Barry Miles

In part thanks to early friendships with renegades such as Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and William Burroughs, and his publication of the electrifying and brilliant Howl, Allen Ginsberg occupies a significant and enduring position in American literature. Following Ginsberg's death in 1997, Barry Miles, drawing both on his long friendship with the poet and on Ginsberg's journals and correspondence, thoroughly updated and revised his immensely readable account of one of the 20th century's most extraordinary poets.

A Biography

Ginsberg

Recreates the period from 1957 to 1963 when Paris's Beat Hotel, a cheap rooming house on the Left Bank, became the home and gathering place of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and other luminaries of the Beat Generation.

Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1958-1963

The Beat Hotel

Many Years from Now

Paul McCartney

Charles Bukowski

An illustrated celebration of the 1960s counterculture captures the political fervor, historical events, slogans, sayings, fashions, styles, music, artwork, and other characteristics and personalities that defined the era from 1965 to 1971.

Hippie

50 Years of Protest

Peace

I Settanta. Da William Burroughs ai Clash, da Allen Ginsberg a Patti Smith. Avventure nella controcultura

Allen Ginsberg

Published in 1956 as the title poem of Allen Ginsberg's first collection, "Howl" is a prophetic masterpiece that overcame censorship trails to become one of the most widely read poems of the century. The annotated Howl is the poet's own re-creation of the long process of composition of a revolutionary poem that broke new ground in America poetry through its expansive poetic form, tonal range, and freshness of spirit.

Howl

Io sono Burroughs. Una biografia

London has long been a magnet for aspiring artists and writers, musicians and fashion designers seeking inspiration and success. In London Calling, Barry Miles explores the counter-culture - creative, avant garde, permissive, anarchic - that sprang up in this great city in the decades following the Second World War. Here are the heady post-war days when suddenly everything seemed possible, the jazz bars and clubs of the fifties, the teddy boys and the Angry Young Men, Francis Bacon and the legendary Colony Club, the 1960s and the Summer of Love, the rise of punk and the early days of the YBAs. The vitality and excitement of this time and years of change - and the sheer creative energy in the throbbing heart of London - leap off the pages of this evocative and original book.

A Countercultural History of London since 1945

London Calling

Barry Miles knew Frank Zappa intimately and was present at the recording of some of his most important albums. This sparkling biography brings the Zappa the musician and composer, Zappa the controversialist and Zappa the family man (despite his love of groupies, he was married for more than 30 years) together for the first time. Barry Miles' biography follows Zappa from his sickly Italian-American childhood in the 1940s (when his father, Frank senior, worked for the US military and was used to test the efficacy of new biological warfare agents) to his death from cancer in the 1990s. Miles shows how Zappa's goal had been to become a classical composer, until he realised that he would starve to death pursuing this ambition in post-war America. In an effort to make music people would actually listen to, in the mid-1960s he joined a noisy new band called 'The Mothers of Invention'. Before long, Zappa had taken over as singer, song writer and lead guitarist and together they exploded on to the San Francisco freak scene. Following the release of recordings such as Freak Out, Absolutely Free, We're Only In It For the Money and Hot Rats, Zappa's reputation in the United States and in Europe, especially the UK, Germany and Holland, took off. When the Berlin wall fell, Frank was surprised to learn that his extravagant music embodied sixties liberty for a generation of dissidents (including Vaclav Havel, who invited Zappa to be his minister for culture). Frank Zappa is an authoritative and hugely enjoyable portrait of a singular man and a vivid evocation of the West Coast scene.

Frank Zappa

Originally published: London: Virgin, 1992.

El Hombre Invisible

William Burroughs

Fifty years ago, Norman Mailer asserted, "William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius." Few since have taken such literary risks, developed such individual political or spiritual ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media. Burroughs wrote novels, memoirs, technical manuals, and poetry. He painted, made collages, took thousands of photographs, produced hundreds of hours of experimental recordings, acted in movies, and recorded more CDs than most rock bands. Burroughs was the original cult figure of the Beat Movement, and with the publication of his novel Naked Lunch, which was originally banned for obscenity, he became a guru to the 60s youth counterculture. In CALL ME BURROUGHS, biographer and Beat historian Barry Miles presents the first full-length biography of Burroughs to be published in a quarter century-and the first one to chronicle the last decade of Burroughs's life and examine his long-term cultural legacy. Written with the full support of the Burroughs estate and drawing from countless interviews with figures like Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and Burroughs himself, CALL ME BURROUGHS is a rigorously researched biography that finally gets to the heart of its notoriously mercurial subject.

A Life

Call Me Burroughs

Grant Scott

Johnny Morgan

Illustrated throughout, this book brings together 250 of the greatest album covers of all time and is arranged chronologically, beginning in 1956, ending in 2005.

The Greatest Album Covers of All Time

The best-selling biographer of Paul McCartney follows the ground-breaking musician Frank Zappa from his Italian-American childhood roots to his ultimate success as a composer and rock star. Reprint.

Zappa

Miles Mabbett

Andy Mabbett

Updated for the third time to include Pink Floyd's activities in the late 1980s and 1990s, this biography includes the acrimonious split between Roger Waters and his three colleagues, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright, and also details of their Division Bell album and the tour that followed. It includes rare early photographs of Pink Floyd with their founder, Syd Barrett, biographies of each member of the band, posters and lost ephemera from the group's own collections, a chronology which lists every concert by the group, and a Floyd discography, including solo work and spin-off projects.

The Visual Documentary

Pink Floyd

In conformist 1950s America, Jack Kerouac's On the Road was greeted with both delirium and dismay, but in Kerouac's hunt for the big experience and his longing for greatness, he has inspired each successive generation. Jack Kerouac is now an icon, and this provocative and intimate portrait of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers, reveals a man full of contradictions, rarely at peace with himself. Barry Miles, friend and official biographer of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, provides a meticulously researched exploration of the complex man and extraordinary writer whose creative mishmash of joyous incoherence, drug-induced ecstasy, genuine mysticism and constant craving has persuaded so many to take to the road.

King of the Beats

Jack Kerouac

In part thanks to early friendships with renegades such as Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and William Burroughs, and his publication of the Howl, Allen Ginsberg occupies a significant and enduring position in American literature. This title presents an account of one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary poets.

Barry Miles

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