Here are 100 books that Rock Covers fans have personally recommended if you like
Rock Covers.
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I’ve been collecting records since I was a teenager, and unlike many of my friends, I’ve kept all my records. I love music, but I also love album cover art. I’ve taken my interest and have written three books on album cover art that tell the story of dozens of album covers. I especially like discovering relatively unknown or anonymous artists and designers who created compelling record cover art. I am constantly looking for interesting records, and I am possessed by the desire to learn more about album cover art. I love to share my passion and let people know about the wide world of vinyl.
This is an exceptional book on album cover art, with over 500 images that cover the 1950s to the 2010s. The author did an amazing job of tracking down stories of how these fantastic covers were created.
I learned so much about album cover art from this book, and it introduced me to dozens of records that I want to acquire. It’s a huge book, and I love to flip through it while listening to vinyl.
Since the dawn of modernism, visual and music production have had a particularly intimate relationship. From Luigi Russolo's 1913 Futurist manifesto L'Arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noise) to Marcel Duchamp's 1925 double-sided discs Rotoreliefs, the 20th century saw ever more fertile exchange between sounds and shapes, marks and melodies, and different fields of composition and performance.
In Francesco Spampinato's unique anthology of artists' record covers, we discover the rhythm of this particular cultural history. The book presents 500 covers and records by visual artists from the 1950s through to today, exploring how modernism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, postmodernism, and…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve been collecting records since I was a teenager, and unlike many of my friends, I’ve kept all my records. I love music, but I also love album cover art. I’ve taken my interest and have written three books on album cover art that tell the story of dozens of album covers. I especially like discovering relatively unknown or anonymous artists and designers who created compelling record cover art. I am constantly looking for interesting records, and I am possessed by the desire to learn more about album cover art. I love to share my passion and let people know about the wide world of vinyl.
I found this book to be fascinating and engaging. It focuses on photographers who have made their mark on album cover design and includes many examples, some of which I was aware of but many that were new to me.
I love photography and album cover art, and this book showcases the role that photography plays in album cover design as well as any book that I have read.
The history of photography is teeming with portraits of musicians made iconic by their album covers: Thelonious Monk by W. Eugene Smith, Miles Davis by Irving Penn, Grace Jones by Jean-Paul Goude, Laurie Anderson by Robert Mapplethorpe. The history of album cover art also includes collaborations between prominent figures, such as Mick Rock and David Bowie, Annie Leibovitz and John Lennon, Lee Friedlander and John Coltrane, Nobuyoshi Araki and Bjoerk, Anton Corbijn and U2, and Robert Frank with the Rolling Stones-not to mention Francis Wolff's legendary work with Blue Note, the record label he cofounded. Musicians and designers have also…
I’ve been collecting records since I was a teenager, and unlike many of my friends, I’ve kept all my records. I love music, but I also love album cover art. I’ve taken my interest and have written three books on album cover art that tell the story of dozens of album covers. I especially like discovering relatively unknown or anonymous artists and designers who created compelling record cover art. I am constantly looking for interesting records, and I am possessed by the desire to learn more about album cover art. I love to share my passion and let people know about the wide world of vinyl.
Wow. I was amazed to find this book. I am deeply impressed with the work that went in to gathering so many record covers by Andy Warhol. The book deepened my knowledge of Warhol’s art. I think of it as a focused history of album cover design.
I love the size (it’s big) and the reproduction quality of all the covers and related artwork.
Count Basie, Tchaikovsky, Aretha Franklin, Lou Reed, Diana Ross, John Lennon and the Rolling Stones all had their music promoted by Andy Warhol's record covers. This stunning volume reproduces all of the album covers, front and back, that Warhol designed over four decades. Hundreds of additional contextual illustrations present liner notes and inside covers, related works by Warhol and documentary images that trace the artist's visual sources. Author Paul Marechal explores Warhol's creative process, his relationship with artists and his fascination with all genres of music. The range of music represented through these record covers, from jazz to classical and…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve been collecting records since I was a teenager, and unlike many of my friends, I’ve kept all my records. I love music, but I also love album cover art. I’ve taken my interest and have written three books on album cover art that tell the story of dozens of album covers. I especially like discovering relatively unknown or anonymous artists and designers who created compelling record cover art. I am constantly looking for interesting records, and I am possessed by the desire to learn more about album cover art. I love to share my passion and let people know about the wide world of vinyl.
I had this book in college, and I loved looking through the themed layouts. This book, more than any other, introduced me to the art of album cover design.
