Rock Books

The Michael Jackson: The Visual Documentary is the most comprehensive book ever published on the King of Pop. Michael Jackson himself has recommended this book - mentioning it in the sleeve notes of his HIStory - Past, Present and Future Book 1 album. Covering from the birth of Michael Jackson upon to the present day, the book provides a complete record of Michael Jackson's moves, grooves, music, albums, family, history, and more. Illustrated with hundreds of photographs, the book also details Jackson's records, concerts, videos, awards, interviews, quotes, public appearances, his family, fascinating memorabilia and details of rare Michael Jackson records, and much more. From Steeltown to Motown, from the Jackson 5 to his solo career, from The Wiz to Thriller, he's been Bad, Smooth and Dangerous and even Blood On The Dance Floor. He's made captivating videos, with exciting dance moves, played spectacular concerts and filled the world's largest arenas across the world. He has been performing since the age of five, breaking records since he was 11 and a star without equal since 21. He has been such a great influence on music history over the past 30 years and with this book, you can be part of his journey from birth to present (full with dated details). Though never far from the media spotlight, Michael Jackson remains an enigma. The Michael Jackson: The Visual Documentary presents all the facts about Michael as never before -- everything you need to know about world's most famous celebrity is in this one book. The book contains over 200 pages, over 280 photos, promo pictures, rare pictures, complete discography, singles information, family tree information, and much more. The complete history of Michael Jackson.

Props to Adrian Grant for this Book. Elvis,Sinatra&the Beatles I got there albums&they were alright,but MJ Built the House Known as Pop Music. nobody else has taken Pop Music where he has. the Brother always makes Me Proud.growing up in the Hood from Gary Indiana to Becoming the King of Pop.the Man is a One Man Industry.Owns those Catelogs,Masters&is the Most Influential Artist over the past 30 years easily.Every Artist over the past 30 years is in Debt to this Man's Musical Genius&Vision.this is a Tight Book&takes you back.He is the Artist that got me interested in Music more than anyone else.truth be told:the Brother is Vastly Underrated IMO.He deserves far more due for the doors He Broke down.

I got this Book a few Years back&truly dug how Adrian Grant went into Detail on MJ's Music.He mentioned when tracks were done&also mentioned side tidbits that were cool as well.very good comprehensive overview on one of the Greatest Music Artists Ever.He mentioned this song called "Buffalo Bill" that Michael Jackson had done&I was like I wish I could have heard it? that was cool of Him to drop Songs&things.alot of folks don't know how detailed MJ is in the studio or the fact He records so much.

If I had to describe this book (and indeed, other books in the Mrs. Jeffries series) in one word, I'd say "clever." Emily Brightwell has a wonderful knack for creating such interesting plots and twists. The way the characters slowly peel away at the mystery and the way the killer is revealed in a heart-pounding way are simply genius.

Sit back, read this book with a cup of tea, and enjoy!

Only the gardener and the residents of Sheridan Square have keys that allow access to the gardens. Venerable Scotland Yard Inspector Gerald Witherspoon begins investigating the murder of Mirabelle Daws, a visitor from Australia. The highly regarded law enforcement official expects this case will prove relatively simpler to solve than most of his previous cases due to the limited opportunity. However, as Gerald meets the occupants, he finds it difficult to see who would possibly have the motive amongst this gentle group. Adding to his troubles is that no one, including the sibling, knew or expected Mirabelle to be in England.

Unbeknownst to the Inspector, his housekeeper Mrs. Jeffries organizes the staff to begin their own inquiries in support of their beloved employer. As the Witherspoon servants begin to unlock the case, Mrs. Jeffries subtly provides her employer with clues and answers without him being aware of what his crack staff is doing for him.

The fourteenth Mrs. Jeffries Victorian mystery stays with the overall premise of the series, yet continues to retain a freshness to each new novel entry. The current tale, MRS. JEFFRIES ROCKS THE BOAT, is entertaining and the who-done is perplexing but interesting, and the characters provide a taste of life the nineteenth century in England. Emily Brightwell's novels continue to be some of the brightest historical mysteries of the past decade.

