A revelatory memoir by the rock icon and legendary guitarist Peter Frampton. His monumental album Frampton Comes Alive! spawned three Top 20 singles and sold eight million copies the year it was released and more than 17 million to date. Frampton was first the lead singer and guitarist of The Herd and then as co-founder along with Steve Marriott of one of the first supergroups, Humble Pie. Frampton was part of a tight-knit collective of British 1960s musicians with close ties to the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and The Who. This led to Frampton playing on George Harrison's solo debut, All Things Must Pass, as well as to Ringo Starr and Billy Preston appearing on Frampton's own solo debut. By the age of 22, he was touring incessantly and finding new sounds with the talk box which would become his signature guitar effect. Frampton remembers his enduring friendship with David Bowie, growing up as classmates, crossing paths throughout their careers, and playing together on the Glass Spider Tour. He shares fascinating stories of his collaborative work with Harry Nilsson, Stevie Wonder, B. B. King and members of Pearl Jam and reveals the curse and blessing of becoming the cover boy he never wanted to be, his overcoming substance abuse, and how he has continued to play and pour his heart out into his music despite an inflammatory muscle disease and his retirement from the road. 341pp, photos.

With his gravity-defying quiff, outstretched arms, shredded shirt, Dr Marten boots, jeans and bare torso, striding across the stage, the good looking young Morrissey certainly made an entrance onto the music scene. Unapologetically a photography book, Cummins' first photographed Morrissey in 1983 and the book covers the timespan from that year through to 1994, a time during which Morrissey became a prominent cultural figure and The Smiths his band had something different to say and special to offer. Morrissey always collaborated with his photographer fully and would come to the shoots full of ideas and they certainly show the excitement and chaos. There is a text about the portraiture alongside the studio shots of Morrissey, explaining what makes an articulate portrait and sharing some stories of working directly with the musician. The book includes photographs from tours at venues in Dublin and Cologne, Japan and the United States as well as the UK. In a final essay by Gail Crowther the significance of fans using their bodies as sites of devotion accompanies photos of Morrisey-inspired tattoos. Crouching arms outstretched with his reflection in a pond, with his bandmates, lounging artistically beside the same pond, posing under the sign THE QUEEN IS DEAD, at The Smiths Convention September 1988 next to the tour bus, and musing 'The only way to kill death is through photography' as Jean Cocteau said. Fans including grey haired grannies, young teenagers rushing up to hug their idol, roughly half of the images are colour and half artistic black and white. 256pp, 20.3 x 27.3cm.

The Romantic Movement which swept Europe in the 19th century was the inspiration for Beethoven's surging quartets, the introspection of Tchaikovsky, the grandeur of Verdi, the epic vision of Wagner, the mental anguish of Schumann, the quiet genius of his wife Clara and the less dazzling lights of English composers from John Field to Sterndale Bennett. This readable narrative history puts the development of Romantic music into the context of writers and philosophers such as Herder, Schiller and Goethe, and the author, for many years a music critic for the Observer, communicates his erudition in an appealing and engaging style. At the close of the 18th century there was a new freedom of expression in the work of Haydn and C. P. E. Bach, perhaps going back to the demonic finale of Gluck's ballet Don Juan in 1761, or Mozart's spine-tingling version of the same story. Later Romantic composers such as Rossini in William Tell have a "proto-cinematic" range of historical events, human emotion and local colour. Opera was the focus of much early 19th century music, with pianists like Chopin strongly influenced by operatic melodies, while the lieder of both Schubert and Schumann revolutionised music for the solo voice. Meyerbeer and Berlioz dominated the Paris Opera, giving way to the early efforts of the young Wagner, whose version of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure ended after its first performance with a punch-up between the leading lady's husband and her leading man, with whom she was having an affair. After an ignominious nocturnal flit from his creditors, Wagner returned to Germany in 1842 with his mature style now ready to take the world by storm in The Flying Dutchman, while at the same time the success of Verdi's Nabucco heralded a dazzling future. The influence of Balakirev on Mussorgsky, Borodin and Rimski-Korsakov is discussed, while Brahms, Bruckner, Dvorak and Sibelius and even Elgar and Vaughan Williams come into view towards the end of the period. 421pp, colour reproductions.

