Metal Books

I am a very busy reader....on my shelves is a section I labeled: Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll. There are books on sex, some on drugs (how to grow/cook cannabis), and metal artists.
This section is mostly metal, excluding: Jaco, Lenny Breau, Charlie Parker, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Miles Davis....
My faves are anything by Neil Peart (this man is brilliant! He wrote his books, not a ghost writer.) Another awesome read is Scar Tissue by A. Kiedis. I don't dig RHCP much but this is so well written! I collected dozens of music bio's and autobio's and love this niche.
What is your fave music bio?

My all time fav "music" biography is Catch a Fire [Bob Marley]. My fav "metal" book is Give Me An "R" [Helix].

UNCLE SAXON'S KICKASS CDS wrote:

My all time fav "music" biography is Catch a Fire [Bob Marley].  My fav "metal" book is Give Me An "R" [Helix].

I hear the Helix book is pretty good...

tough to say I also am not a huge huge fan of RHCP but Scar Tissue was a excellent read

Other ones ive enjoyed were

Slash
Im not Dead and Not for Sale (Scott Weiland)
Duff's book
Dave Mustaine's
Ace Frehley
Heavier than Heaven
Nirvana by Everett True
Come As You Are by Azzlerod
Ive enjoyed all of these

ive been looking for a good Pink Floyd bio

I got a few David Bowie ones i need to still read

I have tons of these but two that stand out right now are Rex Brown - Official Truth, 101 Proof: The Inside Story of Pantera and Paul Stanley - Face the Music: A Life Exposed.

I also enjoyed Lemmy's - White Line Fever autobiography.

I found Sammy Hagar's autobiography to be nearly unreadable. The dude was all over the place in his writing - total stream of consciousness.

Stratovarius book would be nice, because it'd be pretty insane (literally).

These are a few that I've enjoyed over the past year or two, maybe not all are "metal" but all were great reads:

Shut Up And Give Me The Mic by Dee Snider

Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! My Adventures in the Alice Cooper Group by Dennis Dunaway

A Biography of Led Zeppelin: When Giants Walked the Earth by Mick Wall

Black Sabbath: Symptom Of The Universe by Mick Wall

Van Halen Rising: How a Southern California Backyard Party Band Saved Heavy Metal, by Greg Renoff

Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone by Marky Ramone

I Slept With Joey Ramone by Mickey Leigh

VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave by Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter and Martha Quinn

Louder than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal by Jon Wiederhorn & Katherine Turman

Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal by David Konow

Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag by Stevie Chick

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk - Legs McNeil/Gillian McCain

My Life With Deth: Discovering Meaning in a Life of Rock & Roll by David Ellefson

I like biography's but so many are just one sided ego trips or glossed over bullshit.

I do like however

Crazy Diamond - Syd Barrett & the Birth of Pink Floyd
Is that it? - Bob Geldof
A Life in Metal - Dave Mustaine
The Dirt - Motley Crue
No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs - John Lydon
Tainted Life - Marc Almond

Not a great deal of metal there but they are all interesting reads unlike all of the books I've ever read about the majority of metal bands

Addy wrote:

tough to say I also am not a huge huge fan of RHCP but Scar Tissue was a excellent read

Other ones ive enjoyed were

Slash
Im not Dead and Not for Sale (Scott Weiland)
Duff's book
Dave Mustaine's
Ace Frehley
Heavier than Heaven
Nirvana by Everett True
Come As You Are by Azzlerod
Ive enjoyed all of these

I have Slash and Mustaine....both very good! The Stephen Pearcy book is basically a forum for Pearcy to brag about sex and drugs- not great, BUT, I grew up with Ratt and that made it ok.

I have many rock bio's, but a HUGE hole on the shelves is reserved for Mr. Popoff.

Im dyin to find a decent Pink Floyd bio I have like 3 David Bowie bios (Im a huge fan of Bowie) i need to read i dont read as fast as i used to

I have 'A Saucer Full of Secrets'....it is ok, but not wonderful. I had a bio on Bowie but I threw it away after reading. it was a mass-market paperback that was more concerned about Bowie's drug and sex life than his music. I don't give a dry white dog turd about musicians and their sex/party lives (exceptions: Richards, Osbourne, Moon, Lemmy, Lennon)

I wish that metal books were cheaper !
I think many musicians unfortunately hold back the wild stories....
And they also want to give people back pats...etc....Lita Ford....still 13 - 14 bucks....ehh.....
I love laughing while reading...Dirt....Walk This Way....were true classics !
Steve Adler's book was a wild read....he put a lot out there !
Peter Criss book...him calling Gene and Paul " c*** suc***s...a few times...
that was straight forward of him ha ha...
Steve Tyler saying he likes masturbating......was a shocker to read...
Lemmy saying he was invited to see beat, raped, killed sex.,.,whatever order he wanted it seen....
Steven Pearcy was a wild read....
Ace threatened Gene....that he'll write a second book....and really uncover him and Paul, if they kept bad mouthing him and Peter - ha ha !

Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman is an interesting look at being a metal fan in the 1980s. Though he does go off on tangents (including the chapter on bank fraud), it's definitely a good, fun read.

I've been really into rock/metal bios for the last several years.

David Lee Roth - Crazy from the Heat
Dave Mustaine - A Heavy Metal Memoir
Rex Brown - Official Truth 101 Proof
Alex Skolnick - Geek to Guitar Hero
David Ellefson - My Life with Deth
Max Cavalera - My Bloody Roots
Tony Iommi - Iron Man
Scott Ian - I'm the Man
Dee Snider - Shut Up and Give Me the Mic
Dimebag Darrell - Black Tooth Grin
Brian "Head" Welch - Save Me from Myself
Steve Rowe - Metal Missionary
Pete Townsend - Who I Am
Steven Adler - My Appetite for Destruction
Rudy Sarzo - Off the Rails
Mark Salomon (The Crucified) - Simplicity
Andrew Schwab (Project 86) - It's All Downhill from Here

And many more on my want list!

All of my reading life, I have always played music while reading. Sometimes a good book or series gets correlated to the tunes you were listening to especially if you repeat the music for the entire story).
An example : When I was 15, I read a series of paperbacks by V.C. Andrews. There is 4 books in the series and the first book was 'Flowers in the Attic', followed by 'Petals on the Wind' and 2 more that I forget the name of. Back then I loved this series- now, I would never re-read them. The music I played over and over for the whole series still brings to the forefront the images created by my brain while reading. King's X - Gretchen Goes to Nebraska.
Do you find music to be an important part of reading? What songs or albums have you affiliated with certain books/series?

^^ I don't usually, but last week Stormspell sent me a promo of the new Claymorean album (a female fronted "epic power" metal band from Serbia whose songs are all about swords 'n' steel 'n' war 'n' stuff) and it occurred to me that it would make a great soundtrack to the "Red Sonja" graphic novel I'm reading right now.

Troublezone wrote:

I've been really into rock/metal bios for the last several years.

David Lee Roth - Crazy from the Heat
Dave Mustaine - A Heavy Metal Memoir
Rex Brown - Official Truth 101 Proof
Alex Skolnick - Geek to Guitar Hero
David Ellefson - My Life with Deth
Max Cavalera - My Bloody Roots
Tony Iommi - Iron Man
Scott Ian - I'm the Man
Dee Snider - Shut Up and Give Me the Mic
Dimebag Darrell - Black Tooth Grin
Brian "Head" Welch - Save Me from Myself
Steve Rowe - Metal Missionary
Pete Townsend - Who I Am
Steven Adler - My Appetite for Destruction
Rudy Sarzo - Off the Rails
Mark Salomon (The Crucified) - Simplicity
Andrew Schwab (Project 86) - It's All Downhill from Here

nice list! On your list, I only have mustaine and adler- proves to me that there is almost enough music bios   ! There are tons I have yet to read...before this thread I actually thought that I had most music bios already....boy, was I wrong.

Are You Morbid?-Thomas Gabriel Fischer

moonspell67 wrote:

Troublezone wrote:

I've been really into rock/metal bios for the last several years.

David Lee Roth - Crazy from the Heat
Dave Mustaine - A Heavy Metal Memoir
Rex Brown - Official Truth 101 Proof
Alex Skolnick - Geek to Guitar Hero
David Ellefson - My Life with Deth
Max Cavalera - My Bloody Roots
Tony Iommi - Iron Man
Scott Ian - I'm the Man
Dee Snider - Shut Up and Give Me the Mic
Dimebag Darrell - Black Tooth Grin
Brian "Head" Welch - Save Me from Myself
Steve Rowe - Metal Missionary
Pete Townsend - Who I Am
Steven Adler - My Appetite for Destruction
Rudy Sarzo - Off the Rails
Mark Salomon (The Crucified) - Simplicity
Andrew Schwab (Project 86) - It's All Downhill from Here

nice list! On your list, I only have mustaine and adler- proves to me that there is almost enough music bios   ! There are tons I have yet to read...before this thread I actually thought that I had most music bios already....boy, was I wrong.

Yeah, there's plenty more to get... I still need Michael Sweet's, Sebastian Bach's and Harley Flannagan's (Cro-Mags).

Addy wrote:

Im dyin to find a decent Pink Floyd bio  I have like 3 David Bowie bios (Im a huge fan of Bowie) i need to read i dont read as fast as i used to

Have you read, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd written by Nick Mason? I read it years ago, and liked it quite a bit.

as far as trashy books describing rockstar immaturity (sex, drugs, little responsibility, inflated ego's...) Motley Crue - the Dirt or GnR Watch You Bleed are good. Or the Stephen Pearcy book.

Leatherface wrote:

Are You Morbid?-Thomas Gabriel Fischer

I want this book bad!! I have Only Death is Real (the illustrated book) but that one is really hard to come by for a not insane price and it hasn't been reprinted

I've been really into hard rock/metal biographies over the past few years, i've got dozens on my Kindle that I still have not gotten around to reading.

Most recent one I finished was Sebastian Bach's book.