From blood and thunder rock memoirs to considered analyses of pop’s major figures, and from immersive studies of the scene to exposes of the industry, here is the hit parade of top music writing.
Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys - Viv Albertine
The life and post-punk times of the legendary Slits guitarist is just as spiky, combative and raw as the music her band made.
Our Band Could Be Your Life - Michael Azerrad
From Sonic Youth to Fugazi, Azerrad’s breathless tour of the 80s US underground is packed full of the spit and danger of a vibrant, visceral scene.
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung - Lester Bangs
The most iconic rock journo of them all in all his acerbic, scattergun, gonzo brilliance.
The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones - Stanley Booth
The classic work on the Stones in the 60s, Booth’s gripping account perfectly captures the decadence and excess of the world’s greatest rock n roll band.
White Bicycles - Joe Boyd
Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan; whether as producer, manager or roadie Joe Boyd worked with them all - and many more - and this is his incredible story.
Bass Culture - Lloyd Bradley
The definitive book about reggae, from its rocksteady roots to the global commercial powerhouse of Bob Marley’s heyday.
Last Night a DJ Saved My Life - Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton
Brewster and Broughton put the case for the disc jockey as a pivotal figure in the evolution of pop music in this sparkling tome.
One Two Three Four - Craig Brown
The Fab Four reassessed in kaleidoscopic prose in a uniquely entertaining and enlightening meditation on the Beatles legacy.
How Music Works - David Byrne
The Talking Heads frontman delivers a thoughtful, persuasive argument for cultural heritage rather than individual genius as the prime mover in crafting great music.
The Manual - Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond
An iconoclastic gem from pop’s Lords of Misrule on how to ensure you score that all-important No.1 hit.
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop - Jeff Chang
As much social history as music guide, Chang’s panoramic account of the birth of hip hop is essential reading.
Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head - Rob Chapman
Acute and compassionate, Chapman’s deft book peels back the myths surrounding the Pink Floyd frontman to reveal the tortured artist underneath.
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom - Nik Cohn
A vibrant and energetic potted history of rock from jump blues to psychedelia from the heart of the counter cultural revolution.
Krautrocksampler - Julian Cope
Giddily idiosyncratic (and sadly wildly out of print), Cope’s compendium of Krautrock’s great and good is a stone cold cult classic.
Detroit 67 - Stuart Cosgrove
Twelve months in the life of the Motor City kickstarts Cosgrove’s soul trilogy with a forensic account of discord in the Supremes.
Touching from a Distance - Deborah Curtis
Raw and achingly powerful as only a widow’s narrative could be, the tragic demise of Joy Division’s totemic singer pours off the pages.
Hit Men - Fredric Dannen
The venality and narcissism of America’s music moguls, from Tin Pan Alley to the present day, chronicled with scandalous aplomb.
Hammer of the Gods - Stephen Davis
Sex, drugs and a moderate amount of rock n roll on the road with the proto-metal guitar gods will drop the jaws of the most jaded reader.
I’m With the Band - Pamela des Barres
Bedding Jagger, Page and Morrison amongst others, Pamela des Barres was the ultimate 60s groupie and this is her witty and unapologetic tell-all memoir.
But Beautiful - Geoff Dyer
A glorious fusion of style and substance, Dyer’s eight vignettes of jazz greats are things of fluid, free form wonder.
Chronicles Volume One - Bob Dylan
Enlightening whilst preserving the crucial Dylan enigma, Chronicles is a tantalising insight into the mind of rock’s greatest poet.
Give the Anarchist a Cigarette - Mick Farren
From beatnik to punk, Farren was in the thick of the counter culture for two decades and this rollicking memoir is testament to his charisma, prescience and staying power.
Meet Me in the Bathroom - Lizzy Goodman
The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the rebirth of NYC rock in the wake of 9/11 captured in this sprawling oral history.
Girl in a Band - Kim Gordon
Sonic Youth’s Queen of cool holds forth about life in America’s most inventive band and the last forty years of US alternative rock.
Last Train to Memphis/Careless Love - Peter Guralnick
Guralnick’s two volume life of the King is appropriately magisterial stuff, and the most rounded portrait of an American icon we are ever likely to get.
