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Mark Blake

Pink Floyd Shine On : The Definitive Oral History

The definitive oral history of Pink Floyd as told by friends, associates, family members and the band themselves through exclusive, never before published interviews. Bestselling music author Mark Blake has been an associate and collaborator of Pink Floyd for over thirty years. Shine On takes on the behemoth task of capturing the most comprehensive history of the band ever compiled, drawing on huge amounts of new, archive and unpublished interview material with Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright.

No other writer has interviewed the members of Pink Floyd as often nor as thoroughly, which is candidly apparent in this textured, gripping and consistently surprising biography. For the first time, the band's story is told as an oral history with each chapter presented through the words of the band, their friends, contemporaries and supporting musicians. The accessible structure and high level of detail means that the narrative is both approachable to casual readers and magnetic to the committed.

Shine On is comprised of a significant amount of previously unpublished material, including a rare interview with Rosemary Breen lamenting that her younger brother Roger, aka Syd Barrett, should have never become a musician as well as exclusive new interviews with Pink Floyd's Nick Mason and Guy Pratt, reflecting on their enduring legacy and rather more complicated recent twists and turns in the bands story. Shine on is a forensic retelling of one of the most turbulent and enduring groups in rock music history, a complex history that only someone as skilled and insightful as Blake can navigate.

Bob Stanley

The Shadows: The Definitive Story

The first definitive biography of one of the most influential British groups of all time. Told by lifelong fan and bestselling, critically acclaimed music historian Bob Stanley, this is the story of how a group of working-class boys from Newcastle Upon Tyne became the biggest act in the UK before the Beatle revolution of 1963.

Scoring 34 hit singles under their own name, The Shadows landed a further 35 hits alongside Cliff Richard who – along with other surviving members – has spoken exclusively to Bob for the book.

With a legion of famous fans from David Gilmour to Pete Townshend, ‘The Shadows’ aims to cement the group’s legacy as one of the most significant and commercially successful British acts in their own right

Tom Doyle

Ringo : A Fab Life

Ringo Starr’s eventful and remarkable life laid bare in a first-of-its-kind mosaic biography of one of the greatest musicians of all time. Often overshadowed by his former bandmates, Starr’s remarkable story is no less compelling. ‘Ringo: A Fab Life’ highlights a life so jaw-droppingly eventful that one is left wondering how he also had time to become one of the best musicians on the planet.

Through an episodic, mosaic format critically acclaimed author Tom Doyle takes readers through the ride of a lifetime, from Starr’s brushes with death as a child bought up in poverty, through to dizzying heights of fame and success with The Beatles and beyond. By examining pivotal moments, anecdotes and cautionary tales, we see Starr soar as part of the biggest band in the world - and then try and cope with life outside of it: a film career, misadventures with friends, children’s TV narrator, furniture designer, marriage to a Bond girl, before eventually finding peace and sobriety as one of the elder statesmen of rock. So much more than another Beatles related biography, we follow Starr’s career far beyond the rose-tinted sixties, through the various addictions and career left turns in the seventies and eighties, before reaching the 1990’s, his legacy and reputation intact.

The life of Richard Starkey is long overdue a proper inspection and this book - with exclusive new interviews conducted by Doyle with, amongst others, Starr himself - provides a never-before-seen level of detail that will delight hardcore fans and curious readers alike. Ringo: A Fab Life - hilarious, moving, insightful and constantly surprising - is the definitive account of one of the greatest living musicians and the uncontested best drummer in The Beatles.

Marco Pirroni

Your Money Or Your Life

The long-overdue memoir from Adam Ant’s right-hand man Marco Pirroni. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, as punk turned to new wave to new romantic to post-punk to pop, Marco Pirroni was right there front and centre and at the heart of it all. He played guitar with the first incarnation of Siouxsie and the Banshees and was in the line-up for their debut gig at the 100 Club in 1976 with future Sex Pistol Sid Vicious on drums.

Alongside Adam, Marco was the musical architect of the Antmusic phenomenon, co-writing the two classic number one singles ‘Prince Charming’ and the Ivor Novello-winning ‘Stand and Deliver’ and the chart-topping albums Kings of the Wild Frontier and Prince Charming. To date, he has sold more than 20 million records. Your Money or Your Life is Pirroni’s long-overdue and much-anticipated account of his time amidst the maelstrom of Antmania.

It chronicles the ten-year period in Pirroni’s life which ends in March 1982, when Adam and the Ants split up amongst heartbreak and acrimony. Opinionated, acerbic and funny, Your Money or Your Life is one of the unforgettable music stories of the 1970s and 1980s.

