Q encyclopedia of rock stars /
Contains a collection of artist biographies from the last 50 years. Includes rock and roll, R & B, country, folk, reggae, punk, alternative and heavy metal
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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London ; New York :
Dorling Kindersley,
1996
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Table of Contents:
- As a cornerstone of popular western culture, rock music, and its attendant sub-genres, has become the soundtrack to our lives. Since its inception in the 1950s, when it was deemed "devil's music" by some concerned parents, rock has provided successive generations with an absorbing landscape of sounds, memories and events. Each era has yielded performers whose music has influenced subsequent singers and musicians: without Hank Williams and Arthur Crudup, there would likely have been no Elvis Presley; without Little Richard and James Brown, no Prince; without Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles; no Beatles
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- Many performers have skillfully managed both, making their selection automatic. For the others, we have included artists who have had either a formative influence or maintained consistent critical success, but whose chart impact may have been slight, alongside those who have enjoyed a substantial chart career, but whose biography or career is otherwise limited. We have also tried to provide a transatlantic balance: in addition to world-conquering acts whose names are familiar to music fans around the globe, we have included a number of performers who are indigenously popular in either the United States or the United Kingdom, traditionally the two most fertile breeding grounds for rock artists. Within each chronologically compiled biography you will find personal and professional histories, presenting yearly, monthly and often daily diaries.^
- There are two common criticisms of rock history works: first, that "rock" and its predecessor "rock 'n 'roll" are generic terms, traditionally incorporating a wide range of music styles. The fact that Garth Brooks can happily cover a Kiss song, or that alternative bands of the 1990s can assemble a Carpenters tribute album, testifies to the genre-mixing cultural stew that is commonly coined "rock". The title "Encyclopedia of Rock Stars" continues this all-embracing tradition, hence the inclusion of a diverse selection of artists from punk to funk, pop to rock, country & western to rhythm & blues, folk to rap, surf to mod, reggae to metal, new wave to old hat. Second, a popular cry from critics and consumers alike questions the inclusion of certain artists to the exclusion of others. Aside from obvious qualifiers (Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson), the criteria, always tempered by the book's size, are acts that have either been commercially successful or artistically influential.^
- They include the peak position of every UK and US chart single and album; all notable awards, live events, television and radio appearances; disco-graphical information; births, deaths, real names, court cases, lineup changes; and a log of important and sometimes entirely trivial events. With the explosion in media coverage of daily goings-on in the world of music over the past decade, it is inevitable that more information is available to chronicle the 1990s compared to the relatively poorly documented 1950s. This accounts for any imbalance found as the decades progress within each biography
- one shudders to think. The lineage is clear, the pioneering history almost as compelling and fascinating, triumphant and tragic as the music itself. As the glory of rock 'n 'roll has evolved, so too have attempts to document its story, often in an opinionated fashion. All of the different types of truly ground-breaking music created by those already mentioned, together with the likes of Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix et all right up to present day music heroes such as Oasis, Alanis Morissette and Hootie & the Blowfish, have one thing in common: everyone has a different opinion about who they like and dislike, about which albums they prefer and which they roundly disdain. With the Q Encyclopedia of Rock Stars, however, such subjectivity is abandoned in favor of allowing the history of rock to speak for itself through detailed chronological biographies of its most successful and influential players.^