Books

‘Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions Of KATE BUSH’ – New Biography Out This Week

Posted on by JL

24 October 2022

RUNNING UP THAT HILL: 50 VISIONS OF KATE BUSH is a brand new, multi-faceted biography of this famously elusive figure, viewing her life and work from fresh and illuminating angles. It’s written by respected British music journalist and author Tom Doyle.

Louder Than War writes: “Ever since a teenage Kate Bush arrived chanting Heathcliff’s in 78, stretching the key of C sharp like an oscillating wave, there’s been a sense of the otherworldly about her. As much a ground zero moment for pop as the Pistols were for the denim brigade, Wuthering Heights, a chart hit not in 4/4 time, sang about an eighteenth-century troubadour should have been an anomaly not a blueprint for a career that has now stretched out over nearly five decades and shows no sign of ending.

That veil of secrecy and strangeness is such that Kate Bush is one of the few artists you can actually look forward to books being written about. This latest release 50 Visions of Kate Bush by Tom Doyle might well be the punchiest one yet, beginning with her childhood in Welling Kent, where Bush would sit at a Mustel pump organ for hours working out chord structures and setting in motion the foundations for her future career in Dadaist pop.

Doyle, a respected music journalist does an excellent job of getting behind his subject. He’s even granted a rare interview with Bush, which acts as a preface to the book. It’s the closest we get to see the singer with her guard down, upbeat but slightly paranoid about the release of her Aerial album. With the record industry changing for the worse and with outside pressures seeping in, Bush is keen to dispel the layers of myths built up around her. “I just find it frustrating that people think I’m some sort of weirdo recluse that never comes out into the world,” she says.”

The book is out this Friday, 28 October. You can order it here via Amazon.


The single’s artwork – 1985

Their Final Year – New Book ‘THE JAM 1982’ Out Next Month

Posted on by JL

19 October 2022

This richly illustrated oral history account of THE JAM’s rollercoaster final year, led principally by the voice of Jam drummer Rick Buckler, contains a number of previously unseen images and takes in everything from the recording and release of final studio album The Gift and the rigours of the road to the announcement of the split, the final tours, The Tube and more.

The Gift’s rad single ‘Town Called Malice

In addition to Buckler’s memories of this final year, The Jam 1982 also brings together testimonies from producer Peter Wilson, A&R manager Dennis Munday, photographer
Neil ‘Twink’ Tinning, NME journalist Paolo Hewitt, Belle Stars singer Jennie Matthias, touring musicians Jamie Telford and Steve Nichol and others, to tell the tale of a single, fateful
year: the year The Jam, for better or worse, went out at the very top of their game.

Out: 17th November

Extent: 176 pages
Hardback: £25.00
Special edition: £50.00
Rick Buckler signed

Pre-order info: here

Final album THE GIFT

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THE JAM: Bio – Discography

The Story Of THE STRANGLERS As Told By The Fans – New Book ‘LIVE (EXCERPTS)’ Coming Up

Posted on by JL

5 October 2022

A new official book about British punk legends THE STRANGLERS – 368 full color pages – arrives on 27th October. It mixes hundreds of fan anecdotes with memories from the band, their collaborators, other musicians, and celebrity admirers garnered from 50 years of recording and performing.

“Passion, excitement, and emotion are the words that keep cropping up in the pages
of this book. The music and live shows The Stranglers have created, have deeply touched and affected the lives of so many people around the world.”

The book comes in two editions.

A Limited Edition Deluxe (500 copies) slipcase priced at £69.99
and a standard hardback edition is priced at £39.99

Pre-order via This Day In Music website here.

The good old days

THE STRANGLERS: Website – Instagram

New PATTI SMITH Book Coming – Inspired By Her INSTAGRAM Account

Posted on by JL

8 August 2022

A deeply moving and brilliantly idiosyncratic visual book of days by the National Book Award–winning author of Just Kids and M Train, featuring more than 365 images and reflections that chart Smith’s singular aesthetic—inspired by her wildly popular Instagram.

Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith’s world, photographs of her daily coffee, the books she’s reading, the graves of beloved heroes—William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Simone Weil, Albert Camus. Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smith’s unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions, and whims. Original to this book are vintage photographs: anniversary pearls, a mother’s keychain, and a husband’s Mosrite guitar. Here, too, are photos from Smith’s archives of life on and off the road, train stations, obscure cafés, a notebook always nearby. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world.

With over 365 photographs taking you through a single year, A Book of Days is a new
way to experience the expansive mind of the visionary poet, writer, and performer. Hopeful, elegiac, playful—and complete with an introduction by Smith that explores her documentary process—A Book of Days is a timeless offering for deeply uncertain times, an inspirational map of an artist’s life.

Patti Smith on her FB page: “This is A Book of Days, to be published in the fall. It is a year of reflections and images, inspired by my Instagram, but original throughout. The fruit of much labor, populated by sacred ghosts, and celebrating the new.”

Pre-order info here
Out 15 November 2022

PATTI SMITH: Instagram

BOB DYLAN – The Noble Prize Winner’s New Book ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG’ Comes In November

Posted on by JL

2 April 2022

New book: THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG

Author: BOB DYLAN – It’s the Nobel Prize laureate’s
first new book since 2004’s Chronicles: Volume One.

Out: 8 November 2022 – Order info here.

Content: Dylan’s unique reflection on the ideas and philosophy contained in modern
popular song. He began working on the book in 2010, offers a master class on the art
and craft of songwriting. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists,
spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank
Williams to Nina Simone.

He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny.

And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on
the human condition. Running throughout the book are nearly 150 carefully curated photos
as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work’s transcendence.

BOB DYLAN: Website

Expanded Edition Of JOY DIVISION Book With Photos By Legendary Photographer KEVIN CUMMINS Out Now

Posted on by JL

4 January 2022

Book: JOY DIVISION: JUVENES
With photos by legendary Manchester photographer Kevin Cummins.
He worked for 25 years for iconic weekly magazine NME that used to be
the bible for all alternative/indie music.

Content book: “A new, expanded edition of the legendary book published more than
a decade ago, now with added interviews and unpublished photographs. The definitive collection of the Joy Division photographs of Kevin Cummins, including new interviews with Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris. Originally published in 2007 in an ultra-limited run of just 226 copies, Juvenes is a book with legendary status among Joy Division devotees.

The book consists of Kevin’s selection of pictures from his Joy Division archive accompanied
by short personal essays and memories from the band’s family, contemporaries and fans and from several writers including Ian Rankin, David Peace and Natalie Curtis. The foreword is by Ian Rankin. Now comprehensively updated with new material and images that have never been published in a book before, this new edition will allow the band’s many die-hard fans to own it for the first time. Juvenes is a truly special celebration of the magic of Joy Division.”

To my eyes this stunning photo of the late great Ian Curtis
is the most fascinating one ever of the Joy Division frontman.

Cummins: “Curtis’s arresting stare in this 1979 portrait has
become an “emblem” of his legacy with the band.” Absolutely!

You can purchase the book right here.

Kevin Cummins: Website

Picture This – MOTÖRHEAD Photo Book On Its Way

Posted on by JL

26 December 2021

Manic metalheads MOTÖRHEAD were the ace of spades when it came to
crushing the legal level of decibels with their kamikaze racket. True noise
champions, led by party animal LEMMY who would have celebrated his
76th birthday 2 days ago (born 24 Dec 1945 in Stoke-on-Trent, England)

The band canned 22 studio albums between 1975
and 2015. (Lemmy passed away on 28 December 2015).

A new photo book about the legendary trio titled
FAST & LOOSE is coming next week, 30 December.
Order info here.