Bound for Glory - Woody Guthrie
Earthy, laconic and hugely evocative of dust bowl era America, Guthrie’s spirited memoir tracks the formative years of the father of modern folk.
The Last Party - John Harris
The gaudy Britpop soap opera laid bare, as Liam, Damon and Brett capture a zeitgeist and fight over Justine Frischmann.
1971 - David Hepworth
The veteran music journo makes a bold case for 1971 as the pinnacle of rock excellence in this witty and perceptive volume.
Behind the Shades - Clinton Heylin
Weighing in at nearly a thousand pages, Heylin’s labour of love digs deeper into the Dylan mythos than any other biography.
Lady Sings The Blues - Billie Holiday
Tinged with tragedy yet never seeking victimhood, Lady Day essays a twilight world of smoky jazz clubs in a wise and careworn memoir.
No One Here Gets Out Alive - Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman
The short, explosive life of Doors frontman Jim Morrison documented in exhaustive detail and penetrating prose.
Waiting for the Sun - Barney Hoskyns
From surf to soul, Hoskyns traces the fecund postwar LA music scene with a fanboy’s enthusiasm and a scholar’s eye.
Me - Elton John
Gossipy, self-aware and laugh out loud funny; the life and times of Captain Fantastic is every bit as stellar as we hoped.
David Bowie: A Life - Dylan Jones
This monumental oral biography curated from hundreds of interviews is the last word on pop’s great chameleon.
The Dark Stuff - Nick Kent
A cocksure swagger through the tormented geniuses of the music world in the company of rock journalism’s enfant terrible.
Original Rockers - Richard King
The heady days of vinyl worship as experienced by a former record shop worker makes for blissfully nostalgic and evocative reading.
Fargo Rock City - Chuck Klosterman
Knowing and irreverent yet bathed in genuine affection, Klosterman’s love letter to hair metal is a wickedly indulgent delight.
Appetite for Self-Destruction - Steve Knopper
The compelling, cautionary tale of physical music’s terminal decline and the inexorable rise of the digital download and streaming service in the 21st century.
The Dirt - Tommy Lee, Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx
Motley Crue’s notorious memoir is a rollercoaster ride of hedonism and decadence that has become a byword for the monstrous excess of the rock n roll lifestyle.
This is Your Brain on Music - Daniel Levitin
Rigorous and revelatory, Levitin’s magnum opus dissects the science behind humanity’s drive to make and absorb music.
33 Revolutions Per Minute - Dorian Lynskey
From Strange Fruit to Steve Earle, Lynskey’s remarkably assured journey through the history of protest song is a triumphant mix of music and politics.
Revolution in the Head - Ian Macdonald
Every Beatles song analysed and interpreted; the ultimate guide to the Fab Four from one of music writing’s true pioneers.
Cider with Roadies - Stuart Maconie
Drenched in wry wit and wide-eyed wonder, Cider with Roadies relates Maconie’s misspent youth as music geek and budding hack.
Mystery Train - Greil Marcus
Elvis, Dylan, Sly Stone and the Band as part of the fabric of the great American narrative in this pioneering, scholarly work from the great US critic.
Rock She Wrote - Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers
From Caroline Coon to Kim Gordon, this definitive anthology of women writers on rock merges feminism and music criticism with incendiary results.
Please Kill Me - Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
The first wave of US punk recounted in colourful terms by the scene’s artists and hangers-on in a gripping saga of iconoclasm and self-destruction.
Perfecting Sound Forever - Greg Milner
A history of how we have heard music over the decades, Milner’s accessible masterwork hymns the innovators and eccentrics of recorded sound.
Beneath the Underdog - Charles Mingus
Written with lyricism and grace, the jazz musician’s memoir is a riveting portrait of race and invention in 1950s America.
Shots from the Hip - Charles Shaar Murray
The most acerbic broadsides from the NME’s legendary writer collated in a dazzlingly consistent anthology of rare wit and insight.
Black Vinyl White Powder - Simon Napier-Bell
Bitchy and bombastic yet brilliantly informed and written with irresistible zest, Napier-Bell’s drug fuelled romp through fifty years of British pop is an absolute blast.
Shout! - Philip Norman
Arguably the most comprehensive and diligently researched biography of the Beatles, Shout tells rock’s best known story with peerless authority.
