He's an unusual man who makes unusual music, so of course he has an unusual hobby. "I make books," quirk-rocker Tim Fite tells Spinner. "And most of the books that I make are one of a kind. I sew up the binding, glue them, put them together and I read them to myself occasionally, and sometimes to nice people in the crowd."

While Fite says that he doesn't consider himself a "hardcore artisan," he does work for NY's Center for Book Arts when not on tour. And he has plans for his already fanciful website involving PDF files of bind-them-yourself books that fans (or even just interested readers) can download and print. "You fold it 8 times and you cut it once with a pair of scissors and then you have a little itty bitty book," says Fite, who describes the tales as "children's stories for adults." "I'll do it once a week or something until you have a library of 11 little itty bitty books."

In a new book chronicling the story of Blind Melon (well, more specifically, the late Shannon Hoon), titled 'A Devil on One Shoulder and an Angel on the Other,' author Greg Prato spends an entire chapter detailing the friendship between Hood and Guns N' Roses dictator Axl Rose.

According to accounts by friends and members of both bands, Rose took Hoon under his wing, jumpstarting Blind Melon's career and, in the process, forming a meaningful friendship. Both frontmen originally hailed from the same small town in Indiana before, separately, migrating to Los Angeles in search of fortune and fame.

"We don't sit around talking about the music business or publicity stunts because that kind of talk doesn't matter much to either of us," Hoon is quoted as saying in the book. "We always seem to find much more interesting things to talk about."

Hmm. Music biz and publicity stunts aside, one has to wonder if, in their worldly discussions, the subject of Chinese democracy came up. We're guessing that it did not.

In 2007, Prince maintained a 21-night sold-out residency at London's O2 arena. '21 Nights,' a collaborative effort between Prince and photographer Randee St. Nicholas, is a photographic essay that documents this journey with poetry and 124 never-before-seen images. The multimedia set also includes 'Indigo Nights/Live Session,' a live CD that captures Prince's after-hours sessions, along with new music. Take a look at an introductory excerpt from '21 Nights' -- penned by St. Nicholas -- as well as exclusive photos, a first look at the 'Indigo Night' tracklist and a video for the upbeat 'Planet Earth' song 'The One U Wanna C.'

Those who have spent the most time with him are both frustrated and inspired. To know him is to know that you probably will never really know him and to question that is a waste of time ... wasting time is something one should never do ... and something Prince holds in high disregard.

Music industry veteran Danny Goldberg has touched upon genius for more than four decades. From doing PR for Led Zeppelin, running Atlantic Records, Mercury Records and Warner Bros. Records, launching Stevie Nicks' solo career and managing Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, among countless others, Goldberg's storied business trials and triumphs have become the stuff of legend. In his memoir, 'Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business,' Goldberg recounts his personal graces with artists like Patti Smith, Warren Zevon, Bruce Springsteen, Kiss, Hole and more. In the excerpt below, Goldberg discusses his relationship with Cobain just as Nirvana was signing to Geffen for the release of 'Nevermind.' Cobain met Courtney Love soon thereafter, and the two were married in a small ceremony in Waikiki. While Cobain claimed to have never been happier than in his marriage, his drug use was spiraling out of control.

My relationship with Kurt Cobain was the most important of my career and had many contradictory levels. I was his manager, where I did a decent job, and his friend, where I failed. I saw him as a great songwriter and singer, a visionary about the imagery of rock 'n' roll, as someone who both coveted and reinvented superstardom and who hated many of its by-products. He was an extraordinarily thoughtful and supportive friend, a loving husband and father, as well as a tormented depressive and textbook druggie. As with all of the great rock icons, his place in history is the result of a combination of his own talents and ambitions and the timing and context in which he did his work.

Reclusive 1970's rock, funk and soul icon Sly Stone has participated in what will be his first-ever comprehensive biography. Titled 'I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone,' the project was written by San Francisco-based entertainment scribe Jeff Kaliss and is due this October from Backbeat Books.

The tome traces the entire history of the frontman and his infamous backing band, replete "with cooperation from Sly himself, as well as numerous band members and associates, including Greg Errico and David Kapralik," according to the publisher. Despite a number of chart-topping hits from landmark discs including 1968's 'Dance to the Music,' 1969's 'Stand' and 1971's 'There's a Riot Going On', Stone retreated into personal and professional seclusion more than 30 years ago after succumbing to drug dependency and erratic behavior.

The bio is noteworthy because, as Kaliss pulled the first face-to-face interview with Stone in 20 years, "'I Want to Take You Higher' is as close to an authorized biography of Sly as we're ever likely to see," according to the publisher. The 300-page project promises an extensive photo gallery.

