Search Results: Authors starting with T from DAVID DONALDSON

Review
A superbly ironic title for a rock history with more than its fair share of sadness. Based on candid interviews with Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane and Peter Frampton, the switchback ups and downs of the lives and careers of these three totally original and consummately professional musicians are covered with humour, pathos and incredible detail. Kenney Jones, Jim Leverton and other longtime sidekicks fill out the picture.The two German authors write in impeccable English about their British rock heroes, demonstrating their encyclopaedic knowledge of the sixties-to-eighties band scene, its myriad personnel changes, and its recordings both famous and obscure. It's like a combination of a Pete Frame family tree expressed as text, interleaved with Dave Marsh reviews of every album produced by the Marriott/Lane/Frampton axis.The story covers the three main protagonists' careers from their childhoods to the time of writing (mid 1990s), and includes not only the high and happy times of The Small Faces,… Read More

Sean Tyla has always had a reputation for being, to put it mildly, plain speaking. In his autobiography he brings this attitude to his writing in a book that tell the story of the life of a musician trying to make a living in the 1970s. The story starts with his entry into the business in 1970 as a jobbing songwriter for Lionel Bart, through to the formation of ace pub rockers Ducks Deluxe and onto The Tyla Gang. Tyla himself made the cover of Le Monde, who dubbed him Le nouveau Christ and received a gold disc in Germany. In a sense the book is about what might have been. Show Tyla a golden opportunity and he will blow it! This is the man who turned down an offer to join Motorhead, passed on producing the Sex Pistols and signed for Stiff Records rather than Warner Bros. This is partly what makes the story so fascinating. There are plenty of books about 1970s excess - of chauffeur-driven limos, soulless stadiums and endless supplies of cocaine. For Tyla it was mainly unreliable tour vans, smoky pubs… Read More