A thrilling, unconventional hymn to the chameleon who reshaped music time and again

The late superstar was not amused when Barney Hoskyns called his Prince biography ‘Imp of the Perverse’. Here the veteran rock writer recalls the brilliant career of the Minneapolis maverick

Graeme Thomson’s excellent book details the singer’s difficult childhood, the glory years of The Boys are Back in Town and how he took heroin with Sid Vicious

Elvis as a young man, the size of Mick Jagger’s genitalia, Kristin Hersh’s miracle year, Berlioz in love … As festivalgoers crowd the stages at Glastonbury, Brian Eno, Beck, Lavinia Greenlaw, James Wood and a host of other stars select their favourite books about rock, pop, jazz and classical

Janis Joplin and Abbie Hoffman star in a vivid account of a tumultuous decade by the veteran rock critic, which moves from the birth of rock to Vietnam radicalism and street fights

It’s almost worthy of Spinal Tap – a collection of the musician’s thoughts, jotted down while in transit on sick bags. But his book The Sick Bag Song provides a window on Cave’s honesty as well as his narcissism, and there’s the odd flash of brilliance

Bassist Steve Hanley recounts 20 years of working with the post-punk prophet who runs the Fall like his own miniature army, writes Barney Hoskyns