Harriet Klausner

This is one of the better Mrs. Jeffries books. The plot is a little more complex than some of the preceeding books. When an unidentified lady is found stabbed to death in a locked communal garden, Mrs. Jeffries and her crew are launched into investigating one of the most confusing cases yet. The ending for this one is a bit of a surprise as well. And we see Bestsy and her Smythe reach another level in their "courting". Same great characters, same cozy atmosphere - What else could you ask for?

This is the best book yet.Not only do you get a glimpse of there hot looks,music,and talent.But how hard the work to give there audience a great and not to mention in-sync concert. P.S great pix of jc chasez and justin timberlake

This book was the best of *NSync's books! They showed what there day's consist of and how tuff they work to make their fan happy! Now you have to give these guys some kind of credit!

This is a really great book! There are TONS of pics of the guys and they are really great pics. Any *NSYNC fan who doesn't have this book should definately get it because I promise you that you won't be dissapointed!

awesome book. buy it if you have sense. have a nice day.

If you are looking for a book that perfectly tabs out all of Nevermind for the guitar you have found your baby!

Please don't hesitate and do buy this book! It is one of the greatest albums ever and also the most famous happening in the nineties of the previous century.The tabs are strictly grunge and you'll be enjoying nirvana of your own playing these tablatures. The solos are also wonderfull and the notes are tabbed easiest way possible to be played in a harmonic ways with our own being. I think so or... Enjoy it yourself!

I can't remember where I first read a few excerpts from this book, but I remember being pretty irate I didn't have the full text in front of me at the time. Years later, after bad breakups, fires, towers falling down around me, I finally stumbled across Songs They Never Play On The Radio again, devoured it like a starved cannibal on the tundra. This book is so much wider in its scope than the blurbs on the back make it out to be, primarily in its oblique commentaries on European political history, and the valuation of Art.

The book is a biographical snippet of singer/songwriter Nico's last years and tours. At the beginning she is living in Manchester, England, addicted to heroin and passing her days getting high and drowsing in the shadows. A vaguely ambitious and obscure producer named Dr. Demetrius lines up a tour for her and pulls together a band to back her up. James Young, the author, is the keyboard player for this band.

The ensuing narrative is what they call in MFA programs "creative non-fiction." (Yes, MFA programs ARE annoying, but sometimes pull-out the useful term or two). Anyway, it reads like a novel, imitates actual events, and doesn't change the names like in a roman-a-clef. Fortunately, Young lets his camera jump cut from scene to scene, across time, countries and continents, to land right where the action demands. We get portraits of the band--Echo, a mixture of sullen, backsliding pater familia and post-punk rock bassist... oh, and throw in junkie to boot. We get a variety of drummers--from an industrial junk-percussion virtuoso to a totem-wearing pretty-boy tabla diva to a hair-metal sorta-be. We get a lead guitarist desperate to meet Bob Dylan. We get so many mini-music pros, the portrait of the desperation of professional pop music and the love of heroin might fool the reader into thinking it's the subject of the book.

But the real subject is the struggle for recognition and accomplishment of pop artist Nico, and what that means for all struggling artists, especially those who deal with all things truly dark. Nico just happens to write deeply shadowed, literary-style poetry for lyrics, whether she or anyone else likes it or not. The poems themselves, from You Forgot To Answer to Nibelungenland to Frozen Warnings to Mutterlein (to name a few), are not just personal blues songs (though some do deal with relationships). They are elegies for the German tragedy of World War II, and the tragic side of the long and rich history of the country in general. Throughout the book exists a painful irony where Nico responds to interviewers asking her about Berlin's pre- and post- war culture, by people who really don't care at all about the tragedy of racism and war and the hangover it left on the consciousness of a country and continent. Subtler still we get vestiges in the persona of Nico herself, of these old, Central-European cultural mores (and her own quandaries over its single-mindedness). We also get Nico's passing comments on Hassidic Jews and gypsies and thoughts that members the Velvet Underground were hostile due to her Germanness (though the author ascribes it to the possibility of being upstaged).

