Mick Wall

or the first time ever, Bono-the biggest rock star in the world-tells his life story. Bono's career is unlike any other in rock history. As the lead singer of U2, Bono has sold 130 million albums, won fourteen Grammys, and played numerous sold-out world tours, but he has also lobbied and worked with world leaders from Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to Nelson Mandela on debt relief, AIDS, and other critical global issues. He has collaborated with the same musicians for nearly three decades and has been married to his childhood sweetheart since 1982. His life, at all turns, resists the rock star clich?s. In a series of intimate conversations with his friend Michka Assayas, a music journalist who has been with the band since the very beginning, Bono reflects on his transformation from the extrovert singer of a small Irish post-punk band into one of the most famous individuals in the world; and from an international celebrity to an influential spokesperson for the Third World. He speaks candidly about his faith, family, commitment, influences, service, and passion. "Bono: A Self-Portrait in Conversation" is the closest we will come, for now, to a memoir from the iconic frontman of U2

This biography examines the legacy left by Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain. It questions why he killed himself and looks at the emotional fallout that continues to shroud Seattle's other grunge bands, tracing the collapse of their once world-conquering musical scene.

Many millions of words have already been written about Guns N' Roses, the old line-up, the new line-up. But none of them have ever really gotten to the truth. Which is this: Guns N' Roses has always been a band out of time, the Last of the Giants. They are what every rock band since the Rolling Stones has tried and nearly always failed to be: dangerous. At a time when smiling, MTV-friendly, safe-sex, just-say-no Bon Jovi was the biggest band in the world, here was a band that seemed to have leapt straight out of the coke-smothered pages of the original, golden-age, late-sixties rock scene. 'Live like a suicide', the band used to say when they all lived together in the Hell House, their notorious LA home. And this is where Mick Wall first met them, and became part of their inner circle, before famously being denounced by name by Axl Rose in the song 'Get in the Ring'. But this book isn't about settling old scores. Written with the clear head that 25 years later brings you, this is a celebration of Guns N' Roses the band, and of Axl Rose the frontman who really is that thing we so desperately want him to be: the last of the truly extraordinary, all-time great, no apologies, no explanations, no giving-a-shit rock stars. The last of his kind.

A biography of rock band Stone Temple Pilots, whose albums include "Core" and "Purple". The book discusses the band's early days in their native San Diego, California, following their struggles under the name Mighty Joe Young, through to their eventual success after adopting the name Stone Temple Pilots. It also reveals their fight against being controversially accused of plagiarising the Seattle sound of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.

This is the official story of the rise of British progressive rock group, Marillion, as told by the band to noted rock and roll journalist, Mick Wall. It provides fans of the band with a unique behind-the-scenes view of one of the most prominent rock bands of the 1980's. Written with the band's full cooperation, Mick Wall delves into the depths of what drew three Englishmen,one Irishman and a Scot into sounding out their collective muse.

Bruce Springsteen Like a Killer in the Sun, originally published in Italian, is the definitive book on the work of Bruce Springsteen, showing his unique narrative talent and offering an accurate critical examination of his poetics. It presents 117 among his best lyrics, expounded and annotated with the philological care used for the classics of literature. In his introduction, Leonardo Colombati draws the attention to the fact that Springsteen is an author grafted on the line that goes from Whitman to Steinbeck, from Flannery O'Connor to Raymond Carver. The book also contains Springsteen's biography and discography, plus an exclusive interview with Bruce Springsteen. With forewords by Academy Award-winner Ennio Morricone and music critic Dave Marsh, a committee member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Springsteen's biographer.

They were 'the last great band of the sixties; the first great band of the seventies'; they rose, somewhat unpromisingly, from the ashes of the Yardbirds to become one of the biggest-selling rock bands of all time. Mick Wall, respected rock writer and former confidant of both Page and Plant, unflinchingly tells the story of the band that wrote the rulebook for on-the-road excess - and eventually paid the price for it, with disaster, drug addiction and death. WHEN GIANTS WALKED THE EARTH reveals for the first time the true extent of band leader Jimmy Page's longstanding interest in the occult, and goes behind the scenes to expose the truth behind their much-hyped yet spectacularly contrived comeback at London's O2 arena in 2007, and how Jimmy Page plans to bring the band back permanently - if only his former protégé, now part-time nemesis, Robert Plant will allow him to. Wall also recounts, in a series of flashbacks, the life stories of the five individuals that made the dream of Led Zeppelin into an even more incredible and hard-to-swallow reality: Page, Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and their infamous manager, Peter Grant.

