Wot no Iggy? `I Need More` may be harder to find than a laugh in the Van Morrison dressing room, but it`s distilled rock n roll in book form maaan. David Lee Roth`s `Crazy Fronm The Heat` merits a mention too.
Most disappointing has to be Lemmy`s. What a missed opportunity. The great behemoths of rock excess may have punctured memories, sure, but I though the great Mr Kilmister transcended such lightweight amnesia

Stan Cullimore of the Housemartins wrote a very reasonable "how to be a popstar" book, based on how they made it big. Sending postcards to the fans apparently. On a tangent, are there any reasonable portrayals of rock stars/musicians in fiction? I find they mostly ring very false. Jeff Vurts Needle in the Groove is an honourable exception. Maybe the new William Gibson, and an old Iain Banks too.

'Man Enough to Be A Woman' by Jayne County? Never even seen a copy (although I do have a 7" vinyl copy of "Fuck Off" - all reasonable offers considered) but it sounds like an interesting read. Oh and can I just repeat my earlier view that there has never been a more appropriately named individual than Guy Pratt, author of 'My Bass and other Animals'. Thanks. P.S. David - clearly all you need to do is use the phrase 'we should make a list' ...

Definitely agree with the comments about Head On by Julian Cope. I'm not a huge Teardrops/Cope fan but I found the whole insight into the music business fascinating. Also, Eric Goulden's book isn't exactly a classic but was interesting - he really is quite bitter about the way he believes he was treated by some people and the book seems to be his way of getting back at them !

And yes, agree with Jez that McNabb's autobiography looks like being worth the wait ! I think Andrew Collins has already referred to it somewhere.

A recent corker is 'My Bass and other Animals' by Guy Pratt. Top notch - genuinely interesting/understated/funny with a zero percentage prententiousness count (or ZPPC as I like to have it).
Regards
Royston Vince

The Warren Zevon book is fantastic, but I'm afraid it will thoroughly ruin your perception of the artist as a human being. He was a twat who thoroughly deserved several good smacks and inevitably one cannot help but wonder if he got his just desserts. "Touching from a distance" is also a very good book. Deborah's tale totally undermining Ian's "Seer" status - He wouldn't pay the gas bill!

SHIBBOLETH my revolting life by Penny Rimbaud of CRASS fame is a great read,

Icicle Worker Ian Mcnabb's forthcoming autobiography Merseybeast promises to be a must read if the tasters published on his MySpace blogs page are anything to go by.

Arrrgh Mo Foster's book is called "18 watts" not 14. These little details matter....

Henry Rollins' brutal on-the-road diary "Get in the Van" is a bloody good read, if thoroughly depressing. Anyone who wants to join a band "for the glamour" should give this a read first. It's rock 'n roll without the drugs, precious little sex, hardly any money, but with an exhausting work ethic and a seething, violent undercurrent.

i didnt previously recommend it because it was a biography rather than an autobiography but Strange Affair about Richard Thompson by Patrick Humphreys is my all time favourite book about a rock star. Its a real page turner about a national treasure. The book about Warren Zevon by his widow sounds like a must read - just hope it doesnt put me off listening to his music as he sounds as if he was some monster.

Ghost Rider by Neil Peart.
Possibly the best rock drummer in history, and this is a superb book documenting a motor bike ride across Canada and down the west coast of America to Mexico which he undertook after the death of his daughter in a car crash and months later his wife from cancer. As you could imagine it is very personal coping with terrible grief but it is very inspiring as he comes to terms with where his life is going and what happens to him on his journey.

Mark Pytress wrote the biography of Siouxsie and the Banshees and it was fab. What made it more fabber was that my lovely wife suprised me with an autographed copy. Touching from a Distance is a pretty remarkable book too.

On a tangent to the comment about Nico, I'm reminded of the line in her obituary (in the Telegraph, I think) to the effect that "She later gave up heroin and took up bicycle riding. Unfortunately this proved to be the more lethal activity."

Richard Hell has written a few well-received novels. Looking back over all the suggestions, maybe not such a bad list after all...

Surely THE autobiography yet to be written is the one (wishful thinking, I fear) by Captain Beefheart. Now, if he could do with prose what he does in his lyrics with mundane stuff like structure, narrative, character and plot.... BTW, Bill Harkleroad's book is well worth a read.

