It's only Rock and Roll

So what do you think it would be like to be a rock star I don't mean like someone that has won X-Factor or one of these other make me famous shows - but a real rock star. What is a rock and roll life style like and how do you manage the fame and adoration that comes with it, and more to the point what do you do when it goes.

If most of us are honest we have all pondered what it would be like to be famous in some respect, it is why we are all so interested in what the rich and famous do. We want to live vicariously through them.

Personally I have always had a real interest in the biographies of some of the well known folks that we may see on stage, on the telly or on the big screen. The things that they have done, and the people that they have worked for just intrigue me. The strange worlds that they live in are so removed from the way we real folks live, that is in some cases it is as food as reading any fantasy novel.

So anyway a colleague at work lent me a copy of the Motely Crue book Dirt. This book charts he rise and fall of one of the biggest 80's Rock bands with a vert frank look at the way the guys lives and the things that they put themselves through.

As with all of these types of books you find out a bit about the background of all of the members of the band and what drove them to be who they are now and indeed who they were then, but rather than have this laid out neatly for each person, you get the information throughout the book. Each chapter of the book is written by a different member of the group and provides their view on what happened in any given situation. This causes some interesting conflicts for some of the tales that are told as you are presented with 2 or more completely different versions which just don't marry up.

I have to admit that I spent a lot of the book thinking - just how are these guys still alive. When you look at all of the things they did to themselves, they really should be dead somewhere, yet they made it out. This really is a tale of egos and excess and you get to see how the band destroyed it's self.

While you get the tales that make you go, man they were just dreadful to be around you also get the ones that make you go - how could someone survive being treated like that. There are bits of the this book that just made me laugh out loud (esp the story of Mick thinking he was dead and walking into a door), and bits that made me want to cry (the chapter Vince wrote about his daughter is one of the most awful things I have read in a long time) and you really feel like you have a better understanding of why these guys were and indeed are, the way they are.

Perhaps one of the things that stays with you in this book is a line from Tommy Lee where he talks about not being able to stand silence, and I think this is the case for a lot of the guys. When there is no one there and the fans went home - the guys did not know how to cope and found ways to numb the pain.

In a way this is a story not just of the rise and fall of a band but rather the tale of a group of young men who eventually grew up to realize that the world owed them nothing and they had to be responsible, but did it in the public eye.

If you are easily offended or shocked then this may not be the book for you as it really is no holds barred, but if you want to see how some guys, who in the end loved music managed to conquer the world for a short time while not quite killing themselves then give this a shot. Hell it's only rock and roll but I like it!