Books like Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions — picked by fans

Being a musician in a band has been a hallmark of my life. When I first read Roddy Doyle’s book, I was amazed at how he expertly captured the exhilarating emotional peaks that come with starting a band. The early days of being in a band are some of the best, and Doyle writes exquisitely about the joy of shared dreams, spontaneous creativity, and the camaraderie that comes as you create a new musical family.

He also illustrates the inevitable tensions that can and do arise—egos clash, personalities differ, and the pressures of maintaining unity. But like Doyle, I agree that, in the end, the effort and energy are their own reward. The goal should always be making art for art’s sake.

The first time I heard Two Hearts Beat As One by U2 was glorious! I was entranced by the driving drums and the bass line and inspired by Bono’s lyrics, which spoke to my burgeoning interest in how to be cool. And U2 was cool in the 80s. And Bono was one of the coolest musicians I looked up to back then.

His memoir goes deep into explaining where his bravado and “cool” come from. It was a darker and more complicated place than I expected.  Having recently endured the death of my own mother, shortly before I read this book, I was moved to read about how the death of his mother impacted him and motivated him. 

I came away with even more respect for Bono’s life philosophy and his commitment to his family, his bandmates, and his ongoing craft as a musician. 

Daniel Rachel is a master storyteller whose book answered every big and small arcane question I’ve ever had about the birth and popularity of the British 2 Tone ska movement and bands. As a 2 Tone nerd, I know a lot about the bands, but Rachel revealed stories and anecdotes I never knew.

I also consider him a huge influence on my approach to writing music history. He expertly combines incredibly detailed archival research and deep, personal interviews with musicians, label heads, journalists, and rabid fans to tell the definitive story of 2 Tone and its cultural impact, which remains relevant more than 40 years later.

The twin pillars of 2 Tone ska and 80s new wave music sustained me through much of a challenging youth. And once I discovered the music of Depeche Mode, I found another refuge from the harsh realities of my life. Their thoughtful and danceable songs soon became part of my Gen X soundtrack and opened my world to ideas of love, friendship, sex, and fashion.

Spence’s book took me deep into the world that gave birth to the band and their memorable songs while successfully making the culture of their hometown of Basildon—one of the new towns built outside London after World War Two, one of the key characters in their story. Spence provides the detail I love when I read books about bands I love, and he expertly combined the cultural history of 60s, 70s, and 80s England to explain their influences and approach to writing songs that… show more.

Some time in the 1960s, rock ’n’ roll became rock, and rock became white. That moment forms the core of Jack Hamilton’s exploration of the fraught racial politics of this music in the United States.

Putting different artists into dialogue – such as Dylan and Cooke, or Janis and Aretha – allows Hamilton to excavate the original complexity of genre labels that, over the fifty years since, have too often effaced the original, more complicated story about race, music, and American society. 

I think that this book unveils Jerry Garcia’s essential, elusive personality better than anything I’ve read, even given the excellent work of David Browne, Blair Jackson, Dennis McNally, and other terrific Grateful Dead biographers.

I learned a lot about how seemingly secondary characters are often particularly honest and illuminating. Robert Greenfield also collaborated with promoter Bill Graham on Bill Graham Presents, the excellent autobiography in oral history format. 

I love this book for its deep dive into the music and time period of the 1960s and 1970s. It’s a wonderful discovery of the bands that made this era of music so wonderful and how Laurel Canyon was in the center of it.

There are great behind-the-scenes stories and interviews with the people who were there, in the industry and making the music. It’s a great glimpse into the vision, values, and freedom of the time and how it all got funneled into that fantastic music I so love.

Since their 1965 founding, the Grateful Dead have been one of the counterculture’s most enduring institutions.

No Simple Highway answers why, placing the band in the context of its times through three utopian ideals central to the band and its fans: Ecstasy (not just drugs, but an “urge to transcend”), Mobility, and Community. The band, Richardson argues, is “the American experiment in action.”

You’ll learn how the band wove multiple strands of American music with literature, folklore, the counterculture, and the visual arts into a truly unique musical tapestry whose express purpose was as part of a live music experience.

This music-as-participation dynamic meant the audience was as important to the Dead as the music they played. This book had a major impact on how I approached the band/audience story for my own Allman Brothers research. 

Crossroads: Postwar America, youth counterculture, audience, San Francisco

Stevie Wonder’s artistry inspired Quincy Troupe to write a poem about his life and songs, about what he believed in, and how he influenced others.

Stevie was born prematurely and placed in an incubator with extra oxygen in the air. The extra oxygen was helpful for his developing lungs, but it damaged his eyes, blinding him. He discovered his love of music early. His family and neighbors recognized his talent and told others.

Motown released his first album when he was 12. His sense of love and joy has influenced the world. This book is both a tribute and a work of art in itself.

If you don’t know Poppoff, you should. He’s a genial Canuck Youtuber who also happens to be the world’s most prolific music reviewer.

An inveterate headbanger with an unquenchable thirst for loudness. In this—the book for which he’ll surely be remembered—Poppoff turns his eye on the whole prehistory of heavy metal, breaking the music down into component parts, and tracing those components backwards through time.

From psychedelia to early rock n roll, blues, jazz, classical music, all the way back to the Vikings, the Ancient Greeks, and the Battle of Jericho in 1250 BC. If there’s a better researched, more thorough, or more sweeping book about loud music on the planet Earth, I ain’t aware of it.