From the gonzo early days of
Rolling Stone to the black beauty-and-Bangs fueled Beat stylings of
Creem, cutting-edge writing and music have always gone hand in hand. But it’s not just in the pages of the rock rags—some stories are so big they needed whole books to fill. Here's Part II of our favorite works of rock literature.
Missed Part I?
Read it here! 
Cash: The Autobiography by Johnny Cash: If you think you know Johnny Cash’s story from watching the Hollywood biopic Walk The Line, think again. In
Cash’s autobiography, he bravely recalls what most of us already know, such as his struggle with methamphetamines, but the book also includes lesser-known events such as the time he started a forest fire or was nearly disemboweled by an ostrich. As funny, frank, and forthright as Cash’s music, the autobiography tells the whole story. Instead of stopping in 1968, like the movie, Cash goes into great detail about his spiritual salvation, his unexpected and amazing resurgence through his work with Rick Rubin, and his lifelong love with June Carter. It is the unflinching account of a life that started in poverty and tragedy and followed its own jagged, painful course to true love and artistic triumph.
Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota by Chuck Klosterman: Chuck Klosterman is one of rock’s most promising—and polarizing—writers, and his first book
Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota remains his most controversial collection. Although technically it’s a memoir, the book reads more like a collection of sometimes seemingly unrelated thoughts all held together by geography (the Midwest) and music (heavy metal). Love him or hate him, Klosterman’s insights into the ’70s and ’80s hair-metal scenes are truly amazing—and his unabashed for his subject separates him from the hipper-than-thou masses of rock critics. For a while,
Fargo Rock City pigeonholed Klosterman as a metal expert, but his later essays on everything from Britney Spears to the death of Dee Dee Ramone reveal him as a sharp observer and a cultural commentator who is as unflinching in his assessment of himself as he is his subjects.
England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, And Beyond by Jon Savage: There’s a quote from the
New York Times Book Review on the cover of
England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, And Beyond that calls it “[T]he definitive history of the English punk movement,” and that’s a pretty accurate summation of this 656-page opus.
England’s Dreaming painstakingly and vividly recreates the ’70s English punk scene.
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain:
England’s Dreaming is cool, and all, but it only tells a sliver of the story. For the whole Tuinol-fueled, glue-sniffing she-bang, from the Stooges and the Velvets to the Ramones and the Dead Boys and the Heartbreakers, the book to read is
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History Of Punk. Co-written by
Punk magazine’s Legs McNeil, this comprehensive oral history [think George Plimpton and Jean Stein’s
Edie reads as a rollicking, (not always) death-defying account of the birth of punk and its late-70s New York City golden era.] A smart-assed, unglossed version of the beautifully depraved scene that changed everything, it’s not for the feint of heart.
Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan: With echoes of Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield, the great lyrical trickster and twister lays forth this plain-spoken and mesmerizing portrait of a time (the late 50s and early 60s), a place (New York City), and a person. At its heart, it’s the hero’s tale: Dylan leaves frozen, small-town Minnesota to write his dreams large in a way that only New York and an acoustic guitar will let him. Beautifully lucid and dream-like at the same time,
Chronicles is a stunningly good novel, a coming of age story of a man, a city, an era, and a country that swirl together and change each other profoundly forever.
Read Part I Here!