Rock & Roll Books

• Rock & Roll Books

  All the Townes Van Zandt, Texas Troubadours, Southern hip-hop, Zen punk, and Phil Spector, Warren Zevon, and Joe Strummer you can shake a bottle of sunblock at

• To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt

  BY DOUG FREEMAN

• He's a Rebel: Phil Spector: Rock and Roll's Legendary Producer;
  Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector

  BY AUDRA SCHROEDER

• Texas Troubadours

  BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ

• Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus

  BY SHAWN BADGLEY

• Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe

  BY MARGARET MOSER

• Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer, The Definitive Biography

  BY DAN OKO

• Babylon's Burning: From Punk to Grunge

  BY MARGARET MOSER

• I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon

  BY JIM CALIGIURI

• Nirvana: The Biography

  BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY

• Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music

  BY DAVID LYNCH

• Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries;
  My So-Called Punk: How Neo-Punk Stage-Dived Into the Mainstream;
  Punk Love

  BY DARCIE STEVENS

• Third Coast: Outkast, Timbaland, & How Hip Hop Became a Southern Thing;
  Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women;
  To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic

  BY GRAHAM REYNOLDS

• Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life

  BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY

• Modest Mouse: A Pretty Good Read

  BY MELANIE HAUPT

• You Don't Love Me Yet: a novel

  BY JAY TRACHTENBERG

• Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of the Beach Boys' Founding Genius

  BY GREG BEETS

• Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man, an unauthorized biography

  BY AUSTIN POWELL

• Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry

  BY JIM CALIGIURI

• The Rockabilly Legends: They Called It Rockabilly Long Before They Called It Rock and Roll

  BY GRAHAM REYNOLDS

Babylon's Burning: From Punk to Grunge

by Clinton Heylin

Canongate, 694 pp., $25

That "Certs-is-breath-mint-Certs-is-a-candy-mint" debate about whether punk began in the UK or U.S. isn't at issue in the second of Clinton Heylin's lengthy tomes about alt-rock's roots. In 2005's From the Velvets to the Voidoids, his thesis was that "modern music begins with the Velvets," and that's hardly arguable. Yet the aphorism that only a few thousand people listened to the Velvets but all of them formed bands isn't nearly as indisputable as saying that about the Sex Pistols, the band at the heart of punk. Never mind those Sex Pistols, though, Heylin's got something entirely different to say in Babylon's Burning, and he's likely to piss off lots of people, especially when he crucifies Kurt Cobain and calls Nancy Spungen's death "justifiable homicide." To his credit, Heylin's best revelation comes with the book's exploration of Britain's famed welfare system paying people (musicians) not to work. In other words, the government underwrote "God Save the Queen," while political anthems like the Clash's "Career Opportunities" were jokes: They didn't need opportunities, not with the royal handout. Heylin also has a good bead on the power England's mouthy rock press had in bestowing Next Big Thing titles. Unfortunately, the book stays mired in the late-Seventies and then skips forth through the ensuing years, landing on Nirvana's shot heard round the punk world for the final assessment. That's a potent reminder that the only difference between hype and hope is one vowel.