Tori Amos has never been short on imagery. The enigmatic songstress loads her songs with references to faeries, mythological Gods and Goddesses, and intricate, cryptic and certainly colorful stories about love, loss, life, death and even, well, shoes. This, of course, is to generalize. There's also her physical self to note: Amos' diminutive 5-foot-and-change frame is decorated with a signature fiery mane, dishy blue-gray eyes and protruding ears, all of which are cartoonishly exaggerated, if not striking. In fact, it's these characteristics that inspired celebrated graphic novelist Neil Gaiman -- also Amos' friend, whom she commonly name-checks in her songs -- to create the character Delirium in his 'Sandman' series.

A book then, consisting entirely of stories and art inspired by her music, was certainly inevitable. To that end, Amos will release the 480-page collection 'Comic Book Tattoo,' featuring contributions from more than 80 graphic artists and writers. Amos, along with the project mastermind, artist and editor Rantz Hoseley, hand-picked each of the book's 50-plus entries. Spinner spoke with Amos about the project, including her reactions to the stories (a lesbian love affair and murder, among them) and how this collection has inspired her to begin writing new material.

Describe the evolution of 'Comic Book Tattoo.'

Well, I've known [artist and editor] Rantz Hoseley for years. He was a student at Parsons, and I had a younger friend who kind of dated him for a few weeks. I got to know him and we became friends. He started to turn me on to comics. This was in the early days, like, around 1989. He needed a place to crash and I had a studio apartment behind a church on Highland and Franklin in Hollywood. I would go to sleep at my boyfriend's place and Rantz would crash at the little place behind the Methodist church. So, I would run into Rantz every day, and I was writing 'Little Earthquakes.' He would leave all these comic books laying around, and that was the beginning of our relationship. Over the years, I guess in a way, he's sort of become like a little brother to me. He took my music to Comic-Con in 1990, maybe, and gave it to Neil Gaiman. Gaiman got in touch with me, and said, "Hi, I'm Neil. I write 'The Sandman,' and I just wanted to encourage you that maybe you could have a future in music." It was a tape with a phone number on it. I don't think he realized it was going to be released. It happened to be released, although you and I both know a lot of releases come out that nobody ever hears. So, Gaiman called me. He was gonna be in London, and we met up. I've had relationships with Neil and Rantz for over 20 years.

Project Editor, Writer: Rantz Hoseley
Contributions: 'The Waitress,' 'Mr. Zebra'

Describe your relationship with Tori.

Tori and I have been friends for over 20 years now, since the days of her playing piano at the Holiday Inn at LAX, through the "adventure" of Y Kant Tori Read, to her finding the strength to unleash her true musical voice on 'Little Earthquakes.' Before that album was released, I took an early mix on a cassette tape down to the San Diego Comicon and gave it to 'Sandman' writer Neil Gaiman. I've designed tour programs, T-shirts and contributed a painting to one of the RAINN calendars for her. Now, many tours, albums and various projects later, I still consider her to be one of my dearest and best friends.

How did you become involved in this project?

About a year ago, Image [Comics] put out an anthology based on the music of Belle & Sebastian. The book was good, but I'll fully admit I kept thinking, "This is a great idea, but it would be really killer if it was done with Tori's music and songs as the jumping off point for the creators." So, last year at the San Diego Comicon, proving everything comes full circle, I asked Image if they'd be interested in doing something like this. They thought it was a great idea, so Tori, her managers and I starting talking about it. Looking at all of the angles to decide if we wanted to go ahead and commit to it, because we all agreed that if we were going to spend the time on this, it couldn't be "just another comic book," or anything less than a full scale "Tori Project." Once we had all agreed, I started going through lists of creators, and showing them to Tori, getting her yea or nay on them. After getting a solid list of about 150, I started contacting people, and was pleasantly surprised at how many of them immediately and enthusiastically signed on, and really threw themselves into it, individually and collectively producing some of the best comics I've seen.

Why did you choose to interpret 'The Waitress' and 'Mr. Zebra'?

It's a bit funny, because when we started this project, I was sure that I'd end up doing a story for 'Flying Dutchman,' or 'Sugar,' or 'Honey' or 'Here in My Head.' Those are some of my favorite songs of hers and the one that really speak to me on a constant, continuous basis. But it was a funny thing -- I was driving around, doing the daily commute, and I was playing Tori's full discography, getting the songs vivid in my mind, really trying to see them fresh and new, so that I'd be able to do a good job as an editor for the various songs/stories. And then 'Waitress' came on, and it hadn't made it to the first chorus before the whole story just ... appeared. Start, middle, end. All the complex cross-time/location panel cuts, the double meaning on the last page. It honestly freaked me out a little bit, because no story comes that easily or that quickly. Moreover, I was really dead-set on doing one of the other songs, so I fought it. But it kept sneaking in, poking at me saying "You need to do this, you know you do." Tori has always said to me that her girls -- the songs -- always tell her which ones to play on any given night, and I'd always kind of chuckled and thought "Yeah, sure Tor. OK, whatever you say." But here I am, having this song tell me, "You know I the one, stop being stubborn and let's go!" So, I gave in, and did it.