Hanging out with rock stars, trying to steal their chicks, or throwing up over their guitars after launching into the hospitality a little too enthusiastically, Mick Wall spent much of the 1980s sprawled in limos and five-star hotels with the biggest rock bands in the world, including Led Zeppelin, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Mötley Crüe, Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Van Halen, Motörhead and more. He was Kerrang! magazine's star writer and the presenter of Monsters of Rock, his own weekly show on Sky TV, and the decade passed in a blur of hard drugs, hot women, and some of the heaviest people your mother definitely would not like. Depicting a world where vague concepts like 'the future' are disdained in favour of nights that last a week and weeks that last forever, Getcha Rocks Off is a rock apocalypse Cider With Roadies, and a more frank and disturbing Apathy for the Devil. It is the kind of book you need to put on your leather jacket to read, open that bottle of Jack and reach for the Charlie. And let the good times roll...

"Everyone from Sir Paul McCartney and Jimmy Page to Queens of the Stone Age now relishes the chance to share a stage with Dave Grohl and his legendary Foo Fighters. The question is: why? Musical depth? Not really. Major success? Well, yes. Despite no longer shifting albums in the same quantity as they did twenty years ago, this band can still fill stadiums the world over (when Dave's not breaking his leg, of course). Long before Kurt Cobain blew his brains out in 1994, Dave Grohl was planning for a life after Nirvana. The unflinching bright sunlight to Cobain's permanent midnight darkness, Grohl had come from a similar broken home to his erstwhile band leader, but came out of the experience differently - brimming with positivity and a shrewd grasp of opportunities in the music industry. Did Grohl merely take the sonic blueprint of Nirvana and embellish it with a more life-affirming pop sheen? Of course he did. Every band in America that sold over a million records in the post-grunge 90s did the same. The difference was that Grohl had real credibility. And he knew it. With exclusive testimony from true insiders (including Krist Novoselic, Grohl's bass-playing partner in Nirvana, ex-girlfirends, record company executives, tour photographers and confidantes), this book is an exploration of the real story behind Grohl and the Foo Fighters - the only serious literary biography of the group and its leader, one of the most famous and critically bulletproof rock figures of the 21st century."--Amazon.com.

In 'The Ace of Spades', Motörhead's most famous song, Lemmy, the born-to-lose, live-to-win frontman of the band sang, 'I don't want to live forever'. Yet as he told his friend of 35 years, former PR and biographer Mick Wall, 'Actually, I want to go the day before forever. To avoid the rush...'. This is his strange but true story. Brutally frank, painfully funny, wincingly sad, and always beautifully told, LEMMY: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY is the story of the only rock'n'roller never to sell his soul for silver and gold, while keeping the devil, as he put it, 'very close to my side'. From school days growing up in North Wales, to first finding fame in the mid-60s with the Rockin' Vicars; from being Jimi Hendrix's personal roadie ('I would score acid for him'), to leading Hawkwind to the top of the charts in 1972 with 'Silver Machine' ('I was fired for taking the wrong drugs'); from forming Motörhead ('I wanted to call the band Bastard but my manager wouldn't let me'), whose iconoclastic album NO SLEEP 'TIL HAMMERSMITH entered the UK charts at No. 1. Based on Mick's original interviews with Lemmy conducted over numerous years, along with the insights of those who knew him best - former band mates, friends, managers, fellow artists and record business insiders - this is an unputdownable story of one of Britain's greatest characters. As Lemmy once said of Wall, 'Mick Wall is one of the few rock writers in the world who can actually write and seems to know anything about rock music. I can and do talk to him for hours - poor bastard.' With the hard part of his journey now over, Lemmy is set to become a legend. LEMMY: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY explains exactly how that came to be.

Lou Reed wrote songs about drugs, squalor, transgressive sexuality, honourable prostitutes, visionary gutter queens and dollar-hustlers. He also wrote some of the most moving love songs of the era, from 'Pale blue eyes' to 'Perfect day'. In his lifetime he was called, variously, the Godfather of Punk, the High Priest of Glam, and all sorts of similarly tremble-tremble sobriquets. The truth is, Lou Reed began where rock left off. Before him, it was about entertainment. After him, rock was literary, dark, and above all, disquietingly honest.

It was supposed to be Lola Wright's dream trip --a "safe" erotic cruise with her fiance culminating in a sweet marriage at sea. Now it's a nightmare. Not only has her jerk fiance jilted her at the last minute, he's also wiped her out, leaving her with no way to pay the charges he's run up on board. Unless...The ship's hotter-than-hot Greek captain, Captain Skandalis, has a unique solution. Lola can work off her debt by giving herself to him in service for the duration of the trip. She will relinquish all control, shedding every inhibition as he presents her with fantasy after sensual fantasy. Losing herself to forbidden desire wasn't in Lola's carefully drawn-up game plan, but once she discovers how sweet it can be to have a man sail her beyond all boundaries of pleasure, there's no turning back...