Barry Miles

Barry Miles knew Frank Zappa intimately and was present at the recording of some of his most important albums. This sparkling biography brings the Zappa the musician and composer, Zappa the controversialist and Zappa the family man (despite his love of groupies, he was married for more than 30 years) together for the first time. Barry Miles biography follows Zappa from his sickly Italian-American childhood in the 1940s (when his father, Frank senior, worked for the US military and was used to test the efficacy of new biological warfare agents) to his death from cancer in the 1990s. Miles shows how Zappas goal had been to become a classical composer, until he realised that he would starve to death pursuing this ambition in post-war America. In an effort to make music people would actually listen to, in the mid-1960s he joined a noisy new band called The Mothers of Invention. Before long, Zappa had taken over as singer, song writer and lead guitarist and together they exploded on to the San Francisco freak scene. Following the release of recordings such as Freak Out, Absolutely Free, Were Only In It For the Money and Hot Rats, Zappas reputation in the United States and in Europe, especially the UK, Germany and Holland, took off. When the Berlin wall fell, Frank was surprised to learn that his extravagant music embodied sixties liberty for a generation of dissidents (including Vaclav Havel, who invited Zappa to be his minister for culture). Frank Zappa is an authoritative and hugely enjoyable portrait of a singular man and a vivid evocation of the West Coast scene.

Tells the story of London and New York during the seventies, the decade that is often written off as one long hangover after the exuberance of the sixties. This title challenges modern perceptions of the decade with anecdotes featuring a cast of characters, from Allen Ginsberg to Richard Hell, Leonard Cohen to Brian Eno.

Edición en rústica y con un formato menor el gran libro de los “hippies”.

London has long been a magnet for aspiring artists and writers, musicians and fashion designers seeking inspiration and success. In London Calling, Barry Miles explores the counter-culture - creative, avant garde, permissive, anarchic - that sprang up in this great city in the decades following the Second World War. Here are the heady post-war days when suddenly everything seemed possible, the jazz bars and clubs of the fifties, the teddy boys and the Angry Young Men, Francis Bacon and the legendary Colony Club, the 1960s and the Summer of Love, the rise of punk and the early days of the YBAs. The vitality and excitement of this time and years of change - and the sheer creative energy in the throbbing heart of London - leap off the pages of this evocative and original book.

In 1964, North America had a second revolution but this time we welcomed the British! That year, four mop-tops known as The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, ushering in a new era of British music, film, fashion, and art. This richly illustrated and informative volume celebrates the pivotal cultural moment when the United States took on a British accent. The huge influx of talent from across the pond included not only the The Beatles, but also The Dave Clark Five, The Kinks, The Moody Blues, Them (and Van Morrison), The Yardbirds, The Who, and, of course, The Rolling Stones. But the invasion wasn't only musical: Peter O'Toole, Julie Andrews, Sean Connery, and Michael Caine made a splash in Hollywood, while films like Goldfinger, Alfie, and What's New, Pussycat? topped box-office charts. The Avengers became cult TV, and Carnaby Street defined hip style, turning Mary Quant, Twiggy, and Jean Shrimpton into fashion icons. Filled with photographs that capture one of the most exciting artistic periods in recent history, this is an evocative, irresistible look back.

Refreshingly candid and richly illustrated this new edition of the 1960s classic Soho Night & Day is an authentic and very personal portrait of a special time and place Candid shots of Soho legends like Muriel Belcher Gaston Berlemont Madame Floris and more

The first full-length authorised biography of Paul McCartney. Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews and complete access to McCartney's own archives, this is as near as we will come to McCartneyin his own words. It's the private life of a man made public propertyby the age of 21. It's the trajectory of the most popular pop group in history, from the beginnings to break-up. It's the story of Swinging London in the 60s with Paul McCartney at the very centre of it all. It's music, drugs, women, money, madness, the Maharishi, love, peace and bitterness: its the Beatles from beginning to end as never told before.

Barry Milles se adentra en las múltiples capas que conforman la perpecia vital de un autor irreverente y descanado, que se convirtió en personaje mítico gracias a una obra teñida de autobiografismo. Escrita con rigor y respeto, Charles Bukowsky resulta una guia inapreciable de quien marco buena parte de la cultura norteamericana de los ultimos cincuenta años del siglo XX.

El legendario Barry Miles, miembro del círculo íntimo de los Beatles en los años sesenta, ofrece en este libro una cronología asombrosamente detallada de las actuaciones, los locales, los discos, las declaraciones y las fechas memorables de la inmortal banda de Liverpool. El autor muestra la historia de los cuatro integrantes del grupo sin retoques ni maquillajes, sin eludir los momentos dificiles, las peleas y los temas de sexo y drogas, pero sin olvidar tampoco sus logros personales. Este diario no se limita a los diez años de existencia oficial del grupo, sino que se extiende durante treinta años (desde el nacimiento de sus miembros) y revela, ademas, numerosos hechos poco o nada divulgados. Son pocos los especialistas que conocen la historia de los Beatles tanto como Miles, y ninguno de ellos ha tenido un acceso tan personal a su trayectoria y su vida intima. Mucho mas que una simple cronologia, este excelente libro es la cronica verdadera del grupo mas legendario y universal de la musica pop, y su historia es descrita aqui tal y como sucedio, con nuevos comentarios, datos y hechos autenticos. Ademas, el libro incluye numerosas fotografias desconocidas o poco difundidas de los componentes de la banda.

