Frock Rock: Women Performing Popular Music

Frock Rock: Women Performing Popular Music by Bayton, Mavis. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780198166153.

This is a study of women playing instruments in bands: pop, rock, indie, soul etc. from the punk era until today. The author, an academic and musician, carried out over 100 interviews with women playing in British bands from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. Although the book is primarily sociological, it is easily accessible to the general reader and rich with quotations. It explains the shortage of female instrumentalists and explores the routes and life experiences that have been taken by those exceptional women who do play in bands.