James Young handles his insights with a tenderness I rarely witness when it comes to themes of prejudice, loss and cultural kinetics. Throughout the band's world travels, the reader gets the sense that stereotypes like American battle-cry egotism, Pacific rim commercialism, Eastern European old-style communism are animals born from group mentality, group forces much more easily decried than deleted. No character or ideology is oversimplified here. I am reminded of an old episode of Maury Povich where he tries to get a neo-nazi to get over his prejudice and shake his hand. Not a bad thing, but come on, let's talk about why so many rural American kids are entranced by that crap in the first place. Instead, Mr. Young addresses the depression, the lack of options and the insanity of the materially and emotionally impoverished.

Personal emptiness, economic emptiness and artistic emptiness run parallel throughout the narrative. There is a scene where a female Japanese fan offers John Cale a rare bottle of sake as a gift. Well, by then it's later in the 1980's, Cale has gone from beer swilling, snow snorting studio genius to clean living performing genius. He turns her down. Young gives what's due with Cale, always underscoring his musical talent. But he also uses him as a somewhat abstracted symbol for a cultural shift in the music business (and perhaps international business in general). In the narrative, his figure symbolizes 1960's psychedelic, imagination-oriented, hedonism-rich art product, where one must at least pretend the artwork comes first and commerciality second, that then shifts to the mall-shopping fine threads wearing 1980's rich intellectual for whom the cash is not shameful in the least. (Ironically, with the advent of YouTube and so many free venues for every variety of artistic output, we may be entering a strange amalgam of the two eras--the complete shamelessness of wanting to make money with art, but such an abundance of supply that nobody cares to pay for it).

In the center stands Nico, her art and her lament (addiction is a by-product). No one really buys or plays her songs. The penny-pinching carnival goes on. At one point, late in the book, after enduring many painful episodes and adventures, Allen Ginsburg appears as a not-quite Deus ex Machina. Young and Nico accompany him to a poetry reading in Manchester. He heroically recites detailed images of gay sex to a horrified conservative crowd. It is one of the story's happier occasions. Nico seems in good spirits. We get the sense that any latent cultural cruelties on anybody's part were being rubbed out by a non-contrived shared interest in poetry and music. It recalls a time when both artists were looking forward with their art and perhaps hoping, consciously or not, to use it as building block for the improvement of late Twentieth-Century culture and life. At the end of the chapter, however, Nico ominously comments that Ginsburg did not take off his clothes as he used to...

...so I've listed some scenes in this review, but have not revealed even 1% of the beauty of this book. Buy and read it. If it is a gravemarker of a bygone era, I hope its stone fist points to a coming love of insight and imagination in humanity's cultural and artistic output. It rescues Nico's true beauty and function, an imperfect elegy writer, a singer for her native culture's, as well as pop culture's, death dirge and chance at rebirth. And to the dude who commented on another review here on Amazon.com and claimed Young is "milking" Nico's memory for even more money: Dude, whose clean cash pays your bills?

This book is a masterpiece of both style and content, and one of the very best rock biographies in existence. It explores the life of Nico after the Velvet Underground, covering her life in London and tours in Europe and the USA.

I found myself devouring the text in utter fascination. It includes descriptions of bizarre performances, wild parties, weird tour experiences, eccentric characters like her one-time manager Dr Demetrius, encounters with luminaries like John Cale, a visit to the motel where Tom Waits used to stay and much much more.

One of the funniest parts is the narrative of Nico's first experience with angel dust in Los Angeles. Underneath the humor there is a lot of sadness too but it is a strangely inspiring read. Songs They Never Play On The Radio certainly transcends the genre of rock writing. You don't have to be a fan of Velvet Underground to enjoy this classic work, as it stands on its own feet.

I became aware of this book through Young's appearance in the "Nico Icon" documentary. The book is well-written, dry and dark but not without compassion.

No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980.Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and music critic Byron Cooley have created the definitive chronicle of the late '70s New York art-rock scene. Together they skillfully depict the culture, politics, and environment that formed the still-obscure and quietly influential bands of that era. The details are vast and at times daunting; all the who-dated-whoms, whens, wheres, and whys are included with factual reference points, oral histories, and extensive quotes and photography. The scene, created largely by emerging artists, was rich in photographers and creative writers, and a lot of the never-before-seen source material in No Wave is worthy of a book alone. No Wave fans, especially the art-school-leaning types, will appreciate the reproductions of Lydia Lunch fashion calendars, black-and-white behind-the-scenes photography, record covers, and concert flyers.