Jules- I'm sure David Gilmour and Roger Waters have a good book between them. If they can't be arsed writing one, how about a "Pop Up Pink Floyd Pages" full of lovely shots of the band's light show and Nick Mason trying to drum.

I agree with lots of these already suggested! How about a biography yet to come? Anyone desperate for a bio to be written? There are whisperings of a possible David Bowie, and I think Tom Waits is good 'un. Who else?

Forgot to mention this one: "Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting" by Jimmy Webb. Fascinating description of how to write "Wichita Lineman". I think it is aimed at proper musicians, but I enjoyed it too. Also got it signed by the great man when he was last over here. Just a pleasure to own.

Would Steve Calt's "I'd Rather Be The Devil:Skip James And The Blues" count? Calt spent a lot of time with James in the '60's and the book is an unblinking look at a pretty unpleasant man who happened to have been-for a brief time-one of the greatest of bluesmen.

Just thought of another belter - 'Songs They Never Play On The Radio' by James Young. It's by Nico's keyboard player in the '80s and details a pretty wretched period where Nico was touring Europe and taking lots of heroin. Full of scummy annecdotes and gallows humour I'd highly recommend it (the book not heroin).

Gotta go with above recommendations
The Dirt would be hard for anyone else to beat as a bio, forget the Motley's music and just read it. Please Kill Me an oral bio of the New York Punk scene comes close though. Also Diary of A Rock a Roll Star is a must read, a snapshot of life in the lower leagues of rock.

Hugh Cornwell's autobio wasn't bad; Bill Nelson once did an Eno-type diary which looked interesting in parts. David Crosby's bio is supposedly good, though I haven't read it. That aside, not much to add to those already mentioned. It's a pretty thin list isn't it? Almost as short as the list of great books written by footballers!

Can we widen this out to the least essential rock tomes as well? Am I really the only person here to have leafed idly through 'Goodnight JimBob: On The Road With Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine' by the good Mr JimBob?

I've mentioned this one somewhere else on this web-site, but just check out "The Dirt - Motley Crue: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band" by Motley Crue. I really do NOT like this group's music, but this book written by all the band - well compiled from interviews - is pretty much jaw dropping entertainment. It is like "Hammer of the Gods" turned to eleven then cut with Pulp Fiction. it is actually really tragic in places.

More honest and LESS self mythologising. It was late at night. Oh, how I wish we could edit our posts...

Totally agree that "Diary of a rock n roll star" is a classic, as are the two volumes by Deke Leonard (which, incidentally, are called "I wish I'd stayed in bed" and "Man - the diary of a rock n roll band"). Slightly muso orientated but a great read is "14 watts?" by Mo Foster as a great snapshot of the birth of Brit rock n roll through the eyes of a top player. The title comes from the bemused response of his local music shop owner in the early 60s who is unable to conceive of anyone needing an amplifier more powerful than that....

No one seems to have mentioned Eno's "A Year with Swollen Appendices" which offers a very enlightening insight into Professor Pop's life. Also to be recommended is John Cale's "What's Welsh For Zen?" (Written with Victor Bockris) which is rueful, honest and perhaps the best Velvet's account available. I also enjoyed "Head On" and thought Guy Pratt's book wasn't THAT bad. At least he acknowledges that he was a nob. It's just a shame that Peter Kay couldn't have done the same with his appalling book..

If you can, try to track down a copy of Yoko Ono's book 'Grapefruit' - it was the 60's man. Does Jerry Wexler's excellent 'The Rhythm & The Blues' count? If so then so should Andrew Loog Oldham's 'Stoned' which is a fantastic read (skip the sequel '2stoned' though!)

I think Levon Helm's This Wheel's On Fire is very poorly written. Which is a shame, because his account is probably more honest and self-mythologising than Robbie Robertson's would be, if he ever came to write it.

Oh yes, Giles Smith 'Lost In Music'. ( Almost forgot about that one! )

Now i know it's not by a musician, though it wasn't for the want of trying in his early life, but "Cider with Roadies" by a certain Stuart Maconie (you may have heard of him) is the best book about music that I've read.
In a similar vein "Lost in Music" by Giles Smith (of Cleaners from Venus "fame") is also highly recommended and eerily close to many, many truths.

