One Train Later


Book Description

"The train jerks to a halt, and as I get out at Oxford Circus, Stewart gets out with me. We look at each other, laugh, and make the standard remark about it being a small world. But this is the brilliant collision, one train later and it might all have turned out differently." In this extraordinary memoir, world-renowned guitarist Andy Summers provides a revealing and passionate account of a life dedicated to music. From his first guitar at age thirteen and his early days on the English music scene to the ascendancy of his band, the Police, Summers recounts his relationships and encounters with the Big Roll Band, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, the Animals, John Belushi, and others, all the while proving himself a master of telling detail and dramatic anecdote. But, of course, the early work is only part of the story, and Andy's account of his role as guitarist for the Police---a gig that was only confirmed by a chance encounter with drummer Stewart Copeland on a London train---has been long-awaited by music fans worldwide. The heights of fame that the Police achieved have rarely been duplicated, and the band's triumphs were rivaled only by the personal chaos that such success brought about, an insight never lost on Summers in the telling. Complete with never-before-published photos from Summers's personal collection, One Train Later is a constantly surprising and poignant memoir, and the work of a world-class musician and a first-class writer.




Light Strings


Book Description

The guitar is more than a musical instrument. It is an archetype. In homage, Light Strings brings together two masters of their craft: photographer Ralph Gibson and former guitarist for the Police, Andy Summers. Gibson's enigmatic and sensuously elegant photographs are the visual counterpart to Summers' lyrical history and thoughtful exploration of the instrument's features. Together they create a unique poetic meditation on the guitar. Both artists pay attention to the form of the guitar and its relationship to the body; its curves echo the human figure, not only requiring it to be cradled to play it, but inviting a study of its own sumptuous anatomy. With over one hundred alluring images that capture the graceful details of the instrument, Light Strings is the book for every guitar player.




Throb


Book Description

Gathers photographs by the popular rock musician that show aspects of touring as well as surreal visions of modern life




I'll Be Watching You


Book Description

In the early 1980s, The Police went on tour accompanied by a photographer who documented the band behind the scenes in a series of candid and striking black and white photos. This talented photographer also happened to be the bands guitarist, Andy Summers. Containing more than 600 photos and filled with diary-style entries, ""Ill Be Watching You"" is a sumptuous volume beating with musical energy, nostalgia, and atmospheric beauty. Taschen




Andy Summers


Book Description

Andy Summers, former guitarist and composer of the legendary band The Police, has built a unique photographic body of work to parallel his musical oeuvre. According to Summers, these photographs constitute the mental and visual counterpart of his music, marked by a complex melodic search and harmonies of rather melancholic and even convulsive colors. Summers compares these autobiographical photographs to tearing the pages of an intimate diary and reconfiguring them into a new visual syntax. He characterizes these photographs as having a pronounced surrealist sense of what Sigmund Freud called “disturbing strangeness.” Andy Summers has had several photographic books devoted to him. Designed by Gilles Mora, in close collaboration with the artist, this book presents the most creative visual work of photographer/musician Andy Summers, including many unpublished images. A long autobiographical text by Summers tells of his passion for photography. A text by Gilles Mora situates Summers’s photographic work in American modernist photography.




Seventy Summers


Book Description

Sometimes you need a little help learning to believe in yourself. And it can show up in the most unexpected ways. Robbie Berger has stalled out in his life and career, hoping for a fresh gust of wind to take him in a new direction. When he arrives at the home of his latest "senior care" assignment, Robbie has no idea he's about to meet someone destined to change his world. The new client unfolds a remarkable tale of a corporation run aground, a twelve-year-old boy convinced he'll always be a loser, and a sage owl whose wisdom may shift the future for them all. This story-within-a-story is about the boundless possibilities that arise when we learn to ask the right questions, set priorities that match our values, and go after the things we we want in life with unstoppable gusto.




Strange Things Happen


Book Description

When Stewart Copeland gets dressed, he has an identity crisis. Should he put on "leather pants, hostile shirts, and pointy shoes"? Or wear something more appropriate to the "tax-paying, property-owning, investment-holding lotus eater" his success has allowed him to become? This dilemma is at the heart of Copeland's vastly entertaining memoir-in-stories, Strange Things Happen. The world knows Copeland as the drummer for The Police, one of the most successful bands in rock history. But they may not know as much about his childhood in the Middle East as the son of a CIA agent. Or be aware of his film-making adventures with the Pygmies in the deepest reaches of the Congo, and his passion for polo (Brideshead Revisited on horses). In Strange Things Happen we move from Copeland's remarkable childhood to the formation of The Police, their rise to stardom, and the settled-down life that followed. It ends with a behind-the-scenes view of The Police's extraordinarily successful reunion tour. It's a book of amazing anecdotes, all completely true, which take us backstage in a life that is fully lived.




Through the Valley


Book Description

Veteran Andy Summers came home from the war, but the battle of his life was only beginning… Andy returned from deployment with a hatred for muslims and nightmares he refused to share with anyone, especially his wife, Tina. Reaching out for help was weak. His brain tormented him day and night but he was strong enough to stop the demons, even if it meant taking his own life. Tina watched her husband’s mental health spiral, his denial leaving her powerless and alone in their marriage. While Andy was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Tina answered “What’s wrong with Daddy?” questions from their sons. When terrorism at home intensified Andy’s PTSD symptoms, they began to lose hope of life getting better… Until the day Andy met an Imam. True life events woven into a compelling narrative of torment, faith, forgiveness and healing.




SUMMER'S CHILD


Book Description

Early on the morning of her eleventh birthday, on the beach beside her North Carolina home, Daria Cato receives an unbelievable gift from the sea—an abandoned newborn baby. When the infant’s identity cannot be uncovered, she is adopted by Daria’s loving family. But her silent secrets continue to haunt Daria. Now, twenty years later, Shelly has grown into an unusual, ethereal young woman whom Daria continues to protect. But when Rory Taylor, a friend from Daria’s childhood and now a television producer, returns at Shelly’s request to do a story about the circumstances surrounding her birth, something precarious shifts in the small town of Kill Devil Hills. The more questions Rory asks, the more unsettled the tiny community becomes, as closely guarded secrets and the sins of that long-ago summer begin to surface. Piece by piece, the mystery of summer’s child is being exposed, a mystery that no one involved—not Shelly, Daria, not even Rory—is prepared to face.




Groupie


Book Description

When Groupie was first published in 1969 it caused a sensation. The Swingin' Sixties capacity to outrage may have been starting to decline, but this novel managed to shock all over again. A thinly fictionalised chronicle of Jenny Fabian's adventures with underground rock heroes of her day, Groupie caused a furore for all kinds of reasons...it had the scent of danger that accompanies an authentic original, it ruffled feathers with its matter of fact descriptions of drug taking and sexual high jinks, it prompted guessing games about teh true identities of its principal characters, most of all, it was highly explicity about a phenomenon that had never before been documented. Almost three decades later, this book is still extraordinarily fresh and playing the celebrity guessing game is still fun. Groupie is also the genuine article - no reconstruction of Sixties underground rock culture has ever captured the Zeitgist as as well as this novel.