Barry Miles, testimonio y protagonista de excepción a un tiempo, centra su relato en el período que transcurre entre 1965 y 1971, para desgranar la crónica pormenorizada de todo cuanto aconteció en la escena politica y artistica de aquellos maravillosos años, sin por ello descuidar el analisis de algunas de las aportaciones igualmente decisivas de los pensadores, psiquiatras, gurus, chamanes, antropolgos y otras preclaras mentes de la epoca, con especial atencion al que devino el lenguaje universal de toda la generacion, la musica rock. La voz de toda una generacion, en las propias palabras de sus mas significados y añorados lideres, vuelve a cobrar toda su vitalidad y su vigencia en este acido viaje por los eventos y pronunciamientos fundacionales del movimiento. Un paseo psicodelico convenientemente aderezado con reproducciones de publicaciones como International Times y Rolling Stone, posters y otras obras de carteleria de la epoca, portadas de discos miticos y otros tantos documentos graficos de gran valor para contextualizar y visualizar el mundo en el que se desarrollo esta inolvidable aventura.

Les années 1970 ont été l’âge des extrêmes, entre sexe, drogue et bien-sûr, rocknroll. Barry Miles raconte ici ses rencontres, à New York et à Londres, avec les légendes des années 1970 et montre à q

Au début des années 1960, Barry Miles était un étudiant en art ; à la fin il dirigeait le label Zapple des Beatles, vivant dans le légendaire Chelsea Hotel de New York. Voici le récit de ce qui s’est

Authoritative biography of cult writer and author of NAKED LUNCH, William Burroughs (1914-1997).It has been 50 years since Norman Mailer asserted, I think that William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius. This assessment holds true today. No-one since then has taken such risks in their writing, developed such individual radical political ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media - Burroughs has written novels, memoirs, technical manuals and poetry, he has painted, made collages, taken thousands of photographs, made visual scrapbooks, produced hundreds of hours of experimental tapes, acted in movies and recorded more CDs than most rock groups.Made a cult figure by the publication of NAKED LUNCH, Burroughs was a mentor to the 1960s youth culture. Underground papers referred to him as Uncle Bill and he ranked alongside Bob Dylan and the Beatles, Buckminster Fuller and R.D. Laing as one of the gurus of the youth movement who might just have the secret of the universe.Based upon extensive research, this biography paints a new portrait of Burroughs, making him real to the reader and showing how he was perceived by his contemporaries in all his guises - from icily distant to voluble drunk. It shows how his writing was very much influenced by his life situation and by the people he met on his travels around America and Europe. He was, beneath it all, a man torn by emotions: his guilt at not visiting his doting mother; his despair at not responding to reconciliation attempts from his father; his distance from his brother; the huge void that separated him from his son; and above all his killing of his wife, Joan Vollmer.

Fear makes me a writer, fear and a lack of confidenceCharles Bukowski chronicled the seedy underside of the city in which he spent most of his life, Los Angeles. His heroes were the panhandlers and hustlers, the drunks and the hookers, his beat the racetracks and strip joints and his inspiration a series of dead-end jobs in warehouses, offices and factories. It was in the evenings that he would put on a classical record, open a beer and begin to type...Brought up by a violent father, Bukowski suffered childhood beatings before developing horrific acne and withdrawing into a moody adolescence. Much of his young life epitomised the style of the Beat generation - riding Greyhound buses, bumming around and drinking himself into a stupor. During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office, Factotum, Women and Pulp. His novels sold millions of copies worldwide in dozens of languages.In this definitive biography Barry Miles, celebrated author of Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats, turns his attention to the exploits of this hard-drinking, belligerent wild man of literature.

The Beats. a title that Jack Kerouac coined to define the exhausted exaltation of a generation, produced a body of works infected with a new energy. Their spontaneous, often-unedited style epitomised their own era and their famed close-knit literary community continues to inspire writers today.Barry Miles, friend and biographerof Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, was there , part of the Beat Vibe. here he gathers together some of the most influential as well as the most overlooked writers of the era. He covers the writings from The Original Beats (New York 1944-53): The San Francisco Scene (1954-57) and The Second Wave (New York 1958-60) including works from Gregory Corso, John Clellon Holmes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Frank OHara, Diane di Prima and Alexander Trocchi to the king of the Beats Himself, Jack Kerouac.The result is a fascinating compendium that recaptures the unique but varied voices of the Beat generation..