I kept a copy through many, many moves over the years, and it remains one of my favorites. It inspired me to think more carefully about album art.
A stunningly designed review of the greatest album cover designs, spanning the classic period from the 1950s to the 1970s, Album Cover Album first hit the bestseller charts in 1977. This led to the release of six follow-up hits, inspired a host of imitations, and generated a long-playing sub-genre in art and design publishing.
Album Cover Album is edited and compiled by two designers who were among the most innovative pioneers of the work that it celebrates. Storm Thorgerson's Hipgnosis earned world renown for the epic photo shoots and iconic designs that went so perfectly with the music of Pink…
An academically trained historian, I'm a Music Obsessive/History Geek/Southerner/Guitarist/Public Historian/Teacher/Interpreter/Writer/Fan who studies the intersection of music, culture, history, and place. I grew up devouring Mom’s Beatles and Dad’s country records. My life changed in 6th grade when I got my first guitar and discovered the blues. In 7th grade I wrote a research paper on the hippies. That’s when I fell in love with the counterculture. Throughout my life I’ve interwoven my love of the blues, punk rock, the Allman Brothers Band, and the Jam Depression collective as a historian, fan, and musician. My enduring passion culminated in a Ph.D. and the publication of Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East.
Flowers in the Dustbin uses an approach I dearly love: the vignette. Miller deftly selects stories that tie together a larger narrative of “where rock & roll came from—and what it came to do.”
The book begins with the birth of rhythm & blues through one of its earliest stars, Wynonie Harris. Subsequent stories in chapter one weave together the impacts of technology, the Great Migration, racial dynamics, a booming economy, and an emerging youth culture. It culminates in Elvis’s earliest recordings, the so-called birth of rock & roll. All in the first chapter!
In the story that follows, Miller demonstrates why rock & roll emerged and how it reflected and shaped the social, cultural, and political landscape.
A prizewinning historian and journalist who has covered the pop music scene for more than three decades, James Miller brings a powerful and challenging intellectual perspective to his recounting of some key turning points in the history of rock. Arguing that the music underwent its full creative evolution in little more than twenty-five years, he traces its roots from the jump blues of the forties to the disc jockeys who broadcast the music in the early fifties. He shows how impresarios such as Alan Freed and movie directors such as Richard Brooks (of Blackboard Jungle) joined black music to white…
I've always been interested in books about lost souls and broken people. Before I got clean it was the story of my life and they’re stories that continue to resonate with lots of readers. I think my being drawn to those kinds of stories was a reaction to the stories I read and tv and movies I saw growing up. The image-conscious suburban American Dream stuff. I grew up without all those illusions and naturally gravitated to gritty realism because it mirrored my experience. My book is less interested in the day-to-day mechanics of the lives of drug addicts and lost souls, but rather how they came to be what they are.
Baise-Moi won the Prix Goncourt in France, their equivalent of our National Book Award, and was made into a film. It’s the story of Manu and Nadine, a couple of young women who have had it with the people (mostly men) in their lives, take revenge, meet by chance and go on a cross-country crime spree. Sound familiar? It should. Baise-Moi is like Thelma and Louise minus the saccharine sentimentality and the silly fairy tale ending.
“A sticky, smashed, sweaty, laughing too loud, broken teeth, drunker than drunk adventure” from the filmmaker and author of the Vernon Subutex novels (Bust Magazine).
Baise-Moi is one of the most controversial French novels of recent years, a punk fantasy that takes female rage to its outer limits. The basis for a hit underground film which was banned in France, Baise-Moi is a searing story of two women on a rampage that is part Thelma and Louise, part Viking conquest.
Manu and Nadine have had all they can take. Manu has been brutally raped and determines it's not worth leaving…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am a female musician who has toured and experienced life on the road in the male-dominated world of rock and roll. I am always looking for female musicians (famous and unknown) who led the way to me being able to do what I do. Female musicians still don’t get equal time with their male counterparts. There are still so few women who have been recognized in the media, so reading about them makes me feel less alone. Their memoirs inspire me to keep playing and bring to music what only a female musician can do.
“Hello daddy, hello mom, I’m you ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.” Cherrie Currie was the lead singer of the all-female band called The Runaways from Los Angeles, California. Cherrie, Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Jackie Fox, and Sandy West were young teenage street punks when Kim Fowley (infamous record producer) brought them all together to form their band.
