Books to Read When Learning Music

There is an abundance of incredible music books for musicians to read. The memoir is the main style, once a rockstar hits a certain age they usually think, let’s write a book! Then there are biographies, interview books, history books, journalist books, fan books, 33 1/3 books and other stories written from the world of music. I love to read music books and believe you can learn a lot about music through the stories and the nuggets of wisdom musicians impart in their book length reflections. Yes, they do like to spend a lot of time talking about drugs, women and how great they are, but there are also stories about how they made the music, how they developed as musicians, how they loved music when they were young, and how much fun fame seems to be. Books offer an amazing window into the world of music, here are a few of my favourites.

Rock

I’ll start with the well-known Anthony Kiedis Scar Tissue, the ultimate cliché rockstar book. Usually, music books don’t stay on the market too long but this one has stood the test of time, you’ll find it in any bookstore. It is the man’s journey through the hardships of being a self-centered drug addict and look at the hot women! He starts the book as an older Anthony, healthier and sober, getting an injection of O2 from his hot nurse in a tiny nurse’s outfit, oh, the struggles of being Anthony. Obviously, there are exaggerations, and even though he might be framing it as drugs are destructive, he is actually saying drugs are awesome, check out this story, wow, what a fun life, I love being Anthony Kiedis.

Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace is great for the sheer amount of plugging Neil does for his MP3 player brand that never really made it and how much he complains about the sound quality of modern music. He’s funny and it was written by Neil, so it doesn’t get the ghostwriter polish. Ghostwriters make books easier to read and turns them into a narrative, but I like it when musicians write it themselves, there is more reflection about what music means to them. We get details about his recording process and his passion for sound quality. On his ranch/recording studio once an album was complete, he would blast the music on loudspeakers over his lake while on his dingy, if it sounds good that way you, know it’s good sound quality. He also wrote another book about his cars, don’t read that one, but there is an authorized biography by Jimmy McDonough, Shakey: Neil Young's Biography that is a great read if you want the ghostwritten Neil story.

Dave Grohl Storyteller, beyond the fact that it is a terrible name for a music book, Dave has a cool voice. He doesn’t center it around drugs, but mostly about being a rockstar during some interesting movements in rock; from his early years in the Washington punk scene, embarrassing himself at a jam session when he was still learning to play, his Bonham obsession, joining Nirvana, then being the older rockstar trying to be a good father while his job involves being away from home for long periods of time. It’s maybe a bit bland, not quite the thrills of Scar Tissue, but good if you’re a Grohl fan.

Bruce Springsteen Born to Run, being from New Zealand I was never into Bruce, I find “Born in the USA,” a cheesy song, but this book shows a man who reflects upon his weaknesses in ways that some of the others don’t and hence we get a more honest and relatable person. It’s hard to relate to Kiedis but Bruce does show how it can be tough living a musician life. Also good is his book with Obama Renegades: Born in the USA where they bro talk to each other through multiple different interviews. It’s funny how they subtly try to macho each other, but they are also very insightful people, and their discussions go to some interesting places.

Lennon by Tim Riley. The Beatles story has been told by so many different people and angles. There are countless documentaries, biopics, memoirs, with a new Beatles biography being released every few months, and out of all of them, I like this one the best, and I have read quite a few. John is my favourite Beatle, he was more the artist, wounded, trying to understand himself through creating music, Paul was musically talented but a bit of a bore, George was a bit too into Hare Krishna, and nobody seems to want to write about Ringo. This book has a lot of John’s voice in it, it is very easy to read and doesn’t get dragged down by unnecessary details. The Beatles story is epic, one that all musicians should delve into at some point, even if their music is a bit dated now.

Like the Beatles story the Dylan story has been told from an excessive number of angles, through a range of books and some good documentaries. I’m a huge Dylan fan and have consumed a lot of this media. He has written three books, Tarantula is worth skipping, Chronicles is a must, The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan, is a good read; but my personal favourite is No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan by Robert Sheldon. I like Bob Dylan’s life story, starting out in Minnesota, making his way to New York, becoming folk, going electric, being booed at Newport, leaving the limelight, people being weirdly obsessed with him, becoming reclusive, and through it all never stopping his poetic songwriting as his music evolved through each album. Sheldon takes us on that story, in a way that Dylan doesn’t quite want to with his own writing.

