The autobiography of the Prince of Flower Power. Alongside the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, Donovan's music defined a generation.

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and numerous other groups put Britain at the center of the modern musical map. Please Please Me offers an insider's view of the British pop-music recording industry during the seminal period of 1956 to 1968, based on personal recollections, contemporary accounts, and all relevant data that situate this scene in the economic, political, and social context of postwar Britain. Author Gordon Thompson weaves issues of class, age, professional status, gender, and ethnicity into his narrative, beginning with the rise of British beat groups and the emergence of teenagers as consumers in postwar Britain, and moving into the competition between performers and the recording industry for control over the music. He interviews musicians, songwriters, music directors, and producers and engineers who worked with the best-known performers of the era. Drawing his interpretation of the processes at work during this musical revolution into a wider context, Thompson unravels the musical change and innovation of the time with an eye on understanding what traces individuals leave in the musical and recording process.

Donovan was an unconventional artist, a romantic outsider who ushered in a new sound to the folk genre. His international hits brought folk music to mainstream audiences. Now for the first time in paperback The Autobiography of Donovan offers a detailed account of the people he met and his life as a musician: From his days as an itinerant teen, camping on beaches and hitchhiking across the UK, to his life as a chart-topping folk star hob-knobbing with such legends as Joan Baez, Brian Jones, and even Bob Dylan, to his legendary trip with the Beatles to visit the Maharishi.

The hurdy-gurdy, or vielle, has been part of European musical life since the eleventh century. In eighteenth-century France, improvements in its sound and appearance led to its use in chamber ensembles. This new and expanded edition of The Hurdy-Gurdy in Eighteenth-Century France offers the definitive introduction to the classic stringed instrument. Robert A. Green discusses the techniques of playing the hurdy-gurdy and the interpretation of its music, based on existing methods and on his own experience as a performer. The list of extant music includes new pieces discovered within the last decade and provides new historical context for the instrument and its role in eighteenth-century French culture.