Ian Winwood

A group biography of '90s punk rock told through the prism of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and more Two decades after the Sex Pistols and the Ramones birthed punk music into the world, their artistic heirs burst onto the scene and changed the genre forever. While the punk originators remained underground favorites and were slow burns commercially, their heirs shattered commercial expectations for the genre. In 1994, Green Day and The Offspring each released their third albums, and the results were astounding. Green Day's Dookie went on to sell more than 15 million copies and The Offspring's Smash remains the all-time bestselling album released on an independent label. The times had changed, and so had the music. While many books, articles, and documentaries focus on the rise of punk in the '70s, few spend any substantial time on its resurgence in the '90s. Smash! will be the first to do so, detailing the circumstances surrounding the shift in '90s music culture away from grunge and legitimizing what many first-generation punks regard as post-punk, new wave, and generally anything but true punk music. With astounding access to all the key players of the time, including members of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and many others, renowned music writer Ian Winwood will at last give this significant, substantive, and compelling story its due. Punk rock bands were never truly successful or indeed truly famous, and that was that--until it wasn't. Smash! is the story of how the underdogs finally won and forever altered the landscape of mainstream music.

Green Day, The Offspring, Rancid, NOFX, and the '90s Punk Explosion

Smash!

Paul Brannigan

Draws on exclusive interviews with band members and intimates to cover such topics as their family lives, their Grammy Award-winning achievements, and the tensions that challenged their pursuits.

The Biography

Birth School Metallica Death, Volume 1

Life and Death in Music

Bodies

Money, freedom, adoring fans: professional musicians seem to have it all. But beneath the surface lies a frightening truth: for years the music industry has tolerated death, addiction and exploitation in the name of entertainment. In Bodies, Ian Winwood explores the industry's reluctance to confront its many failures in a far-reaching story which features first-hand access to artists such as Foo Fighters, Green Day, Trent Reznor, Biffy Clyro, Kings of Leon, Chris Cornell, Mark Lanegan, Pearl Jam. Much more than a touchline reporter, Winwood also tells the tale of his own mental-health collapse following the shocking death of his father. Written with warmth, humour and bracing honesty, Bodies is a deeply personal story and essential reading for musicians and fans alike.

Draws on exclusive interviews with the band's members and intimates, providing coverage of such topics as their family lives, their Grammy Award-winning achievements, and the tensions that challenged their pursuits.

The Inside Story of Metallica (1991-2014)

Into the Black

There has never been a hard rock band like Metallica. The California quartet has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, won nine Grammy Awards, and had five consecutive albums hit number one on the Billboard charts. But Metallica’s story, epic in scope, is a tale about much more than sales figures and critical acclaim, and their journey from scuzzy Los Angeles garages to the world’s most storied stadiums has been dramatic and painful, their gigantic successes often shot through with tension, tragedy, loss, and controversy. Birth School Metallica Death is the definitive story of the most significant rock band since Led Zeppelin. Volume 1 covers the band’s formation up to their breakthrough eponymous fifth album, aka “The Black Album.” The intense and sometimes fraught relationship between aloof-yet-simmering singer, chief lyricist, and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield and the outspoken and ambitious drummer Lars Ulrich is the saga’s emotional core. Their earliest years saw the release of three unimpeachable classics—Kill ’Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets—genre-defining masterpieces that took hard rock to a new level, both artistically and commercially. During these tumultuous times, the band persevered through line-up changes when guitarist Dave Mustaine was replaced by Kirk Hammet, and their bass player, the beloved Cliff Burton, was tragically killed in a bus crash while on tour in Europe. But it was the breakthrough of …And Justice for All that rent the fabric of the mainstream, hitting the top of the charts without benefit of radio airplay or the then-crucial presence on MTV. And finally in 1991, with the release of their fifth studio album, nicknamed “The Black Album,” Metallica hit the next level—five hit singles including their best-known songs “Enter Sandman” and “Nothing Else Matters”—and their first album atop the Billboard charts. In Birth School Metallica Death, veteran music journalists and Metallica confidants Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood detail this meteoric rise to international fame in an epic saga of family, community, self-belief, the pursuit of dreams, and music that rocks. Told through first-hand interviews with the band and those closest to them, the story of Metallica’s rise to the mainstream has never been so vividly documented.

Die Biographie

Birth School Metallica Death

Brannigan Paul

Metallica har sålt över 100 miljoner album och vunnit sju Grammys. Deras resa från ett smutsigt garage i Los Angeles till scener på världens största arenor har varit episk och ofta traumatisk – det är utan tvekan en av de största rock’n’roll-sagorna. Inga musikskribenter har kommit Metallica närmre än Paul Brannigan och Ian Winwood, två tidigare redaktörer för hårdrockstidningen Kerrang. Efter att ha intervjuat bandet i hundratals timmar genom åren har de en enastående kunskap om gruppens historia och en insiders syn på hur deras berättelse har utvecklats: de har åkt i bandets limousiner, flugit i deras privata jet, följt med in i studion, bjudits till kvartettens ”HQ” utanför San Francisco och delat öl och upplevelser med dem runt om i världen. Det finns otaliga minnesvärda historier om bandet som aldrig tidigare setts i tryck, berättelser om sex och droger och bilkrascher och knytnävsslagsmål och svek – allt sådant som uppstår när man blandar testosteron och adrenalin, alkohol och egomani, talang och rå ambition. Klarsynt, intelligent och känslomässigt laddad – Birth School Metallica Death är den definitiva historien om detta extraordinära band. Den första delen av två tar oss med från bandets födelse till strax före släppet av deras nyskapande, självbetitlade album från 1991.

Birth School Metallica Death Vol. 1

Metallica have sold in excess of 100 million albums and won seven Grammys. Their journey from scuzzy Los Angeles garages to the stages of the world's biggest stadia has been an epic and often traumatic one, and one of the few truly great rock 'n' roll sagas. No music writers have been afforded greater access to Metallica over the years than Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood, two former editors of Kerrang. Having conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with the band, they have between them gained an unparalleled knowledge of the group's history and an insiders' view of how their story has developed: they have ridden in the band's limos, flown on their private jet, joined them in the studio, been invited to the quartet's 'HQ' outside San Francisco and shared beers and stories with them in venues across the globe. There are countless memorable stories about the band never before seen in print, tales of bed-hopping and drug-taking and car-crashes and fist-fights and back-stabbing that occur when you mix testosterone and adrenaline, alcohol and egomania, talent and raw ambition. Perceptive, emotionally attached, and intellectually rigorous, Birth, School, Metallica, Death will be the essential and definitive story of this extraordinary band. Volume I takes us from the band's inception through to the recording and eve of release of their seminal, self-titled, 1991 album.

Ian Winwood

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