Carlos Santana The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light. Carlos grew up in Mexico, giving a slightly different story to some of the other 1960s rock stars. He has a music loving voice. His father was a mariachi violin player, and his career started out playing mariachi music, later becoming one of the top guitarists in 1960’s San Fran. A lot was happening in San Fran at that time and Carlos was there for all the hippies, acid trips, Janis, Hells Angels, and free love. I quite enjoyed the story where he takes acid at Woodstock, thinking he doesn’t have to play till later, is told go on now, finding himself in front of the giant Woodstock crowd attempting to control his guitar that has turned into a snake.

Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad. This is basically about all the Nirvana bands that didn’t become Nirvana. Nirvana came out of the hardcore punk scene, Kirk mentioning almost all these bands as inspiration to Nirvana, bands that they played with and were friends with before the Nevermind phenomenon. It takes place between 1981 and 1991, 10 years where many bands were creating an underground scene but were unable to hit mainstream. It shows a DIY attitude, touring through America, partying, sleeping on couches, living cool lives. Lots of the bands you’ll be familiar with, some of them not. It’s an awesome book for anyone in a band who wants to know how do I make it happen? Well, this is how these bands did it back then, resources are different now, but the can-do attitude remains the same.

You could read David Byrne How Music Works where he explains how music works based on being David Byrne or you could read Chris Frantz book Remain in Love where he talks about what a pretentious douche David Byrne is, maybe because I am a drummer I’m biased, but I say Frantz book is the better read. He’s the other member of Talking Heads along with his partner Tina Weymouth the bass player. It’s more the story of Talking Heads and the New York CBJB’s scene, rather than Byrne’s inaccurate opinions on music. It’s an interesting music scene with the usual characters Patty, Debbie, Warhol turning up here and there. Frantz and Weymouth were art school students who found their way into music. One of their funky rhythm songs was sampled to make that Mariah song, “Fantasy,” if you like that song, it’s mostly because of Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz… well Mariah’s melody is good too.

I'm Your Man: Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons. Cohen started as a fiction writer, then became a songwriter. His guitar playing is average, but his chord selections and lyrics are some of the best so in many ways the basic guitar doesn’t matter. He came to music a bit later, but always lived as an artist, always searching. He takes his time on songs famously saying “Hallelujah,” took two years to write, compared to Dylan who said, “Blowing in the Wind,” took 15minutes, I guess every musician has their methods. “Hallelujah,” also didn’t become a hit song when Cohen released it, hidden on an obscure Casio keyboard driven album, it was only later ,when people started covering it that it become his more well-known song. He lived a fascinating life, joining a monastery, following Buddhism, and always writing. Book of Longing one of Leonard’s later books of poetry is worth reading too; but don’t bother with his early fiction, songwriting was a better medium for him.

Archie Roach Tell Me Why: The Story of My Life and My Music is a story from a child of the stolen generation. Archie was the youngest of his large family when he was taken away and put into the house of a Scottish Christian family. He was too young to know what had happened and didn’t know his real name until he became a teenager and started to piece together what had happened. He describes his foster parents as loving people, but the story is about the psychological affect losing his family at a young age had on him. Once he left school he went searching for his family and identity. He lives homeless in Sydney, drinks, gets antagonized by the police who put him in prison for being homeless, finds his family, writes songs, and sings his music to a heated protest on Australia day that brings a calmness over the crowd. It’s a book that sticks with you for a long time, as you get a first-hand perspective as to what an awful thing it was taking the children away from the parents of a race of people and the destructive affect that had.

Hip Hop

The best place to start is Questlove Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove; if I had a favourite music writer it would be Questlove. He loves to talk music and his books are centered on music rather than drugs, parties, and girls. He grew up touring with his musician parents, playing drums in their bands as an adolescent. His stories are written from the perspective of a music fan, someone who has always loved to listen and experience music. He details the time he first heard the De La Soul album walking through the park and the affect the music had on him, something other writers wouldn’t mention but are relatable to other music fans. He was very influenced by Prince growing up and later became friends with him, there are some good Prince stories, and everyone loves a Prince story because he’s Prince. He was around for all the major turning points in 1990s hip hop, the Roots being top underground artists in New York at that time, working and getting to know the big names, seeing many of the famous moments. He has three other music books, all worth reading, Hip-Hop Is History, Music Is History and Creative Quest.

Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography by Staci Robinson is an important book that gives insight into one of music’s most tragic stories. Staci Robinson was a friend of Tupac, chosen by his mother to author the book, taking 20 years to write. The book starts with Afeni Tupac’s life as a Black Panther, taking the reader through Tupac’s upbringing, the different neighborhoods he lived in, his time in performing arts school, his rise to fame, his acting career, and all the different rappers and producers he met along the way. He had a lot of talent that didn’t have the time to grow. Hip-hop stars at this time were dealing with a different society, and different types of adversity to their fame, compared to the rockstars and white artists. He got shot at multiple times, got incarcerated to a maximum-security prison on a minor charge, and then eventually lost his life at 25, too young.

Jay-Z’s Decoded, is not so much about his life but about his lyrics, there isn’t any Beyonce love story in here unfortunately. It’s good for anyone who likes to write lyrics and is interested in developing their rapping skills. He explains the multiple meanings behind his lyrics and gives stories about creating his songs. In “99 problems,” he uses the B word to throw the listener of the topic of the song, saying that the song has nothing to do with women, it’s a song about racial profiling describing the time that he got pulled when he was doing nothing wrong, when in his car he had a lot of stuff he didn’t want the cops to find. There are some good stories thrown in there, giving background to the environment he grew up in, but not much of a Jay-Z narrative.

Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story by Joe Coscarelli This book is if you want to learn about Atlantic hip hop. It was released in 2023, so many of the artists are still relevant, usually it takes some time for new artists to start popping up in books, unless they’re a big money maker like Carpenter. It’s a journalist book mapping out the artists, producers, and managers, active in the Atlanta music scene around the start of the 2020s. Atlanta has become one of the main hip hop centers creating a distinctive southern sound, different to the New York and LA sounds. I didn’t know much about Atlantic hip hop until I read this book, but afterwards, I became a trap fan, can’t deny the catchiness of those beats and the rapid fire hi hats. Lil Baby is one of the main characters and we get a glimpse of his life as he is starts to become well known.

King by Hau Latukefu is a hip hop story set in Australia. Hau was one of the first hip hop artists to be active in Australia, making for a slightly different story. Although hip hop comes out of New York and all the major artists are still from the big centers LA and New York, it is also a global genre that has spread throughout the world. The messages in the music resonates with a wide range of people, giving voice to those who might feel voiceless. Hau is of Polynesian descent, and his heritage and life as a Polynesian in Australia is a big part of his story. He interacts with a lot of the other Polynesian rappers, visiting King Kapisi out at Piha, and helping a younger OneFour when they start to gain infamy on social media. He has a love of early hip hop and that really comes through in the book. Not all hip hop stories are the same, Hau was never a huge artist but it’s a cool story, and he has a real passion for hip hop.

Jazz

Miles, the Autobiography with Quincy Troupe. Miles says that he changed music 7 times and this book takes us through that story getting descriptions of all the awesome players he meets along the way. Miles had the top band everyone wanted to play in, back when the caliber of musicianship was at its pinnacle. He has a lot of wisdom and was mentor to many of the greats. Miles joins Charlie Parker’s band as a teenager, we get stories of what it was like hanging with Charlie. Coltrane was still learning when he joined Miles and everyone knows what that combination created. Tony Williams was 17 and Herbie was in his early twenties when they got the offer to jam downstair in Miles basement, while Miles sat upstairs listening on the intercom, calling his buddies for them to hear the energy of Williams’s drums. It’s one of the music stories every musician should at some point listen and get to know, because Miles did change music 7 times.

Coltrane on Coltrane: The John Coltrane Interviews, by Chris DeVito. Coltrane left us too early, in music it has happens a lot, talent expiring, denying the world of what could have been. Coltrane’s creativity seemed to be just starting, he was pushing things in strange places at the end, he was quite possibly the most virtuosic of all the musicians. Because he left a bit early there isn’t an autobiography, but there are interviews, and this book has them all, plus any concert reviews or journalist articles. For learning about Coltrane and hearing how he thinks about music, this is the best book out there, full of musical wisdom. It’s a great book for Coltrane fans, which hopefully is everyone because it’s Coltrane!

