Titles by Hank Bordowitz

Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business: Why So Much Music You Hear Sucks

Chicago Review Press
January 2007
ISBN: 1556526431

This insightful dissection covers numerous aspects of the industry’s failures and shortcomings, including why stockholders play an important role, how radio went from an art to a science and what was lost in that change, how the record companies alienated their core audience, why file sharing might not be the bogeyman that the record industry would have people think, technology’s effects on what and how music is heard, and dozens of other reasons that add up to the record industry’s current financial and artistic woes.

Billy Joel: The Life & Times of an Angry Young Man

Billboard Books
July 2005
ISBN: 0823082504 (hardcover), 0823082482 (paperback)

An in-depth look at “the piano man,” starting with is lower middle class Long Island, NY childhood and his years as a gang member, boxer, and working musician. Based on numerous interviews, and enormous amounts of research, this biography gives a detailed picture of this complex man and his music.

Noise of the World: Non-Western Artists in Their Own Words

Noise of the World is the authentic story of a burgeoning world music scene, as told by its most seminal artists. Drawing on 20 years of original interviews, Hank Bordowitz presents the fascinating commentary of world music’s most pivotal figures—performers such as Youssou N’dour, Ravi Shankar, Ofra Haza, the Gipsy Kings, Miriam Makeba, the Bulgarian Women’s Choir, and dozens of others.

Soft Skull Press
November 2004
ISBN 1932360603

Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright: The Bob Marley Reader

Da Capo Press
September 2004
ISBN 0306813408

For the first time, the voices of Alice Walker, Rita Marley, Lester Bangs, and many others join together to offer a new perspective on one of the twentieth century’s most compelling figures. From Marley’s “Rude boy” teens to international fame and his tragic death at the age of thirty-six, Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright explores the larger picture—Marley as the spokesman for Jamaica’s homegrown religion Rastafarianism, as a flash point for the pressure cooker of Jamaican politics, and as the first pop music superstar of the Third World.

Turning Points in Rock and Roll: The Key Events That Affected Popular Music in the Latter Half of the 20th Century

Citadel Press/Kensington
August 2004
ISBN: 0806526319

From the first great music festival at Monterey to the violence at Altamont that signaled the beginning of a new era, from Elvis’s swiveling hips to Mick Jagger’s pouting lips..it’s all here—the people and events that have kept rock and roll vibrant, vital, and constantly evolving in bold new directions.

Author Bio

Hank Bordowitz is a veteran music journalist, a former recording artist, a music business consultant, an adjunct professor, and the author of seven critically hailed books.