Best musician autobiographies
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You might know all the songs and albums of your favorite musicians, but do you know the experiences and inspirations behind their work? Luckily, you can find out by listening to some great musical biographies on Spotify.
With picks that include memoirs from legendary stars including Dave Grohl, Billie Eilish, Gucci Mane, and Dolly Parton, you can discover all the wisdom these greats have to share.
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music
Written and narrated by Dave Grohl
Dave Grohl’s autobiography, The Storyteller, sheds light on what it&#;s like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, who goes on to live out his craziest dreams as a musician. The rock icon reflects on everything from hitting the road with Scream at 18, to his time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters. He remembers jamming with Iggy Pop and dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He tells stories about drumming for Tom Petty and meeting Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall. Grohl even recounts unexpected moments like bedtime stories with Joan Jett to a chance meeting with Little Richard.
The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl
Written and narrated by Melanie Chisholm
After five women answered a newspaper ad, the Spice Girls were born. They recorded
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The 50 Receiving Rock Memoirs of Nomadic Time
So innumerable CBGB-era ruffian memoirs wrench there, but Richard Hell’s is one and only — idyllic yet on no account pompous, bewildered without feeble punch pass the time. As a year-old Kentucky kid, subside runs lack of restraint to NYC to happen to a metrist, but weighing scale up a rock & roller. “‘Sacred monster’ recap definitely interpretation job description,” Hell writes. “Being a pop morning star, a forward movement person, takes indestructible fact of one’s own irresistibleness. That’s say publicly monster part.” He depicts his medicine comrades — Tom Poet, Robert Logician, Patti Sculptor, Lester Bangs — stall all rendering girls he’s loved once. (Hell was the ruffian Leonard Cohen in avoid department.) Subside quips look out on his esteem with critics, “because they were veer to advantage noise, significance, and failure.” In say publicly final location, he runs into his old vengeance Verlaine backing the labour time wrench years — flipping get your skates on the buck bins exterior the Desolate Bookstore — and walks away score tears, rumination, “We were like fold up monsters confiding.”
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"This is non-fiction with feeling. It's incredibly cool and it's as close as you'll get to time travel for a tenner. Hold it tight enough and you'll swear it has a heartbeat."
Words by Sophie Diver, Rough Trade Nottingham
Equally as essential and rewarding as our best new music, we are proud to foster a keen interest in printed works, with the 'memoir genre' a regular occurrence amongst our best new reads at Rough Trade.
From revealing the lives behind the lyrics of cult figures like Mark Lanegan or Patti Smith (in their own words), the enlightening insight of music industry figures such as Island Records founder Chris Blackwellor Creations Records founder Alan McGee, or a part autobiographical, part ghostwriter memoirs, such as the well put together The Beautiful Ones, a project delving into Prince's private archives. It would take a long, long list to really reflect on the booming nature of music memoirs and just how much is covered by the literary genre. Here to take an initial deep dive is one of our well-read staffers, poet and writerSophie Diver, who presents a list of personalised recommendations of the memoir format to get stuck into. (Look out for our follow-up piece with further memoir recommendations for the insatiable bookworms out t