10 It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track: Objects โ€จAnd Essays
Ian Penman
Fitzcarraldo

Incapable of dumbing down, Penman had NME readers reaching for their dictionaries in the post-punk years. He retains the โ€จsame daunting intelligence in this essay collection, which featured a fine take on mod, a gloomy assessment of James Brown and a sublime meditation on Frank Sinatra. Challenging, but worth it.

9 Year Of The Monkey
Patti Smith
Bloomsbury

Another metaphysical ramble in the vein โ€จof her 2015 outing โ€จM Train, Year Of โ€จThe Monkey was โ€จa walking tour through the proto-punk poetโ€™s 70th year, punctuated by moody photographs, delicious breakfasts and foreboding visions. One way or another, those horses are still running wild.

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8 Cruel To Be Kind: โ€จThe Life & Music Of Nick Lowe
Will Birch
Constable

A pub-rock powerhouse in โ€จhis own right, ex-Kursaal Flyer Birchโ€™s portrait of โ€˜Basherโ€™ is not as cheery as the Stiff records superstarโ€™s knockabout reputation might suggest. However, his enormous respect for his subject is evident as Birch carefully plots Loweโ€™s path from Kippington Lodge to third-age master craftsman.

7 Face It
Debbie Harry โ€จ
Harper Collins

Blondie made amazing records, but singer Debbie Harry remembered only heroin, exhaustion and โ€จbad business as โ€จshe recalled the bandโ€™s peak years in this tell-all account. Her adventures in pre-gentrification New York are at times joyful and terrifying, though her intelligence and resilience shine through. Fair but hard.

6 I Put A Spell On โ€จYou: The Bizarre โ€จLife of Screaminโ€™ โ€จJay Hawkins
Steve Bergsman
Feral House

A smart sophisticate โ€จforced to live theโ€จlife of a carnival sideshow, Screaminโ€™ Jay Hawkins boiled with rage as Nina Simone and Creedence Clearwater Revival made more from his most famous song than he ever did. Bergsmanโ€™s study of the schlock icon was a thrilling portrait of an arch narcissist. Spoiler alert: it ends badly.

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5 Afternoons With The Blinds Drawn
Brett Anderson
Little Brown

The sequel to Coal Black Mornings that Anderson said he would never write, this exorcism of โ€จhis Suede years tracked the bandโ€™s swift ascent to โ€จthe NME front cover and slow โ€จdecline into back-biting and drugs โ€จas their Britpop crown fell to โ€จโ€œbands who waved flags and dropped their aitchesโ€. Bitter, twisted, but very classy.

4 Defying Gravity: Jordanโ€™s Story
Jordan with Cathi Unsworth
Omnibus

The madame guillotine of the punk years, Jordan surveyed the movementโ€™s triumphs and tragedies from behind the counter of Malcolm McLarenโ€™s Sex boutique. The best punk book since Englandโ€™s Dreaming, her story offered a unique perspective on the Sex Pistols and the PVC-clad nihilism of the time.

3 Me
Elton John
MacMillan

The former Reg Dwightโ€™s garish, stack-heeled autobiography detailed his musical triumphs, suicide attempts and A-list adventures with a delightfully surly twinkle. An eyewitness account of deranged times starring Rod Stewart, John Lennon, Queen, the Queen, โ€จand one of the worst mothers in showbiz history.

2 Fried & Justified
Mick Houghton
โ€จFaber

โ€œThe legendary โ€จMick Houghtonโ€, according to Julian Cope, was the โ€จgo-to PR man for generations of offbeat talent in โ€จthe indie age. His illuminating memoir was a glorious K-Tel collection of anecdotes concerning the finest leftfield โ€จtalent of his age: The Undertones, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Felt, the KLF and many more.

1 This Searing Light, โ€จThe Sun And Everything Else โ€“ Joy Division: The Oral History
Jon Savage
Faber

Bandmates were in stitches when hotel staff admonished Ian Curtis for urinating into an ashtray; the laughter continued after William Burroughs told Joy Divisionโ€™s troubled singer to โ€œfuck offโ€ when Curtis tried to shake the author down for a free book. Savageโ€™s first-person patchwork honoured the ur-Manchester bandโ€™s dour power, but also presented Joy Division as excitable, gawky kids, too unworldly to understand how dark things were getting until Curtis killed himself in 1980. โ€œTo have done something for Ian would have taken someone with responsibility,โ€ says guitarist Bernard Sumner. Here are the young men, then โ€“ but as this superb account shows, the weight on their shoulders remains.