Biography & Autobiography

A large-format 400-page collectible art book curated by Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, and David Crosby, and hand-signed by all three.

This exclusive Super Deluxe Edition is hand signed by Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, and David Crosby. Additionally, it’s hand-numbered and limited to 795 copies worldwide. It is the only edition of the book signed by the three authors and housed in a deluxe slipcase. 

As with the other editions of the book, it’s printed in Italy on 200gsm premium art paper, and features quality thread-sew binding and quarter-bound casing. When the Byrds released “Mr. Tambourine Man” in 1965, they introduced Bob Dylan’s songs to a new audience and launched a career that would make them among the most influential rock bands of all time. With their unmistakable harmonies and Roger McGuinn’s innovative 12-string Rickenbacker guitar, the Byrds never stopped experimenting. They incorporated folk, country, and jazz, influences into a fresh blend that helped define an era. “And not to be too shallow,” Tom Petty once wrote, “but they also were just the best-dressed band around. They had those great clothes and hairdos.”

In 2022 the band’s three surviving founding members - Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, and David Crosby - came together to present The Byrds: 1964-1967, a large format tabletop book that offers a unique visual history of the group. Featuring more than 500 images from legendary photographers such as Henry Diltz, Barry Feinstein, Curt Gunther, Jim Marshall, Linda McCartney, Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal, and Guy Webster, the book also includes restored images from the Columbia Records archives and the personal archives of the band’s original manager. Accompanied by a running commentary of their memories of the group, the era, one another, and their late compatriots Gene Clark and Michael Clarke, this carefully crafted volume is a truly unique collector’s item for Byrds fans.

When LA musicians Russell and Ron Mael moved to Britain in 1973, they hit the pop world as Sparks and looked like Oddballs, even in the context of the Glam Rock movement that made them welcome. Soon defined by their weird and wonderful 1974 single This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us from the Kimono My House album, Sparks went on to release 21 albums over four decades, each record inhabiting a bizarre world of it's own. Their songs were peppered with puns and pop culture nods, as well as nostalgia and jokey images, all mixed up in a kaleidoscope of musical references ranging from rock to glam to disco.

The paperback edition of the critically acclaimed biography. The Sparks story is now celebrated in this book, Daryl Easlea's exploration of their extraordinary career drawing on hours of new interviews and research.

Talent is an Asset comes as close as possible to pinning down the quicksilver nature of two gifted musicians who have gone out of their way to remain unpredictable and elusive, forever entrenched behind a dazzling gallery of jokes, impersonations and musical eccentricities.

This exclusive Deluxe Edition is hand signed by Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman. Additionally, it’s hand-numbered and limited to 1600 copies worldwide. It is the only edition of the book signed by two of the three authors and housed in a deluxe slipcase. 

As with the other editions of the book, it’s printed in Italy on 200gsm premium art paper, and features quality thread-sew binding and quarter-bound casing. When the Byrds released “Mr. Tambourine Man” in 1965, they introduced Bob Dylan’s songs to a new audience and launched a career that would make them among the most influential rock bands of all time. With their unmistakable harmonies and Roger McGuinn’s innovative 12-string Rickenbacker guitar, the Byrds never stopped experimenting. They incorporated folk, country, and jazz, influences into a fresh blend that helped define an era. “And not to be too shallow,” Tom Petty once wrote, “but they also were just the best-dressed band around. They had those great clothes and hairdos.”

In 2022 the band’s three surviving founding members - Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, and David Crosby - came together to present The Byrds: 1964-1967, a large format tabletop book that offers a unique visual history of the group. Featuring more than 500 images from legendary photographers such as Henry Diltz, Barry Feinstein, Curt Gunther, Jim Marshall, Linda McCartney, Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal, and Guy Webster, the book also includes restored images from the Columbia Records archives and the personal archives of the band’s original manager. Accompanied by a running commentary of their memories of the group, the era, one another, and their late compatriots Gene Clark and Michael Clarke, this carefully crafted volume is a truly unique collector’s item for Byrds fans.

One of England’s greatest blues guitarists, Peter Green was the founder of Fleetwood Mac. Considered an enigma as well as a brilliant musician, he quit the band in 1970.

Written by Green’s close associate, this fourth edition of the biography first published in 1995 challenges the accepted narrative about why he left Fleetwood Mac and what happened next. Revised and updated, the book also includes unseen photographs.

A Continual Farewell tells the story of the relationship between Factory Records’ Tony Wilson and his first wife, Lindsay Reade, through their letters, Factory Records memorabilia and numerous family photos and snapshots. Many are typed on Factory notepaper, or are scrawled on pages from various studios and hotels.

