Search Results: Biography -- Entertainers from I Cannot Live Without Books

150 Glimpses of the Beatles by Craig Brown
John Updike compared them to "the sun coming up on Easter morning." William E. Buckley called them "unbelievably horrible." The Duchess of Windsor adored them. Noel Coward despised them. J.R.R. Tolkien snubbed them. The Rolling Stones copied them. Leonard Bernstein admired them. Muhammad Ali called them "little sissies." Bob Dylan introduced them to drugs.
They changed the way the world looked, the way it sounded, and the way it thought. President Gorbachev told Paul McCartney, "I do believe the music of the Beatles taught the young people of the Soviet Union that there is another life."
No remained unaffected by their music. President Obama spoke of how after the Beatles first came to America, "in a few short years, they had changed the way that we listened to music, thought about music, and performed music forever." On her golden wedding anniversary, Queen Elizabeth II observed: "Think what we would have missed if we had never heard the Beatles."
150… Read More

Be My Baby: A Memoir by Ronnie Spector with Vince Waldron
Be My Baby is the behind-the-scenes story -- newly updated, and with an especially timely message -- of how the original bad girl of rock and roll, Ronnie Spector, survived marriage to a monster and carved out a space for herself amid the chaos of the 1960s music scene and beyond.
Ronnie's first collaboration with producer Phil Spector, "Be My Baby," shot Ronnie and the Ronettes to stardom. No one sounded like Ronnie, with her alluring blend of innocence and knowing, but her voice would soon be silenced as Spector sequestered her behind electric gates, guard dogs, and barbed wire.
It took everything Ronnie had to escape her prison-like marriage and wrest back control of her life, her music, and her legacy. And as shown in this edition, which includes a 2021 postscript from Ronnie, her life became proof that our challenges do not define us and there is always the potential to forge a fuller life.
In Be My Baby, the incomparable Ronnie Spector… Read More

Being John Lennon: A Restless Life by Ray Connolly
What was it like to be John Lennon? What was it like to be the castoff child, the clown at school, and the middle-class suburban boy who pretended to be a working-class hero? How did it feel to have one of the most recognizable singing voices in the world, but to dislike it so much he always wanted to disguise it?
Being John Lennon is not about the whitewashed prince of Peace of Imagine legend -- because that was only a small part of him. The John Lennon depicted in these pages is a much more kaleidoscopic figure, sometimes almost a collision of different characters.
But above everything, Lennon had attitude -- his impudent style somehow personifying the aspirations of his generation to question authority. He could, and would, say the unsayable. Though there were more glamorous rock stars in rock history, even within the Beatles, it was John Lennon's attitude which caught, and then defined, his era in the most memorable way.
Pegasus Books, Hardcover,… Read More

Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of the One Band and the Whole World by Rob Sheffield
THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES.
It is truly impossible to imagine a world without the Beatles. Yes, they are the biggest, most iconic rock band of all time. Their music continues to delight, define, and provide a soundtrack for fans all over the globe. It seems, however, that with each passing decade this band has become more popular, more influential, more ubiquitous, more beloved, just more, and in Dreaming the Beatles the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love is a Mix Tape brings his singular voice to the most universal popular culture phenomenon in history, exploring what the Beatles mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them.
This is not another biography of the band or an expose of how they broke up. It isn't a history of their gigs or gear. It's a fresh, unconventional look at the Beatles'… Read More

King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King by Daniel DeVise
Riley "Blues Boy" King (1925 - 2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister's guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, and encouraged by his cousin, the established bluesman Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark. In turn, generations of artists claimed him as inspiration, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Carlos Santana and the Edge.
King of the Blues presents the vibrant life and times of a trailblazing giant. Witness to dark prejudice and lynching in his youth B.B. performed incessantly (more than fifteen thousand concerts in ninety countries over nearly sixty years) -- in some… Read More

