As a founding member of the influential English rock bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole and with a solo career which has lasted for over 40 years, Robert Wyatt has collaborated with artists including Bjork, Brian Eno, Carla Bley, Paul Weller and David Gilmour. His own music remains unclassifiably personal. Alfie Benge is a visual artist, songwriter and pioneering music manager, who has managed Robert's career for over 50 years and is also married to him. Since 1982 they have collaborated on many of Robert's most well-known songs. This unique Faber volume celebrates one of the most enduring creative partnerships of the last half century. Their work is unusual, perceptive, playful, songs that touch your mind and your heart, selected and arranged by the authors themselves and featuring an introduction by Jarvis Cocker. A full presentation of the lyrics, poems, writings and drawings, some of the titles include Dada Was Here, Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road, Pigs, and Vandalusia. The purity and fragility of Robert's singing can lead to the lyrics being overshadowed and finally this is readdressed. Some are fantastically funny like 'Winter of our discotheque' and 'Words take the place of meaning' and some are disturbingly prescient as in Born Again Cretin and NIO (New Information Order). Despite being rendered virtually immobile following his accident, Robert flies in his book so be prepared for lift off. 192pp, illus.

Fully revised and updated this is a must have for soul fans covering Dusty's status as a 60s mod queen to influential LGBT heroine. Dusty Springfield was one of our greatest pop singers from releasing 60s hits like 'I Only Want to be With You', 'Son of a Preacher Man' and 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' to collaborating with The Pet Shop Boys and beyond, she was a musical pioneer and the very essence of authentic white soul. 20 years after her death she continues to fascinate and inspire. Featuring a new introduction and photographs, this latest edition of the classic biography explores Dusty's life and legacy, from a troubled home counties childhood, struggles with addiction and mental health to becoming a member of the US Rock 'n' Roll and UK Music Halls of Fame. 'In building the image of The Lady, she took tips from male drag queens on which mascara lasted longer and how to apply the heavy eye-shadow. 'Basically I'm a drag queen myself' she admitted later. Yet it was this glitzy image that established her on the upmarket cabaret circus. For her 1967 Talk of the Town in London, she earned £2,500 a week...' Her evening gowns became her trademark and even Prime Minister Harold Wilson named her as his favourite singer. Dusty was adept at moving from one end of the pop spectrum to the other from a laid back The Look of Love for the soundtrack to spoof Bond movie Casino Royale and her pursuit of looking at film roles 'but most of the parts offered were 'crummy? requiring her to play a 'brainless pop singer.' Her press interviews were becoming more introspective and wistful and her most thoughtful interview was given in 1967 to Penny Valentine at Disc. At this point she introduced her infamous teddy bear mascot Einstein, which served as her secure alter ego, a manifestation of the shy, self-protected Mary O'Brien. 'I'm just groping and wandering. All I know is that I have a distinctive voice I don't particularly like listening to.' Packed with musical names from the past and eight pages of colour and black and white photos. 304pp.
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The author is a New Yorker, long resident in London, and best known for founding London's popular 'Poems on the Underground'. For her ground-breaking account on Schumann's life and works, drawing extensively on new material, she enlists her experience as a scholar and novelist and her lifelong love of Romanticism in poetry and music. Schumann held a passionate conviction about the art of music as 'food and drink' to his fellow musicians in their youth and that music must respond to the times and be forward-looking while building on the greatest works of the past. His music was closely interwoven with the key events of his life and the people he loved, especially his wife Clara, herself a great musician and artist. We have the enduring magic of Carnaval and Kinderszenen, the great song cycles, a wealth of chamber music, four symphonies, the Manfred Overture and many other orchestral and choral works. Begins with his life in Leipzig in the 1830s, his collapse and recovery Dresden December 1844-47 and his music directorship in Düsseldorf September 1850-53. His extraordinary artistic achievements must be set against recurrent illnesses, self-inflicted obstacles, and misjudgements as detailed in these pages. It is a ground-breaking account of the major composer whose life and works have been the subject of intense controversy ever since his early death in an insane asylum. Schumann was intensely original but worshipped the past - Bach and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Byron, Raphael and Michelangelo. He believed in political, personal and artistic freedom, but struggled with the constraints of artistic form. He turned his tumultuous life into music that speaks directly to the heart. Chernaik sheds new light on Schumann's sexual escapades, his fathering of an illegitimate child, the true facts between the courtship of his wife Clara and her monstrous father's opposition, his troubled relationships with fellow Romantic composers Mendelssohn and Chopin are freshly explored, and the full medical diary kept at Endenich Asylum, long withheld. A richly complex biography with nine illustrations including a beautiful watercolour of Clara at ages 17 and 34 and facsimiles of his musical scores. 352pp.

