The raw materials of the story are sensational: burning ambition, clashing egos, onstage epileptic seizures, deranged groupies, great albums, the birth and death of Sixties idealism, and, most of all, extremes of substance abuse

Succeeds in stripping a star of his iconography - McDonough's book excels at anecdotes of music excess from a bygone era

It's hard to imagine anyone trying to better this book - It has an abundance of what Young values above all else - passion

I've been reading this biography of Neil Young called Shakey and it's changed my life, man

This is the one Stone Roses book fans will want to read. Copies of this superb biography will not remain on shop shelves for long

An era-defining, definitive biography

A loving and detailed biog

Cute on the machinations of the industry and internal band politics

Brilliant... forensically put together

Simon Spence's Stone Roses compendium has it all - interviews with the Manc group's closest confidants, unseen photos and a timeline that stretches all the way back to the group's inception . . . The definitive word on the band

He starts right at the beginning, with 25,000-year-old bone flutes ... It's a huge brief, made huger by Goodall's alertness to new thinking in scholarly circles, and his fondness for interesting asides ... a racily written, learned and often shrewdly insightful book

A roller-coaster ride, which Goodall tells with verve... a racily written, learned and often shrewdly insightful book

An accessible guide to roughly 42,000 years of music in just over 300 pages … The Story of Music is a clever, engaging read

Howard Goodall’s beautifully clear and compelling account is both a hymn to human endeavour and a groundbreaking map of man’s musical journey

Goodall's distinguisihing gift is his ability to explain the mechanics of music instead of gliding hastily over them. He is fearless in unknotting those medieval mysteries of oranum and isorhythms, as well as chords, triads, fugues, keys, equal temperament, atonality, dodecaphony and blues

A clear and compelling account which is a hymn to human endeavor and a groundbreaking musical journey

Fascinating – as well as illuminating on how music works

At his best, Goodall has a facility for lively shorthand…

This ambitious and all embracing history of 40, 000 years of music will have you dancing in the aisles

[Rod] has warm good humour and a nice line in self-deprecation...He wears it well—and tells it even better.

By some distance the most entertaining of last year’s...rock star memoirs.

This book takes readers on an adventure, that is at times deeply moving, through the life of one of the UK's greatest singers.

Ruthlessly entertaining