Books by Barney Hoskyns

A Rock's Backpages anthology of Radiohead, the most radical and fascinating rock band in modern music history, edited and introduced by Barney Hoskyns.

An anthology of the most incisive commentary on the extraordinary career of recording artist Joni Mitchell.

No city in the western world exerts such a fascination as the glamorous, debauched Los Angeles, and there is no city with more of a draw to musicians. Defined by the music of Brian Wilson, NWA, jazz, funk, soul, hip hop, and fulled by drugs, alcohol, sun, sex and surf, LA has seen it all. This book tells the story of LA's post-war music scene.

In the American South, blacks and whites have been influencing each other's music for generations, from the hymns of the 18th century to the soul music of the 60s. This book features personal interviews of the artists behind this blend of music.

Think 'Woodstock' and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But Woodstock itself was over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. So why the misnomer? Quite simply, Woodstock was already a key location in the Sixties rock landscape, the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan had holed up after his 1966 motorcycle accident.In Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns recreates Woodstock's community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, opportunistic hippie capitalists and scheming dealers drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks The Band. Central to the book's narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, The Band, Janis Joplin and Todd Rundgren - and Big Daddy of a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants and his own record label. Intertwined in the story are the Woodstock experiences of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Butterfield, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton and Bobby Charles.Drawing on first-hand interviews with the remaining key players in the scene, and on the period when he lived there himself in the 1990s, Hoskyns has produced an East Coast companion to his bestselling L.A. Canyon classic Hotel California - a richly absorbing study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.

Starting out as a backing group for Ronnie Hawkins, before being propelled on to the world stage by Bob Dylan, The Band literally changed the course of music with their first two albums.