How about 'Hit Me, Fred' by Fred Wesley, trombone player and musical director for James Brown for a time. He's a very good story teller -and with James Brown there are just so many funny/horrifying stories. Also very good as a description of his life trying to earn a living as a musician in jazz and funk in the 60/70s.

Never thought I would hear myself say it, but Sting's "Broken Music" is a very interesting and well written affair. Well worth a look, even if you hate his music.

Surely THE rock autobiography has to be "Chronicles" by Bob Dylan. The man has a way with prose that's probably even better than his lyrics - an unalloyed joy to read. Runners-up prize to Julian Cope for writing books so full of energy and enthusiasm you want to go straight out and listen to what he's been writing about. Bronze medal to Joe Jackson's, "A Cure For Gravity."

"This Wheel's on Fire" by Levon Helm is a great read. He really doesn't like Robbie Robertson!

"Long Time Gone" by David Crosby - how could it not be entertaining after a life like that?

And another vote for Miles Davis's autobiography. He doesn't come out of it very well, especially in his treatment of women, but it's fascinating.

Willy Vlautin (Richmond Fontaine)"The Motel Life" - as close to Raymond Carver as you will find

'A Cure for Gravity' by Joe Jackson. More than an autobiography (though that side of it is a great read), he says interesting things about music of all kinds. I'm a fan, but it should be read by all music lovers.

I'm cheekily going to nominate a book that hasn't been written yet. Tom Waits has had an interesting life by any standards, but with his tendency for wild self-mythologising and his inability to form a dull sentence, his autobiography - if and when he gets down to writing it - will surely be a solid gold classic. In the meantime we can enjoy the world's greatest interviewee in "Innocent When You Dream: The Collected Interviews". In his words, if you think that you can tell a bigger tale, I swear to God you'd have to tell a lie.

Do try Guy Pratt's "My Bass and Other Animals". Worth it simply for David Coverdale's "These are terrible times for a cocksman" quote.

Ah nobody has mentioned the excellent 'I Was a Robot' (checka the title) by Wolfgang Flur, detailing the Kling Klang studio and his invention of the synthesisier 'stolen' by Ralf and Florian on The Model, right before Wolfgang was kicked out of Kraftwerk.

Mark Radcliffe's 'Showbusiness' was fun too, since he's a musician/DJ in his own right (Did anyone, and I didn't, see the Mahones' Loopallu set?)

Zodiac Mindwarp's Fucked By Rock is an incredible book. And agreed on the Julian Cope two, um, too.

'Wouldn't It Be Nice' by Brian Wilson is a pretty disturbing read. Especially since, when interviewed on 'The Tube' a couple of years later, he couldn't remember ever writing it.

Further votes for Bruce Thomas' 'Big Wheel' and Cope's 'Head On' from me. Of the latter, Julie Burchill wrote, 'Made my heart burst.' And who couldn't love a book that did that?
Also well worh looking out for is James Young's book, 'Nico, the Last Bohemian (Songs They Never Play on the Radio)'. Young was Nico's keyboard player on some late tours. The scenes of John Cooper Clark trying to shoot flies of the kitchen ceiling with jets of blood from a syringe should put any impressionable would-be rock star off the seedier side of the rock'n'roll life.

Ian Hunter?s book was a startling read ? certainly to my 14 year old eyes when I found it back in about 1972. Page after page about second-hand guitar shops in the glamorous American mid-west, it was like reading science fiction. And the industrial-strength fruitiness of the language only added to the charm. Surprisingly little about the groupies that were supposedly eager to give up their innocence to the marauding bands of Englishmen though.

The Bruce Thomas book is also terrific ? but I do have it on good authority that most of the stories were actually Nick Lowe?s, not Bruce?s. If Basher is a reader (and he surely must be) perhaps he can clarify.

Chuck Berry's 'Autobiography' was a hoot although I was surprised he didn't leave mid-way through the final chapter clutching a brown paper bag full of dosh. The late great Dick Heckstall-Smith write a darn fine auto-biog too called 'Blowing The Blues'. Very good on the Graham Bond Organization days and the travelling-in-the-back-of-the-van-in-the-sixties kinda thing. Agree about 'The Big Wheel'. Thomas did pen another one called 'On the Road...Again' plus a biography of Bruce Lee called 'Fighting Spirit'. But I digress...

