"I Am Still The Greatest Says Johnny Angelo" is Nik Cohn's hymn to rock as myth, in all its crazed, absurd, and glorious excess. Partly based on the legendary rocker, PJ Proby, Johnny Angelo is the pop star to end all pop stars--narcissistic, mock-heroic, and massively destructive. The novel follows his progress from warped infancy to final messianic explosion. It is a top read, which David Bowie once claimed inspired Ziggy Stardust.

In I Am Still The Greatest Says Johnny Angelo, the protagonist goes from a weird loner kid to a famous rock singer and a murderer. In King Death, Eddie is a performer who administers Death. Both these stories are bizarre and brilliant, fables for our time. Both are written by legendary rock & roll writer Nick Cohn.

Nik Cohn's hymn to rock as myth, in all its crazed, absurd and glorious excess, I'm Still the Greatest Says Johnny Angelo was once the inspiration for David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust. Partly based on the legendary rocker PJ Proby, Johnny Angelo is the pop star to end all pop stars - narcissistic, mock-heroic and massively destructive. The novel follows his progress from warped infancy to final messianic explosion. Cohn writes in such a rich, strange prose style that its responses linger long after the book's initial impact' - Robert Holland'

A sleazy, neon- and grease-stuffed chronicle of London’s rock scene during the pivotal year of 1972—from Marc Bolan to the New York Dolls. Elvis, Eddie, Chuck, Gene, Buddy, and Little Richard were the original rockers. Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, and the Who formed rock’s second coming. As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, the crucial question was who would lead rock ’n’ roll’s third generation? Pin-Ups 1972 tracks the London music scene during this pivotal year, all Soho sleaze, neon, grease, and leather. It begins with the dissolution of the underground and the chart success of Marc Bolan. T. Rextasy formed the backdrop to Lou Reed and Iggy Pop’s British exile and their collaborations with David Bowie. This was the year Bowie became a star and redefined the teenage wasteland. In his wake followed Roxy Music and the New York Dolls, future-tense rock ’n’ roll revivalists. Bowie, Bolan, Iggy, Lou, Roxy, and the Dolls—pin-ups for a new generation.

Exploring the explosion of the Who onto the international music scene, this heavily illustrated book looks at this furious band as an embodiment of pop art. “Ours is music with built-in hatred,” said Pete Townshend. A Band with Built-In Hate pictures the Who from their inception as the Detours in the mid-sixties to the late-seventies, post-Quadrophenia. It is a story of ambition and anger, glamor and grime, viewed through the prism of pop art and the radical leveling of high and low culture that it brought about—a drama that was aggressively performed by the band. Peter Stanfield lays down a path through the British pop revolution, its attitude, and style, as it was uniquely embodied by the Who: first, under the mentorship of arch-mod Peter Meaden, as they learned their trade in the pubs and halls of suburban London; and then with Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, two aspiring filmmakers, at the very center of things in Soho. Guided by contemporary commentators—among them, George Melly, Lawrence Alloway, and most conspicuously Nik Cohn—Stanfield describes a band driven by belligerence and delves into what happened when Townshend, Daltrey, Moon, and Entwistle moved from back-room stages to international arenas, from explosive 45s to expansive concept albums. Above all, he tells of how the Who confronted their lost youth as it was echoed in punk.

Drawing on archival sources and oral testimony, Keith Gildart examines the ways in which popular music played an important role in reflecting and shaping social identities and working-class cultures and - through a focus on rock 'n' roll, rhythm & blues, punk, mod subculture, and glam rock - created a sense of crisis in English society.

The Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music is an incredible and opinionated collection of celebrated cultural critic Dylan Jones's thoughts on more than 350 of the most important artists around the world—alive and dead, big and small, at length and in brief. This A to Z reference is the true musical heir to David Thomson's seminal The New Biographical Dictionary of Popular Film. Jones writes entertainingly about bands that have inspired, bedeviled, and fascinated him over the years.