In August 1968, The Beatles launched their greatest business enterprise, Apple Records, to international fanfare. It was their label for experimental music and spoken word recordings, launching the group to be leading members of the counterculture movement of the late 1960s. The brainchild of Paul McCartney, the label collaborated with Yoko Ono alongside John Lennon, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Brautigan, Charles Bukowski, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Charles Olson. The less well known story is the introduction of their Zapple label about nine months later. If Apple presented artists with new, commercial opportunities, Zapple offered more cutting-edge freedom for leading avant-garde figures of the time. Barry Miles was the label's manager who went on to become a leading authority and chronicler of 1960s culture and here he provides insight into the colourful lives and working methods of the artists and discloses the experimental ventures and an engaging account of this little-known last chapter of Beatles history. Lennon and George Harrison took advantage of the sub-label to release their 'Life with the Lions: Unfinished Music #2' and 'Electronic Sound' albums respectively. The book describes in detail the transatlantic journeys to record on both the West and East Coasts of the USA, interwoven with the excitement and turmoil that was occurring at the Apple offices and in the London art and literary scene. Written by someone who really was there. 238pp, very well illustrated throughout and with useful chronology.

As an emerging music journalist in the 1970s, Paul Morley wrote for NME. No longer excited by modern pop music and determined not to give in to dreary nostalgia, Paul went searching for something new, rare and wondrous, and found it in classical music. His soaring polemic, a grumpy reflection on modern music, rejects the idea that classical music is a drag and instead rehabilitates this genre as the most exciting, radical and varied of all. Both a memoir of Paul's shifting musical tastes and a compelling history of classical music, he explores the genre's rich and often deviant past, and makes a case for its future, all the while recognising its revolutions and revelations. His Coda is entitled 'Music to Listen to While Reading A Book', and other chapters The Piano, The Light and the Dark and The Writing - Finding the Right Words but starting with the To The Planets and Beyond. 599 page illustrated paperback.

John Barry emerged as the UK's most eminent film composer and here is an opportunity to discover exactly how he reached this position by way of a thorough dissection of his early years throughout which he was to rely heavily on a steady influx of talented musicians, all of whom feature prominently in these pages. 2017 saw the 60th year since the formation and launch of 'The John Barry Seven' and the book includes personal anecdotes from past members across the full spectrum of the band's eight year existence, tales of an often perilous life on the road and appearing and or backing Britain's earliest generation of pop idols - Tommy Steele, Jackie Dennis, Marty Wilde and in particular Adam Faith, whose career was inextricably linked to the Seven's. Covered in depth are the numerous recording sessions undertaken for EMI's Parlophone and Columbia labels at Abbey Road Studios, plus precisely how the band faced up to the challenge posited by the emerging Beat group phenomenon. Reads how the stellar careers of both John Barry and Les Reed were shaped by being in the band. With a plethora of photographs of onstage concerts, tour images, concert programmes and posters, record sleeves, band-related adverts and several historic documents some written by John Barry himself, the postscript reveals what happened to the various members of the Seven once they left. On the day that Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth, the band were playing the Top Hat Ballroom in Northern Ireland and Londonderry City Hall travelling in a hired VW van rather than a Vostok 1 spaceship. Jimmy Stead clearly remembers the remoteness and primitive nature of some of the destinations. Superbly detailed, hugely nostalgic from the skiffle, rock 'n' roll, beat era from December 1957. With selected diary of events, discography, bibliography and index, 350 very large pages, well illustrated.

Sub-titled 'A Conductor's Guide to the Art of Listening'. Why do so many people listen to classical music, and how can we get the most from the listening experience? The author is an internationally celebrated conductor and teacher, and he brings to bear his lifetime of experience, profound knowledge and exuberant appreciation in his book. A protege of Leonard Bernstein, his colleague of 18 years, and an artist who has performed and recorded all over the world, Mauceri is the guide par excellence to the joys of classical music. Briefly we learn the way a musical tradition, born in ancient Greece, welcomed by the Romans and subsequently nurtured by influences from across the globe, gave shape to the classical repertory that has embraced a worldwide community and draws from both local and ancient culture. Mauceri examines the music itself, helping us to understand what it is, and what we hear when we listen, how by a kind of sonic metaphor music expresses the deepest recesses of human feeling and emotion, and how each piece bears the traces of its history. Unpretentious, graceful and instructive, this is a book for the novice or the aficionado, everyone looking to have the love of music fired within them. Aaron Copeland said "the sound element of music is a powerful and mysterious agent which it would be foolish to deride or belittle." 211 rough-cut pages, one illustration of Carnegie Hall.