-from AlarmPress.com
http://www.alarmpress.com/4089/book-reviews/no-wave-post-punk-underground-new-york-1976-1980/

Best described as a mish mash of art and punk rock, the No Wave movement of the late 1970s was something bizarre to behold. "No Wave: Post Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980." is a look at the brief movement and those who were behind it, including James Chance and Lydia Lunch among others. Collected from oral history and interviews conducted by the authors, and enhanced with dozens of black and white photographs, "No Wave: Post Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980." is highly recommended for community library music collections.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

1970's New York, a time of polemic filth and fury with displaced art kids crashing head first into the detritus to form bands without which we would have no Rapture, Yeah Yeah Yeahs or (insert a hundred names here). Framed around this incredible gathering of black & whites are interviews (conducted by the Thurston Moore and writer/editor/et cetera Byron Coley) with artists deep in the thick of said scene (i.e. James Chance, Glen Branca, Ikue Mori, Robert Quine and the ever-verbose Lydia Lunch), club owners, iconic groupies and passers-by, including Brian Eno who gives his perspective on the immortal Eno "produced" No New York compilation. Having been active participants during this era, the authors do a spectacular job of detailing the tenuous camaraderie, insular tension and the seeds of No Wave's demise. Not simply for those who know the difference between "No Wave" and "New Wave", the eye candy and history lessons make for an illuminating, universally appealing document.

...however, this book will mainly appeal to those interested in the fields of publishing, and, to a lesser extent, songwriting. Extremely well written and researched, it provides the missing pieces to the Lennon/McCartney legacy, and bursts a couple of bubbles as well.

As a life-long Beatles fan and avid Beatles collector for the past 30 years, I have, like most serious fans, read all the major books on the Beatles over the years. Up until now, the best serious attempt at trying to explain the business side of the Beatles was Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfield's "Apple to the Core". Well-researched and decently written, it focused on how Apple's legal and financial mess tore the Beatles apart. But it was published in 1972 and thus covers only a small piece of the full history of the Lennon and McCartney songwriting legacy.

35 years after that book was published, we now have "Northern Songs: The True Story of the Beatles' Song Publishing Empire" by Brian Southall with Rupert Perry. This excellent book documents the full story behind the management (and mismanagement) of the Beatles song publishing rights over the past 40+ years. And what a fascinating story!

Northern Songs was the company set up in 1963 by Brian Epstein (the Beatles' manager) and Dick James, a fledgling London music publisher recommended by George Martin, to handle Lennon and McCartney's song publishing. The deal that Brian cut meant Dick James (and his partner) owned just over half of Northern Songs, with the remainder being split between Lennon, McCartney and NEMS (Brian Epstein's company).

Whether purposeful, or simply a byproduct of Epstein's lack of experience, the ownership design of Northern Songs kept Lennon and McCartney from having any controlling interest in the company that was formed to manage the rights to their own songs. By 1965, Northern Songs decided to go public - leaving John and Paul with even less control over the company -- minority stakeholders answerable to the thousands of other shareholders.

Probably the single greatest act of incompetence by Brian Epstein was the fact that he didn't even negotiate a "first right of refusal" agreement that would have required Dick James and his partner to give Lennon & McCartney the first rights to purchase their share of Northern Songs should Dick ever decide to sell out. And so, in 1969, when Dick James and his partner decided to sell their shares to Lew Grade's ATV, neither John nor Paul were notified of the impending deal.

In the midst of all of the financial turmoil at Apple and their weakening relationship, Lennon (who wants Allen Klein to manage the Beatles' affairs) and McCartney (who wants his brother-in-law, Lee Eastman, to run things) can't coordinate any strategy to try to gain ownership of their songs -- and they both end up selling out to ATV under some bad advice.

