How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll is an alternative history of American music that, instead of recycling the familiar cliches of jazz and rock, looks at what people were playing, hearing and dancing to over the course of the 20th century, using a wealth of original research, curious quotations, and an irreverent fascination with the oft-despised commercial mainstream.

Out of Our Heads is the Rare Book That is Unafraid to celebrate rock'n' roll's druggy good times-before the uptight killjoys and self-righteous reformists came along and spoiled the party.

Hundreds of books have been written about The Beatles. Over the last half century, their story has been mythologized and de-mythologized and presented by biographers and journalists as history. Yet many of these works do not strictly qualify as history and the story of how the Beatles' mythology continues to be told has been largely ignored. This book examines the band's historiography, exploring the four major narratives that have developed over time: The semi-whitewashed "Fab Four" account, the acrimonious breakup-era Lennon Remembers version, the biased "Shout!" narrative in the wake of John Lennon's murder, and the current Mark Lewisohn orthodoxy. Drawing on the most influential primary and secondary sources, Beatles history is analyzed using historical methods.

The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one critic called it "musical riots put to a switchblade beat"--but if it generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it signify? As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler shows, in particular, how rock's "switchblade beat" opened up wide fissures in American society along the fault-lines of family, sexuality, and race. For instance, the birth of rock coincided with the Civil Rights movement and brought "race music" into many white homes for the first time. Elvis freely credited blacks with originating the music he sang and some of the great early rockers were African American, most notably, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. In addition, rock celebrated romance and sex, rattled the reticent by pushing sexuality into the public arena, and mocked deferred gratification and the obsession with work of men in gray flannel suits. And it delighted in the separate world of the teenager and deepened the divide between the generations, helping teenagers differentiate themselves from others. Altschuler includes vivid biographical sketches of the great rock 'n rollers, including Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly--plus their white-bread doppelgangers such as Pat Boone. Rock 'n roll seemed to be everywhere during the decade, exhilarating, influential, and an outrage to those Americans intent on wishing away all forms of dissent and conflict. As vibrant as the music itself, All Shook Up reveals how rock 'n roll challenged and changed American culture and laid the foundation for the social upheaval of the sixties.

By the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet a mere ten years earlier, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become “white”? Just around Midnight reveals the interplay of popular music and racial thought that was responsible for this shift within the music industry and in the minds of fans. Rooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. In the 1960s, however, rock and roll gave way to rock: a new musical ideal regarded as more serious, more artistic—and the province of white musicians. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, Jack Hamilton underscores how ideas of “authenticity” have blinded us to rock’s inextricably interracial artistic enterprise. According to the standard storyline, the authentic white musician was guided by an individual creative vision, whereas black musicians were deemed authentic only when they stayed true to black tradition. Serious rock became white because only white musicians could be original without being accused of betraying their race. Juxtaposing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and many others, Hamilton challenges the racial categories that oversimplified the sixties revolution and provides a deeper appreciation of the twists and turns that kept the music alive.

"From the hoodoo-inspired sounds of Elvis Presley to the Eastern odysseys of George Harrison, from the dark dalliances of Led Zeppelin to the Masonic imagery of today's hip-hop scene, the occult has long breathed life into rock and hip-hop--and, indeed, esoteric and supernatural traditions are a key ingredient behind the emergence and development of rock and roll ... [and in this book] writer and critic Peter Bebergal illuminates this web of influences"--Amazon.com.

Up to the current day, matters of sexual morality—including contraception, abortion, premarital sex, and gay marriage—have polarized the Catholic Church. In the wake of the turmoil of the 1960s, when liberal theologians challenged the Church’s traditional views on the subject, a schism has opened. Much of the world, and many Catholics themselves, believe that the views of each camp are clear and well defined. As Mark Judge reveals in this trenchant and illuminating defense of the teachings of his Church, this is far from the case. Without sensationalism, Judge is candid here about his personal journey from the playgrounds of the sexual revolution to his eventual belief in the need to combine sexuality with love and commitment to another person, not as an end in itself but rather as a particularly direct means of opening oneself up to God’s love. He also sees support for the Christian theology on love in a seemingly unlikely place: rock music. He delves into the Church’s teachings on sexual matters, going back to the time of Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint John of the Cross, and Pope John Paul II while also acquainting us with more contemporary voices from within the Church—as well as from the pop charts.

A founding member of the bands Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the Hollies shares the story of his life from his youth in post-war England through his creative relationship with Joni Mitchell and his career as a solo musician and political activist

The Beatles are widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history and their career has been the subject of many biographies. Yet the band's historical significance has not received sustained academic treatment to date. In The Beatles' Reception in the 1960s, Kenneth L. Campbell uses the Beatles as a lens through which to explore the sweeping, panoramic history of the social, cultural and political transformations that occurred in the 1960s. It draws on audience reception theory and untapped primary source material, including student newspapers, to understand how listeners would have interpreted the Beatles' songs and albums not only in Britain and the United States, but also globally. Taking a year-by-year approach, each chapter analyses the external influences the Beatles absorbed, consciously or unconsciously, from the culture surrounding them. Some key topics include race relations, gender dynamics, political and cultural upheavals, the Vietnam War and the evolution of rock music and popular culture. The book will also address the resurgence of the Beatles' popularity in the 1980s, as well as the relevance of The Beatles' ideals of revolutionary change to our present day. This is essential reading for anyone looking for an accessible yet rigorous study of the historical relevance of the Beatles in a crucial decade of social change.

Once you're dead, you're made for life. --Jimi Hendrix Hendrix. Janis. Morrison. Elvis. Lennon. Cobain. Garcia. Their reckless brilliance held the key to their self-destruction. Their deaths had much in common--and, surprisingly, so did their lives. From lonely childhoods marred by loss to groundbreaking music and turbulent careers that ended tragically and suspiciously, David Comfort explodes the myths as he probes: • The sinister roles of Hendrix's manager and girlfriend in his death and subsequent cover-up • The bizarre odyssey of Jim Morrison's corpse • Why Kurt Cobain was worth more dead than alive to Courtney Love • The twisted motives that caused John Lennon to sail through the Devil's Triangle to Bermuda--nearly going down in a storm--shortly before he was fatally shot • The crippling disease and "miracle" drug that drove Elvis to suicide Charismatic and gifted, but also isolated and conflicted, these are not the rock icons you thought you knew. Here are their larger-than-life stories of turmoil and excess that led to their early deaths and ultimate immortality. It's a wild ride to the other side of fame. "Fame is the soul eater." --Jerry Garcia "Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground." --John Lennon Includes Rare Photos David Comfort is the author of three bestselling nonfiction books. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, including Eclectic Literary Forum, Pacific Review, Coe Review, and Belletrist Review. He has been the recipient of several literary prizes and a finalist for such prestigious awards as the Nelson Algren Award and America's Best. A former rock musician, he has spent over 30 years studying rock music, particularly the revolutionary and fatalistic pioneers of the 1960s. He lives in Santa Rosa, California.