Rodge Glass

As One: Remaking Suede

The official, intimate and candid biography charting the second act of Suede during their remarkable second act. This year will mark thirty-three years since Suede released their debut eponymous album and sixteen since their glorious and unexpected comeback in 2010. Their two most recent albums - Autofiction in 2022 and Antidepressants in 2025 - both reached number two in the UK charts.

Based on exclusive and extensive interviews with the band, their family and friends, As One is an intimate and candid biography of one of the UK’s biggest band’s during the unlikely second act of a career that spans four decades. It is a book that studies the band from close up and afar, written by award-winning author Rodge Glass, who has been granted unprecedented access to the members at home, on stage, backstage, in the studio, rehearsing and promoting over the past three years. It is an honest, long-term interrogation of what it is really like to be in Suede.

The book asks difficult questions about how great bands survive and thrive over time, many years after their first flush of success. How do you build back up from nothing? How do you reconnect with your audience, while avoiding simply rehashing old ideas? How do relationships in a band change with time? How do you remake Suede?

Nige Tassell

Truly Gifted Kids: A Book About A Band Called Prefab Sprout

A celebration of a much-cherished pop group and a long-overdue companion to their unique musical output. Rolling Stone called him ‘the last pop genius’, while Richard Osman claimed he is ‘the most unfairly overlooked lyricist of his generation’. Paddy McAloon is undoubtedly one of the great songwriters of the last half-century.

As the leader of Prefab Sprout, he’s overseen ten heavily praised albums, including the classic Steve McQueen, along with a trail of hit singles, among them ‘When Love Breaks Down’ and ‘The King of Rock ’n’ Roll’. His songs have been sung by Kylie and Cher. Others were written for Madonna, Sinatra and Streisand.

But despite the commercial success and abundant critical acclaim, McAloon remains an enigmatic figure within the bright, brash world of pop. The semi-reclusive Prefab Sprout have seldom followed paths trod by others. They rarely toured.

They took their time to make records. They always danced to their own drum. A lifelong fan of the band, acclaimed writer Nige Tassell attempts to illuminate the mystery, to uncloak the enigma.

Truly Gifted Kids is the deepest dive ever made into McAloon’s craft, exploring the motivations and methods of a man who, 13 years since the band’s last album, still obsessively marries melody to words on a daily basis, in the process building up an enormous stockpile of songs that no one will hear. Occasionally esoteric and freeform, and always original, Truly Gifted Kids pulls together stories, interviews, analysis, history and travelogue to fashion a fulsome portrait of the band, with its chief creative force at the very centre. During his investigations, Tassell both acts as an ad-hoc roadie for solo Sprout Martin McAloon and goes undercover in search of pop music’s most famous motorbike.

At its beating, romantic heart, Truly Gifted Kids is a celebration of a much-cherished pop group, a long-overdue companion to their wonderful music.

Debsey Wykes

Teenage Daydream : We Are The Girls Who Play In A Band

An evocative coming of age story from one of the UK’s first ever female post-punk musicians. Debsey Wykes was the bass playing singer in the first all girl punk group Dolly Mixture. Thrown into the musky, misogynistic, male dominated world of the UK music industry in the late 1970s, they enjoyed unlikely #1 success alongside Captain Sensible of The Damned on1982’s even unlikelier cover version of ‘Happy Talk’, whilst fame and success on their own individual terms alluded them.

Debsey went onto greater prominence with Saint Etienne with who she has performed since 1992, whilst in 2025, desirable Dolly Mixture reissues sell out around the world as quickly as they are printed. Featuring a cast of contemporary post-punk heroes – rom Paul Weller and the Jam (their first record label boss) to Madness and the Pogues – Teenage Daydream is a unique coming of age story of youthful ambition, enterprising DIY musical ethics and how an unlikely bunch of school-girl friends ended up on Top of the Pops in home made hula skirts.

Paul Vallely

Live Aid - The Definitive Inside Story

The authoritative, official inside story of 40 years of Live Aid, from Band Aid to todayIn 1985, with £100+ million in his back pocket from Live Aid – the greatest rock concert the world had ever seen – Bob Geldof took a trip across Africa to decide how the money should be spent. He asked Paul Vallely to accompany him. Over the next four decades Vallely became one of Geldof’s closest advisers – travelling with him to meet the world’s top rock stars and politicians.

Here, for the first time, Vallely gives his full eye-witness account of what happened backstage at Live Aid – and Live 8, the biggest collective event in human history. Both of them, watched by more people than saw the moon landing. Vallely reveals for the first time exactly how Geldof reunited the Pink Floyd, drank late night whisky with Margaret Thatcher, witnessed Bob Dylan take singing lessons from Stevie Wonder and met Vladimir Putin on a boat in the Mediterranean.

