In the Houses of the Holy


Book Description

This volume examines the powerful ways in which identity can be shaped by rock music. Through the music, imagery and discourse surrounding one of the most innovative and commercially successful rock bands ever, Susan Fast probes such issues as constructions of gender and sexuality, the creation of myth and the use of ritual, the appropriation of Eastern musics and the blues, the physicality of the music, and the use of the body in performance. The band's influence is examined through socially-situated musical analysis, as well as an ethnographic study of Led Zeppelin fans. Fast draws on academic and journalistic writing as well as a new interview with band member John Paul Jones. Specific pieces examined include "Dazed and Confused," "Kashmir," "Stairway to Heaven," and "Whole Lotta Love."




Houses of the Holy


Book Description

A visually stunning and Dantean descent into a nightmare.




This Day in Music


Book Description

Births, deaths and marriages, No1 singles, drug busts and arrests, famous gigs and awards... all these and much more appear in this fascinating 50 year almanac.Using a page for every day of the calendar year, the author records a variety of rock and pop events that took place on a given day of the month across the years.This Day in Music is fully illustrated with hundreds of pictures, cuttings and album covers, making this the must-have book for any pop music fan.




Led Zeppelin -- Complete Songbook


Book Description

Complete, including all the songs from Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin IV, Houses of the Holy, Presence, Physical Graffiti, In Through the Out Door, and Coda. The arrangements include all the critical instrumental riffs and figures. Other contents include two guitar TAB sections, one featuring many of the note-for-note riffs on which the classic Led Zeppelin songs are based and the other featuring many of Jimmy Page's classic guitar solos; a detailed style analysis of Jimmy Page; a complete history of the band; and a one-of-a-kind photo gallery. The book is printed on sturdy premium paper and is comb bound for easy use.




The Prophet


Book Description

A book of poetic essays written in English, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is full of religious inspirations. With the twelve illustrations drawn by the author himself, the book took more than eleven years to be formulated and perfected and is Gibran's best-known work. It represents the height of his literary career as he came to be noted as ‘the Bard of Washington Street.’ Captivating and vivified with feeling, The Prophet has been translated into forty languages throughout the world, and is considered the most widely read book of the twentieth century. Its first edition of 1300 copies sold out within a month.




What You Want Is in the Limo


Book Description

An epic joyride through three history-making tours in 1973 that defined rock and roll superstardom—the money, the access, the excess—forevermore. The Who’s Quadrophenia. Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies. These three unprecedented tours—and the albums that inspired them—were the most ambitious of these artists’ careers, and they forever changed the landscape of rock and roll: the economics, the privileges, and the very essence of the concert experience. On these juggernauts, rock gods—and their entourages—were born, along with unimaginable overindulgence and the legendary flameouts. Tour buses were traded for private jets, arenas replaced theaters, and performances transmogrified into over-the-top, operatic spectacles. As the sixties ended and the seventies began, an altogether more cynical era took hold: peace, love, and understanding gave way to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But the decade didn’t become the seventies, acclaimed journalist Michael Walker writes, until 1973, a historic and mind-bogglingly prolific year for rock and roll that saw the release of countless classic albums, from The Dark Side of the Moon to Goat’s Head Soup; Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.; and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Aerosmith, Queen, and Lynyrd Skynyrd released their debut albums. The Roxy and CBGB opened their doors. Every major act of the era—from Fleetwood Mac to Black Sabbath—was on the road that summer, but of them all, Walker writes, it was The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Alice Cooper who emerged as the game changers. Walker revisits each of these three tours in memorable, all-access detail: he goes backstage, onto the jets, and into the limos, where every conceivable wish could be granted. He wedges himself into the sweaty throng of teenage fans (Walker himself was one of them) who suddenly were an economic force to be reckoned with, and he vividly describes how a decade’s worth of decadence was squeezed into twelve heart-pounding, backbreaking, and rule-defying months that redefined, for our modern times, the business of superstardom. Praise for What You Want Is in the Limo “Required reading . . . 1973 is a turning point in popular music — the border between hippie-ethos ’60s rock ’n’ roll and conspicuous-consumption excess ’70s rock.”—New York Post “Loud and boisterous . . . Like a good vinyl-era single, it’s over before it wears out its welcome. You may even want to flip it over and start again when you’re finished.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram “You don’t have to love the music or personas of the three bands highlighted here . . . to appreciate the vital roles that all three played in creating the modern rock star. . . . [Walker] is convincing and entertaining in explaining why 1973 was a seminal year in rock.”—The Daily Beast “[There’s] so much rock n' roll history packed inside.”—GQ “Very well written . . . It gives an intellectual immersion into these bands’ lives.”—Led-Zeppelin.org “[Walker] argues for [1973] as a tipping point, when big tours—and bigger money—became a defining ethos in rock music.”—NPR




