BOOKS WE LIKE! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BY THE EDITORS AT LEGSVILLE

“THERE’S NO BONES IN ICE CREAM: SYLVAIN SYLVAIN’S STORY OF THE NEW YORK DOLLS” BY SYLVAIN SYLVAIN, WITH DAVE THOMPSON

From OmnibusPress.com:

“Rock-musician autobiographies don’t come much better than this… one of the best books of its kind. Sylvain had had an extraordinary life even before he became a New York Doll. A superb book even if all Sylvain had done was work in a bank. As it is, it’s one of the best rock autobiographies ever.”
– Classic Rock, 10/10

“There are stories galore here… yet there are genuinely tender moments and poignancy too… affectionate, sometimes lurid portrait of his band”
– Mojo, 4*

“Don’t live life worrying about it, just T. Rex the s*** out of it.”
– Sylvain Sylvain

The New York Dolls were called many things; glam, proto-punk, hard rock, but are probably best understood as a ‘dirty rock & roll’ band.

Combining an aggressively androgynous style with street smart New York attitude and campy humour, the New York Dolls ushered in the era of CBGBs, heroin chic, loud guitars and referential lyrics which gave rise to Patti Smith, The Ramones, Television and many more. Fans of the band range from Guns N’ Roses to Morrissey, who organised the reformation of the band when he curated Meltdown festival in 2004.

Sylvain Sylvain was there from the start, and this is his story. Taking in his early life in New York, the rise, fall and rise again of the New York Dolls, and all his misadventures between, There’s No Bones in Ice Cream is the true story of one of rock’s greatest, told in his own authentic voice.

Publication Date: 17.06.21
ISBN: 9781913172459
Extent: 256 pages
Format: Paperback

***Please note, if out of stock at our warehouse, this title can be purchased at all good high street and online booksellers***

“EYE MIND: THE SAGA OF ROKY ERICKSON AND THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS, THE PIONEERS OF PSYCHEDELIC SOUND” BY PAUL DRUMMOND

From AbeBooks.com:

“One of the most exhilarating and important rock ’n’ roll stories ever told.”
—Julian Cope

The trailblazing 13th Floor Elevators released the first “psychedelic” rock album in America, transforming culture throughout the 1960s and beyond. The Elevators followed their own spiritual cosmic agenda, to change society by finding a new path to enlightenment. Their battles with repressive authorities in Texas and their escape to San Francisco’s embryonic counterculture are legendary.

When the Elevators returned to Texas, the band became subject to investigation by Austin police. Lead singer Roky Erickson was forced into a real-life enactment of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and was put away in a maximum-security unit for the criminally insane for years. Tommy Hall, their Svengali lyricist, lived in a cave. Guitarist Stacy Sutherland was imprisoned. The drummer was involuntarily subjected to electric shock treatments, and the bassist was drafted into the Vietnam War.

This fascinating biography breaks decades of silence of band members and addresses a huge cult following of Elevators fans in the United States and Europe. The group is revered as a formative influence on Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Patti Smith, Primal Scream, R.E.M, and Z.Z. Top.

“TROUBLE BOYS: THE TRUE STORY OF THE REPLACEMENTS” BY BOB MEHR

From ReplacementsBook.com:

Thirty-five years after the release of their debut album, comes the definitive biography of one of the last great rock ‘n’ roll bands of the twentieth century: The Replacements. Written with the participation of the group’s key members, including reclusive singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, and the family of late guitarist Bob Stinson, Trouble Boys is a deeply intimate portrait, revealing the primal factors and forces – addiction, abuse, fear – that would shape one of the most brilliant and notoriously self-destructive groups of all-time.

Based on a decade of research and reporting, hundreds of interviews (with family, friends, managers, producers and musical colleagues), as well as full access to the Replacements’ archives at Twin/Tone and Warner Bros. Records, author Bob Mehr has fashioned something far more compelling than a conventional band bio. Trouble Boys is a heartbreakingly tragic, frequently comic, and, ultimately, triumphant epic.

“GET IN THE VAN: ON THE ROAD WITH BLACK FLAG” BY HENRY ROLLINS

From TwoThirteenSixtyOne.com:

Get In The Van is back in print after taking a break for upgrades. We are happy to have this battle worn classic available. Signed!

