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Music Books

A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary
(2020 - 25th anniversary reissue of 1995 original)

Search tells me this hasn't been mentioned since 2014 and I've just read it so thought I'd give it a mention :)
Diary format might not be for everyone but I thought it was absolutely brilliant, so many great ideas contained in it and a really fascinating insight into working with bands and generally being a creative thinker/producer. The appendices are excellent (essays). Recommended!
 
A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary
(2020 - 25th anniversary reissue of 1995 original)

Search tells me this hasn't been mentioned since 2014 and I've just read it so thought I'd give it a mention :)
Diary format might not be for everyone but I thought it was absolutely brilliant, so many great ideas contained in it and a really fascinating insight into working with bands and generally being a creative thinker/producer. The appendices are excellent (essays). Recommended!
A good book, but reading it, Eno persuaded me to buy the Passengers album, which was an unforgiveable breach of the trust between author and reader.
 
I'm currently in the middle of Trevor Horn's autobiog. Enjoying it so far. For some reason I'd always thought of him as a mild mannered chap (I suppose it's the glasses!), but he seems to have been fairly ruthless with some of the artists he worked with.
 
Definitely worth a read ... especially if you're from 'up north'.

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Stephen
 
I'm currently in the middle of Trevor Horn's autobiog. Enjoying it so far. For some reason I'd always thought of him as a mild mannered chap (I suppose it's the glasses!), but he seems to have been fairly ruthless with some of the artists he worked with.

I suspect every successful musician is more or less a bit of a rutheless sh%t.

That's my excuse anyhow.

Stephen
 
A tad late but I have a lot of books on the go currently:-

"Charlies Good Tonight" - the best Stone biography I have read to date. If you like Charlie Watts then this will elevate him even more.
 
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Rick Rubin's new book 'The Creative Act' is essential for anyone interested in creativity in any field. It's not exclusively about music, or particularly about music at all actually, but his thoughts and musings on process, choice, purpose etc are really interesting and often very inspirational. Highly recommended.
 
I've just started reading Acid for the Children: A Memoir by Flea: Given to me by a Patti Smith fan. I wasn't sure if i'd enjoying it....
I've just got to the bit (about of a third of the way through) where he starts to play the trumpet and meets Dizzy Gillespie as a child, the way he describes the instrument, other Jazz musicians and the meeting with Gillespie is dazzlingly beautiful and alive.
I feel like everything has come full circle, when i was a kid i saw the film Lets get Lost on Channel 4. A biography about Chet Baker, filmed by photographer Bruce Weber, i was totally hypnotised by the B&W photography, i didn't really understand why and the effect it would have. I'd never heard of Chet Baker at that point, Flea was right there at the start of the film.

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Quite a fun read if you're a fan (and I am). But it suffered (as did the Trevor Horn and Thomas Dolby autobiographies) from poor proof reading and a couple of amusing howlers (Steve Jobs worked for Xerox and invented the computer Mouse! Tony Banks had an (inferior to the C3) Hammond B3—he didn't, it was a T102).

Still, it's good to hear the story from the 'other side'. The problem here (as with the Glyn Johns book) is that he's writing about his friends, so there's very little that's new or any real insight into the day to day life with Genesis—which would have been really interesting!

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