- Rough Ideas – Stephen Hough
The acclaimed international performer writes about music and the life of a musician, from exploring the broader aspects of what it is to walk out on to a stage, to specialist tips from deep inside the practice room. Hough also writes vividly about people he’s known, places he’s been, books he’s read, paintings he’s seen, and touches on more controversial subjects such as the challenge of being a gay Catholic. An illuminating and absorbing introduction into the life and mind of a great cultural figure.
- The Wichita Lineman – Dylan Jones
Written in 1968 by Jimmy Webb, Wichita Lineman is the first philosophical country song: a heart-breaking torch ballad still celebrated for its mercurial songwriting genius fifty years later. Mixing close-listening, interviews and travelogue, Dylan Jones explores the legacy of a record that has entertained and haunted millions for over half a century. Part biography, part work of musicological archaeology, The Wichita Lineman opens a window on to America in the late-twentieth-century through the prism of a song that has been covered by myriad artists in the intervening decades.