They begin in the punk year of 1976 from love at first sight to marriage, from a music show entitled So It Goes to the formation of Factory and the Hacienda, across domestic infidelities, separation, stalled reconciliations and a brutal sacking.

After all that, when the reader would doubt any recovery was possible, the letters describe a renewed but now illicit love affair of former marriage partners. And beyond that, to a lasting friendship.

Best known as the divisive but iconic frontman of The Mission and a poster boy for the-then fledgling gothic scene of the 80s, Wayne Hussey has been making music since he was inspired to pick up a guitar by his childhood hero, Marc Bolan. As he began making his name in music with The Invisible Girls, Dead Or Alive and The Sisters Of Mercy, Wayne was at first seduced and then ultimately corrupted, swapping the repression of his religious upbringing for its polar opposite: a lifestyle of total hedonism.

From his early days raised as a Mormon to being schooled in gender bending by Pete Burns, from his move to Liverpool in the late Seventies to his remaining fanaticism with Liverpool FC, Salad Daze is an all-encompassing account of Wayne's personal and musical journey up until the formation of The Mission.

Salad Daze is an unflinchingly honest portrayal of the peaks and pitfalls of a life in the music industry, told with plenty of Wayne's wit and charm qualities that helped him survive his own unrestrained ambitions to still be making music today.

Blues guitar great and Fleetwood Mac founder, Peter Green, was an enigma throughout his career. His innovative songwriting and unmistakeable voice shot Fleetwood Mac into the mainstream in 1969 with 'Albatross', 'Man of the World', and 'Oh Well'. But in May 1970, he turned his back on stardom and quit the band.

Written by Green's associate and friend, this biography - first published in 1995, now fully revised and updated - challenges the accepted narrative about why he left the band, and what happened next. It tracks every stage of Green's career, from his semi-pro years playing bass to his rise to fame in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Fleetwood Mac. It also takes a closer look at Green's solo material and the personal trauma that saw him hit the headlines.

This edition covers his return to the stage in 1996 with Peter Green Splinter Group and how his final band, Peter Green & Friends, was formed. It also covers the last years of his life and includes new, unseen photographs.

So It Started There chronicles the life and career of drummer Nick Banks, and how he came to be in one of the most iconic and beloved bands: Pulp.

Beginning with his childhood in Rotherham, Nick recounts his personal and musical journey through the genres, first as a punk, then as a goth; how it all started when he was first inspired to pick up the sticks by Sex Pistols drummer, Paul Cook.

Flash forward to the eighties, Nick has been playing in a handful of Sheffield groups and spies an ad from his favourite band, Pulp, in a local club. He pays Jarvis and the gang a visit and the rest is history.

From there, Nick describes his growth as a professional drummer and musician, the trials and tribulations of chasing success in the music industry, touring triumphs and horrors, the band’s journey from relative obscurity to becoming a global sensation, and the process of writing and recording their most famous albums.

Written with warmth, humour and inimitable northern charm, Nick tells all. And with it, tells the story of a band that defined a generation.

Emerging onto the punk scene at just 18 years old, inspired by an early encounter with the Sex Pistols, Pauline details how she played alongside the leading bands of the era, navigated the demands of the music industry, conquered the post-punk landscape with the Invisible Girls, opened her own music studios and reformed Penetration in 2001.

Highly illustrated with unseen photographs and drawing upon Pauline’s teenage diaries, interviews and archive material from her personal collection, this book chronicles the life and work of an authentic creative artist and punk rock legend.

Sixteen Tons is the true story of Country Music Hall of Fame member Merle Travis, a brilliant, multi-talented and deeply troubled artist who is widely considered a genius. A world-class guitarist who dazzled audiences with his Kentucky thumb-picking style that came to be known as “Travis-picking,” Merle was also a pioneering country songwriter who wrote such classics as “Divorce Me C.O.D.,” “So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed,” “Dark as a Dungeon,” and “Sixteen Tons.” Additionally, he was responsible for early electric guitar innovations in the 1940s, and was a gifted actor, writer, and cartoonist, among many other talents.

This definitive portrait of Travis’s life and career is the result of a recently-discovered treasure trove of Merle’s unpublished autobiographical writings, which have been fleshed out with an immersive deep-dive biography by researcher and musical historian Deke Dickerson.

Sixteen Tons details the highs of a career that began with a string of nine straight Top 5 singles in the 1940s, and the lows of a lifelong struggle with alcoholism that developed into an addiction to pills that nearly killed Merle when he was running with Johnny Cash in the late 1950s. Travis ultimately reemerged to become a Grammy-winning artist who inspired millions with his creative stage presence and unparalleled guitar recordings.

