Issue: Winter 2018

Winter Reading

You can tell a lot about people from the way they live, and rock stars are no exception. From Graceland to Neverland, private planes to island hideaways, rock stars always live large and Rock Stars at Home takes you on a private tour inside the houses, pools, planes, music rooms , playgrounds of the biggest names in rock and pop. A collaborative effort from six of music’s notable journalists--Chris Charlesworth, Eddi Fiegel, Bryan Reesman, Colin Salter, Simon Spence and Daryl Easlea—the 176-page hardcover takes fans on a private tour of thirty rock legends’ homes from Elvis Presley and the Beatles to Prince and Ozzy Osbourne. With these images the book will have you gasp in astonishment at the crazy worlds these artists created for themselves. 

In a career that spans over seven decades, Roger Moore has been at the very heart of Hollywood. He’s a knight, an actor and has starred in films that have made him famous he world over. He’s also a tremendous prankster, joker and raconteur, yet he is well known as one of the nicest guys in the business. On and off the screen, he has always been up for some fun. In One Lucky Bastard, a fabulous collection of true stories from his stellar career, Moore lifts the lid on the movie business, from Hollywood to Pinewood (UK) with outrageous tales from his own life and career as well as those told to him by a host of stars and filmmakers. Wonderfully entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny, this is vintage Moore at his very best.

When the 2013 documentary Bettie Page Reveals All was released, one could assume we would never again hear directly from the adored icon. After all, the film was narrated by Bettie Mae Page herself. Fortunately for the hordes of Bettie fans worldwide, a bounty of unreleased Bettie material awaits. Following her death in 2008 at 85, boxes of Bettie mementoes gathered dust in her nephew’s Bakersfield house. Bettie’s beloved sister, Goldie Jane Page, had carefully stored family photos—the bulk of which feature Bettie never published and few even knew existed. Goldie’s son, Ron Brem, shared the family files with author Tori Rodriguez with Ron Brem, whose Bettie Page: The Lost Years – An intimate look at the Queen of Pinups through her private letters and never-published photos tell the unknown story of Bettie’s “lost years” following her retirement from modeling in 1957.

From the beginning of her modeling career in 1944 as Norma Jeane Mortensen, to her death as the voluptuous Hollywood icon in 1962, Marilyn Monroe posed for thousands of modeling and publicity photos, scores of which have long been forgotten or abandoned in neglected studio archives. Marilyn Lost Images from the Hollywood Photo Archive by Colin Slater with captions and commentary by Boz Hadleigh is a collection of 100 of the rarest of the rare, seldom-seen images of Marilyn’s brief modeling career, early days on the 20th Century Fox lot, candids between scene takes and traveling as a public figure as the wife of Arthur Miller and Joe DiMaggio. For the Monroe fans who think that they have seen it all, this book provides a new lens on a beloved American icon.

You’ve heard the clichés: Everybody in L.A. is fake. It’s a cultural wasteland. It’s vapid and flimsy, shallow and soulless. It never rains. This Is (Not) L.A. An Insider’s Take on the Real Los Angeles offers the modest proposal that L.A. is actually as real and wonderful as any other place, and maybe more so. Its people are flesh and blood, its stories are complex, its history is venerable. It’s also full of the opposite of emptiness, that creative force known as ‘hope’. People come here to do great and impossible things. Even for native Angelenos, the city’s ever-evolving cultural mosaic isn’t really something to be completely “understood.” It has to be experienced firsthand—just like any other real, wonderful space. Written by Jen Bilik with Kate Sullivan and a forward by the late Jonathan Gold, after reading this book you’ll never see L.A. the same way again