Bøker i Decades-serien

This is a journey through Kiss's first and most storied decade. It is the story of the four men behind the masks, and the music they made, the studio albums, the legendary live albums, and of one of the greatest rock follies in music history, the four simultaneously released solo album.

How did social, cultural and political events concerning Britain during the 1940s reshape modern British fiction? During the Second World War and in its aftermath, British literature experienced and recorded drastic and decisive changes to old certainties. Moving from potential invasion and defeat to victory, the creation of the welfare state and a new Cold war threat, the pace of historical change seemed too rapid and monumental for writers to match. Consequently the 1940s were often side-lined in literary accounts as a dividing line between periods and styles. Drawing on more recent scholarship and research, this volume surveys and analyses this period's fascinating diversity, from novels of the Blitz and the Navy to the rise of important new voices with its contributors exploring the work of influential women, Commonwealth, exiled, genre, avant-garde and queer writers. A major critical re-evaluation of the intriguing decade, this book offers substantial chapters on Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, and George Orwell as well as covering such writers as Jocelyn Brooke, Monica Dickens, James Hadley Chase, Patrick Hamilton, Gerald Kersh, Daphne Du Maurier, Mary Renault, Denton Welch and many others.

Yes are widely recognised as pioneers of progressive rock through their defining work in the 1970s, including classic records such as Fragile and Close to the Edge. The band then went on to completely re-invent themselves in the 1980s. They achieved huge commercial success with the album 90125 and global hit 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'. But there has been little acknowledgement of their achievements in the ten years that followed, paving the way for three more decades in an extraordinary 50 plus-year-long career. Examining six more albums, the arrival of multi-instrumentalist Billy Sherwood, successful tours, solo and film projects, a move into the digital age, and consolidation of a worldwide fanbase, Yes in the 1990s adds a fresh twist to the story of this revered band. Simon Barrow followed Yes closely in the '90s, seeing them dozens of times on both sides of the Atlantic. He charts an underestimated era of development in the Yes sound, encompassing multiple personnel changes. Bookended by notable tours for Union and The Ladder, the '90s is a tale of Yes-intransition, as the search for new musical horizons sees their influence mutate across everything from art pop to global fusion.

There were a lot of very different bands peddling their wares in the progressive rock 'golden age' of the 1970s - some tending toward symphonic grandeur, other towards jazz fusion, and others still ploughing the more immediate end of the spectrum. There were the left-field eccentrics and the tricky 'difficult' bands. Apart from it all, however, there were Van Der Graaf Generator. In a decade stuffed with a wild array of influences, styles and instrumental line-ups, there can be few tending quite so near to the definition 'unique' as the four musicians who made up the 'classic' line-up of Van Der Graaf. For a start, there was the astonishing songwriting and vocals of generally accepted 'leader' Peter Hammill, but there was much more behind that to set these men apart. Their unparalleled instrumental make-up saw little or no guitar and no bass guitar, while organist Hugh Banton handled the bass parts on pedals, David Jackson pioneered an astonishing saxophone style, playing two instruments at once, electric rather than miked up, and using a full effects pedalboard. Drummer Guy Evans filled in - well, everything else. It was and remains a sound quite like no other. This book documents their incredibly influential first decade as prog's ultimate 'outsiders'. It's quite a ride

.Status Quo are a British institution - a multi-million selling band of epic proportions and while their career was in it's hey day during the 1970s, the hits kept coming through the 1980s along with breakups, lawsuits, line-up changes, substance abuse and a high-profile, highly successful comeback after calling it a day in 1984.

Having moved from jazz, Blues and R'n'B to out-and-out pop in his various 1960s bands, keyboard player Manfred Mann went back to the drawing board in 1971 with a new quartet, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, and the intention of focusing on progressive rock.

Propelled into stardom at an exhilarating speed due to clever marketing and virtuosity in their musicianship, particularly violinist Darryl Way, the story of Curved Air in the 1970s is of a band that burned brightly before collapsing well ahead of their time.

George Harrison was known as 'The Quiet Beatle', although this title did him a disservice, considering his intellectual focus and thoughtful nature. Instead, he was arguably 'The Chameleonic Beatle', a moniker that only serves to understand the deeply complex guitar player better. And in a deeply complicated decade, Harrison's artistry flourished.

The 1970s saw the rise of rock and metal as a force in record and ticket sales. Right there at the birth of this was Black Sabbath, whose first album came from nowhere to smash into the top of the charts in Britain and around the world. This is a comprehensive roundup of the band's music in the decade.

Free were formed in 1968 towards the end of the British blues boom. After two critically acclaimed albums, the release of 'All Right Now' and the album Fire and Water in 1970 brought them major success. Musical and personal differences took their toll and they split after the comparative failure of their next album and single.

Long, unfurling tracks; huge stacks of gear; music like that of no other group; trailblazing live gigs based on improvisation. This is the legacy of Tangerine Dream, the legendary German group piloted by Edgar Froese, whose impact on music, and electronic music in particular, has been profound.

Genesis remain the best known and best loved progressive rock band in the UK, bar none. While the 1980s represent their most profitable period as pop starts, their core fans turn to the 1970s for the band's true artistic peak.

Britpop Decades covers the ten-years that witnessed the birth, boom and bust of Britpop - a period in which home-grown indie guitar music from across the UK went mainstream, pop stars were cut from the most unlikely of cloth, and British culture made its voice heard with some incredibly bombastic choruses.

Championed by David Bowie, Mott The Hoople became one of the best known bands of the Glam era. A succession of top twenty singles in 1973 and 1974. Ian Hunter went on to commercial success and critical acclaim as a solo artist.

No period of Bob Dylan's six-decade career confounds fans more than the 1980s. The singer began the decade with Saved, the second in a trio of explicitly religious records, and a tour in which he declined to play his older songs because of concern they were anti-god.

Here is the story of Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s - the music, the people, the tours, the rumours, the failures and the successes. While it's impossible to ignore the skill and longevity of the albums Fleetwood Mac, Rumours and Tusk, there are an equal number of half-forgotten classic songs from the first half of the 1970s.

Stephen Lambe's enlightening book guides the reader through Focus's early history year by year, dealing with all eight Focus albums song by song, while also giving the same treatment to Akkerman and Van Leer's lesser know solo work between 1970 and 1979.

It may have all started with Syd Barrett, but the persistence and creativity of Roger Waters, Rick Wright, Nick Mason, and David Gilmour meant that Pink Floyd went from one of England's top underground psychedelic bands to one of the biggest rock bands on the planet - all thanks to an album wondering if there really was a dark side of the moon.