Any of Kinky Friedman's novels come highly recommended. I agree that Marianne Faithfull's 'Faithless' is excellent stuff, enhanced by meeting her at a Van Morrison gig shortly after reading it - sadly an encounter unlikely to merit a footnote in the update which I see is due out soon. Nick Mason's inside account of Pink Floyd is worth a mention too. However stay well clear of the self serving rubbish that is Guy 'slap-bass for hire' Pratt's autobiography - he took lots of drugs in the 80's, married into Pink Floyd and once passed out on a plane with Jimmy Page, and all related in the most self-serving prose imaginable .

'Wreckless' Eric Goulden's 'A Dysfunctional Success' is a great read, mainly because of his exceedingly jaundiced world view. Don't think he'll be getting many Christmas cards from Elvis C., though...

Bruce Thomas's odd little autobiography, 'The Big Wheel' is a good read, as I recall. 'The Singer' (Costello) gets a bit of a caning, though Thomas doesn't come over as someone you'd cheerfully get stuck in a lift with either.

Isn't Ian Hunter's 'Diary of A Rock & Roll Star' supposed to be top in this field? I find most books by musos that I like have some degree of interest. I even read a good one by Deke Leonard a few years back. George Melly is a top contender, (Digby Fairweathers' book on the last Melly touring years is currently on the bedside table, and contains the following Melly comment on being shown the new car that one of the band members had just bought to ferry him around in style " ...very nice indeed. I haven't shat myself for a couple of months now, so it should be just the job", Ian McLagan's book is worth a look and I have yet to find Bruce Thomas' book on life in the Attractions, in which I believe Elvis Costello was described as The Pod. This one would be a welcome present.
Anything by Bruce Dickinson would not.

Miles:The autobiography was an excellent read although not sure how much was actually written by Miles.If half of it is true he had some life.Diary of a rock and roll star by Ian Hunter remains a classic to this day.Elvis Costello is writing his own autobiography which I eagerly await but am sceptical as to how much of the really truly personal stuff he will put in it - always seems very eager to talk about other people but more reticent to let slip the veil shrouding his personal life.

Deke Leonard's two were pretty good, although I don't recall the titles. And of course, having read nothing but good reports about it, Andy Summers' "One Train Later" was an inevitable disappointment. Recent find was the highly amusing "Do You Do Any Wings" by Shane Kirk.

'One Train Later' by Andy Summers offers a broad history of rock music in the UK since the '60's, largely due to the long period of time he's been involved actually playing it. From The Flamingo in tight suits to Shea Stadium with dyed hair and a devastated marriage. Does Clapton's biog mention him? Because Summer's mentions Clapton fairly substantially, claiming Clapton bought his Les Paul which he subsequently used to record The Bluesbreakers album with John Mayall. I wonder if all these rock biogs do actually tally up the same stories?

Bruce Thomas's "The Big Wheel" is a pretty fascinating read, mainly for the insight into touring and band relationships. You can understand the antipathy that still exists between Dec and Bruce after reading it, scathing doesn't begin to describe it...
I'll second the previous comments about "Head on", legendary!

My girlfriend gives a big shout out to Grace Slick's autobiography and 45 by Bill Drummond is wonderful.

And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave got really good reviews in the Lit pages of the broadsheets. And judging by the comments at Amazon , it is a well liked piece of Falkneresque gothic. Got to confess, I haven't read it yet. Looks interesting though

Woody Guthrie - Bound for Glory; Charles Mingus - Beneath the Underdog; Julian Cope - Head On. All great books, irrespective of the author's day job.

Two particularly choice examples by musicians of arguably equal worth:
'The Real Frank Zappa Book' by Frank Zappa, and 'Cor Baby That's Really Me' by John Otway. You'd have to go a long way to beat '45' by Bill Drummond, though.

Anything by Julian Cope - especially 'Head On'. Currently reading his new book on Japanese music which is equally brilliant.

Bob Dylan's Chronicles, obviously. It's unlike any other autobiographically themed book by a musician; belonging firmly to the genre of American literature, rather than to any category that is home to sensationalist, backstabbing showbiz gossip. And the guy can write, you know?

I enjoyed Marriane Faithfull's book, Faithless - does that count? And Ben Watt's book Patient is supposed to be good, though I have never seen a copy and it is not about music. Friends of mine swear by Julian Cope's the Modern Antiquarian, but then they still go to Fields of the Nephilim concerts so you have to wonder.