Description

In this book we explore the lives and times of James Brown, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Little Richard, Rod Stewart and Pete Townshend. While some were mates and more than a couple of them paid their dues in The Yardbirds, their music and personalities took them on vastly different journeys in life, crossing paths here and there. It makes you wonder how intimately they could have known each other’s pain— were they able to share experiences openly, or did they keep the front up backstage too? Perhaps we’ll never know, and maybe it isn’t our place to. Some people say you should never meet your heroes, and perhaps they are right. To truly get to know someone like James Brown, Elton John or Eric Clapton would be to destroy the mythology in your head: no longer are they the perfect being dispensing songs to the common folk, but they are now terrifyingly human. I say terrifyingly, because once you understand that these men and women don’t have the answers, it dawns on you that perhaps no one does. For some, stardom and all that came with it was their dream — the music industry was but one path they could have traveled down to achieve the life that they wanted, caused by some twist of fate. For others, stardom was nothing but a terrible side effect; they were afflicted with the need to create music, their outlet for the emotions and thoughts that boiled beneath them tearing them apart. Some may have embraced it as it came, while others fought it until the end. In Volume 24 we cover profiles on: James Brown Eric Clapton Elton John Little Richard Rod Stewart Pete Townshend