Hipgnosis


Book Description

The complete catalogue of design collective Hipgnosis, showcasing groundbreaking cover art created for iconic rock ’n’ roll giants, including the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd The complete, definitive, and never-before-published catalogue of album covers created by the legendary design agency Hipgnosis, this volume finally does justice to the work of the most important design collective in music history. Founded in 1967 by Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey “Po" Powell, and Peter Christopherson, Hipgnosis gained a legendary status in graphic design, transforming the look of album art forever and winning five Grammy nominations for package design. Their revolutionary cover art departed from the conventional group shots favored by record companies of the day, resulting in groundbreaking, often surreal designs inextricable from the major albums of many of the biggest names in the history of popular music: AC/DC, Black Sabbath, The Police, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Syd Barrett, The Who, Wings, Yes, and XTC, to name but a few. Arranged chronologically, Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art features stunning reproductions of every single Hipgnosis cover—more than 300 in total—for the first time, along with pertinent insights from the rock ’n’ roll legends whose albums are featured and behind-the-scenes photography. The text, written by Powell, and with contributions by Peter Gabriel, Robert Plant, and Nick Mason, brims with information that illuminates the album art and the compelling stories behind each cover’s creation.




Season of the Witch


Book Description

"From the hoodoo-inspired sounds of Elvis Presley to the Eastern odysseys of George Harrison, from the dark dalliances of Led Zeppelin to the Masonic imagery of today's hip-hop scene, the occult has long breathed life into rock and hip-hop--and, indeed, esoteric and supernatural traditions are a key ingredient behind the emergence and development of rock and roll ... [and in this book] writer and critic Peter Bebergal illuminates this web of influences"--Amazon.com.




The Joy of Small Things


Book Description

'This book is a not-so-small joy in itself.' NIGELLA LAWSON 'Parkinson has the gift of making you look with new eyes at everyday things. The perfect daily diversion.' JOJO MOYES 'Always funny and frank and full of insight, I absolutely love Parkinson's writing.' DAVID NICHOLLS 'I loved this book . . . Parkinson's writing transports you to unexpected places of joy and comfort . . . these pages contain happiness.' MARINA HYDE 'The twenty-first century feels a lot more bearable in Parkinson's company.' CHARLOTTE MENDELSON Drawn from the successful Guardian column, these everyday exultations and inspirations will get you through dismal days. Hannah Jane Parkinson is a specialist in savouring the small pleasures of life. She revels in her fluffy dressing gown ('like bathing in marshmallow'), finds calm in solo cinema trips, is charmed by the personalities of fonts ('you'll never see Comic Sans on a funeral notice'), celebrates pockets and gleefully abandons a book she isn't enjoying. Parkinson's everyday exaltations - selected from her immensely successful Guardian column - will utterly delight. FEATURES BRAND NEW MATERIAL 'A compendium of delights.' OBSERVER 'Delightful . . . a love letter to those little moments of bliss that get us through the daily grind.' RED




The House of the Lord


Book Description