Kirjahaku

This is the first full-length illustrated look at the Zapple label the Beatles experimental label and the most ambitious expression of the Beatles determination to be leading members of the counterculture movement Created by Zapple label manager, Barry Miles, the acclaimed author who set up and planned the list in cooperation with the Beatles, and written in an engaging diary style, this book lets the reader gains unique insights into the lives and working methods of leading literary and counterculture figures of the era Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan, the City Lights poets, Ken Weaver, Frank Zappa, and many more. Included are self-contained feature spreads on topics of particular interest to add background detail, and to introduce a change of pace for the reader for example, on the Chelsea Hotel and its artistic inhabitants, and a feature summarizing Miles s relentless traveling schedule. As the author travels to and from the US and Apple HQ in London, the reader learns about the developing tensions within Apple Corps, the developing sourness between the Beatles over the appointment of Allen Klein as Apple Corps Business Manager and the eventual closure of Zapple, and the breakup of the Beatles. The records issued by Zapple reveal the aims and passions of John Lennon and George Harrison as they begin to forge new identities as solo artists. Packed with great stories from the Hell s Angels notorious visit to Apple HQ to the goings-on at New York City s Chelsea Hotel, which became Miles s main base when traveling to and from the US this book also features many previously unpublished photos made by the author, plus memorabilia from the author s archive, now held at the British Library."

In conformist 1950s America, Jack Kerouac's On the Road was greeted with both delirium and dismay, but in Kerouac's hunt for the big experience and his longing for greatness, he has inspired each successive generation. Jack Kerouac is now an icon, and this provocative and intimate portrait of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers, reveals a man full of contradictions, rarely at peace with himself. Barry Miles, friend and official biographer of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, provides a meticulously researched exploration of the complex man and extraordinary writer whose creative mishmash of joyous incoherence, drug-induced ecstasy, genuine mysticism and constant craving has persuaded so many to take to the road.

Iconoclast; visionary; homosexual crusader; drug advocate; teacher and elder statesman to the Beats: William Burroughs remains one of the most complex and controversial American writers of the twentieth century. This title presents an unconventional biography of this legendary provocateur and all-round thorn in the side of the establishment.

'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.

Allen Ginsberg occupies a significant and enduring position in American literature. Following Ginsberg's death in 1997, Barry Miles has drawn on both his long friendship with the poet and on Ginsberg's journals and correspondence to produce an immensely readable account of one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary poets.

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.

Ten years after his death, Frank Zappa continues to influence popular culture. With almost one hundred recordings still in print, Zappa remains a classic American icon. Scores of bands have been influenced by (and have shamelessly imitated) his music, and a talented roster of musicians passed through Zappa's bands. Now comes the definitive biography of Zappa by Barry Miles, best-selling author of Hippie and Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, who knew Zappa personally and was present at the recording of some of his most important albums. Miles follows Zappa from his sickly Italian-American childhood in the 1940s (his father worked for the military and was used to test the effectiveness of new biological warfare agents) to his youthful pursuit of what was a lifelong dream: becoming a classical composer. Zappa brings together the many different personalities of this music legend together for the first time: the self-taught musician and composer who gained fame with the "rock" band the Mothers of Invention; the political antagonist who mocked presidents while being invited by Vaclav Havel to represent Czechoslovakia's cultural interests in the United States, and Zappa the family man who was married to the same woman for over thirty years.

During the past year Paul McCartney has been in the public's eye more than at any time since the peak of Beatlemania over thirty years ago. His fans have been treated to the best-selling Flaming Pie and Standing Stone albums, a full hour of Paul on "Oprah," and this thoughtful and comprehensive biography that brings us closer to the man than ever before. Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews over a period of five years, and with complete access to Paul's own archives, Barry Miles has succeeded in letting Paul tell the story of his life as a Beatle in his own words. It includes Paul's recollection of the genesis of every song that he wrote with John Lennon and the fascinating details about their remarkable collaboration.

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.

Authoritative biography of cult writer and author of NAKED LUNCH, William Burroughs (1914-1997).It has been 50 years since Norman Mailer asserted, 'I think that William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius.' This assessment holds true today. No-one since then has taken such risks in their writing, developed such individual radical political ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media - Burroughs has written novels, memoirs, technical manuals and poetry, he has painted, made collages, taken thousands of photographs, made visual scrapbooks, produced hundreds of hours of experimental tapes, acted in movies and recorded more CDs than most rock groups.Made a cult figure by the publication of NAKED LUNCH, Burroughs was a mentor to the 1960s youth culture. Underground papers referred to him as 'Uncle Bill' and he ranked alongside Bob Dylan and the Beatles, Buckminster Fuller and R.D. Laing as one of the 'gurus' of the youth movement who might just have the secret of the universe.Based upon extensive research, this biography paints a new portrait of Burroughs, making him real to the reader and showing how he was perceived by his contemporaries in all his guises - from icily distant to voluble drunk. It shows how his writing was very much influenced by his life situation and by the people he met on his travels around America and Europe. He was, beneath it all, a man torn by emotions: his guilt at not visiting his doting mother; his despair at not responding to reconciliation attempts from his father; his distance from his brother; the huge void that separated him from his son; and above all his killing of his wife, Joan Vollmer.

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.

London has long been a magnet for aspiring artists and writers, musicians and fashion designers seeking inspiration and success. In London Calling, Barry Miles explores the counter-culture - creative, avant garde, permissive, anarchic - that sprang up in this great city in the decades following the Second World War. Here are the heady post-war days when suddenly everything seemed possible, the jazz bars and clubs of the fifties, the teddy boys and the Angry Young Men, Francis Bacon and the legendary Colony Club, the 1960s and the Summer of Love, the rise of punk and the early days of the YBAs. The vitality and excitement of this time and years of change - and the sheer creative energy in the throbbing heart of London - leap off the pages of this evocative and original book.

A photographic survey of UK schools of art by artist Matthew Cornford and writer John Beck. Contemporary colour photographs of these often architecturally significant buildings are accompanied by captions detailing each art school’s history. Cumulatively they reveal the changes undergone by many of these vital institutions and offer a reflection on the state of art education today. Artist Matthew Cornford and writer John Beck studied at art school in Great Yarmouth in the early 1980s. Three decades later they found the building boarded up and for sale. Was the closure of this art school of simply local significance, they wondered, or part of a broader story about the changing place of art and art education in the country? Combining fieldwork and archival digging, over the last ten years the pair have explored the towns and cities of the United Kingdom, building a photographic record of each art school building, or the site upon which it stood, and compiling a capsule history of each institution. Cumulatively, the images are a reminder of quite how many art schools there were in the UK, with over 150 still in operation as recently as the 1960s. As contemporary photographs, the images also speak to a complex and varied history of amalgamations, closures, renovations, demolitions and shifting priorities in art education and beyond. Schools Of Art is a selection of 75 photographs and captions from Beck and Cornford’s ongoing survey, covering the celebrated and the forgotten, the repurposed and the dismantled institutions that fuelled and shaped the creative life of the UK for over a hundred and fifty years. Among the questions raised by this work are fundamental ones regarding the value and significance of arts education and its contribution to the health and prosperity of our towns and cities.