Why was Bob forced to write a grovelling apology to Bill Clinton? What did Maria Carey say when Geldof told her that her dress was too short? Why did the prime minister of Italy once hide from Bob in a bathroom? Is Bob Geldof a bully or a charmer, saint or a ‘white saviour’, or simply a force of nature? This book reveals all. With a foreword by Sir Bob Geldof this is the authoritative behind-the-scenes guide to four decades which rocked the world.


Mike Joyce

The Drums

The long-awaited memoir from the legendary Smiths drummer.

Throughout his honest and witty reflections, Joyce answers the question he and bassist Andy Rourke used to often ask each other: “Where did it all go right?”

Joyce articulates humour, honesty and genuine humility, whilst retaining an acute awareness of how much people already know about his career. This focused his intention of conveying what it felt like to be in one of the most influential groups of all time. He tells us what it meant for that boy from the parochial suburbs of Fallowfield to be told he had a number one record.

‘Mike Joyce – The Drums’ (a credit that all Smiths fans will recognise) finally gives us the perspective from the self-confessed biggest Smiths fan in the world: some lad who plays the drums.


Graeme Thomson

In Another World; The Four Seasons Of Talk Talk

An elegant, erudite and insightful study of a unique and exceptional group, In Another World explores the full creative lifespan of Talk Talk and Mark Hollis while focusing on four remarkable records: The Colour of Spring, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, alongside Hollis’s eponymous solo album, released in 1998.

A quartet of timeless, uncategorisable masterpieces, these works grow in stature with each passing year. Separately, each one is a towering achievement in its own right. Taken together, they become a self-contained universe sculpted in sound.

In Another World mixes close critical analysis of the music, its recurring themes, prevailing moods, unique qualities and ever-growing influence, with informed artist biography, personal reflection, and a vivid reconstruction of the painstaking working methodologies from which these albums emerged.

The book draws on scores of in-depth interviews with original band members and many of the core group of musicians, producers and engineers who helped create the music, as well as record label executives, friends and admiring fellow artists.

Lyrical and impressionistic, engaging and revelatory, the result is a deep and informed immersion in a singular musical world which has fascinated listeners for more than three decades.

Steve Mason

Failure Is Always An Option : Lo-Fi Adventures With The Beta Band

The long awaited autobiography from the musical maverick, polymath and Beta Band front man.

Formed in 1996 the band were quickly embraced in the media as The Next Big Thing and hailed by famous fans from Radiohead to Noel Gallagher. They were an idiosyncratic, self-contained, Dadaist counterpoint to the bloated Britpop corpse as it metastasized in the late ‘90s. The band split in 2004, owing their record label £1.2m.

Since 2004, front man and songwriter Steve Mason has forged a singular, highly lauded solo career, releasing 5 albums under his own name and in April this year the Beta Band reformed to announce their first shows and the UK and U.S in over twenty years. “I see this book as a picture of someone who was lost, with zero confidence and had no idea what he was supposed to do to with his life. But through music, he found something approaching belief in himself which carried him over the next 30 years into all manner of success, failure and adventure.

All the while battling the demons on constant patrol in his mind until, after they nearly finished him off, he focused his full attention on purging them from of aspect of his life. It’s a story of youth culture, failure, success, sadness and redemption.

Scott Rowley

Stay Alive: The Life And Death Of Stuart Adamson

The official biography of former Big Country frontman chronicling his career highs and tragic death. This is the story of Stuart Adamson, co-founder of not one but two seminal Scottish post-punk groups, The Skids and Big Country. But this is a book that is about much more than music. Stay Alive is about alcoholism, abuse, family, fame, addiction, depression and working-class pride.

And along the way there are stories of drug busts, debauchery, flag burning, fist-fights, prison escapes and riots, with a revolving cast of characters from The Clash to the Rolling Stones. For the first time, both of Stuart Adamson’s wives, children and bandmates tell their side of the story: unflinching, funny and brutally honest.

Alexander Larman

Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie

A major new biography of David Bowie on the 10th anniversary of his death, exploring the second half of his career from commerical failures to critical rebirth in the 21st century. When David Bowie died on 10 January 2016, aged 69, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before. Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up.

His Eighties career had been a slow descent into self-parody, his attempts to diversify into hard rock with the had been disastrous, and the art-rock music with which he had made his name was badly out of fashion. The Thin White Duke needed a miracle if he was not only going to be able to assume his rightful place at the top of the rock music firmament, but even to continue his career. And a miracle – a resurrection from the dead – is precisely what happened.

Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie is the first biography of Bowie that tells the full and candid story of what happened in between those two apparently unbridgeable points. With new and exclusive interviews with the musicians, filmmakers and cultural figures who worked with and befriended Bowie throughout this period, Lazarus is the definitive account of the previously overlooked and fascinating latter half of a great and distinguished career. A career that climaxed with his final masterpiece, Blackstar, and the unprecedented theatrical flourish of his departure from the stage as he passed into legend.


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