Oceans apart, down low, far from the world's music-making epicentres and dangling on the edge of the world is a country - Australia - that produces music unlike any place else. Nor has there been a book like this before.
Rock Country is a lavishly illustrated book of 35 essays exploring the culture and the story of rock (and pop) in Australia. Writers include many of Australia's finest authors and musicians, among them M.J. Hyland, Fiona McGregor, Clinton Walker, Jeff Jenkins, Toby Creswell, Stephen Cummings, Neil Murray, Malcolm Knox, Sophia Brous and Mick Harvey, the late David McComb.
Threading the words is a pictorial panorama: more than 130 on-stage and backstage photos, most of them seldom seen. A once-in-a-lifetime poll of 100 handpicked chart-toppers, each with a Number 1 song or album to their name, unveils the Five Greatest Australian Rock (and Pop) Stars of all time. For anyone who has soothed a smashed heart to the sound of Wide Open Road, or played pass the- parcel to Can't Get You Out of My Head, here is a treasure trove of scoops.
Sex lessons from Bon Scott. Conversations with Chrissy Amphlett. The whirlwind genius years of Ian 'Molly' Meldrum. Normie Rowe's ten months in London. Cold Chisel in LA. Adelaide: birthplace of grunge. How Nick Cave got me through my Soviet adolescence. Around Australia in 80 Days with Sherbet and the Ted Mulry Gang. The unsung, unhip, happy-sad genius of Barry Gibb. Fran ois Tetaz and the making of Gotye. My three days stalking The Police. Who Was Keith Richards's Melbourne wife? What happened to Donnie Sutherland? Where is Peter Blakeley? Was Michael Hutchence happy?