• Paperback edition

From Wikipedia.org:

Get in the Van is a memoir by singer, writer and spoken word artist Henry Rollins first published in 1994 by Rollins’ own company, 2.13.61 Publications. The book is composed of journal entries that Rollins kept while he was lead singer of the band Black Flag from 1981 to its breakup in 1986. Other text includes recollections of times when he had yet to start, or had lapsed in, his journal-keeping.

Sections of the book were read and recorded by Rollins and released as a 2-CD set, which won a Grammy in 1995 for Best Spoken Word Album.

“CHEETAH CHROME: A DEAD BOY’S TALE: FROM THE FRONT LINES OF PUNK ROCK” BY CHEETAH CHROME, FOREWORD BY LEGS MCNEIL

From GoodReads.com:

Here is the autobiography of Cheetah Chrome, lead guitarist of the Dead Boys, one of the greatest punk bands ever. It’s a tale of success–and excess: great music, drugs (he overdosed and was pronounced dead three times), and resurrection.

The Dead Boys, with roots in the band Rocket from the Tombs, came out of Cleveland to dominate the NYC punk scene in the mid-1970s. Their hit “Sonic Reducer” soon became a punk anthem. Now, for the first time, Cheetah dishes on the people he’s known onstage and off, including the Dead Boys’ legendary singer Stiv Bators, Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, the Ramones, the Clash, Pere Ubu, and the Ghetto Dogs, as well as life at CBGBs, a year with Nico, and more.

Straight from the man, these are the backstage stories that every punk fan will want to hear. Never mind the Sex Pistols, here’s Cheetah Chrome!

“JOHN LYDON: STORIES OF JOHNNY: A COMPENDIUM OF THOUGHTS ON THE ICON OF AN ERA” FOREWORD BY AARON MCGHEE

From AbeBooks.com:

A set of stand-alone essays written by the cream of rock music’s commentators—among them Rob Johnstone, Clinton Heylin, Legs McNeill, Greil Marcus, Kris Needs, Judy Nylon, Alan Clayson, and Nigel Williamson—this work could well be the final word on the symbol of 1970 punk they once called “Rotten.” Love him or hate him, 30 years after the release of the Sex Pistols’ first record, John Lydon—the man who was the focal point of the British punk movement—is impossible to ignore when discussing the history of rock. Was the Sex Pistols’ album Never Mind the Bollocks the one true masterpiece of punk’s first wave? How did the Pistols influence American punk? How does Lydon’s post-Pistols work in PIL compare in influence and artistry? Contributors delve into these questions and more in this fitting tribute to an underdog who went on to become an antihero to millions.

“THE MUDD CLUB” BY RICHARD BOCH

From BarnesAndNoble.com:

I was a Long Island kid that graduated college in 1976 and moved to Greenwich Village. Two years later, I was working The Mudd Club door. Standing outside, staring at the crowd, it was “out there” versus “in here” and I was on the inside. The Mudd Club was filled with the famous and soon- to- be famous, along with an eclectic core of Mudd regulars who gave the place its identity. Everyone from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, and Robert Rauschenberg to Johnny Rotten, The Hell’s Angels, and John Belushi: passing through, passing out, and some, passing on. Marianne Faithful and Talking Heads, Frank Zappa, William Burroughs, and even Kenneth Anger— just a few of the names that stepped on stage. No Wave and Post- Punk artists, musicians, filmmakers, and writers living in a nighttime world on the cusp of two decades. This book is a cornucopia of memories and images, and how this famed wicked downtown club attained the status of midtown and uptown. There was nothing else like it— I met everyone, and the job quickly defined me. I thought I could handle it, and for a while, I did. ”

— Richard Boch

“TWENTIETH-CENTURY BOY: NOTEBOOKS OF THE SEVENTIES” BY DUNCAN HANNAH

From PenguinRandomHouse.com:

Celebrated painter Duncan Hannah arrived in New York City from Minneapolis in the early 1970s as an art student hungry for experience, game for almost anything, and with a prodigious taste for drugs, girls, alcohol, movies, rock and roll, books, parties, and everything else the city had to offer. Taken directly from the notebooks Hannah kept throughout the decade, Twentieth-Century Boy is a fascinating, sometimes lurid, and incredibly entertaining report from a now almost mythical time and place. Full of outrageously bad behavior, naked ambition, fantastically good music, and evaporating barriers of taste and decorum, and featuring cameos from David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, and many more, it is a rollicking account of an artist’s coming of age.