It's at this point (just 70 pages into the book) where the story really begins to shed a tremendous amount of new light as we follow Northern Songs through the Lew Grade/ATV ownership period and beyond. We see John and Paul going through the 1970s as they try to ensure they can at least control their own solo songs - while they continue to negotiate separately with ATV, now being run by Lew Grade, a very shrewd business person who is, at least, honest in his business dealings. When Lew Grade decides to sell ATV in 1982, he offers McCartney and Yoko a chance to buy ATV Music together. In recent years, McCartney has put the blame on Yoko for not wanting to pay Lew Grade's asking price. While true, the fact becomes clear that Paul could have likely pulled the deal off himself - and would have multiple opportunities to purchase the catalog over the years (though at increasingly higher prices).

The most eye-opening element of this excellent book is the 1982-1985 period when ATV was purchased/owned/run by a ruthless millionaire from Australia named Robert Holmes a Court. So little has been previously known of this period until now -- but it's Holmes a Court who tears the ATV empire apart and sells off its assets for a quick (and substantial) profit, leaving the entire staff of ATV Music out of work, and selling the ATV Music publishing catalogs (which includes Nothern Songs) to Michael Jackson (though forcing him to "gift" the rights to "Penny Lane" to his daugher - who still owns it today!).

The remaining years are an often-told story - where Jackson gets in financial stress and sells half his interest to Sony. But even then, the book sheds a tremendous amount of new light on the actual deal to form a new company, Sony ATV - half owned by Jackson. Seems Michael Jackson is quite a shrewd and aggressive dealmaker (though his personal issues are certainly well-known).

The author Brian Southall and his co-author, Rupert Perry, are both true record industry insiders - with decades of experience as executives at EMI and other record companies -- and are well-qualified to tell this story. But unlike so many other books by Beatles "insiders", they do not attempt to interject their own personal opinions or views, relying on the the first-hand accounts of the many lawyers, publishers, songwriters, and others involved in the many negotiations and business dealings. And this is what makes their effort so admirable -- and so much easier to read. We aren't subject to personal theories, hunches or interpretations that can frustrate the reader of so many other Beatles books. The authors let the story unravel naturally through the words and recollections of the people who where there (and the letters and memos of those where are no longer here to tell their story). And they assume the reader is smart enough to make their own interpretations and conclusions.

The bottom line is: this is a must-read for Beatles fans - or anyone wanting to better understand the complexities (and huge financial potential) involved in song publishing.

Even the youngest Beatle fans who have followed the recent financial travails of Michael Jackson know that John Lennon and Paul McCartney long ago lost the publishing rights to their own songs. Exactly how that happened is one of several important topics covered by Brian Southall's latest book on the greatest musical act the world has ever known.

The book provides, perhaps for the first time in one place, a detailed, understandable explanation of music publishing in general...and a history of the Beatles' Northern Songs publishing empire in particular. Specifically, it describes what music publishers do, how they make money, and to what extent, if any, publishing profits are shared with song composers.

Southall starts out by providing a quick history of music publishing practices and norms from its beginnings in the 18th century, followed by a vivid snapshot of the industry as it existed in the U.S. and Britain in the early 1960's when the Beatles sprang forth upon an unsuspecting world.

For John Lennon and Paul McCartney, a truly pivotal moment in their lives occurred on a cold morning in early 1963 when they were taken to an office to sign a contract...one which they apparently hadn't read, didn't understand, and didn't even ask questions about. What that document did was to give a guy named Dick James, a struggling London song publisher looking for a musical gold mine, a one-half ownership share in the future songs written by Lennon and McCartney.

Why he deserved to own half of their songwriting catalog is never satisfactorily explained, mainly because it cannot be explained, but the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein offered it to him, and he quickly accepted it. The remaining half was divided between Lennon, McCartney, and Epstein...so that the two main composers of the Beatles songs began their commercial song-writing careers with a minority interest in the ownership of their own songs.

Southall presents a lot of quotes from a lot of people who knew the players involved in this deal, many of whom seem to insist that Dick James and Brian Epstein truly believed they were looking out for the Beatles' best interests in this and subsequent deals affecting their song catalog.

