In 1973, a 16-year-old Cameron Crowe wrote a cover story for Rolling Stone on the Allman Brothers Band. To this day, it remains the most in-depth, intimate look at the Allman Brothers Band at the ABBsolute peak of their fame. A tremendous feature for Rolling Stone in and of itself, even if you didn’t know any of the backstory. But he turned the story of that article into the movie Almost Famous (2000). And until I read The Uncool, I did not realize how much of his time with my favorite band made it into the movie, which remains a favorite to this day.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Cameron has written a book that feels like music, an intimate souvenir, like a song you can't stop listening to.” —Stevie Nicks • “A delicious tale of a devotee who worships at the altar of rock and roll....It's a love letter to fandom, sealed with Cameron's trademark sincerity and heart.” —Maggie Rogers • “Such a joy and so well written...My favorite book in a long, long time.” —Anderson Cooper
The long-awaited memoir by Cameron Crowe—one of America's most iconic journalists and filmmakers—The Uncool is a joyful dispatch from a lost world, a chronicle of…
A gripping narrative that captures the tumult and liberating energy of a nation in transition, Sweet Soul Music is an intimate portrait of the legendary performers--Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Al Green among them--who merged gospel and rhythm and blues to create Southern soul music. Through rare interviews and with unique insight, Peter Guralnick tells the definitive story of the songs that inspired a generation and forever changed the sound of American music.
Chris O'Dell has a truly remarkable rock & roll story. She left Arizona for LA in the late 60s and hooked up with Beatles' insider Derek Taylor. Taylor brought her to London. She got a job with Apple and became a confidante of two Beatle wives: Pattie Boyd Harrison and Maureen Starkey. She was one of only three people not in the band or crew on the rooftop at Apple for the Beatles' last public appearance. Leon Russell wrote two songs for her; George Harrison wrote one. Though this could've been a book of name-dropping, O'Dell shares her remarkable story in relatable fashion of a young woman making her way in the music business.
Chris O'Dell has packed a lot in a small amount of time and is probably surprised that she made as far as she has, considering the life she have lived. Hanging around with the Beatles, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones and managing tours for George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Santana, Earth, Wind & Fire and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In the early 1980s she worked with Led Zeppelin, Phil Collins, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, The Grateful Dead, and The Band.
During all those years, drugs were everywhere. She smoked marijuana, popped black bombers, dropped LSD, and drank endless Scotch and…
The origin story of a groundbreaking album. The 1971 Allman Brothers Band album At Fillmore East was a musical manifesto years in the making. In Play All Night!, Bob Beatty dives deep into the motivations and musical background of band founder Duane Allman to tell the story of what made this album not just a smash hit, but one of the most important live rock albums in history.
Featuring insights from bootleg tapes, radio ads, early reviews, never-before-published photos, and the memories of band members, fans, and friends, Beatty chronicles how Allman rejected the traditional route of music business success—hit singles and record sales—and built a band that was at its best jamming live on stage, feeding off the crowd’s energy, and pushing each other to new heights of virtuosic improvisation. Every challenge, from recruiting a group of relatively unknown but established musicians like Jaimoe and Dickey Betts, touring the American South as an interracial band, and the failure of their first two studio albums, sharpened Allman’s determination to pursue the band’s truly unique sound. He made a bold choice—to record their next album live at Bill Graham’s famous concert hall in New York’s Lower East Side, a gamble that launched a new strand of American music to the top of the charts.
Four days after the album went gold, Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was 24. This book explores how At Fillmore East cemented Allman’s legacy as a strong-willed, self-taught visionary, giving fans of Southern rock and all readers interested in the role of rock music in American popular culture a new appreciation for this pathbreaking album.
