By any standards, Kings of Leon are unique. Consisting of three brothers and their first cousin, all surnamed Followill, the quartet from Tennessee have conquered the music world on their own terms. They have audaciously mixed elements of classic rock with grunge, garage and a very contemporary attitude. The result is music that has found a global audience, drawn from all ages. Along the way, the band have earned the respect of Bob Dylan, U2, and other A-list celebrities. Their hard-partying lifestyle and glamorous girlfriends ensure that the band remains a favourite with the media. This book traces the rise of Kings of Leon from local hopefuls to Grammy-winning chart-toppers. A religious background that kept them well away from rock music until 1997 has further added to the mystique surrounding the Kings, as Michael Heatley recounts in this first-ever full-length, authoritative biography of the band.

By any standards, the Kings of Leon are unique. Consisting of three brothers and their first cousin, all surnamed Followill, the quartet from a God-fearing Tennessee background has conquered the music world on their own terms. They have audaciously mixed elements of classic rock with grunge, garage and a very contemporary attitude. The result is music that has found a ready audience between 15 and 50. It has also been used in several significant movie soundtracks, accelerating their rise. Their song- writing skills have earned the admiration of none other than Bob Dylan himself. This first-ever full-length, authoritative biography of the band, by Michael Heatley, traces their rise from local hopefuls to US Hot Modern Rock chart-toppers (singles 'Sex On Fire', 'Use Somebody', and 'Notion' all reached Number 1) with the platinum album Only by the Night. A background and lifestyle that kept them well away from popular music until 1997, when their father sensationally resigned from the church and divorced their mother, has produced some fascinating results. Exposure to the rock'n'roll lifestyle led to crises that have had to be resolved as a band and as individuals, and The Kings of Leon: Sex On Firerecounts them all.

This title provides a group portrait of some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, including Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Grandmaster Flash and Bob Dylan.

Arriving on the music scene in 2003, the Kings of Leon embarked on a sex, drug and booze-fuelled rampage through the London music and fashion scene, never afraid to reveal all to the press and somehow surviving to tell the tale. Joel McIver's new book, the first ever Kings of Leon biography, digs deep into their history to reveal a band like no other.

Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR and GQ Joining the ranks of the classics Please Kill Me, Our Band Could Be Your Life, and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, an intriguing oral history of the post-9/11 decline of the old-guard music industry and rebirth of the New York rock scene, led by a group of iconoclastic rock bands. In the second half of the twentieth-century New York was the source of new sounds, including the Greenwich Village folk scene, punk and new wave, and hip-hop. But as the end of the millennium neared, cutting-edge bands began emerging from Seattle, Austin, and London, pushing New York further from the epicenter. The behemoth music industry, too, found itself in free fall, under siege from technology. Then 9/11/2001 plunged the country into a state of uncertainty and war—and a dozen New York City bands that had been honing their sound and style in relative obscurity suddenly became symbols of glamour for a young, web-savvy, forward-looking generation in need of an anthem. Meet Me in the Bathroom charts the transformation of the New York music scene in the first decade of the 2000s, the bands behind it—including The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Vampire Weekend—and the cultural forces that shaped it, from the Internet to a booming real estate market that forced artists out of the Lower East Side to Williamsburg. Drawing on 200 original interviews with James Murphy, Julian Casablancas, Karen O, Ezra Koenig, and many others musicians, artists, journalists, bloggers, photographers, managers, music executives, groupies, models, movie stars, and DJs who lived through this explosive time, journalist Lizzy Goodman offers a fascinating portrait of a time and a place that gave birth to a new era in modern rock-and-roll.

"If You Don't Know Me By Now," "The Love I Lost," "The Soul Train Theme," "Then Came You," "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now"--the distinctive music that became known as Philly Soul dominated the pop music charts in the 1970s. In A House on Fire, John A. Jackson takes us inside the musical empire created by Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell, the three men who put Philadelphia Soul on the map. Here is the eye-opening story of three of the most influential and successful music producers of the seventies. Jackson shows how Gamble, Huff, and Bell developed a black recording empire second only to Berry Gordy's Motown, pumping out a string of chart-toppers from Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the Spinners, the O'Jays, the Stylistics, and many others. The author underscores the endemic racism of the music business at that time, revealing how the three men were blocked from the major record companies and outlets in Philadelphia because they were black, forcing them to create their own label, sign their own artists, and create their own sound. The sound they created--a sophisticated and glossy form of rhythm and blues, characterized by crisp, melodious harmonies backed by lush, string-laden orchestration and a hard-driving rhythm section--was a glorious success, producing at least twenty-eight gold or platinum albums and thirty-one gold or platinum singles. But after their meteoric rise and years of unstoppable success, their production company finally failed, brought down by payola, competition, a tough economy, and changing popular tastes. Funky, groovy, soulful--Philly Soul was the classic seventies sound. A House on Fire tells the inside story of this remarkable musical phenomenon.