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The Best Music Books of 2024: Joni Mitchell, Lisa Marie Presley, Kathleen Hanna, Rolling Stones and More
This year's bumper crop of great music books includes titles on Joni MItchell, Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna, the Rolling Stones, the Bee Gees and more.
Hilburn gets into the impact of growing up under the shadow of three famous film-composer uncles (Alfred, Lionel and Emil), being steered away from classical and driven into pop music by his childhood friend Lenny Waronker(who went on to guide his career at Reprise Records), and how a turn into film scoring fulfilled his family destiny. This new volume, started by Lisa Marie Presley before her 2022 death and completed recently by daughter Riley Keough, falls squarely into the realm of autobio-tragedy — bracingly looking at how depression and addiction issues repeat themselves generationally, with almost none of the sentimentalized overlay you might expect a book of this kind to impose. He focuses on the music and moments that are most fertile, highlighting their series of sparkling ‘60s hits, the brief breakup and confusing of the early ‘70s that ultimately led to their unexpected disco dominance — and the subsequent backlash that was so intense the group barely worked under their own name for many years.
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