Art Taylor Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews. Taylor is a jazz drummer, who recorded and played with all the best during the mid-20^th century. He has access to all these musicians and is comfortable talking to them, getting a different conversation compared to an unknown interviewer asking generic questions. You end up with more insightful and music centered interviews of two musicians discussing music and their lives as musicians. Conversations in Jazz by Ralph J. Gleason, for an interview book is worth a read too as Gleason is a respected jazz journalist who asks relevant questions, but there isn’t the relaxed conversational approach that Taylor achieves.

Herbie Hancock Possibilities. Herbie is awesome, he’s a nice guy who has contributed hugely to music and jazz. His voice really comes through. He describes being in Miles’s band giving a different angle to what the man was like and what it was like playing with him. After Miles he goes out on his own creating a range of different styles of music, always innovating, always trying something new. He becomes Buddhist, discovers the power of Buddhist chant, buys fast cars, does an acid trip to Coltrane’s Ascensions, and becomes confused by whatever was happening on that Rockit video.

Dance Of The Infidels: A Portrait Of Bud Powell by Francis Paudras. Bud Powell was one of the bebop pioneers, considered the best pianist of the 1950s era, when there were a lot of great pianists playing. He ended up struggling with mental illness, lost his flare and moved to Paris where jazz moved on without him. This is where Paudras found him and built a friendship. Paudra took him into house, helped his music career and got him back to America and back to playing better gigs. Paudras was a huge Powell fan, his love and respect for Powell’s musicianship shows in the storytelling. The story is sad, fascinating but heartwarming in many ways, as Powell is almost childlike, but very likable and very intelligent.

Female

Music is a boys club. Females in music can fall into the vocalist in skimpy clothing category while males fill all the other roles, this seems to have always been the case and is still the case today; musicians, music producers, film composers are disproportionally male. That said there are some interesting female music books. They might not have been as successful or famous as the males, but they loved music, lived musical lives, were very active, played instruments equally well as the boys and have interesting perspectives on music to share. I find females tend to write slightly different books, they aren’t afraid to show vulnerabilities, making for better reads and characters, sometimes I think life might be easier not having a male ego.

Nina Simone, I Put A Spell On You. Simone is a powerhouse of a piano player, she counters any notion that you need to be male to play virtuosic, with strength, power and volume. Trained as a classical pianist, but unable to go to the elite conservatoires because she was black, Simone ended up working in nightclubs. There she started singing and gained success in RnB. Her dream was to play Carnegie Hall, she achieved that, but it wasn’t the music she would have liked to have been playing. When you listen to her you can hear her classical training mixed with the swing, groove and feel of RnB. She stood up for black rights and her career suffered the repercussions from the white mass that didn’t like her loudly proclaimed young black and proud. Her story takes us through interesting areas, from Haiti, to Africa then to Paris where she spent the later years of her life.

Alicia Keys More Myself. Everyone loves Alicia, do I need to say more, read this book because she is lovely and sweet. There isn’t much drama to Alicia’s life, she’s levelheaded, a story about herself as a musician and songwriter. The book gives details about creating some of her well-known songs. She said when they stumbled upon “Girl on Fire,” they knew it was special. There’s a Prince story (everyone loves a Prince story) he mysteriously pops up at a gig, gives advice on the sound, then mysteriously disappears, classic Prince. There is also a quote in this book where she says Simone doesn’t play the piano, she destroys it, Alicia being no slouch on the piano either does say something, yes, you should go listen to some Simone now.

Lily Allen, My Thoughts Exactly. She is funny and witty and not afraid of showing every unpleasant side to her life. Males don’t do that, Grohl’s biography, he gives a detailed account of Joan Jett and her pajama selection, while skipping over the mother of his children, not to mention Kiedis and his relationship problems being about his too much awesomeness. Lily is happy to show the embarrassing side of her personality making her more relatable, and you can’t help feeling a bit better about your own life knowing that even the celebs have a hard time with this stuff. She understands that the best characters are flawed, who have difficulties with love and the emotional baggage that we all carry around, she’s a mess but delightful and hilarious. She has a funny childhood story of her mum sending an assistant to pick her up from school and he picked up another Lily instead, it took them a while before they realized it was the wrong Lily at the house, hence she has had a need to be noticed and loved.

