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Many people will recognize the famous crosswalk. Some visitors may have graffitied their name on its hallowed outer walls. Others might even have managed to penetrate the iron gates. But what draws in these thousands of fans here, year after year? What is it that really happens behind the doors of the most celebrated recording studio in the world? It may have begun life as an affluent suburban house, but it soon became a creative hub renowned around the world as a place where great music, ground-breaking sounds, and unforgettable tunes were forged. It is nothing less than a witness to, and a key participant in, the history of popular music itself. What has been going on there for over ninety years has called for skills that are musical, creative, technical, mechanical, interpersonal, logistical, managerial, chemical and, romantics might be tempted add, close to magic. The history of Abbey Road may just make you believe"-- Provided by publisher.

_________ `Hepworth's knowledge and understanding of rock history is prodigious ... [a] hugely entertaining study of the LP's golden age' The Times _________ The era of the LP began in 1967, with `Sgt Pepper'; The Beatles didn't just collect together a bunch of songs, they Made An Album. Henceforth, everybody else wanted to Make An Album. The end came only fifteen years later, coinciding with the release of Michael Jackson's `Thriller'. By then the Walkman had taken music out of the home and into the streets and the record business had begun trying to reverse-engineer the creative process in order to make big money. Nobody would play music or listen to it in quite the same way ever again. It was a short but transformative time. Musicians became `artists' and we, the people, patrons of the arts. The LP itself had been a mark of sophistication, a measure of wealth, an instrument of education, a poster saying things you dare not say yourself, a means of attracting the opposite sex, and, for many, the single most desirable object in their lives. This is the story of that time; it takes us from recording studios where musicians were doing things that had never been done before to the sparsely furnished apartments where their efforts would be received like visitations from a higher power. This is the story of how LPs saved our lives.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Pop music's a simple pleasure. Is it catchy? Can you dance to it? Do you fancy the singer? What's fascinating about pop is our relationship with it. This relationship gets more complicated the longer it goes on. It's been going on now for 50 years. David Hepworth is interested in the human side of pop. He's interested in how people make the stuff and, more importantly, what it means to us. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, he shows how it is possible to take music seriously and, at the same time, not drain the life out of it. From the legacy of the Beatles to the dramatic decline of the record shop, from top tips for bands starting out to the bewildering nomenclature of musical genres, with characteristic insight and humour, he explores the highways and byways of this vast multiverse where Nothing Is Real and yet it is, emphatically and intrinsically so. Along the way he asks some essential questions about music and about life: is it all about the drummer; are band managers misunderstood; and is it appropriate to play `Angels' at funerals? As Pope John Paul II said `of all the unimportant things, football is the most important'. David Hepworth believes the same to be true of music and this selection of his best writing, covering the music of last fifty years, shows you precisely why.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• September 14, 1955, Rampart Street, New Orleans, Louisiana : Enter the first rock star
• September 26, 1956, from Memphis to Tupelo : The first rock idol
• July 6, 1957, Woolton Village Fete, Liverpool, England : The first rock fans form a band
• May 22, 1958, London Airport, England : A bad boy flies in
• February 3, 1959, Clear Lake, Iowa : A good boy flies out
• July 1, 1960, London, England : Enter the guitar hero
• September 25, 1961, Gerde's Folk City, New York City : A boy invents himself
• September 28, 1962, Sefton Street, Liverpool, England : The man who fit in
• May 1, 1963, London, England : The man who didn't fit in
• December 23, 1964, Los Angeles airport : The rock star as tragic genius
• September 26, 1965, Aarhus, Denmark : The rock band as perpetual drama
• October 1, 1966, Central London Polytechnic, England : A new sheriff in town
• June 18, 1967, Monterey, California : The first female rock star
• May 15, 1968, New York City : The view from Olympus
• August 9, 1969, Birmingham, England : The devil's business
• June 24, 1970, New York City : Rock god embraces the occult
• May 16, 1971, New York City : The comeback
• July 26, 1972, Madison Square Garden, New York City : Rock goes high society
• July 3, 1973, Hammersmith, London, England : A "rock star" retires
• August 6, 1974, 914 Studios, Blauvelt, New York : Rock in a complicated world
• July 18, 1975, the Lyceum, London, England : The best rock isn't always rock
• July 4, 1976, Tampa, Florida : The X-factor
• August 16, 1977, Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee : Death is good for business
• December 9, 1978, London, England : A raspberry on top of the charts
• August 4, 1979, Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, England : Twilight of the gods
• December 8, 1980, New York City : Death by fan
• August 13, 1981, Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Middlesex, England : Sex, violence, and television
• March 19, 1982, Leesburg, Florida : Road fever
• September 31, 1983, the Continental Hyatt House, Hollywood, California : The absurdity of rock stars
• January 27, 1984, the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, California : A superstar on fire
• July 13, 1985, Wembley Stadium, London, England : From dumper to sainthood
• July 16, 1986, Madison

