The Ten Greatest Books About Rock And Roll

Every fledgling rock and roll fan goes through the same phase. Whether
passed down from an older sibling, a hipper friend or simply found on one's own, some time after getting your first real dose of classic rock, copies of No One
Here Gets Out Alive, the lurid Jim Morrison biography; 'Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky, a tell-all about the legendary Jimi Hendrix and Legend, Tim White's well researched biography of Bob Marley, inevitably make their way into your
hands. However, as Bon Jovi once said, 'it's all the same, only the names have
changed.' The same decadent tales contained in the Led Zeppelin memoir Hammer Of The Gods are echoed in Danny Sugerman's Appetite For Destruction: The Days Of Guns N' Roses only to be retold in the chronicles of Motley Crue compiled in The Dirt: Confessions Of The World's Most Notorious Rock Band.

While there will always be an allure to tales of sex, drugs and rock and roll, especially amongst the high school set, stories of Satanism, sharks and groupies only present a small albeit colorful aspect of rock and roll. While any one of those
'unauthorized' tomes of 'literature,' may give a sense of the artist's origins and human failings, they rarely provide any perspective on the larger world of rock and roll.

What follows is a list, in no particular order, of the ten greatest books ever written about rock and roll. As you will see, it doesn't always have to be non-fiction to delve into the psyche of rock music, grasp the artistic essence of a generation or provide insight into the music that probably plays too large a role in some of our lives. It's only rock and roll, but we like it.