BEST NEW ROCK BOOKS

From the most famous love triangle in rock history (with Pattie Boyd and George Harrison) to decades of profound substance abuse, Clapton opens up about his epic life. Especially cool: his admiring takes on fellow guitar heroes Duane Allman and Jimi Hendrix.

In one of the most unflinching examinations of the rock & roll life ever, Warren Zevon's ex-wife Crystal paints a harrowing picture of a brilliant mind ravaged by alcohol — using excerpts from the late singer-songwriter's journals and interviews with friends including Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen.

The definitive account of Gram Parsons' life — and early death. From the country-rock pioneer's wealthy, wildly dysfunctional family through his symbiotic friendship with Keith Richards, Meyer deftly illuminates one of rock's most elusive figures.

Blending fact and myth, novelist Lazar casts the Rolling Stones, the Manson family and avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger as characters in his dizzying, foreboding shadow history of the Sixties.

Not so much a biography as a fascinating, sharply argued history of the cultural forces that made the Fab Four's oversize lives possible — and the world they left permanently altered in their wake.

Check out everything ruling the rock universe in 2008