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Your favourite music biography?

punkjazzben

punkjazzben

Jun 26, 2008
1,711
206
Australia
#1
The two music biographies/histories I have enjoyed the most are 'Dream Brother' by David Browne and 'The Cello Suites' by Eric Siblin. Dream Brother is the story of both Tim and Jeff Buckley, and The Cello Suites is a combination of the biographies of J S Bach and Pablo Casals.

What are your favourite musician biographies? Any must-reads?
 
#11
Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, the two part Peter Guralnick biography of Elvis Presley is a really good read. Guralnick is a very strong writer - it would work well as a work of fiction. Amazing that it is based on an actual events and a real human.

Dylan's Chronicles was good.

My favorite music autobiography is How Bluegrass Destroyed My Life and Vampire Vultures by John Fahey. Hard to parse out the real from the unreal but such is life.
 
#13
I used to read a lot of music biographies, but not so much these days. A few standouts that I recall:

Miles Davis autobiography

Hammer of the Gods (Led Zep)

Grateful Dead biography (I forget the name of it)

All the above will make you lose respect for the artists, especially Miles, but they are interesting reads.
 
#16
George Jones autobigraphy - I Lived to Tell It All. No mater what page you flip it open to it's a hilarious drinking story. "Well, there was this one time I git to drinkin'..."

At one point he lived in in his Cadillac with a life size cutout of Hank Williams. He drank so much that he developed multiple personalities with different voices. One was Old Man that talked like Gabby Hayes and another was a duck named Dee-Doodle the Duck that quacked/talked like Donald Duck. He would get so drunk the two would argue with each other and the Hank Williams cutout. He once did a gig so plastered he sang the entire night as Dee-Doodle the Duck.

He claims later in life that the mafia took out a giant life insurance policy on him and then would kidnap him and force him to do massive amounts of cocaine for days on end so he would OD. But George had such a high tolerance that he couldn't die.
 
#17
+1's for "Miles" autobiography and "Beneath the Underdog". Both great reads with cool information and wonderfully controlled BS.
Schindler's biography of Beethoven is quite good, they were personal friends.
Stafford's bio of Charles Ives is informative, if you're a fan of Ives' music.
And "Pops" the bio of Louis Armstrong is very good too.
 
#18
Bassist4Eris said:
+1 to the Miles and Bruford books.

Don't miss Mingus' "Beneath The Underdog", an autobiography told in novel form.

"The Real Frank Zappa Book" is wildly entertaining and a quick read.
Click to expand...

Read all those (well, except Bruford's ...which has been on my radar since it's release).
Recently read the Zappa book you mentioned-
On a tangent, ex-Mother, ex-Turtle Howard Kaylan's recent bio is even better, IMO. Wildly entertaining.
 

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