The reader is of course free draw his or her own conclusions. It just seems terribly ironic that a musical group known for such astonishing musical innovations was utterly lacking in imagination from a business perspective.

If Epstein truly believed at the outset that the Beatles would be as successful as he claimed they would be, he might have obtained some expert advice and arranged for John and Paul to own 100% of their songs in their own publishing company...and to hire someone like Dick James to administer their song catalog in exchange for, say, 10% of the gross publishing profits, more than enough to make anyone rich given the prolific output of the Beatles' two main composers.

Instead, Brian Epstein did what he did, Lennon and McCartney signed off on it, and Dick James gleefully made more money from those great songs than John or Paul ever did until he eventually sold his interest to ATV in 1969 behind the backs of the Beatles.

That episode and many others that followed in subsequent years eventually resulted in Northern Songs being owned by Michael Jackson and Sony Corp. instead of Paul McCartney and the estate of John Lennon. All of it is covered in this fascinating and understandable account of an area of Beatles' history rarely discussed and little understood.

Highly recommended.

Star Sisterz has much to recommend it not only for girls, but for adults trying to understand the feelings and travails of the average teenager. It is well written and captures their insecure world with both humor and colorful examples of teenage angst. It shows true insight on the part of the author. I heartily recommend for both moms and daughters.

Fourteen-year-old Nova Darling can't seem to get out of a huge rut. Her mother is forcing her to stick with ballet, even though she wants nothing more than to rock out on her hidden guitar, Roxie; her older sister, Venus, is a certifiable genius, and now Nova's going crazy. I mean, she has to be. After all, it's not everyday that someone claims to have seen a secret message pop-up on the screen of the ATM machine, like Nova did. Her message? "Act like a rock star in front of a group of strangers." How would the ATM machine know that she loved the guitar, and that she truly wanted to be a rock star? Now, in between her daily duties as a library volunteer, ballet prima donna, and Joe Tsai gazer, Nova has to also play the part of detective to figure out what is truly going on.

From the very first page of NOVA ROCKS! I knew that STAR SISTERZ was bound to be a popular new series for middle readers. Nova is a fabulous character, who has the snottiness of a 14-year-old, accompanied by the need to be cool, and normal feelings of not being accepted. Her lingo is hip, and will draw readers in by the hundreds. Overall, this is a wonderful new book that will leave readers grappling for the next release in the series CARMEN DIVES IN.

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

The Star Sisterz series has been the redemption of my daughter's reading habits. She refused to read for a long time until I gave her the first book Nova Rocks. She devoured the entire series in just under two weeks. This is nothing short of a miracle for the girl that hates to read. I've read the books too and found them to be filled with fun humor, interesting characters, and a nice little surprise at the end. Definately worth five stars.

You don't have to be a Canadian or even KNOW any of the bands in this book to enjoy the stories as told by the rockers themselves.

It's simply a great collection of road tales in the ever-entertaining realm of rock and roll touring. Of course, the fact that 2 gigs in the same province can be a day's drive apart, makes Bidini's collection ever the more fascinating.

I simply could not put the thing down. Plenty of laughs and funny stories, a couple of shockingly painful stories, and some priceless moments of insight into Canadian popular culture, human interaction, and the music business.

A great gift for your Rockin' and Rollin' friends!

Written during his band's cross-Canada tour, Bidini's stories as one of the founding members of the Rheostatics are interspersed with interviews he conducted with some of the biggest music legends of our time.

Some people start playing an instrument after they hear a great song. Bidini's book will make people want to start their own bands. Descriptions of first gigs, first band break-ups and first record deals offer amazing insight into an industry and a life that goes far beyond ghost-written rock and roll 'autobiographies' both emotionally and intellectually. Bidini is a gifted writer.

A fantastic book! If you are a fan of the band, or of Canadian music in general, you won't be able to put it down. I guarantee that after reading this book, you'll never think of the music industry in the same way again.

This book is really two books in one, blended together. First of all, it tells the story of Dave Bidini and the Canadian rock band "Rheostatics". Fans will relish all the interesting twists and turns of the band's career, while non-fans will be heading to their local music store as fast as possible to hear what these guys sound like.