'Mr. Zebra' was very similar. When James Stokoe became available at the 11th hour, I thought "What story should we do?" and it was obvious, the format, the humor, the surrealist bent. It was just ... there. I'm very happy with both of them, and glad I stopped being a stubborn ass about it.

What is it about Tori's music that inspired your visuals and storyline?

'Waitress,' the song, is all about betrayal, and the emotion that comes through makes that pain so clear -- the regret, the anger, the hurt and the frustration of other people seeing the other person's side, and not yours. Treating your reaction like it's irrational or worse yet, crazy. So, by drawing a page by page parallel between these two women's relationship from start to tragic end and the minute by minute buildup to their final confrontation, hopefully the reader can see what's pushed the main character to the point of taking the actions that she does.

With 'Mr. Zebra,' it was just going to that Duchamp-esque state of mind -- being open to the seemingly unrelated series of words and scenarios tell their story. Not shutting any part of the mind off from it for fear that it was "too far out there," and just letting the song tell its own story through the filter of my perceptions. It's probably just a bit different that what someone else might think of, but that's kind of the point of the whole project -- to show how art in any form, be it music, visual, or written word, begets and inspires more art. Sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in forms that are completely unexpected.

In what way to graphic novels evoke the same reactions -- both emotional and physical -- as that of music?

I think music and comics, more than any other art forms, are so closely related in terms of how they draw a reaction, or emotional response from their audience. Both have a controlled cadence and beat to them, both can use staccato rhythms (a series of small, tight panels in the case of comics) to build a frenetic feeling, or hold a long, intense note to draw the audience deeper in, and add emphasis on the emotions that have been building (in comics, using a splash page, for example).

Comics and music also, especially in this day and age of being able to release work digitally, have the capability of being some of the least "committee"-driven forms of art. With music, it can be one person or a small group of people in a band, writing songs the way they want to write them. Recording with protocols, releasing them onto the net and getting it out the way they want to. The same holds true for comics. Sure, you can have large, multi-title crossover events from companies like Marvel and DC, but you can also have someone making a comic by themselves, or with a small number of friends, putting it up on the web or self-publishing, and getting out the stories that they feel compelled to tell. I think that's why so many people connect with both comics and music. At its best, there's less between the creators and the audience.

Many comic creators I know use music as an inspiration in their comics, and draw direct parallels between musical timings and signatures and panel, page and story construction. It's nothing new really -- comic creators have been riffing off of music for years. It's just that now comics has gained the level of public acceptance to where the audience, for both music and comics, is becoming more aware of it.

Artist/Writer: David Mack
Contribution: 'Flying Dutchman'

Describe your relationship with Tori.

I've done paintings of Tori for all of her RAINN charity calendars for the last five years.

How did you become involved in this project?

Rantz Hoseley invited me to be a part of this book.

Why did you choose to interpret 'Flying Dutchman'?

It came about by talking with Rantz Hoseley. Rantz is organizing the project and he presented me with a few different songs to choose from, but he specifically recommended that he'd like to see me adapt 'Flying Dutchman.' Tori had written the song about Rantz in a way -- about a specific time in the life of Tori and Rantz in their early formative years while both of them were in the process of making their dreams come true in their creative endeavors as artists.

After learning the back story of the song from Rantz and he suggesting that I do that song, I felt like I had an extra layer of information about the intentions and ideas of the song directly from the source moments that it was created that I could integrate into my visual adaptation of it.

What is it about Tori's music that inspired your visuals and storyline?

I tried to go right into the internal story of the song and make it personal and universal at the same time. I began with the lyrics and the backstory of the circumstances of the creation of the song that Rantz had discussed with me. I wanted it to be inclusive of that and my personal identification and experience with those ideas.

Some of the song is about the rich life of imagination of a creative person, and people's more mundane external views of them, so I wanted to reflect that in the composition of the layout. I discussed with Rantz the idea of splitting the page composition in two, and making the top half the part that suggests the untethered imagination of creative internal life, and the bottom half displays the an external version and charts in panels the artist at different stages of their life. This double composition gave the opportunity to have moments where the two narratives intersect ... thereby affording an opportunity to show a transformation at those points of overlap between action and imagination, and to blur the edges between the external and the internal.

In what way to graphic novels evoke the same reactions -- both emotional and physical -- as that of music?