The Runaways enjoy cult status to this day, and I very much enjoyed the descriptions of the places they played and shows that are legendary to this day. Cherrie shares with us the punk beginnings of this band with these fierce teenage girls who were swimming in waters a bit too deep and adult for them.
Her memoir reveals the ugly truth about how women have been taken advantage of both physically and emotionally by men. Drugs and alcohol take their toll on Cherrie, so she’s even unable to make music anymore with the band. But,…
In this candid autobiography, Cherie Currie—the original lead singer of ‘70s teenage all-girl rock band The Runaways—powerfully recounts her years in the band, her friendship with guitarist Joan Jett, and her struggle with drugs. An intense, behind-the-scenes look at rock music in the gritty, post-glam era, Neon Angel is a must-read for anyone whose heart beats to the rhythm of David Bowie, Suzi Quatro, Nick Gilder, and the Sex Pistols, and for every fan of the movie it inspired: The Runaways, starring Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart as Cherie Currie and Joan Jett.
I write fiction, mostly historical mysteries, and non-fiction, generally about the English language. Both aspects of my writing reflect an interest in the past and how it continually shapes the present. The roots of English go back thousands of years to Latin, Anglo-Saxon, French, and many other sources. Yet the newest term to the vast storehouse of language may have been added only last week. Recently I’ve been writing about oaths, swear words, and bad language.
Silverton starts with the moment when one of the Sex Pistols used a
four-letter word live on afternoon TV in 1976. It’s an appropriate
beginning for a highly entertaining ramble through the dirtier byways
of the English language, encompassing historical research, pop culture , and personal anecdotes, and showing just how ingrained bad language is
in everyday life. His enjoyment and approval spring from every page.
When the Sex Pistols swore live on tea-time telly in 1976, there was outrage across Britain. Headlines screamed. Christians marched. TVs were kicked in. Thirty years on, all those words are media-mainstream - bandied about with impunity on TV and in the papers. This is the story of our bad language and its three-decade journey from the fringes of decency to the working centre of a more linguistically liberal nation. Silverton takes a clear, comprehensive and witty look at swearing and the impact of its new acceptability on our language, our manners and our society. He considers how we have…
As a writer of children’s books, I’ve always been fascinated – not merely by the narrative, characters, and plot that form a story – but how ideas themselves spring to life and cross-pollinate to form some kind of creative endeavor, whether that’s a song, a poem, a book or anything else that provokes an emotional response. Rather than shying away from the question: "Where do you get your ideas?" I like to embrace it and search for answers myself. These books all set contexts through which the nature of imagination and ideas are explored alongside the tales they tell, and they remain an influence on the ideas I have, and the words I write.
The birth of punk rock was never really about the music – or at least not justabout the music – and England’s Dreaming sets the context for probably the most volatile genre to assault the senses. Jon Savage’s book explores the historical and social setting that led to this – albeit brief – explosion in youth culture. He links together the birth of anarchism with the Situationist art movement alongside the eventual do-it-yourself attitude of punk fashion and music to create a narrative that’s both fascinating and incredibly relevant to the world today. As the legendary contemporaneous fanzine, Sniffing Glue once put it: Here’s a guitar chord, here’s another, here’s another…now go form a band!
The influence of The Sex Pistols has stretched way beyond their short, violent and notorious career - not only did they define punk, through the vision of their manager Malcolm McLaren and lead singer Johnny Rotten, but by the time of the Jubilee in 1977, they had initiated an explosion of angry music, graphics, fashion and media. This book is full of research, interviews plus a discography of The Sex Pistols that provides a historical perspective of the group. It follows the group's development over the course of a decade that began with a small shop in the King's Road…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
Photography has always been more than just images for me. I love capturing the moments that define a movement. I started out photographing punk bands, drawn to their raw creativity. Later, I shot Hollywood legends, but at the core, it was always about the same thing: artists fighting to make something that lasts. These stories feel like snapshots of a life I know well, and they bring me back to the packed punk club where everything started.
Viv Albertine’s memoir is raw and completely unfiltered, just like punk itself. I was hooked from the first page because it lives and breathes punk while also documenting its history.
Having photographed the New York and Boston punk scene firsthand, I connected deeply with her storytelling. It reminded me of the energy I felt photographing the bands back in the late 1970s.
SUNDAY TIMES MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR MOJO BOOK OF THE YEAR
A new edition as part of the Faber Greatest Hits - books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.
In 1975, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn't play an instrument and she'd never seen a girl play electric guitar.
A year later, she was the guitarist in the hugely influential all-girl band the Slits, who fearlessly took on the…