The definitive portrait with unseen photographs by iconic photographer Terry O'Neill, this is like gazing through a window at the most extraordinary and exciting moments in Elton John's life complete with the madness and style. O'Neill worked for many years and took more than 5,000 photographs of Elton John from intimate back stage shots to huge stadium concerts. See Elton laden with packages leaving the Cartier shop for his Rolls Royce, during a soundcheck at the huge Dodge Stadium in Los Angeles where he truly did rock the world and had a football knockabout during rehearsals, under a huge fluffy rug on a bed reading Esquire and Penthouse magazines, wearing crazy glasses for a photo shoot aboard a plane, working with Gus Dudgeon at Caribou Ranch Recording Studio 1975, sharing a breakfast table with his white cat, signing his Captain Fantastic albums while watching TV at home, multifunctioning riding his stationary bicycle and taking phone calls in the bathroom, in sequin costumes, wearing designer labels, doing his trademark famous jump with hands still on the piano keyboard, with his long term collaborator Bernie Taupin, at home with his dogs in Windsor, dancing with Kiki Dee in 1976 when they released their classic duet, posing with his likeness in Madam Tussauds, with Diana Ross hosting the Rock Music Awards in 1975, posing with many famous names, behind the scenes at Watford Football Club, with his mother and grandmother and posing on locations such as the Palais Garnier Opera House in Paris. Elton John clearly loves the limelight! Truly a superb gallery, colour and atmospheric black and white, 256pp, 20.8 x 26cm.
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One of the world's greatest blues guitarists, Stevie Ray Vaughan had a meteoric career, assisted by a high-profile collaboration with David Bowie, before his life was cruelly cut short in a helicopter crash in 1990 when he was only in his thirties. This tribute book prints extracts from interviews from Guitar World magazine, not only with SRV but also interviews with friends and collaborators including his bandmates bassist Tommy Shannon, drummer Chris Layton and keyboardist Reese Wynans. A highlight of the book is the "lost interviews" with Vaughan between 1986 and 1989 when he spoke revealingly to Andy Aledort. At the time he had just left the rehab centre which also helped his friend Eric Clapton. SRV reminisces about his first records by Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters and B. B. King. He describes how addiction had let his self-centredness and ego get out of control, particularly when everyone was telling him he was wonderful. The lyrics of blues numbers tended to emphasize hurt and pain, but Vaughan eventually found that some songs are kinder than others. On the road, he describes repeated technical problems with amps, and Vaughan ended up with a combination of a Dumble, a Marshall, a Bassman and a Super Reverb. He reminisces about the Montreux Jazz Festival of 1982 when Bowie said "Stevie was so complete, so vital and inventive with the form" and asked him to play on his next record, which turned out to be the smash hit Let's Dance. Bowie said their collaboration was one of the greatest musical experiences of his life. Vaughan's last show was opening for Clapton at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in Wisconsin. He hitched a lift home with some of Clapton's team, who were all lost in the crash. 254pp, a Backbeat paperback, photos.

The music journalist has covered weird, rare and collectable records for Record Collector magazine and by mixing lo-fi charm into hi-fi science Scott's book is 'skipping with real analogue delight'. It is the story of recorded sound - the technological developments, the people that made them happen, and the impact they had on society, from the earliest inventions via the phonograph to LPs, EPs and the recent resurgence of vinyl. While Thomas Edison's phonograph represented an important turning point in the story of recorded sound, it came only after decades of invention, tinkering and experimentation. The book looks at the origins of record-playing machinery and the development of the first commercial discs. We learn about the rise of the LP record, the drama of competing speed and format wars, and the fall of the 7-inch, the story of a format repeatedly written off, threats from radio, tape, compact disc and download, vinyl only seems to endure and come back stronger. The story starts with grooves in tin foil in a workshop in New Jersey in 1877 and sees records evolving and blossoming to become a cornerstone for musical culture worldwide, and even into outer space. 320pp.

