Just about everyone listens to music, and a number of us are simply content to listen to catchy tunes and leave it at that. But many of us go beyond listening to read about the making of music—the creative process employed by our favorite artists, their inspirations and influences, the occasional and often dramatic clash of personalities, and the wider cultural vibrations released by their music. Journalists, historians, and artists themselves have always written histories, memoirs, and first-hand accounts of the lives, times, and music of particular bands or acts over the years, especially recently as many members of the golden generation of rock in the 1960s and 1970s publish their own career retrospectives.
Here are some of my favorite books about some of my favorite artists:
This Thing Called Life: Prince’s Odyssey, On and Off the Record: Rock journalist Neal Karlen had about as open and honest a relationship with the late, great Purple One as any other reporter—and he paints a portrait of Prince as a painfully lonely individual, afraid his closest friends and collaborators would inevitably abandon him. Prince also comes across as an impish figure, a trickster god as adept at fooling himself as everyone else. With his combination of creative genius and roguish behavior, Prince resembles no other figures so much as the bad-boy Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century—writers like Keats, Shelley, and Byron. For a closer look at the making of Prince’s magnum opus Purple Rain, check out music journalist Alan Light’s Let’s Go Crazy or Duane Tudahl’s Prince and the Purple Rain Studio Sessions: 1983 and 84.
Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story: U2 frontman Bono’s memoir delves deep into his own influences, the band’s genesis in Dublin, the stresses and strains between bandmates over the decades, and the origins of classic songs like “I Will Follow,” “Where the Streets Have No Name,” and “One.” Bono also gets into his latter-day career in political activism, with many insights about collaboration across ideological lines that many in Washington would do well to hear. But overall, this memoir stands as one of the best and most honest accounts of life as a rock musician yet published—and I highly recommend the audiobook version, with both Bono’s narration and chapters accompanied by selections from Songs of Surrender, unplugged and reworked versions of the U2’s most noteworthy songs. For another worthwhile rock memoir, check out the Who lead guitarist Pete Townshend’s Who I Am.
Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska: Based in part on a series of interviews with the Boss himself, journalist Warren Zanes pens a short but captivating account not just of the making of Springsteen’s landmark 1982 album Nebraska but of the decade that spanned from his breakthrough with 1975’s Born to Run to the release of his mammoth Born in the USA in 1984. In this telling, the dark and austere Nebraska reflected Springsteen’s state of mind as he wrestled with the demands of fame, a crisis of personal meaning, and the pressures of producing what would eventually become Born in the USA. The Springsteen that emerges from these pages is a tortured artist complete with complex and unexpected influences on the work he produced at the height of his popularity.
Heartbreak is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music: Taylor Swift has been making music for almost two decades now, but Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield’s brief book (which takes its title from a lyric in Swift’s song “New Romantics”) seems to be the first major attempt to write about her music and career. It’s an engaging if imperfect effort, perhaps a bit too glib at times but nonetheless useful as a first rough draft of history that actually takes Swift seriously as an artist as well as a pop cultural icon. His personal, impressionistic approach offers those perplexed by the Swift phenomenon as a whole an able guide into the deeper recesses of Swiftian lore and gives a good sense as to why she’s won the devotion of so many fans around the world. Hopefully just the first in what will become a long line of Swift studies moving forward.
Led Zeppelin: The Biography: Author Bob Spitz chronicles the ur-rock band in all its decadent, thunderous glory, from its inception from the ashes of the guitar hero incubator the Yardbirds to its slow but inevitable unraveling under the influence of heavy drugs and alcohol. Reading this account, it’s a wonder that any members of the band survived the experience—much less three of them. Notoriously unruly and chaotic drummer John Bonham succumbed to alcoholism, while Zeppelin’s brilliant guitarist and founder Jimmy Page spent the band’s latter years too strung out on heroin to adequately function. Level-headed bassist John Paul Jones and lead singer Robert Plant held things together until Bonham’s death in 1980 led to the group’s ultimate demise. As told by Spitz, Zeppelin’s story is as much a tale of the times as it is of the band itself and its majestic, often bone-crushing sound.
If reading isn’t your thing, a number of great rock documentaries and concert films have been made over the years as well. Here are a couple of my picks:
Woodstock, the granddaddy of all rock documentaries and concert films, still sets the standard with its superb, you-are-there chronicle of the music festival to begin and end all music festivals—just don’t take the brown acid.
Until his estate released a remixed and remastered version of his 1985 concert in Syracuse in 2022, the quasi-concert film based on Prince’s Sign O’ The Times tour released in 1987 was the closest anyone could get to seeing the great Purple One live at the zenith of his musical powers and popularity in the 1980s.
Miss Americana, a surprisingly intimate account of Taylor Swift’s songwriting process and 2018 stadium tour as well as a behind-the-scenes view of her first steps into politics.