• The best books on Rock Music - Nico: The End by James Young
  • The best books on Rock Music - To Hell and Back: My Life in Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers by Walter Lure
  • The best books on Rock Music - The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren: The Biography by Paul Gorman
  • The best books on Rock Music - Life: Keith Richards by Keith Richards
  • The best books on Rock Music - Girl in a Band: A Memoir by Kim Gordon

The best books on Rock Music, recommended by Peter Lawlor

Successful musicians don’t necessarily need formal training or 10,000 hours of practice under their belt; what they must have is a feel for music, an innate gift. But many of rock’s brightest burning stars were lost to drugs. Here, Peter Lawlor—who combined a career as a senior economic advisor with that of an award-winning songwriter, producer and record label executive—selects five of the best books on rock music, focusing on revelatory biographies that peer behind the veil.

  • The best books on Punk Rock (in 80s America) - England's Dreaming, Revised Edition: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond by Jon Savage
  • The best books on Punk Rock (in 80s America) - Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century by Greil Marcus
  • The best books on Punk Rock (in 80s America) - Dead Kennedys' Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (33 1/3) by Michael Foley
  • The best books on Punk Rock (in 80s America) - We Were Going to Change the World: Interviews with Women from the 1970s and 1980s Southern California Punk Rock Scene by Stacy Russo
  • The best books on Punk Rock (in 80s America) - Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History by John Patrick Diggins

The best books on Punk Rock (in 80s America), recommended by Kevin Mattson

Punk is more than just a musical genre. It is an ethos. Channelling one’s anger against the triteness of the culture industry’s offerings can be a spontaneous and creative act of resistance and rebellion. Moreover, as Kevin Mattson shows in this selection of books about punk in the 1980s in America, attending a rock concert by a band like the Dead Kennedys was a formative political experience for a generation of citizens, akin to attending a rally or a party convention. It was a spirit of constructive anarchy that can still channel the political anger of the alienated in the 21st century.