Exposes the squalid truth behind rock 'n roll: goes behind the headlines and uncovers the many sordid scandals that have rocked the music business and exposes the decadence, degradation and drugtaking. Revised and updated to include all the latest gossip and scandal: Oasis, Robbie Williams, Eminem, Marilyn Manson, Michael Hutchence etc.

Fun, shocking, and compulsively readable, Rock Star Babylon is a guilty pleasure for fans everywhere who want to know more about rock stars behaving badly. From Ozzy Osbourne to Chuck Berry, Courtney Love to Keith Moon, Rock Star Babylon has gathered together the most outrageous antics and diva-esque misbehavior in the annals of rock. Here in a single volume are the most wickedly entertaining stories of over-the-top parties, crazy divorces, hidden cameras, trashed hotel rooms, misapplied epileptic interventions, and innocent headless bats. Running the gamut from the rude to the ridiculous, these reports of rock-and-rollers at their worst come straight from the mouths of those who were there—or those who were there but left early and heard about it afterward.

In her familiar style, Pamela Des Barres shines light on the people whose art remains the background music to our popular culture.

Why did prehistoric people start making music? What does every postwar pop song have in common? A “masterful” tour of music through the ages (Booklist, starred review). Music is an intrinsic part of everyday life, and yet the history of its development from single notes to multi-layered orchestration can seem bewilderingly specialized and complex. In his dynamic tour through 40,000 years of music, from prehistoric instruments to modern-day pop, Howard Goodall does away with stuffy biographies, unhelpful labels, and tired terminology. Instead, he leads us through the story of music as it happened, idea by idea, so that each musical innovation—harmony, notation, sung theater, the orchestra, dance music, recording, broadcasting—strikes us with its original force. He focuses on what changed when and why, picking out the discoveries that revolutionized man-made sound and bringing to life musical visionaries from the little-known Pérotin to the colossus of Wagner. Along the way, he also gives refreshingly clear descriptions of what music is and how it works: what scales are all about, why some chords sound discordant, and what all post-war pop songs have in common. The story of music is the story of our urge to invent, connect, rebel—and entertain. Howard Goodall's beautifully clear and compelling account is both a hymn to human endeavor and a groundbreaking map of our musical journey.

Gary Herman cuts through the PR spin to expose rock and roll s long history of decadence and degradation. From the stars of the 1950s to the rappers, divas, and heavy metal icons of today, he details lurid scandals, outrageous antics, tragic deaths, and who got with, shot at, and shot up with whom. Included are the scandals surrounding Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Keith Richards, Tupac and Biggie, Whitney Houston, and many others, as well as over 200 rare and revealing photographs."

Allan Carr was Hollywoods premier party-thrower during the towns most hedonistic era the cocaine-addled, sexually indulgent 1970s. Hosting outrageous soirees with names like the Mick Jagger/Cycle Sluts Party and masterminding such lavishly themed opening nights as the Tommy/New York City subway premiere, it was Carr, an obese, caftan-wearing producer the ultimate outsider who first brought movie stars and rock stars, gays and straights, Old and New Hollywood together. From the stunning success of Grease and La Cage aux Folles to the spectacular failure of the Village Peoples Cant Stop the Music, as a producer Carrs was a rollercoaster of a career punctuated by major hits and phenomenal flops none more disastrous than the Academy Awards show he produced featuring a tone-deaf Rob Lowe serenading Snow White, a fiasco that made Carr an outcast, and is still widely considered to be the worst Oscars ever. Tracing Carrs excess-laden rise and tragic fall and sparing no one along the way Party Animals provides a sizzling, candid, behind-the-scenes look at Hollywoods most infamous period.