Taking in superstars such as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and Frank Sinatra alongside the unheralded figures behind some of our most enduring songs, Stanley paints a stunning portrait of pop music's formative years, uncovering the silver threads and golden needles that bind the form together. Who were the earliest recording stars? Who were the likes of George Gershwin writing songs for? Why did swing, the hit sound for a decade or more, become almost obsolete after World War Two? 'An absolute landmark/joy/gossip-fest/door to Narnia: the history of pop music before rock'n'roll. Fascinating.' - Caitlin Moran. The prequel to Bob Stanley's Sunday Times bestselling 'Yeah Yeah Yeah', this is the only book that brings together all genres to tell the definitive story of the birth of pop, from 1900 and the invention of the 78 rpm record to the beginnings of rock and the modern pop age. There was the maximal rhythm of Count Basie and the minimal softness of Claude Thornhill; the furrowed Jerome Kern and the flighty P. G. Wodehouse; the bellow of Sophie Tucker and the squeak of Helen Kane; the Andes siren sound of Yma Sumac and the lounge-bound purr of Julie London; the rough Louis and the smooth Hutch, and throw in the silver threads of Billie Holiday and Rodgers & Hammerstein. It is an Anglo-American story, with early nods to sounds and styles from Vienna, together with outside influences from Hawaii, Cuba, Brazil and the tape recordings and technology brought home by victorious American soldiers. We will see how World War Two broke up swing bands, putting the post-war focus on solo singers like Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee, and how Tin Pan Alley's infantilism in the 1950s left the door open for the schism of rock'n'roll. 636 magnificent pages, illustrated. Please note contents same as code 94500.

'Chess Records and the Business of Rock & Roll', Macher is a Yiddish word for a big wheel or an operator. On the South Side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants, one a Jew born in Russia, the other a black Blues singer from Mississippi, met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the Blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that too. Rock & Roll had arrived, and an industry was born. In a book as vibrantly and exuberantly written as the music and people it portrays, Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business, aggressively acquiring artists, strong-arming distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation. The book is full of absorbing lore and animated by a deep love for popular music - it's a big, tough, funny, clever story. Not politically correct, the book begins at a Bar Mitzvar and immediately draws connections between blacks and Jews. 220pp, photos.

This roller-coaster of a book is impossible to put down as the author tells the story of the charismatic entrepreneur Sam Phillips, who became his friend in 1979. Credited with inventing Rock 'n' Roll by launching Elvis's career, in 1952 Sam Phillips pioneered Sun Records in Memphis, a recording company specifically designed to bring forward Black talent. His commitment to all kinds of equality was later consolidated when he founded an all-female radio station. In 1950 Black artists had no place to go to record in the South, and Sam wanted to open up an area of freedom within the artistic community regardless of colour, so in 1952 Sam and Jimmy Connolly established Sun Records in his Memphis Recording Studios, with the help of Sam's wife Becky and her business acumen. For the first time the couple were able to own a house with their young sons Knox and Jerry. Sam recorded the best of Black and white talent, but unusually most of the behind-the-scenes workers were also Black. Jimmy Bragg, the world's champion smoke ring blower, was lead singer of the Prisonaires, inmates of the Tennessee state Penitentiary, and his song "Just walkin' in the rain" was a massive hit for the studio, putting them on the map locally and nationally. Howard Seratt's country gospel music was a new direction for Sam, who at the same time had not forgotten a kid who did a personal recording for his mother in the studio some years previously. He invited the nineteen year old Elvis to a session, which did not go well until Sam unearthed the old blues number "That's All right, Mama" and Elvis's voice really took off. Sales were phenomenal and a legend was born. By the late 50s Johnny Cash was another Memphis sensation. Jerry Lee Lewis was the most naturally talented person Sam had ever worked with, although he was an unstable performer and was ricocheting from marriage to marriage. Jerry went on the road with Chuck Berry, and although Jerry Lee was the undisputed headliner, they came to blows, sometimes literally, over who was going to close the show. A fascinating action-packed narrative. 763pp, discography, photos.

A companion to The Freewheelin' code 94044, we have from the same supplier acquired an absolute facsimile of the original Columbia 12" LP, the third studio album by the legendary American singer-songwriter. Whereas his previous albums 'Bob Dylan' and 'The Freewheelin''consisted of original material among cover songs, this third album was the first to feature only original compositions. It consists of mostly stark, sparkly arranged ballads concerning issues such as racism, poverty and social change in the spirit of social and political upheaval that characterised the 1960s. It is the work of a 22 year old who found his place for rousing protests such as the title track and 'When the Ship Comes In'. These songs are outnumbered by the equally powerful likes of Only A Pawn In Their Game, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and The Ballad of Hollis Brown. The other tracks are With God On Our Side, One Too Many Mornings, North Country Blues, Boots of Spanish Leather and Restless Farewell. This will bring all your memories flooding back and it sounds oh so much better on real vinyl. Includes Dylan Vinyl the Definitive Collection Part One magazine. These albums are retailing at