Bidini's writing is intense and very personal. From the stinking tour bus to the bright lights up on the stage of Maple Leaf Gardens, you'll feel like you're right there with the band.

The second aspect of the book is a collection of interviews with Canadian musicians who led the way back in the 70's and 80's. These snapshots of life in the rock biz are the most the most honest you're likely to come across. Crazy, hilarious, heartbreaking, and sometimes disturbing, they are an invaluable historical resource for the Canadian music scene.

Buy this book, and once you've read it, go buy some Rheostatics CDs. You won't be disappointed!

I stumbled across this book on a friend's coffee table and was just idly leafing through, as I have no real interest in the 1960's or rock music. But the incredible glimpse into the life of a young person in a Britain still recovering from World War 2 was absolutely riveting. The writing is very much "at the moment" and real time. Married with never-before-published photos of the royal family and film stars (including Richard Burton and Liz Taylor during the filming of "Becket"), the result was a book I could not put down. Required reading for any Anglophile.

To me, this isn't really about the world of rick and roll as much of the story as a talented, intelligent boy born into relative adversity. Through his pen and camera we travel back to an imperial power on it's slow but unstoppable way down.

As more and more rock and pop stars are putting down their guitars and picking up their pens to write best selling autobiographies, renowned international photojournalist Ian Wright has just published "On The Brink OF Fame, Pop Stars In The Swinging 60s," an expose' on the era from a different perspective. Wright's stunning photographs animate his fascinating and amusing anecdotes about the celebrities, social scandals and the political/economic landscape which many have already come to regard as a social history, chronicling the Swinging 60s.-

In 1962, Wright was a sixteen year old junior photographer for "Teenage Special" a new supplement to a newspaper in the North East of England. Too young to drive, Ian strapped the heavy plate camera equipment to his bicycle, pedaling to local ballrooms, theaters and nightclubs, photographing emerging pop stars and celebrities. "Photograph everyone on the bill; you never know who's going to become famous and keep all your negatives," was the brief given by his editor, the now illustrious editor/publisher, Sir Harold Evans, who wrote the foreward for this book.

Consequently, teenage photographer Ian Wright was unwittingly on hand to photograph the creation of the Swinging 60s. From his first picture, for the Teenage Special, of Ella Fitzgerald in 1962 to his last of Elton John in 1971, Wright photographed everyone on the scene. His intimate back-stage portraits show eager, young performers unsure of whether they would flop or ascend to fame and fortune. Some fell into obscurity while others ascended to indescribable success. Five became Knights of the Realm and many died too young.

Wright's collection of historic negatives, thought lost for 45 years, have recently been discovered in his old darkroom, bringing to light countless unpublished photographs representing a veritable who's who of the 1960's including, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison, Ike & Tina Turner, Marianne Faithfull, Tom Jones, Moody Blues, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Dusty Springfield, Dave Clark Five, Manfred Mann, Engelbert Humperdink, The Animals, Jimi Hendrix, Peter & Gordon, Johnny Cash, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O'Toole, Jayne Mansfield, Sophia Loren, Peter Ustinov, Rex Harrison, Michael Crawford, and members of the Royal family.

As you look through this amazing book, I'm sure you will think of the first time you heard the songs and films made famous by the faces in the photographs. You may think of your first date, your first dance, and your first kiss. These photographs and Mr. Wright's reminiscences allow us all to keep those memories forever.

Wright's pictures of the photographers and the crowd scenes in Beatlemania, show a nation rushing into a new era when nobody wanted to be left behind. His lens captured the youthful naiveté of Mick Jagger in 1965 and again the dynamic performer he had become, live on stage in 1971. Wright has managed to vividly capture on film and now in this book, the enormity of what was happening in the 60s.

As Sir Harold Evans says in the foreward, "This stunning collection of photographs by Ian Wright, many never published, affords us a rare pleasure. Here we are, face to face, with the artists who created what we now call the Swinging Sixties and we are intimately back-stage with them. They cannot know what awaits them when they go out to perform, still less could any of them guess whether they would flop or ascend to fame and fortune."