Rip It Up and Start Again - Simon Reynolds
Casting his net wide, Reynolds provides perfectly realised potted accounts of post-punk’s major players.
Life - Keith Richards
The rock memoir to end all rock memoirs; the human riff holds forth on a life of rock n roll hedonism and groundbreaking music making.
Divided Soul - David Ritz
The troubled life and career of Marvin Gaye as recounted by one of those who knew him best results in a tender and humane, yet never sycophantic, biography.
Morrissey and Marr: The Severed Alliance - Johnny Rogan
So inflammatory that Morrissey wished its author dead, The Severed Alliance essayed a Shakespearean tragedy on the streets of 1980s Manchester.
The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross
Ross’s mighty history of 20th century classical music weaves a multitude of disparate threads into an accessible, revealing account of a remarkable sonic era.
Musicophilia - Oliver Sacks
A deep dive into the neurological properties of music from the eminent scientist, Musicophilia’s case studies enlighten and inspire.
England’s Dreaming - Jon Savage
Savage’s seminal work enfolds the tumultuous reign of the Sex Pistols into a broader history of the UK punk scene.
The Song Machine - John Seabrook
Through encounters with the pop world’s key hit makers Seabrook deconstructs the magic formula for a guaranteed smash success.
Turn the Beat Around - Peter Shapiro
Born of Black Power and gay liberation, disco was a truly revolutionary musical genre and in Shapiro’s electrifying history gets the literary treatment it deserves.
Love is a Mix Tape - Rob Sheffield
A powerful, bittersweet meditation on pop’s connection to the deepest human emotions as Sheffield mourns his late wife through a celebration of their mix tapes.
Lost in Music - Giles Smith
A comic gem about growing up loving pop music that is packed full of relatable vignettes and expertly crafted nostalgia.
Just Kids - Patti Smith
Richly evocative and achingly hip, the punk poetess’s love letter to 60s New York and the artist Robert Mapplethorpe is a lyrical wonder.
Yeh Yeah Yeah - Bob Stanley
The essential one-volume history of pop music is an intoxicating, highly idiosyncratic brew that manages to convey a vast amount of information with clarity and insight.
Mars by 1980 - David Stubbs
From nineteenth century mechanical experiments to Giorgio Moroder and the Pet Shop Boys; how electronic music rose from curio to world conquering musical monolith.
Bedsit Disco Queen - Tracy Thorn
With bone dry wit and winning charm, the Everything But the Girl singer charts the course of her own musical education alongside the giddy thrill of 80s indie pop.
Ocean of Sound - David Toop
A truly unique reflection on the global development of ambient sound, Toop’s classic takes in Javanese music, Debussy and Brian Eno amongst much, much more.
Hellfire - Nick Tosches
Crushed between a fervent religiosity and an amoral hedonism, Jerry Lee Lewis’s tormented life plays like a page turning novel in Tosches’s expert hands.
How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll - Elijah Wald
Ignore the sensationalist title; Wald’s fascinating alternative history of popular music focuses on the fans, jobbing musicians and media that shaped our culture rather than the usual roll call of stars.
Louder Than Hell - Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman
Revelling in bombast, excess and ludicrous anecdote, this oral history of heavy metal is a wildly entertaining ride through the sub culture.
Out of the Vinyl Deeps - Ellen Willis
The New Yorker’s first ever rock scribe, Ellen Willis was a true trailblazer and her most perceptive, eloquent pieces are collected in this indispensable anthology.
Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste - Carl Wilson
In this esoteric entry in the 33 1/3 series, Wilson analyses the muso disdain for Celine Dion in the light of an existential debate about good and bad taste.
How Music Got Free - Stephen Witt
Coming on like a techie crime thriller, How Music Got Free tells the astonishing tale of how a trio of unlikely revolutionaries transformed the 21st century musical landscape.
Everybody Loves Our Town - Mark Yarm
A flannel-shirted fanfare for the gods of grunge and the creative hub of the early 90s most vital rock music, Seattle.
Electric Eden - Rob Young
From Cecil Sharp to Steeleye Span, the sounds of Albion filtered through the bucolic prism of folk rock in eloquent, nimble prose.
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