Angélique Kidjo Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music. Angélique is one of the biggest popstars to come out of Africa. With biographies you get to learn about different lives from different cultural backgrounds, and this story takes readers to Africa, a continent with a massive amount of music, history but also poverty and corruption. Obviously not all it is in this book, but it shows how a popstar life might be different in different areas. She is respected in both Western and non-Western cultures and used her music to affect change in various areas of Africa. Her music is incredible too, with the interesting rhythmic feel of her home nation, Benin, mixed with dance and funky bass.

Viv Albertine Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. Do you know who Albertine is? She was the guitarist in the Slits? Still don’t know, well neither did I, but she was very involved in the London punk scene. The punk ethos is that anyone can do it, some of the girls hanging around the boys who were doing it, thought we can do it too, started a band, didn’t really know much about music and couldn’t play their instruments. They would start their songs 1,2,3,4 only realizing later that’s how you are meant to set the tempo, not just a cool way to start a song. She was good friends with the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees; got signed to Chris Blackwell’s label, then dropped because they were kind of shit. She went on to produce music videos, went back to music, grew out of the punk era while trying to navigate her life. She’s a good writer, insightful and it’s a fun read through the life of a punk rocker.

Kathleen Hanna Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk, Kathleen was the riot Grrrl pioneer, lead singer of Bikini Kill, and the smells like teen spirit inspiration, having been Kirk’s friend and neighbor during his not famous Olympia years. Riot grrrl voiced feminism back when feminism wasn’t known or accepted. Many people didn’t like the messages that feminism was proclaiming; feminism is in the mainstream consciousness now, but back then not as much. She had to deal with a lot from people and media who would push back against what she was trying to stand up for and attack her personally. It is a book that shows the power of music to give a voice, amplified through a microphone to project thoughts, opinions and what you believe to be right. But one that shows following a music path isn’t as easy as many of those who find success at a young proclaim it to be, Bikini Kill were never able to make it financially.

The Girl in the Back: A Female Drummer's Life with Bowie, Blondie, and the '70s Rock Scene by Laura Davis-Chanin. This book is more of a love letter to Bowie, a fan story and a glimpse into the CBGB music scene from someone who was in the background. Davis-Chanin wasn’t much of a musician, a regular at CBGB’s she started a band with her friends influenced by the music that was happening at CBGBs. She dates Jimmy Destri the keyboardist in Blondie and we get her life being amongst these musicians. Bowie arrives at the CBGB music scene because he is magnetically attracted to where the music is, starts working with Debbie Harry and becomes friends with Destri. Bowie is the allusive character everyone is in awe of, while also being this drug riddled mess everyone wants to look after, and an intense musical talent everyone wants some musical wisdom out of. It’s a cool book if anyone is interested in the CBGB era and getting a story about these elusive characters from another angle.

Face It: A Memoir Debbie Harry. Blondie is the ultimate post punk band and it’s an interesting time in New York, especially when you’re the girl everyone wants to hang with. She’s around for the birth of hip hop, she befriends Jean Michael Basquiat, everyone falls in love with her, she makes James Woods blush on the set of Videodrom. She has her own Bowie story where they are just hanging out, and his penis seems to simply come out because that’s Bowie, any other guy and the police will be there, but I suppose Bowie has that effect on women.

Patti Smith Just Kids. Smith has written a few books, they’re maybe not all worth reading, but I do like this one. It describes her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, life living in the Chelsea hotel before she became a musician, and the start of her music career. It’s interesting to hear about Mapplethorpe as an artist, being in awe of Warhol and trying to find his way before he became a respected photographer of bum holes. The Chelsea hotel if famous for the number of creatives who lived and frequented the establishment, and various New York characters pop up. It was written by Smith, so it doesn’t have the ghost writer polish, she’s reflecting on her time. It’s the book I would go to first if you’re into Smith, there are a few others to explore but I think this one has the best narrative.