Rock N Roll Soccer

The North American Soccer League - at its peak in the late 1970s - presented soccer as performance, played by men with a bent for flair, hair and glamour. More than just Pelé and the New York Cosmos, it lured the biggest names of the world game like Johan Cruyff, Franz Beckenbauer, Eusebio, Gerd Müller and George Best to play the sport as it was meant to be played-without inhibition, to please the fans. The first complete look at the ambitious, star-studded NASL, Rock 'n' Roll Soccer reveals how this precursor to modern soccer laid the foundations for the sport's tremendous popularity in America today. Bringing to life the color and chaos of an unfairly maligned league, soccer journalist Ian Plenderleith draws from research and interviews with the men who were there to reveal the madness of its marketing, the wild expectations of businessmen and corporations hoping to make a killing out of the next big thing, and the insanity of franchises in scorching cities like Las Vegas and Hawaii. That's not to mention the league's on-running fight with FIFA as the trailblazing North American continent battled to innovate, surprise, and sell soccer to a whole new world. As entertaining and raucous as the league itself, Rock 'n' Roll Soccer recounts the hype and chaos surrounding the rapid rise and cataclysmic fall of the NASL, an enterprising and groundbreaking league that did too much right to ignore.

When Jimi Hendrix died, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet ten years earlier, Chuck Berry had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become white? Jack Hamilton challenges the racial categories that distort standard histories of rock music and the 60s revolution.

A gripping insight into the power of sport to change lives. Every four years the soccer World Cup unites people all over the globe to watch their favourite team battle it out to make the final. But there's another World Cup that isn't quite as glamorous: the Homeless World Cup (HWC). In 2008 award-winning author and filmmaker Dave Bidini accompanied the poor and dispossessed players of Homeless Team Canada to the HWC in Melbourne. What Bidini found was the ultimate underdog sporting event, teeming with stories of humanity and more relevant to our times than any modern big-ticket spectacle. Through seeing the players' disappointments, frustrations, joys and triumphs, Bidini understands the true meaning of this tournament. He sees firsthand the power of sport to transform the lives of those on the edge ?how the decision to play this game can mean the difference between survival or a life of addiction, poverty or crime. Home and Away offers a powerful look at the homeless and disadvantaged, from the barrios of Mexico City and the shanties of West Africa to the streets of North America, Europe and Australia. Whether you're a sports fanatic or a keen observer of human nature, you'll never watch a soccer game in the same way again.

From a legendary music journalist with four decades of unprecedented access, an insider's behind-the-scenes look at the major personalities of rock and roll. Lisa Robinson has interviewed the biggest names in music--including Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Patti Smith, U2, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Jay Z and Kanye West. She visited the teenage Michael Jackson many times at his Encino home. She spent hours talking to John Lennon at his Dakota apartment--and in recording studios just weeks before his murder. She introduced David Bowie to Lou Reed at a private dinner in a Manhattan restaurant, helped the Clash and Elvis Costello get their record deals, was with the Rolling Stones on their jet during a frightening storm, and was mid-flight with Led Zeppelin when their tour manager pulled out a gun. A pioneering female journalist in an exclusive boys' club, Lisa Robinson is a preeminent authority on the personalities and influences that have shaped the music world; she has been recognized as rock jounralism's ultimate insider. A keenly observed and lovingly recounted look back on years spent with countless musicians backstage, after hours and on the road, There Goes Gravity documents a lifetime of riveting stories, told together here for the first time.

They say if you remember the Swinging '60s, you weren't there. And surely no other football club encapsulated that momentus era of change more than Chelsea. As Britain's youngest football agent, Greg Tesser lived the 1960's dream. As an eighteen-year-old publicist he helped launch the careers of the likes of Eric Clapton and Georgie Fame, before promoting the King of Stamford Bridge himself, the legendary Peter Osgood. It was all showbiz glamour down the Fulham Road in those halcyon, hedonistic years, with Hollywood stars Steve McQueen and Raquel Welch choosing to worship at the shrine of Ossie and co. Football become fashionable with all the Beautiful People - Greg and Charlie Cooke even wrote for Vogue! - QPR legend Rodney Marsh modelled for upmarket glossies, and Ossie morphed into a true '60s icon. A first FA Cup, a first European trophy, all Chelsea fans, indeed all fans of football, will enjoy this journey down memory lane when soccer swung and it was hip to kick a ball.

'Entertaining, affectionate and righteous' Guardian 'Says so much about being a woman' Cosey Fanni Tutti In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey’s music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock ’n’ roll love affairs. Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. She asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of – and back into – history.