Author:Daryl Richard Lawrence, Stan Jeffries. Duncan Harris
I’m not a big fan of the West Coast country sounds of Linda Ronstadt, but given that she’s sold over 100 million albums I’m obviously in a minority! This book covers the first twenty years of her career, which saw the release of 17 albums – a pretty impressive work rate. The only two records I really know are Living in the USA and Heart Like a Wheel, but dipping into her back catalogue in the course of reading this book confirmed my thoughts that pleasant as her music is, it all rather washes over me. Nevertheless, she successfully crossed over into both the rock and country markets and attained huge commercial success over a sustained period. Fans will enjoy the in depth track by track breakdown of the albums and might even rediscover some long forgotten gems, while it also provides a good introduction for newcomers to her music.
The Jam was a band I was quite a fan of back in the day. From 1977’s In The City single through to their last hurrah with 1982’s Beat Surrender they produced some fantastic music that still sounds as good today as it did back then, when for a time they were arguably the biggest band in Britain. For me the singles were always what I listened to rather than the full albums, the Snap collection getting plenty of plays even today. Again we get a detailed song by song look at the albums together with demos and tracks tucked away on compilations. A career that saw five top ten albums plus thirteen top twenty singles in just five and a half meteoric years is well served by this potted history, which will appeal to both the dedicated fan and the merely curious listener.
This revised edition of the Hawkwind book, which first appeared in 2020, has been updated to include the latest two albums from 2021 and 2023. As good as they are, they are something of a post script to the most exciting and innovative period of their career some fifty years previously when they were at their absolute creative peak. All the studio and live albums are dissected, but for me this is music that’s hard to describe on the printed page – it’s far better appreciated by listening to it. Be that as it may, this book is certainly a worthy effort to capture their appeal from the heyday of the seventies through the patchier eighties and nineties and on to, dare I say, a triumphant return in the new millennium. You can’t keep a good band down – they are still going strong, and part of me feels that in a nuclear winter only cockroaches and Hawkwind would survive!
Length of Read:Short
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
The work of these artists.
One thing you’ve learned
There’s always something new to learn.
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