• Square Garden, New York City : Rock royalty up close
• August 1, 1987, Greyhound bus station, Hollywood and Vine, Los Angeles, California : Looking the part
• September 9, 1988, Sotheby's, London, England : Elton John clears out his closet
• March 21, 1989, United States of America : Clean and sober
• May 29, 1990, Toronto SkyDome, Toronto, Ontario, Canada : Rock star as celeb
• November 24, 1991, Kensington, London, England : The party's over
• May 7, 1992, Tokyo, Japan : Man overboard
• June 7, 1993, Minneapolis, Minnesota : Career suicide
• April 5, 1994, Seattle, Washington : The last rock star
• August 9, 1995, Mountain View, California : Revenge of the nerds.

"The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations. What did we see in them? Swagger. Recklessness. Sexual charisma. Damn-the-torpedoes self-belief. A certain way of carrying themselves. Good hair. Interesting shoes. Talent we wished we had. What did we want of them? To be larger than life but also like us. To live out their songs. To stay young forever. No wonder many didn't stay the course. In Uncommon People, David Hepworth zeroes in on defining moments and turning points in the lives of forty rock stars from 1955 to 1995, taking us on a journey to burst a hundred myths and create a hundred more. As this tribe of uniquely motivated nobodies went about turning themselves into the ultimate somebodies, they also shaped us, our real lives and our fantasies. Uncommon People isn't just their story. It's ours as well."--Dust jacket flap.

The Sixties ended a year late - on New Year's Eve 1970, when Paul McCartney initiated proceedings to wind up The Beatles. Music would never be the same again. The next day would see the dawning of a new era. 1971 saw the release of more monumental albums than any year before or since and the establishment of a pantheon of stars to dominate the next forty years - Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Marvin Gaye, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Rod Stewart, the solo Beatles and more. January that year fired the gun on an unrepeatable surge of creativity, technological innovation, blissful ignorance, naked ambition and outrageous good fortune. By December rock had exploded into the mainstream. How did it happen? This book tells you how. It's the story of 1971, rock's golden year.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A must for all Pop Culture junkies. "Myriad weird and weirder showbiz stories with which to amaze, astound and possibly bore rigid close personal friends down the pub or in sheltered accomodation. A must for intellectuals and anoraks alike". MARK RADCLIFFE * 'Imagine the most entertaining pub conservation you have ever been privy too, distilled into elegant prose and sealed between covers. Anecdote is too small a word for these pearls of pop-culture illumination.' Stuart Maconie Did you know that those aren't Julia Roberts' legs on the Pretty Woman poster? In fact the only things that are Julia's are the head and the incandescent smile. Everything from the neck down belongs to Shelley Michelle, a model, actress and body double. Okay so maybe you knew that one, but how about these: Why was Bob Dylan's performance at Live Aid so bad? Who -- or rather what -- won the very first Best Actor Oscar? What life changing discovery did Jack Nicholson make about his sister in 1974? Just how badly did Elvis Presley treat the songwriters who penned his hits? And what in the devil's name is the 'Wilhelm Scream' and how does it link Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Reservoir Dogs and fifty-seven other movies? Unlike most of what passes as "trivia" -- who really cares who's had the most number ones? -- these one hundred amazing, unfathomable, absurd and often implausible stories point towards some greater truth. This is how the Big Thing Got Big. This is the secret history of entertainment. If SCHOTT'S MISCELLANY is the book of useless facts to be read in the smallest room in the house, then THE SECRET HISTORY OF ENTERTAINMENT is the book of useful stories to devour and wow your friends with over a pint in the pub. David Hepworth has launched (and written for) some of the most successful magazines of the last two decades -- including Q in 1985, Empire in 1988, Mojo in 1997 and Heat in 1999. He is the only person to have won both the Writer of The Year and also Editor of The Year awards from the Periodical Publishers Association. He has presented programmes for the BBC and VH1 and makes regular contributions on BBC Radio 4.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)