Books in the Decades series

Genesis remain the best known and best loved progressive rock band in the UK, bar none. While the 1980s represent their most profitable period as pop starts, their core fans turn to the 1970s for the band's true artistic peak.

.Status Quo are a British institution - a multi-million selling band of epic proportions and while their career was in it's hey day during the 1970s, the hits kept coming through the 1980s along with breakups, lawsuits, line-up changes, substance abuse and a high-profile, highly successful comeback after calling it a day in 1984.

This is a journey through Kiss's first and most storied decade. It is the story of the four men behind the masks, and the music they made, the studio albums, the legendary live albums, and of one of the greatest rock follies in music history, the four simultaneously released solo album.

George Harrison was known as 'The Quiet Beatle', although this title did him a disservice, considering his intellectual focus and thoughtful nature. Instead, he was arguably 'The Chameleonic Beatle', a moniker that only serves to understand the deeply complex guitar player better. And in a deeply complicated decade, Harrison's artistry flourished.

The 1970s saw the rise of rock and metal as a force in record and ticket sales. Right there at the birth of this was Black Sabbath, whose first album came from nowhere to smash into the top of the charts in Britain and around the world. This is a comprehensive roundup of the band's music in the decade.

Free were formed in 1968 towards the end of the British blues boom. After two critically acclaimed albums, the release of 'All Right Now' and the album Fire and Water in 1970 brought them major success. Musical and personal differences took their toll and they split after the comparative failure of their next album and single.

Propelled into stardom at an exhilarating speed due to clever marketing and virtuosity in their musicianship, particularly violinist Darryl Way, the story of Curved Air in the 1970s is of a band that burned brightly before collapsing well ahead of their time.

Britpop Decades covers the ten-years that witnessed the birth, boom and bust of Britpop - a period in which home-grown indie guitar music from across the UK went mainstream, pop stars were cut from the most unlikely of cloth, and British culture made its voice heard with some incredibly bombastic choruses.

Championed by David Bowie, Mott The Hoople became one of the best known bands of the Glam era. A succession of top twenty singles in 1973 and 1974. Ian Hunter went on to commercial success and critical acclaim as a solo artist.

No period of Bob Dylan's six-decade career confounds fans more than the 1980s. The singer began the decade with Saved, the second in a trio of explicitly religious records, and a tour in which he declined to play his older songs because of concern they were anti-god.

Here is the story of Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s - the music, the people, the tours, the rumours, the failures and the successes. While it's impossible to ignore the skill and longevity of the albums Fleetwood Mac, Rumours and Tusk, there are an equal number of half-forgotten classic songs from the first half of the 1970s.

Stephen Lambe's enlightening book guides the reader through Focus's early history year by year, dealing with all eight Focus albums song by song, while also giving the same treatment to Akkerman and Van Leer's lesser know solo work between 1970 and 1979.

It may have all started with Syd Barrett, but the persistence and creativity of Roger Waters, Rick Wright, Nick Mason, and David Gilmour meant that Pink Floyd went from one of England's top underground psychedelic bands to one of the biggest rock bands on the planet - all thanks to an album wondering if there really was a dark side of the moon.

The 1980s encapsulated Marillion's birth, commercial apex, and near-implosion. This book combines meticulous history with careful musical analysis to chronicle their most turbulent decade from their first gig, through the dizzying success and destructive decadence of their time with frontman Fish.