Levon: From Down in the Delta to the Birth of The Band and Beyond by Sandra B. Tooze
He sang the anthems of a generation: "The Weight," Up on Cripple Creek," and "Life is a Carnival." Levon Helm's story -- told here through sweeping research and interviews with close friends and fellow musicians -- is the rollicking story of American popular music itself.
In the Arkansas Delta, a young Levon witnessed "blues, country, and gospel hit in a head-on collision," as he put it. The result was rock 'n' roll. As a teenager, he joined the raucous Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, then helped merge a hard-driving electric sound with Bob Dylan's folk roots, and revolutionized American rock with the Band. Helms not only provided perfect "in the pocket" rhythm and unforgettable vocals, he was the Band's soul.
Levon traces a rebellious life on the road, from being booed with Bob Dylan to the creative cauldron of Big Pink, the Woodstock Festival, world tours, The Last Waltz, and beyon with the man Dylan called one of the… Read More

The Search for John Lennon: The Life, Loves, and Death of a Rock Star by Lesley-Ann Jones
Late on December 8th, 1980, the world abruptly stopped turning for millions of people, as news broke that the world's most beloved bard had been gunned down in cold blood in New York City. The most iconic Beatle left behind an unrivaled body of music and legions of faithful disciples -- yet his profound legacy has brought with it as many questions and contradictions as his music has provided truths and certainties.
In this compelling exploration, acclaimed music biographer Lesley-Ann Jones unravels the enigma that was John Lennon to present a complete portrait of the man, his life, his loves, his music, his untimely death, and, ultimately, his legacy.
Using fresh first-hand research, unseen material, and exclusive interivews with the pele who knew Lennon best, Jones's search for answers offers a spellbinding, 360-degree view of one of the world's most iconic music legends. The Search for John Lennon delves deep… Read More

Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort
Just a few years after he nearly died from drug and alcohol addiction, a clean and sober Stevie Ray Vaughan was riding high. His last album was his most critically lauded and commercially successful. He had fulfilled a lifelong dream by collaborating with his first and greatest musical hero, his brother Jimmy. His tumultuous marriage was over, and he was in a new and healthy romantic relationship. Vaughan seemed poised for a new, limitless chapter of his life and career.
Instead, it all cam to a shocking and sudden end on August 27, 1990, when he was killed in a helicopter crash following a dynamic performance with Eric Clapton. Just thirty-five years old, he left behind a powerful musical legacy and an endless stream of what-ifs. In the ensuing twenty-nine years, Vaughan's legend and acclaim have only grown and he is now an undisputed international musical icon. Despite the cinematic scope of Vaughan's life and death,… Read More

This Thing Called Life: Prince's Odyssey On + Off the Record by Neal Karlen
Neal Karlen was the only journalist Prince granted in-depth interviews to for more than a dozen years, from before Purple Rain to after the artist changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph. Karlen interviewed Prince for three Rolling Stone cover stories and wrote 3 Chains o' Gold, Prince's "rock video opera," as well as the star's last testament, which may be buried with Prince's will underneath his vast and private compound, Paisley Park.
According to Prince's former fiancee Susannah Melvoin, Karlen was "the only reporter who made Prince sound like what he really sounded like." Karlen quit writing about Prince a quarter-century before the megastar died, but he never quit Prince, and the two remained friends for the last thirty-one years of the superstar's life.
Well before they met as writer and subject, Prince and Karlen knew each other as two of the gang of kids who biked around Minneapolis's mostly segregated Northside.… Read More

And in the End: The Last Days of the Beatles by Ken McNab
THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES.
Ken McNab reconstructs, for the first time, the seismic events of 1969, when The Beatles reached new highs of creativity and new lows of the internal strife that would destroy them. Between the pressure of being filmed during rehearsals and writing sessions for the documentary Get Back, the company, Apple Corps, facing bankruptcy, John Lennon's heroin use, and musical disagreements, the world's biggest group was arguing more than ever before and their formerly close friendship began to disintegrate. In the midst of this rancor, however, emerged the disharmony of Let It Be and the ragged genius of Abbey Road, their incredible farewell love letter to the world.
This detailed month-by-month account of the breakup features the perspectives of all four Beatles and their roles in the final year and is based on new interviews conducted by the author. McNab has turned rock 'n' roll… Read More