Examines the historical, social, and business reasons for the variety of pop musical forms fueled by the San Francisco music scene. Looks at satellite factors to the music such as radio, poster art, nightclubs, and studios. Features individual essays on the more than 100 significant recording bands to have emerged from the Bay Area.

San Francisco’s rich and unique cultural history since its time as a gold rush frontier town has long made it a bastion of forward thinking and freedom of expression. It makes perfect sense, then, that both it and the surrounding Bay Area should prove to be a crucible for some of the most enduring and influential music of the rock and roll era. From the heady days of Haight-Ashbury in the ’60s to today, San Francisco and the Bay Area have provided a distinctive soundtrack to the American experience that has often been confrontational, controversial, enlightening, and always entertaining. Perhaps best known for the '60s psychedelic scene which included the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, the Steve Miller Band, Sly & the Family Stone, and Janis Joplin, the Bay Area's rock and roll history twists and turns like Lombard Street itself. The first wave San Francisco punks wrought the Avengers and Dead Kennedys; punk later gripped the East Bay, giving us Green Day and Rancid. From the folk and blues eras through the chart-topping sounds of Journey and Huey Lewis & the News. The rock equivalent of Manifest Destiny carried wave upon wave of young musicians in search of fame, fortune and the great lost chord to Golden Gate City. San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area have collectively produced countless key figures in rock and roll, from musicians to journalists to entrepreneurs. The modern concept of the vast outdoor rock festival took root in and around San Francisco. The Bay Area is also where music history happened to artists from almost everywhere else: San Francisco is where the Beatles played their final concert and the Sex Pistols fell apart; where the Clash recorded much of their second album; where a drug-addled Keith Moon passed out during a concert by the Who only to be replaced behind the drum kit by an eager fan. Rock and roll is baked into the Bay Area’s culture and story to this day. A guide to the places that shaped the local scene and world-famous sound, the Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area will take you to where music makers lived, rocked, performed, recorded, met, broke up, and much, much more.

Get the real skinny on the Bay Area's most illustrious rock and-roll, jazz, and blues musicians and their favorite digs from the one cat who should know—the San Francisco Chronicle's longtime music critic Joel Selvin. Here are the stories, legends, and secrets behind the clubs, recording studios, famous homes, and final resting places of dozens of music greats, from Jimi Hendrix to Linda Ronstadt. With rare archival photographs of pivotal events and places, this lively compendium will captivate both resident and visiting music fans.

“For every successful local group that ever packed the Fillmore, Avalon, or Winterland Ballrooms, there were dozens of overlooked, and much better, groups that also hailed from the City by the Bay.” Explore the primitive, rocking rhythm and blues of the fifties, the garage and psych of the sixties, and the seventies punk and new wave scenes with this definitive history of an unsung era. Spanning rock & roll’s first three decades, these were the bands left out of the history books. This second installment in the Scene History Series is essential reading for music history nuts and record collectors, and mandatory for all Bay Area devotees.

The diverse boulders and cliffs spread throughout the greater Bay Area provide the local climber with a bounty of climbing opportunity. This thoroughly researched 8th edition of Bay Area Rock introduces a surprising number of new climbs, boulders and top ropes, all within a two hour drive of San Francisco.

Rock and roll will never die! Experience the music of the late 1970's San Francisco Bay Area concert scene and the artists who rocked its famous venues like Winterland, The Cow Palace, and The Oakland Coliseum. More than 150 never-before-seen photos of legendary classic rock and roll bands including Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Alice Cooper, Sammy Hagar, and many others. Feel the rush of the concerts, bands, and venues that made this era unforgettable. Discover or re-live this incredible time through my extensive collection of ticket stubs, backstage passes, setlists, and other memorabilia. I have always been considered a good storyteller, and photographing rock concerts started as a hobby but quickly became a passion for me. I have used my skills and actual concert photographs to put you in the front row with me for the jaw-dropping days of classic rock in San Francisco. Many rock and roll fans wish they were at these shows-I WAS THERE! and now you can be, too. -Dave Munoz

From the Allman Brothers Band to Frank Zappa, and through the interweaving lives of Bill Graham, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, and Carlos Santana, author John Glatt chronicles the story of the 1960s’ rock music Colossus that stood astride the East and West Coasts—Graham’s twin temples of rock, the Fillmore East and Fillmore West.