A unique hybrid of posthumous memoir and unflinching biographical study, Sixteen Tons is the long overdue final word on the life and career of an inimitably talented American music legend.

From bass player to lead guitarist, singer and last remaining founding member, Steve Diggle has been the driving force keeping Buzzcocks alive since he first met Pete Shelley in 1976. Together they would ignite the Manchester music scene, kickstart indie and become one of the best loved and most influential punk groups of all time.

Following Shelley’s untimely death in 2018, Autonomy is Diggle’s definitive inside account of their shared musical legacy and complex friendship through the band’s rise, fall, and rise again – from their punk origins supporting Sex Pistols with original singer Howard Devoto to Top of the Pops, the excess of success, break-up, reformation and life beyond bereavement.

Funny, honest and touchingly philosophical, it is also Diggle’s very personal story of working class escape, dreams, redemption and loss – an ultimately heroic survivor’s tale from an irrepressible rock ’n’ roll spirit.

John McGeoch was the unsung hero of the post-punk era. Blazing a trail with some of Britain’s biggest bands and most revered artists – Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Armoury Show and Public Image Ltd. – John left an undeniable and indelible mark on music.

The Light Pours Out of Me examines John’s life and legacy, drawing on original interviews with the likes of Siouxsie Sioux, Howard Devoto, Johnny Marr, Billy Idol, John Frusciante, Keith Levene, Jonny Greenwood, Nick Launay, Ed O’Brien, Peter ‘Hooky’ Hook and many others.

Illustrated with unseen photographs, this moving biography – authorised by the family – celebrates the remarkable guitarist who helped provide the soundtrack to a generation.

A powerful biography of Steve Marriott, lead singer of the Small Faces and Humble Pie, whose voice was coveted by Bob Dylan, Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey and David Bowie, amongst many others.

All or Nothing, Simon Spence's oral history biography, is drawn from over 125 interviews with those who knew Marriott intimately: his wives, children, bandmates and closest friends, managers, record producers, record label bosses and his fellow musicians. Included are scores of people who have never told their story before.

From his child star beginnings to his battles with drug addiction and untimely death in a housefire, All or Nothing is a visceral and unflinching account of Steve Marriott's extraordinary and often troubling life.

"A well-written, sympathetic biography of a complicated but important musical figure."—Booklist STARRED

Small Hours is an intimate, unflinching biography of one of the great maverick artists.

Though Martyn never had a hit single, his extraordinary voice, innovative guitar playing and profoundly soulful songs secured his status as a much admired pioneer.

Did any musician in the Seventies fly so free as John Martyn did on Bless The Weather, Solid Air, Inside Out, and One World? Did any fall so far?

Drawing on almost 100 new interviews, Small Hours is a raw and utterly gripping account of sixty years of daredevil creativity, soaring highs, and sometimes unconscionable lows.

Poly Styrene was many things: a pop star, a punk, a songwriter, a single mother, a woman of colour, a Hare Krishna convert and an artist, but she is best known as the singer of X-Ray Spex. Dayglo! is the definitive statement on Poly Styrene as an artist.

Poly Styrene was a singer-songwriter, an artist, a free-thinker, a post-modern style pioneer and a lifelong spiritual seeker: a true punk icon. But this rebel queen with the cheeky grin was also a latter-day pop artist with a wickedly perceptive gift for satirising the world around her - her brightly coloured, playful aesthetic sharply at odds with the stark monochrome style and nihilism of punk.

Here, for the first time, the vibrant jigsaw of Poly's inspiring and often moving story has been lovingly pieced together by her daughter, singer-songwriter Celeste Bell, and writer/artist Zoë Howe.

From growing up mixed-race in London in the 1960s, to being at the forefront of the emerging punk scene with X-Ray Spex in the 1970s, to finding faith with the Hare Krishna movement, to balancing single motherhood with a solo music career and often debilitating mental health issues, the book honestly and openly explores Poly's exceptional life, up until her untimely passing in 2011.

Based on interviews with those who knew and loved Poly whether personally or through music, this oral history book includes testimonies from Vivienne Westwood, Don Letts, Glen Matlock, Jonathan Ross, Neneh Cherry, The Slits' Tessa Pollitt, Thurston Moore, Jon Savage, and many others.

Heavily illustrated throughout including personal photographs, flyers from the punk scene and hand-drawn artwork and lyrics for X-Ray Spex and beyond the book beautifully captures Poly Styrene's creative and personal legacy, reminding us that if anyone had the power to turn our worlds dayglo, it was her.