Popular music

Peter Doherty's is the last of the great rock 'n' roll stories. As an icon, he is on par with the early Rolling Stones and Sid Vicious - bad boy and public enemy. To his devoted fans, he is a cult hero, a modern-day Rimbaud. Musically, there is no doubt he has defined the past twenty years of Bri...

I say I love my people and mean there is a language that is only ours, and within that language there is shelter. But when I speak that language in the world, I know how eager the world might be to bend it to its own desires. From breakout writer and peerless new voice Hanif Abdurraqib, comes a s...

I say I love my people and mean there is a language that is only ours, and within that language there is shelter. But when I speak that language in the world, I know how eager the world might be to bend it to its own desires. From breakout writer and peerless new voice Hanif Abdurraqib, comes a s...

The son of a British army sergeant-major and Italian mother, Brian Johnson grew up in Dunston, Tyne and Wear, as it emerged from the shadow of the Second World War. Then he saw Little Richard on the BBC and it changed the course of his life. The choirboy and cub scout was going to be singer. For ...

Without the Sex Pistols there would be no punk. And without Steve Jones there would be no Sex Pistols. It was Steve who formed Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols, the band that eventually went on to become the Sex Pistols, with his schoolmate Paul Cook and who was its original leader. As the world c...

At just 15, Tana Douglas ran away to the circus that was rock 'n' roll in the 1970s, taking a job with a young and upcoming band called AC/DC. While still a teenager she headed to the UK and later the US to work for a who's who of bands and artists. Life on the road was exhilarating, hard work, o...

If you are one of the many millions who watched the Oscar-winning film Bohemian Rhapsody you may suppose that Mary Austin was the love of Freddie Mercury's life, the woman who he could never quite let go of. The truth is more complicated. Respected biographer and music journalist, Lesley-Ann Jone...

In this extraordinary book, with unparalleled candour, Paul McCartney recounts his life and art through the prism of 154 songs from all stages of his career - from his earliest boyhood compositions through the legendary decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his solo albums to the present. Arranged ...

'Poetry was my place, my little clearing in the forest, where I could quietly put everything I was holding. I'm not sure what gave me the courage to open up that space to you, but here I am, doing it.' 'The Magic Border' is the debut book from Mercury Prize-winning musician and poet Arlo Parks, c...

Born in rural Georgia in 1947, Jayne moved to New York and became part of the 60s art scene surrounding Andy Warhol's Factory. Jayne's story follows the arc of LGBT liberation in the US - she came of age living hand-to-mouth, faced off against police at Stonewall and came out as a trans woman whi...