Well, there are some interesting comparisons between them. Writing the story and creating the art for it, is probably parallel to the songwriter who writes music and lyrics and then performs it themselves. They both have a rhythm, and a narrative, and they both can communicate metaphorically and speak in iconography that can be very personal and universal and be open to individual interpretation.

In using images and melodies in addition to words, there seems to be inherent properties in those images and melodies that bypass a certain cerebral gateway and go straight to the core of a person. Perhaps because images and sound are more primal and early communication technologies than the written word. They tend to speak to a very direct part of us. And when you combine them with very carefully crafted wording, you have communication that engages both the right and left hemispheres of the brain making the experience a very "whole brained" approach -- something that engages our intellect and our intuitive and emotional responses, as well as something that engages the more recently developed parts of our brains and the more primal parts in concert. I imagine they have similarities in reactions from the readers, but also in the creative process and choices of the artist.

I write a full script for the story. And then I try to consider what will be the best visual way to communicate that story -- how to download it into the readers head in a way that bypasses their usual checkpoints and filtering process. This lets me use the art as another tool of the writing and gives me the liberty to develop a new look for each project. I can use the best choice of media, storytelling layout, panel rhythm or cultivate a new style and atmosphere to best communicate that particular story.

Often I may think of some visual choices while I am writing the script and I will include notes of those options in the script. But for each step of the way there is margin for improvement and spontaneity and epiphany.

The best example of my work like this is my most recent Kabuki story from Marvel called 'The Alchemy.'
In fact, much of the story is about characters that are cultivating the creative process in themselves and have developed specific principles and practical applications for doing this.

Artist/Writer: Ted McKeever
Contribution: 'Past the Mission'

Describe your relationship with Tori.

I am an admirer of her ability to create depths and emotions beyond the simplicity of notes.

How did you become involved in this project?

Rantz Hoseley contacted me, and when he said it was for a visual interpretation for Tori's songs, I was in.

Why did you choose to interpret 'Past the Mission'?

I felt it had the tone and atmosphere of where my head was at the time. I liked the melancholy it caused in me, and in turn it caused me to visualize images that eventually became part of the story.

What is it about Tori's music that inspired your visuals and storyline?

She speaks without clarification of exactness. She's abstract, and yet direct. She tells a story with her words, and sets the tone with the range of her voice. She's a very visual musician and that is rare.

In what way to graphic novels evoke the same reactions -- both emotional and physical -- as that of music?

If given the right amount of freedom and page count, a good graphic story can evoke a mood that creates a soundtrack all its own. It's like what they say about good comedy. The timing is everything. Same goes for graphic novels. The pacing and timing is what makes it work, or not.

Artist: Colleen Doran
Contribution: 'Pretty Good Year'

How would you describe your relationship with Tori?

Well, my relationship with Tori is limited to adoring her music. I bought her first album when it came out, after I heard selections on a local alternative music station. I rushed out and got the album right away. I later added videos and limited edition albums to my stack of Tori adoration and I venerate often.

How did you become involved in this project?

I heard a rumor through the grapevine that this project was in the works, and sulked a bit, wondering if anyone was going to contact me about it. then I got the call and stopped sulking.

Why did you choose to interpret 'Pretty Good Year'?

I worked with a writer on this piece named Derek McCulloch, and he actually chose the song. Fortunately, it was one of my favorites, and he took a different approach to it that I think distinguishes it in the collection. I had very strong visual ideas when listening to the music and integrating that imagery with the story which I did not write was in interesting experience. I think I came up with a way of visualizing the story that honored the content as well as gave a visual impression of the sound of the music.

What is it about Tori's music that inspired your visuals and storyline?

Tori has a very gentle, liquid voice that becomes very powerful and angry during the course of the song. Also, she sounds hurt. The sound of the piano gives me an impression of blocks of color. So, I like the way that the story transpires in blocks of time, both within the context of the individual moments of life's passage, but also in the blocks of sound that the piano staccato creates. And I see different colors when she creates different sounds and used them as visual cues for both the sense of the sound and the sense of the characters in the story.

In what way to graphic novels evoke the same reactions -- both emotional and physical -- as that of music?

Both comics and music are multi-sensory and require a certain amount of participation on the part of the audience to enjoy them fully. Music, like Tori's music anyway, requires that we pay attention to the feelings evoked by the sound of the music, but also to the lyrics which also have a narrative sense, and, in the case of Tori Amos, can often be challenging. there are different levels of meaning and experience in her music. She can sing in this gentle, ethereal way about the most difficult of life's experiences, and if you aren't paying attention to the lyrics, you miss half the story.

Comics have a similar ability to create a multi-layered experience. the pictures and the narrative may even be at odds with one another. Music has the ability to suggest color through the mood conveyed by sound, and comics have the ability to convey mood with color. The narrative may be in concert with the message of the pictures, or may be in counterpoint.