Böcker av Richard Butterworth

The Pretenders proved revelatory, lashing hard rock to the sexy, sassy swagger of streetwise punk and catchy, chart-busting pop. Richard Butterworth appraises The Pretenders' turbulent, vital early years: from Chrissie's arrival in Britain, through the band's 1978 birth to 1990 and their fifth album. Enjoy the ride.

Pink Floyd are one of the most innovative, enduringly successful bands in history. Their influence is incalculable. 1973's Dark Side of the Moon, though far from the first concept album, established a new model for quasi-symphonic, long-form investigations into the human condition: a record of thoughtfully poignant lyrics and some of the most elegant, powerful, genre-defining rock music ever made. Formed in 1967 Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason, helmed by the tragically brilliant Syd Barrett, fused English pastoral whimsy with electrifying instrumental voyages through inner and outer space. Their gigs at underground clubs, such as UFO and Middle Earth, are the stuff of psychedelic legend. Between 1968 and 1971, Barrett replaced by David Gilmour, their sonic inquiries were never braver: some delivered instantly; others revealed their treasures slowly; all played crucially distinctive parts in rock's development. During the 1970s, the music matured as the messages darkened. While Floyd continued to prove that emotional weight and cathartic release can be forged from deceptively modest arrangements, the band's live spectaculars reached a pitch of technical complexity and extravagance none has matched. With insightful analysis, objectivity and ironic wit, Richard Butterworth appraises afresh Pink Floyd's official recorded canon, from 'Arnold Layne' to The Endless River. and beyond, to 2022 and the first all-new Floyd music for 28 years.

Jefferson Airplane's classic lineup - one ex-model, two ex-folkies, one ex-jazzer and two ex-D.C. guitarslingers - crafted music that was at once powerful, innovative and beautiful. A musical and social force of nature, Airplane mirrored the psychedelic dream, burning higher, fiercer and brighter than any of their contemporaries.

One long summer two friends discover that their fantasy worlds are becoming a bit real, and that the real world has got rather fantastic until no-one is really sure which is which. For the next twenty years they try to recapture that summer and their imaginary enchanted woodlands in a Great Work of Art. Too bad they keep getting distracted and going to the pub. As well as taking you for a gentle ramble through their fantasy worlds, King of the Woods will teach you the secret art of making very loud explosions, you will meet the Thorn Witch who dances with the winds, a fox who is probably also a Prince and is in love with an Ice Maiden, an Austin Mini 850 held together with string and a Land Rover that hates roads, a life size working clockwork model of Jean Paul Satre and the worst heavy metal band in the West Midlands. King of the Woods is silly, mysterious, elegiac and a love story, though neither of the protagonists would ever admit it to each other.