Best Selling Books by Barry Miles

A definitive, authorized portrait of Paul McCartney draws on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews and access to personal archives to chronicle the private life and successful career of one of the world''s most famous musicians, the world of the Beatles, his partnership with John Lennon, and more.

An authentic and compelling story of the group that gave alternative London its first real soundtrack and launched on the rock world a radical combination of music, light shows and pyrotechnic stage effects.A revealing diary of Pink Floyd''s daily routine, from their roots in Cambridge to cult status in Sixties London. Author Barry Miles saw the band play when they were still called The Pink Floyd Sound and he wrote the first ever article about them for a New York underground newspaper in 1966. He also knew band members socially, witnessed the rapid decline of Syd Barrett and became actively involved in setting up some of Floyd’s major gigs.Barry Miles is an acclaimed music writer and expert on ''Beat'' poetry and poets. A founder of the Indica bookshop and gallery in the Sixties, he went on to launch International Times and write for NME. He ghost-wrote Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney''s autobiography and has written books on The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Frank Zappa.

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.

An intimate day-by-day history of all four Beatles from childhood to the break-up of the group. All the concerts...film, TV and radio appearances...interviews, hushed-up scandals, the sex and the drugs...the triumphs and quarrels...and all the Beatles-related births, marriages and deaths. Essential reading for anyone interested in rock''s most influential phenomenon of all time.

The celebration of an era, this ultimate, beautiful, illuminating, and "really groovy" look at the 1960''s counterculture is rich in illustrations and filled with the history, politics, sayings, and slogans that defined the age.

Beginning with the Weathermen explosion in Greenwich Village and ending with punk, the seventies was the age of extremes; sex, drugs and, of course, rock ''n'' roll. With an extraordinary cast of characters, and even more extraordinary anecdotes, In The Seventies tells, firsthand, the story - and stories - of the decade. From Allen Ginsberg''s hippie commune in upstate New York to the time Miles spent cataloguing William Burroughs'' archives in London, from David Bowie in drag to Grace Jones naked at Studio 54, it''s all here. Vivid, compelling, intimate and, sometimes, insane, Barry Miles reveals the truth behind this legendary era.

''Fear makes me a writer, fear and a lack of confidence'' Charles Bukowski chronicled the seedy underside of the city in which he spent most of his life, Los Angeles. His heroes were the panhandlers and hustlers, the drunks and the hookers, his beat the racetracks and strip joints and his inspiration a series of dead-end jobs in warehouses, offices and factories. It was in the evenings that he would put on a classical record, open a beer and begin to type... Brought up by a violent father, Bukowski suffered childhood beatings before developing horrific acne and withdrawing into a moody adolescence. Much of his young life epitomised the style of the Beat generation - riding Greyhound buses, bumming around and drinking himself into a stupor. During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office, Factotum, Women and Pulp. His novels sold millions of copies worldwide in dozens of languages. In this definitive biography Barry Miles, celebrated author of Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats, turns his attention to the exploits of this hard-drinking, belligerent wild man of literature.

With the resurgence of vinyl going from strength to strength, album cover art is as important as it''s ever been. This sumptuous book brings together 250 of the greatest album covers of all time and is arranged chronologically, beginning in 1956. Our judging panel, drawn from the great and the good of the music industry, has selected the final 275 entries, giving their reasons for selection to accompany the illustrations. From rock ‘n’ roll to pop, R&B to jazz, blues and even folk, some of the album covers included are obvious classics, while others will surprise readers and jog memories. The chosen entries might not necessarily be of a best-selling release, but they are important artistically, stylistically or culturally. This fascinating book forms a wonderful visual record of this popular art form, and is an essential read for music fans the world over.

The Beat Hotel is a delightful chronicle of a remarkable moment in American literary history. From the Howl obscenity trial to the invention of the cut-up technique, Barry Miles''s extraordinary narrative chronicles the feast of ideas that was Paris, where the Beats took awestruck audiences with Duchamp and Celine, and where some of their most important work came to fruition--Ginsberg''s "Kaddish" and "To Aunt Rose"; Corso''s The Happy Birthday of Death; and Burroughs''s Naked Lunch. Based on firsthand accounts from diaries, letters, and many original interviews, The Beat Hotel is an intimate look at an era of spirit, dreams, and genius.

Originally published: London: Virgin, 1992.

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 of the influential American beatnik novelist, charting both his life and legacy. Miles considers the continuing appeal of Kerouac, his iconic status, the cult of On the Road, and the influence he has had on popular culture.

Traces the life of ground-breaking musician Frank Zappa from his Italian American childhood roots to his ultimate success as a composer and rock star.

Bowie''s career year-by-year, 1963-1987.

At the beginning of the sixties Barry Miles was at art school in Cheltenham; at the end he was running the Beatles'' Zapple label and living in New York''s legendary Chelsea Hotel. This is the story of what happened in between. In the Sixties is a memoir by one of the key figures of the British counterculture. A friend of Ginsberg and Corso, Miles helped to organise the 1965 Albert Hall poetry reading. He co-founded and ran the Indica Bookshop, the command centre for the London underground scene, and he published Europe''s first underground newspaper, International Times (IT), from Indica''s basement. Miles'' partners in Indica were John Dunbar, then married to Marianne Faithfull, and Peter Asher. Through Asher, Miles became closely involved with the Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney, and In the Sixties is full of intimate glimpses of the Beatles at work and play. Other musicians who appear in its pages include the Rolling Stones, the Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen and Frank Zappa. But Miles'' greatest love is for the written word and his book includes memorable portraits of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Charles Olson, Richard Brautigan and Charles Bukowski. This is the book that ever

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.

Mesdames et Messieurs, voici l''histoire la plus étonnante et la plus incroyable que vous ayez jamais entendue ! 1965 : une vague contestataire se lève sur San Francisco. Subversive, anticapitaliste et porteuse d''un idéal libertaire, la contre-culture va bientôt submerger la planète et faire vaciller les gouvernements. Cheveux longs et vêtus de vieilles fripes, les hippies changeront la face du monde : " paix et amour " sera leur seul mot d''ordre. Hippies est une chronique fouillée des années 1965 à 1971. avec leurs concerts, leurs fêtes, leurs happenings et leurs incessants coups de boutoir contre un certain rêve américain. Les principaux protagonistes du mouvement en sont les invités d''honneur. Hippies est aussi un livre magnifique en forme d''hommage à l''étonnante créativité de la fin des sixties : affiches de l''époque, pochettes d''albums, premiers numéros de revues légendaires comme International Times, Oz ou Rolling Stone. L''ouvrage de Barry Miles s''agrémente de délirantes images psychédéliques et d''une inénarrable galerie de portraits de figures marquantes ou anonymes. Avec ses innombrables photographies d''événements politiques ou musicaux, Hippies restitue toute la saveur d''une époque après laquelle plus rien ne sera jamais comme avant. Peace and love, man...