6 Great Rock n’ Roll Biographies By: Theresa and Izzi Summer always permits more time, more sunlight, less homework (if you still do that stuff). Who wants to lay out in the sun and just lay there? No, these warm months provide a great opportunity to pick up a good book. We’ve compiled a list of 10 rock n’ roll biographies that will inspire you to pick up an instrument, go to a show, or just live a rockin’ life. Theresa’s picks: Tina Turner, I, Tina: My Life Story (1986). Tina Turner’s memoir records an extraordinary music career, her violent marriage to Ike Turner, and her strength to come out…
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The Women in Punk in Please Kill Me
When I picked up Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain I naively thought I would be writing an article about the female musicians included in the oral documentation of punk and those who were left out. It was pretty soon that I realized the issue wasn’t who they included and who they left out but how musicians and scenesters talked about women during the time, how women were portrayed and how most of the female quotes came from groupies. This was an eye opening revelation. Of course Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain are not to blame. They simply captured the quotes that tell the story of punk…
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The Collected Lives of Patti Smith
Someone asked if I would consider Woolgathering a fairy tale. I have always adored such tales but I am afraid it does not qualify. Everything contained in this little book is true, and written just like it was. ~Patti Smith Two years ago, a dear friend gifted me a signed copy of Patti Smith’s little book, Woolgathering. Published in 1992 — nearly two decades before the National-Book-Award-winning Just Kids & a full twenty-three years before the bestselling M Train — Woolgathering is a lesser-known work, an unassuming 76 pages of lyrical vignettes and photographs depicting Smith’s early life. I read Woolgathering during a time of upheaval in my life, a series…