When we’re not listening to rock, we’re reading about it. The following memoirs lifted the lid on rock and roll’s excess, mayhem and misfits, and though they mightn’t be hot off the press, they still burn with (at times, heinous) stories to tell.
The Dirt: Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band
by Neil Strauss
A collaborative autobiography written by members of Mötley Crüe and New York Times journalist Neil Strauss, The Dirt was the seminal work when it came to documenting rock and roll excess. Following the band through their heyday in the ’80s, Strauss encouraged them to pen their own chapters, and the book quite literally dishes the dirt on the big-haired lords of metal.
I’ll be damned if the Crüe didn’t just unapologetically love living – though it’s a shame they didn’t wash more. In one of The Dirt’s more grotesque moments (of which there are many), a member retells a story about how a long shower-less stint while wearing leather strides led him to stick his privates in a pie to counter malodours when chanced with hooking up. Really, it’s a move that’s awfully counterintuitive, yet so obnoxiously rock and roll.
Dirt is a travelogue that captures one debaucherous escapade after another, in particular Nikki Sixx’s bizarre recount of his dance with the devil during a seance. And it seems that the only recurring theme, aside from the usual sex, drugs and rock and roll, is that poor Mick Mars is weird as fuck.
Strauss is renowned for being a one-time Courtney Love dalliance, and his fragile male ego is responsible for The Game: Undercover In The Secret Society of Pick-up Artists, a tome that taught generations of men to “neg”, and one the ex-sex addict has since expressed regret for. In light of this, it’s worth wondering whether Strauss would paint the band’s exploits in such a flattering light if he had the chance to work on Dirt again.
Just Kids
By Patti Smith
Patti Smith’s memoir documents the punk-poet powerhouse’s defining moments, from the heartbreak of giving up her infant daughter for adoption to sleeping rough after dropping out of teachers college. That Beverly Smith, Patti’s kind-natured mother went along with her daughter’s adventure almost begs belief: she sent a teenage Patricia Lee to New York with little more than a waitress’s uniform, despite knowing she’d be terrible at it.
Let’s face it: there’s fuck all Smith can’t do.
Just Kids unravels Smith’s relationship with lover and famed photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the infamous Hotel Chelsea: the two are presented as loved-up neophytes living in a romantic idyll, despite being met with hunger and a lack of funds while squatting in New York City’s seedier settings.
Most of the book is a series of highlights, and one of its most impressive moments comes when an androgynous, jacket-shucked Smith gets to work on her debut studio album Horses. Although, from start to finish Just Kids is so damn beautiful that at times you almost can’t bear it; its form has a rare transcendence that requires savouring. Let’s face it: there’s fuck all Smith can’t do, which is why she’s Patti Smith and we are just mere mortals.
Tommy Land
By Tommy Lee and Anthony Bozza
Sure, it’s ghost written to hell, but Tommy Land is an entertaining romp through the life of the Mötley Crüe’s founding member, Tommy Lee (I know, we’re back with that ol’ band, but bear with me). Amid discussing his marriages to famous blonde bombshell actresses (namely Heather Locklear and Pamela Anderson), Lee delves into tragedy, recounting how a four-year-old boy accidentally drowned at his home, which, understandably, fucked him up to no end.
His enthusiasm is infectious and makes him come off likeable as all fuck.
And then there’s the explicit documenting of his sexual desires in the second chapter, which comes in the guise of well-mannered advice. Lee gives his two cents on threesome etiquette (his strong preference is actually foursomes, so that no one gets left out), the boons of a woman with curves (“Big girls are the hottest, craziest fucks ever”), sex while driving, and gardenia perfume (“If it were cool to walk around with a gardenia duct-taped to each nostril, I would so that I could smell that scent all day long.”) Lee proves so fired up about the subject matter that this lurid chapter precedes anything about his contribution to the band. His enthusiasm is infectious and makes him come off likeable as all fuck.
Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess
By Danny Sugerman
Proving that truth sometimes is really stranger than fiction, Danny Sugerman became the Doors’ informal PR guy at the tender age of 12 after befriending Jim Morrison at the beach. By age 17, Sugerman had parlayed into the role of band manager, but wound up in a California state mental hospital suffering with severely excessive drug and alcohol addiction when he reached 21.
Wonderland Avenue was illustrated by Ralph Steadman, the same guy whose eerie, and at times terrifying scribbles accompany the bulk of Hunter S. Thompson’s work. The first half of the book is a good trip with cracking insights into life behind closed Doors, while the second half follows Sugerman’s not so glamorous descent into a heroin addiction that nearly killed him.
That said, some of the latter exploits are quite humorous, including his account of Iggy Pop as a houseguest from hell, as well as Sugerman having to head over to the local cop shop to bail Iggy out, only to discover him dressed like someone’s mum replete with pumps and pearls. After all of the merry flavours of hell to which he subjected his body and mind, Sugerman died of lung cancer while clean and sober at aged 50.
