Music

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Scenic Wye Valley isn’t the typical place for a rock story to begin, but when Echo & the Bunnymen hit the studio to record their ground-breaking debut album, Crocodiles, it was anything but ordinary. The album was the making of the band – cultivating a cult following which would soon evolve into staggering mainstream success. Their lives would never be the same again.

In Echoes, legendary guitarist and founding member of Echo & the Bunnymen, Will Sergeant, recounts the band’s whirlwind rise to stardom with his trademark wryness and intelligence. Sharing never-before-told anecdotes – including the heady Rockfield Studio sessions and touring across the US, playing sold-out shows at Whisky a Go Go and experiencing the iconic New York club scene from dusk ’til dawn – and accompanied by snapshots of the cultural, social and political scene at the time, this is a memoir to remember.

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The Sunday Times bestseller and Waterstones Book of the Year, now in paperback

‘Paul McCartney says this is as close as he will get to an autobiography and no wonder – his life is in every line of these songs … pure joy’ Sunday Times, Book of the Year

With seven songs added for this edition: ‘Bluebird,’ ‘Day Tripper,’ ‘English Tea,’ ‘Every Night,’ ‘Hello, Goodbye,’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and ‘Step Inside Love’

Spanning seven decades – from his early Liverpool days, through the historic decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his long solo career – Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics has transformed the way artists write about music, pairing the definitive texts of 161 songs with intimate, autobiographical commentaries on McCartney’s life and music.

Arranged alphabetically, these commentaries reveal the diverse circumstances in which the songs were written, how they ultimately came to be, and the remarkable – often ordinary – people and places that inspired them. Dozens of vignettes re-create the working-class Liverpool of McCartney’s youth, where delivery boys ran parcels on docks, as in ‘On My Way to Work,’ and elderly ladies in the neighbourhood inspired ‘Eleanor Rigby.’ McCartney also introduces us to his early literary influences, among them Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and Allen Ginsberg, as well as Alan Durband, his beloved English teacher, and his mother, Mary, who passed away when he was just fourteen – and whose memory has infused his work ever since.

Yet the two most powerful presences in The Lyrics after the author himself are his songwriting partner, John Lennon, and his ‘Golden Earth Girl,’ Linda Eastman McCartney. Here McCartney describes how he met John at a church fête in 1957; their adventures with George Harrison and Ringo Starr in the early 1960s; and how, at the end of the decade, they, and The Beatles, broke up. Thus began a second act of now more than fifty years, with Linda and family life as driving forces – inspiring songs from ‘Maybe I’m Amazed,’ written just after the breakup of The Beatles, to the 2012 ballad ‘My Valentine,’ addressed to McCartney’s wife and partner, Nancy Shevell McCartney.

Edited and introduced by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Paul Muldoon, and enhanced by more than a hundred images from McCartney’s personal archives – including handwritten texts, mementos, and photographs – and seven new song commentaries, The Lyrics is a book for the ages, and the definitive literary and visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

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In these fifty-two interviews, the greatest songwriters of our time go straight to the source of the magic of songwriting by offering their thoughts, feelings, and opinions on their art. Representing almost every genre of popular music, from folk to Tin Pan Alley to jazz, from blues to pop rock, these are the figures who have shaped American music as we know it. Here they share their secrets and personal methods for converting inspiration into song: Robbie Robertson of the Band an Tom Petty talk about working with Bob Dylan; Dylan himself, in his only in-depth interview in more than ten years, says that the world doesn’t need any new songs; R.E.M. name their favorite R.E.M. songs; Madonna describes collaborating with Prince; Sammy Cahn talks about writing standards for Sinatra; Pete Seeger recounts hitting the road with Woody Guthrie; Frank Zappa admits to loving “Louie Louie”; Todd Rundgren explains how he dreams his songs; and, in the book’s most extensive interview, Paul Simon delves into his opus from “The Sound of Silence” to “Graceland.”

And almost all of them express delight at being able to talk about the mechanics of music itself, something that they have rarely been asked to discuss. Here expanded with new interviews with Burt Bacharach, Laura Nyro, Yoko Ono, Leonard Cohen, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Richard Thompson, and many others, Songwriters on Songwriting is a rare volume: one of the best books on the craft of musicmaking, an informative source for musicians and songwriters, and an invaluable historical record of the popular music of this century.

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Travel the world exploring the cities that have influenced dance music and DJ culture and discovering the cutting-edge scenes taking club culture in new directions.

Featuring incredible photography, insider recommendations, and some of the biggest names in dance music, Destination Dancefloor reveals how DJ culture swept the globe and 40 cities where you can immerse yourself in the best electronic music culture has to offer.

Whether you want to know more about the start of house music in Chicago, the club that started Berlin on the road to becoming the global epicentre of club culture, the French Touch scene in Paris that influenced the early years of Daft Punk, why Ibiza became the world’s summer party destination of choice, or are looking for new destinations to add to your own clubbing bucket list, this unique book leans on Mixmag’s position and expertise as one of the foremost names in club culture to present an overview of global dance music, making it a must-read for all clubbers, past, present, and future. See you on the dancefloor.

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**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Roxy Music’s iconic first album with this collection of Bryan Ferry’s evocative lyrics of aspiration and romantic longing, introduced by the author.

‘Lyrics is a book any Roxy fan would be proud to have on their shelf’ The Telegraph

Bryan Ferry’s work as a singer and songwriter, both as a solo artist and with Roxy Music, is legendary.

Lyrics collects the words written for music across seventeen albums, from the first iconic Roxy album of 1972 via the masterpiece of Avalon to 2014’s reflective Avonmore, introduced by the author, and with an insightful essay by James Truman.

All the classic Roxy anthems are here – ‘Virginia Plain’, ‘Do the Strand’, ‘Love is the Drug’ – songs in which the real and the make-believe blend in a kaleidoscopic mix, shot through with cinematic allure.

Also included are the evocative lyrics of romantic longing and lost illusions for which Ferry is rightly revered: ‘Slave to Love’, ‘Mother of Pearl’, ‘More Than This’. As he writes in his preface, ‘The low points in life so often produce the most keenly felt and best-loved songs.’ And, it might be added, some of the best poetry.

Discover this unforgettable collection of Bryan Ferry’s work today.

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