After a few listens of the new REM single (lovely by the way), a few friends wasted office resources and time in an email joust over what was the greatest opus from Atlanta's finest: we were split between Up and Green: what about everyone else?

Automatic for the People.

Book - The True Adventures Of The Rolling Stones - Stanley Booth

REM - Life's Rich Paegent - By a mile

Deke Leonard's two volumes "I should have stayed in bed" and "Man - a history of a rock n roll band" are excellent.

Diary Of A Rock 'n' Roll Star is pretty good too. It doesn't skimp on the truth about touring; 90 percent stultifyingly bored and homesick, 9% carousing in a hairy arsed fashion, and 1% adrenalised to the hilt on stage.

Mark Manning's autobiography Crucify Me Again, is particularly vile. Helpfully it does away with bothersome details such as chronology, in favour of chapters grouped together under headings such as 'Rock', 'Women', 'Intoxication' etc.

As far as REM is concerned, I am fond of Reckoning's watery mystique.

Whilst not a rock n' roll memoir, the book about Radio 1, The Nations Favourite by Simon Garfield is great, especially for the Peel vs Bates stories. If you're a grapple fan, The Wrestling by Garfield is toppermost.

should get a honourable mention as the template...

'Pop From The Beginning' will always be a favourite in our house. I also liked the Creation Records story ( was it called 'My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For the Prize' or some such rot? ) Great stories about Lawrence. ( From Felt that is. Not the one who advocated nude fireside wrestling ).

... the "The Big Wheel" by Bruce Thomas was an entertaining read - although I was told that the best story in it was actually one of Nick Lowe's mile-melters. They're both from the same stable I suppose though.

by Danny Sugarman is pretty rocktastic. Befriended by Jim Morrison aged 14, ends up managing Iggy Pop. Lots of naughtiness and drugs, of course. The episode where he uses an unconscious Iggy as a mop stands out.

Oh, and 'Murmur' gets my vote.

Margrave of the Marshes and REM bore the pants off me

(i) Edie: An American Biography by Jean Stein and George Plimpton.

I understand the film Factory Girl, which I haven't seen, was inspired by this book.

Okay, so Edie Sedgwick herself was not a Rock n Roller. But she was the centre of a Venn Diagram that involved VERY rich American aristocracy, the modelling world, Avant-garde film makers, artists and rockers. For a short time in the mid-sixties, she was Andy Warhol's muse and the prototype Factory Superstar, she shagged Dylan AND Lou Reed...maybe, got very drugged up on anything that was available, got sucked into a whirlpool of amoral debauchery involving the demi-monde crew of artists, transexuals, users, and hustlers whirling around the seemingly-innocent - but in reality, manipulative- Warhol. Just as she seemed to be getting her act together she died of an OD at 28 (the Rock and Roll age of death). In other words the classic 1960's rocker life-arc.

I agree the The Dirt is pretty good on the rubber necking front, But having read them both this Edie book, which is also presented as a series of transcribed interviews, turns it all up to eleven. I remember reading it in the 1980s and it stayed with me for weeks. Its tragic, sordid, but fascinating.

One caveat don't be put off by the first section on her family roots and childhood. It is there to make you realize just how vertiginous her fall is.

(ii) 2Stoned. Andrew Loog Oldham and the Stones through the mid- to late-sixties. Need I say more?