Barnes & Noble CEO On ROADWORK: "Probably The Best Book On Rock & Roll Ever Published"

(New York, NY) -- In an extraordinary endorsement, Barnes & Noble Booksellers CEO Steve Riggio has called ROADWORK: ROCK & ROLL TURNED INSIDE OUT by photographer Tom Wright “probably the best book on rock & roll ever published.”

Riggio joins others in his praise of Wright’s photo-laden memoir of life inside rock’s inner circle. Don Carleton, director of the Center for American History, hails ROADWORK as “a major contribution to the literature of rock and roll,” while Pete Townshend, founder of the Who, has dubbed it “about the best book on rock ’n’ roll you’ll ever see.”

In 1962, American teen Tom Wright was studying photography at England’s Ealing Art School when he met graphic design student and musician Pete Townshend. Wright turned Townshend on to Muddy Waters and marijuana; Townshend found in Wright a lifelong friend and creative sounding board. “Had I not met Tom Wright,” Townshend muses in his foreword to ROADWORK, “the Who would never have become successful.”

Wright became the Who’s official photographer in 1967 and chronicled the group’s development through the decades. From 1967 to 1970 he managed the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan, giving him full and up-close access to a revolutionary period in rock music. In addition to his extensive work with the Who, Tom also served as photographer or road manager for the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart and the Faces, the Eagles, the James Gang, Elvis Costello, J.D. Souther, Bob Seger, and others.

Wright’s photographs of rock performers, audiences, and concert venues comprise an intimate, behind-the-scenes history of rock and roll from the 1960s to the 1990s in the United States and Great Britain. Over 200 of Wright’s images – gritty, poignant, humorous – are collected in ROADWORK.

In 1993, Wright’s vast collection of photographic prints, negatives, tapes, phonograph recordings, and correspondence – over 500,000 items, still being unboxed and cataloged – was acquired by the Center for American History on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.


ROADWORK: ROCK & ROLL TURNED INSIDE OUT
By Tom Wright with Susan VanHecke
Foreword by Pete Townshend
Hal Leonard Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-4234-1300-4

www.tomwrightphotography.com

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