“From 1976 to 1982 Graham Mitchell traveled countless miles of highway with Motörhead as their tour manager and trusted friend. Fortunately, he brought along his camera. Captured through the lens of their trusted friend, those photos—many of them never seen before—have now been collected in the new book “Motorhead: Fast & Loose – Snapshots from the Graham Mitchell Archive.” The images are a gritty, intimate and authentic “insider’s view” of daily life on the road with Lemmy, Phil Taylor, and Eddie Clarke as they were setting out to take over the world.”

The book’s promo trailer…

MOTÖRHEAD: Website

SHANE MACGOWAN Announces Art Photo Book

Posted on by JL

25 December 2021

First things first: Happy 64, Xmas child. MacGowan was born
on 25 December 1957 in Pembury, Kent, England, son of Irish
immigrants.

And now about the upcoming art book titled
The Eternal Buzz and The Crock of Gold.

Out: April 2022. Limited edition,
only 1000 copies.Order info here.

Content: From the man who brought forth such musical masterpieces as
Fairytale Of New York, Streams of Whiskey and A Pair of Brown Eyes, this
limited edition art folio book presents a complete psychedelic collection of
never-before-seen or published illustrations, drawings, lyrics, stories, snippets
and secretions from the pen of Shane, dating back to his childhood, and
journeying through six decades of punk and Irish revelry.

Shane: “I was always into drawing and painting, and I used to do
all sorts of things, hurlers, IRA men, teenage punks hanging around
in cafes, you name it. When I was about 11 or 12 I got heavily into
studying history of art and looking at old paintings and modern
paintings, I knew a lot about art. It’s one of the only O Levels
I got, was in art.

I like pastels but I don’t really think about it. I’ll paint or draw on anything,
with anything. I like more or less everyone from Fra Angelico and Giotto to
the latest, like Caravaggio was the last of the Renaissance, before it went
into Expressionism. I love Cezanne, Gauguin, Monet, Manet.

I love the Irish impressionists, Lavery, Jack B Yeats, Brendan Fitzpatrick.
The 20th-century impressionists who painted the period of Ireland fighting
for its freedom. I like Max Ernst, the surrealists, Dali, Chagall… God there’s
millions of them.”

SHANE MACGOWAN: Website

MARK LANEGAN Wrote Memoir About His Near-Death Experience Due To Covid-19

Posted on by JL

14 November 2021

Washington born singer-songwriter MARK LANEGAN (Screaming Trees, QOTSA,
solo and countless collaborations) got infected with COVID-19 last March.

He went deaf, couldn’t walk for months, had cracked ribs, and had breathing
problems. He was hospitalized and slipt in and out coma for months.

He wrote a memoir about his life-threatening misfortunes
and the near-death experience he suffered.

The book, titled DEVIL IN A COMA comes out
on 14th December via White Rabbit Books.


(photo by Turn Up The Volume)

Press statement: One morning in March 2021 with the second wave of infections
ripping through Ireland where he was newly resident, Mark Lanegan woke up breathless, fatigued beyond belief, his body burdened with a gigantic dose of Covid-19. Admitted to
Kerry Hospital and initially given little hope of survival, Lanegan’s illness has him slipping
in and out of a coma, unable to walk or function for several months and fearing for his life.

As his situation becomes more intolerable over the course of that bleakest of springs he
is assaulted by nightmares, visions and regrets about a life lived on the edge of chaos and disorder.

He is prompted to consider his predicament and how, in his sixth decade, his lifelong battle
with mortality has led to this final banal encounter with a disease that has undone millions, when he has apparently been cheating death for his whole existence. Written in vignettes of prose and poetry, DEVIL IN A COMA is a terrifying account of illness and the remorse that
comes with it by an artist and writer with singular vision.”

FOO FIGHTERS General DAVE GROHL Is A Storyteller

Posted on by JL

18 September 2021

Former Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters‘ frontman DAVE GROHL will have his
first book out on 5th October, titled THE STORYTELLER – Tales Of Life And Music.

Grohl: “My life flashes before my eyes every single day. And in
writing this book, I’ve tried to capture those moments as best
I can.”

Here’s the trailer for the book…

Order info here