The legendary mid-sixties partnership of Joan Baez with Bob Dylan, "the voice and the poet", is often thought to have been dominated by Dylan's musicianship and personality, but the author of this absorbing book suggests the opposite was true. Joanie rose to fame through her involvement with the civil rights movement, appearing on stage with Martin Luther King at the age of 17, and consolidating that success the following year, 1958, with her legendary performance at the Newport Folk Festival. When the family moved from California to the east, Joan enrolled at Boston University, though she was soon performing regularly at Club 47 which she helped to put on the map. She signed up with Vanguard rather than Columbia to avoid the glitter and fuss of the more established label, and colleagues remember Joan's sincerity and "unphoniness" in this early period. In the early sixties she was touring black colleges with unsegregated audiences, and in 1963 she started singing with Dylan, some of whose songs she had covered, at the Monterey Folk Festival. Their legendary Newport performance, preserved on grainy footage, established Dylan's stardom as it had Joan's four years earlier. Baez and Dylan continued to sing together in 1964, but in 1965 the cracks in their partnership became apparent, with jealousies arising and Dylan's insisting that he did not want to engage in active politics. In the late sixties Joan was arrested and imprisoned twice for protests over Vietnam, and with her sisters she modelled the poster "Girls say yes to boys who say no" - encouraging men to refuse the draft. At this time Joan married and became a mother. Baez continued to pursue a politically engaged career, visiting Sarajevo and other war zones, and giving her farewell concert in 2019. A fascinating read. 224pp, discography, black and white photos.

'I was saying things in songs that female singers didn't really say back then. I wasn't submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up, yet I was very serious.' Brave, beautiful and born to be punk, Debbie Harry is a musician, actor, activist and the iconic face of New York City cool. As the front-woman of Blondie, she and the band forged a new sound that brought together the worlds of rock, punk, disco, reggae and hip-hop to create some of the most beloved pop songs of all time. As a muse, she collaborated with some of the boldest artists of the past four decades. In a mix of visceral, soulful storytelling and stunning visuals that include never-before-seen photographs, bespoke illustrations and fan art installations, the book upends the standard music memoir. With all the grit, grime and glory recounted in intimate detail, the book recreates the downtown scene of 1970s New York City, where Blondie played alongside the Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Following her path from glorious commercial success to heroin addiction, the near death of partner Chris Stein, a heart-wrenching bankruptcy, and Blondie's break-up as a band, to Debbie Harry's multifaceted acting career in more than 30 films, a stunning solo career and a triumphant return of her band, and her tireless advocacy for the environment and LGBTQ rights, here is a cinematic story of a woman who made her own path. Her interest in bees and small anecdotes such as her trip to the cigar shop show small insights into her personality in this chatty and friendly book. 360pp, paperback, packed with illustrations including colour plates and images of this extraordinarily beautiful woman.

A fascinating insight into the golden age of 1970s and 80s rock 'n' roll told through the eyes of music legend Bernie Marsden and most notably his role in establishing one of the world's most famous rock bands of all time - Whitesnake. Touring with AC/DC, befriending The Beatles, writing one of the world's most iconic rock songs, this is the story of a young boy from a small town who dreamt one day of playing the guitar for a living and ended up a rock legend. Bernie's astonishing career in the industry includes tours in Cold War Germany and Franco's Spain to meeting and befriending George Harrison and touring Europe with AC/DC. It's a story of hard graft, of life on the road, and meeting and playing with your heroes, of writing the multi-million selling hit 'Here I Go Again' and, at the age of 30, Bernie leaving Whitesnake due to serious conflict with his management. This is something he explores in this memoir for the very first time. Packed with stories and encounters with the likes of Ringo Starr, Elton John, Cozy Powell, Ozzy Osbourne, B.B. King and Jon Lord, we drift back to a time and a place we won't ever get back again. The glorious David Coverdale writes in 2019 in his Introduction, 'Bernie quite boldly suggested himself for the band I was putting together after Deep Purple. He immediately established himself by playing and singing great, and bringing his excellent sense of derisive humour to the mix, which was a huge part of early Whitesnake... and our choruses inspired the creation of the Almighty Whitesnake Choir - ah, sweet memories. Bernie was truly an invaluable band-mate, friend, musician and co-composer of many of my favourite Whitesnake songs, particularly 'Walking in the Shadow of the Blues' and 'Here I Go Again'.' 274 page paperback with many colour and archive photos.