perfect Christmas stocking filler for any music heads you may know. They are always a wicked read.

Mr Pikes: The Story Behind The Ibiza Legend

The playboy who built himself a playground reveals all in his hard-hitting memoir. The iconic hotelier reflects on a fast life of hedonism and the globe-trotting backstory that influenced his set-up of pioneering Balearic boho bolthole, Pikes.

Now at the grand old age of 83-years-young the man Boy George dubbed “the real Hugh Hefner” has decided to tell all. The globetrotting story of how Tony Pike reached Ibiza is as fascinating as the shameless shenanigans and scrapes he conjured up on the island. This is a man who built himself up from nothing...who travelled the world…and became the living embodiment of the phrase ‘work hard, play hard’. Who bought a 500-year-old Spanish farmhouse with no electricity, running water, sanitation…or rooms…and turned it into the best rock and roll hotel in the world.

Tony looks back on the extreme highs and lows of an unparalleled life, goes exclusively behind the scenes of the Club Tropicana video shoot which put his unique hotel on the map and discusses his relationships with guests/friends including George Michael, Freddie Mercury, Julio Iglesias and lover Grace Jones.

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Heavier Than Heaven: The Biography of Kurt Cobain

Alongside the death of Elvis Presley and the assassination of John Lennon, Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994 ranks as one of the generational milestones of American life - an epochal event in both rock 'n' roll and youth culture. This book is the story of Kurt Cobain's life, from abject poverty to unbelievable wealth, power and fame. It traces the journey from his humble origins in Aberdeen to becoming lead singer of Nirvana, the most popular rock band in the world from 1991 to 1994, and the most influential band of this decade. The beautifully written text is complimented by 16 pages of photographs.

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The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band by Vince Neil

Whiskey and porn stars, hot reds and car crashes, black leather and high heels, overdoses and death. This is the life of Mötley Crüe, the heaviest drinking, hardest fighting, most oversexed and arrogant band in the world. Their unbelievable exploits are the stuff of rock 'n' roll legend. They nailed the hottest chicks, started the bloodiest fights, partied with the biggest drug dealers, and got to know the inside of every jail cell from California to Japan. They have dedicated an entire career to living life to its extreme, from the greatest fantasies to the darkest tragedies. Tommy married two international sex symbols; Vince killed a man and lost a daughter to cancer; Nikki overdosed, rose from the dead, and then OD'd again the next day; and Mick shot a woman and tried to hang his own brother. But that's just the beginning. Fueled by every drug they could get their hands on and obscene amounts of alcohol, driven by fury and headed straight for hell, Mötley Crüe raged through two decades, leaving behind a trail of debauched women, trashed hotel rooms, crashed cars, psychotic managers, and broken bones that has left the music industry cringing to this day. All these unspeakable acts, not to mention their dire consequences, are laid bare in The Dirt.

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Lost and Sound: Berlin, Techno and the EasyJetset.

Tobias Rapp was among the many young Germans who moved to Berlin just after the Wall came down, and who moved directly into a squat. He grew up in tandem with the city, from his early days raving in its virtually lawless clubs, to his eventual post as Der Spiegel's pop culture editor, and he saw how the techno scene changed with it. It's a story he tells in his book, Lost and Sound: Berlin, Techno and the EasyJetset.

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Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983

As the 1970s gave way to the 80s, New York's party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by its creativity, intensity, and hybridity. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor chronicles this tumultuous time, charting the sonic and social eruptions that took place in the city’s subterranean party venues as well as the way they cultivated breakthrough movements in art, performance, video, and film. Interviewing DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, and dancers, Tim Lawrence illustrates how the relatively discrete post-disco, post-punk, and hip hop scenes became marked by their level of plurality, interaction, and convergence. He also explains how the shifting urban landscape of New York supported the cultural renaissance before gentrification, Reaganomics, corporate intrusion, and the spread of AIDS brought this gritty and protean time and place in American culture to a troubled denouement.

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The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club

Peter Hook, as co-founder of Joy Division and New Order, has been shaping the course of popular music for thirty years. He provided the propulsive bass guitar melodies of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and the bestselling 12-inch single ever, 'Blue Monday' among many other songs. As co-owner of Manchester's Hacienda club, Hook propelled the rise of acid house in the late 1980s, then suffered through its violent fall in the 1990s as gangs, drugs, greed and a hostile police force destroyed everything he and his friends had created. This is his memory of that era and 'it's far sadder, funnier, scarier and stranger' than anyone has imagined.

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Superstar DJs Here We Go!: The Rise and Fall of the Superstar DJ

During the 1990s big names such as Sasha, Jeremy Healy, Fatboy Slim, Dave Seaman, Nicky Holloway, Judge Jules, and Pete Tong exploded out of acid house, becoming international jetsetters, flying all over the world just to play a few hours and commanding up to £140,000 a night. The plush, heavily branded 'superclubs' where they performed - clubs like Cream, Ministry, Renaissance and Gatecrasher - were filled with thousands of adoring clubbers, roaring their approval of their DJ gods. For the DJs and promoters, it was a licence to print money and live like a rock star. For clubbers, it was a hedonistic utopia where anyone and everyone could come together to look fabulous, take drugs, and dance the night away. But underneath the shiny surface lurked a darker side, a world of cynical moneymaking, rampant egos and cocaine-fuelled self-indulgence that eventually spiralled out of control leaving behind burnt-out DJs, jobless promoters and a host of bittersweet memories. They went from having the clubbing world at their feet to the world's biggest comedown. Dom Phillips - former editor of clubbers' bible Mixmag - reveals an enthralling and at times jaw-dropping account of flawed people, broken dreams and what really happens when it all goes Pete Tong.

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Chronicles, Volume One Bob Dylan, 2004

Concentrating on his hungry years amid New York’s rich early-’60s folk scene, Dylan lends a romantic glow to the city’s smoky clubs and their colorful inhabitants, like Dave Von Ronk, Richie Havens and Tiny Tim, hailing the poets who first ignited his lust for words — Byron, Shelley, Poe — along the way. Later, he highlights two lesser-known but pivotal albums: New Morning, which captured Dylan’s need for family and privacy, and Oh Mercy, possibly his wisest work. Those seeking anecdotes about his best-known songs will go wanting, though Dylan die-hards hold out hope for the two sequel memoirs Dylan promises in the future. In the meantime, he offers hosannas to musical inspirations obvious (Robert Johnson) and less so (Brecht & Weill), told in prose that, true to Dylan’s wily image, is by turns sincere and flip, insightful and evasive. Given his aloof nature and exalted stature, it’s all revelatory.

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England's Dreaming

Jon Savage's Ralph Gleason Award-winning England's Dreaming is the ultimate book on punk, its progenitors, the Sex Pistols, and their time: the late 1970s. Full of anedcote, insight, and exclusive interviews, it tells the sensational story of the meteoric rise and rapid decline of the last great rock'n'roll band and the cultural moment they came to define.

The critical reputation of England's Dreaming has grown over the past decade and a half. This updated edition includes an introduction focusing on the legacy of punk twenty-five years on, an account of the Sex Pistols 1996 reunion, and a comprehensively updated discography.

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Decoded

Part personal narrative, part lyrical analysis, and part art book, Jay Z’s Decoded is nothing like the average memoir. He tells his life story through candid vignettes about his tumultuous childhood, his complex relationship with his father, Hurricane Katrina, and everything in between. He examines his own life as part of the greater scheme of hip-hop, and offers music history lessons along the way.

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