The story of Island Records : keep on running / edited by Chris Salewicz [and Suzette Newman ; preface by Chris Blackwell].

From its beginnings in 1959 with a local Jamaican album release, Island Records has brought a global audience to the works of Bob Marley, U2, Cat Stevens, Steve Windwood, John Martyn, and Nick Drake among many others. Mixing cultures and influences from reggae to pop, hip hop, and punk, Island has shaken up artistic tastes and introduced new categories to mainstream music.

This book, produced in collaboration with the label, moves chronologically from Island's origins in founder Chris Blackwell's passionate mission to bring Jamican raggae to the mainstream, to the label's rise in popularity in the late 1960s and its acquisition of Traffic, Elvis Costello, U2, Roxy Music, and other era-defining acts, and finally to the new millennium and Island's continuing presence in the music industry. Included are photographs and album art from such acts as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Steve Windwood, Brian Eno, Grace Jones, Tom Waits, Eric B & Rakim, Tricky, Keane, Amy Winehouse, and many others.

Heavily illustrated with a comprehensive retrospective of album covers and photo shoots from the legendary Island archive--"If you felt the artwork was intriguing then there must be something going on inside," as Chris Blackwell once said--and accompanied by a preface from Blackwell as well as essays by ten of contemporary music's most esteemed writers, including Chris Salewicz, Jon Savage, Joe Boyd, and Richard Williams, The Story of Island Records: Keep on Running is a celebration of one of the most influential record labels of the twentieth century --Book Jacket.

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