Best rock biographies of all time
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Best rock star biographies and memoirs: it&#;s pure debauchery
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We're talking sex, drugs and bloody good stories
Rock stars of yesteryear had all the fun. The best rock star biographies shed light on those glory days, answering questions you didn’t know you wanted answering.
From tales of debauchery to gritty insights into life on the road, the best biographies share the low points as well as the highs. Teasing details about their lives, many of these access-all-areas biographies allow you to be a fly on the wall for some of the most dramatic moments in musical history.
UPDATE: We've added a couple more key picks from the world of rock autobiographies. Elton John's Me makes the cut for the sheer style of its retelling of one of the iconic careers in rock music. And for those after a less classic biopic-style approach should check out Viv Albertine's memoir Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. It's a top read.
Here we’ve picked out a selection of the very best rockstar memoirs. They feature some of rock’s most prominent figures… as well as some who we
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The 50 Greatest Rock Memoirs of All Time
So many CBGB-era punk memoirs out there, but Richard Hell’s is unique — poetic yet never pompous, bemused without corny punch lines. As a year-old Kentucky kid, he runs off to NYC to be a poet, but ends up a rock & roller. “‘Sacred monster’ is definitely the job description,” Hell writes. “Being a pop star, a front person, takes indestructible certainty of one’s own irresistibility. That’s the monster part.” He depicts his music comrades — Tom Verlaine, Robert Quine, Patti Smith, Lester Bangs — and all the girls he’s loved before. (Hell was the punk Leonard Cohen in that department.) He quips about his popularity with critics, “because they were predisposed to favor noise, intellect, and failure.” In the final scene, he runs into his old nemesis Verlaine for the first time in years — flipping through the dollar bins outside the Strand Bookstore — and walks away in tears, musing, “We were like two monsters confiding.”
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Biographies About
Rock Stars & Vandal Rebels
Electrifying guitarists, dazzling drummers, smokin’ usher singers, courage indie artists—
famous or notorious, these musicians have exciting life suffer tour stories to tell.
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- By: Ben Folds
- Narrated by: Ben Folds
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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