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Toxic34
In this post, I wish to ask everyone to state who they think the worst rock n' roll author is, in terms of mangling/distorting facts and the expression of their bias. This is also not counting the likes of Albert Goldman, who only did 2 rock n' roll books, and who simply cannot be topped in terms of hatchet jobs.
In my opinion the worst such author would be Stephen Davis, the man behind Hammer Of The Gods, Old Gods Almost Dead, Jim Morrison: Life-Death-Legend, and Watch You Bleed: The Saga Of Guns N' Roses. Davis is a highly opinionated, almost hipsterish, and blatantly pretentious hack with a penchant for absolute hatchet jobs on his subjects, either inventing incidents or blowing up something out of proportion in order to smear them. He also tars lots of periods and great works with a massive black paintbrush (the Stones basically died with Brian Jones and are just corporate whores, Guns did nothing worthy after Appetite For Destruction, The Doors' Absolutely Live is a worthless album, Paul McCartney's own children heard Guns' version of Live And Let Die and thought it was a Guns original, Jimi Hendrix played a Les Paul at Woodstock, Motley Crue's best album was Girls Girls Girls and faded into obscurity afterwards, rock died in the '90s and was "replaced by the heroin-fueled grunge movement," etc.) The only worthy bits of his work is showing the most complete picture of the last day of Jim Morrison's life and reviewing Chinese Democracy, even though it thoroughly shreds the album apart and gives descriptions that makes it clear he didn't actually listen to it. He is only good when working as the co-author of autobios, as he did with Mick Fleetwood's first book, Walk This Way and This Wheel's On Fire (though the latter contained Levon Helm's baseless accusations of Robbie Robertson stealing songwriting credits). For some reason, working as the ghostwriter for someone else shows a great concern for accuracy and truth, and his independent bios the exact opposite.
A close second would be Mick Wall. Sadly, he started out doing quite wonderful work, as his unauthorized bio of Axl Rose shows. His book When Gods Walked The Earth was a very wonderful look into Led Zeppelin, except for his trashing the Celebration Day O2 Arena concert and unfairly comparing it to the shows they did in their prime. However, he began to slide into Stephen Davis territory with his Metallica book, Enter Night, as he did nothing but tar everything after Master of Puppets, especially Death Magnetic, calling everything on it worthless (not just valid complaints like the "what doesn't kill you makes you more strong" line in Broken, Beat & Scarred and the compressed and artificially louder sound, but outright fabrications and inventions about the record). His recent Black Sabbath book is much better, but it focuses too much on the original Ozzy period. While he gives props to the Dio years, he simply lionizes and fetishes that original lineup to a ridiculous amount, even letting that cloud the results of 13. His newest book, Love Becomes A Funeral Pyre, on The Doors, is his absolute worst book. He simply states that everything we know about them is wrong, and gives alternate explanations, but without the evidence to prove it. He also vilifies Ray Manzarek well beyond his genuine, documented faults, and renders him as absolute scum who deserves to burn in hell.
But these are my thoughts. What about yours?
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GasLightStreetQuote
Toxic34
In this post, I wish to ask everyone to state who they think the worst rock n' roll author is, in terms of mangling/distorting facts and the expression of their bias. This is also not counting the likes of Albert Goldman, who only did 2 rock n' roll books, and who simply cannot be topped in terms of hatchet jobs.
In my opinion the worst such author would be Stephen Davis, the man behind Hammer Of The Gods, Old Gods Almost Dead, Jim Morrison: Life-Death-Legend, and Watch You Bleed: The Saga Of Guns N' Roses. Davis is a highly opinionated, almost hipsterish, and blatantly pretentious hack with a penchant for absolute hatchet jobs on his subjects, either inventing incidents or blowing up something out of proportion in order to smear them. He also tars lots of periods and great works with a massive black paintbrush (the Stones basically died with Brian Jones and are just corporate whores, Guns did nothing worthy after Appetite For Destruction, The Doors' Absolutely Live is a worthless album, Paul McCartney's own children heard Guns' version of Live And Let Die and thought it was a Guns original, Jimi Hendrix played a Les Paul at Woodstock, Motley Crue's best album was Girls Girls Girls and faded into obscurity afterwards, rock died in the '90s and was "replaced by the heroin-fueled grunge movement," etc.) The only worthy bits of his work is showing the most complete picture of the last day of Jim Morrison's life and reviewing Chinese Democracy, even though it thoroughly shreds the album apart and gives descriptions that makes it clear he didn't actually listen to it. He is only good when working as the co-author of autobios, as he did with Mick Fleetwood's first book, Walk This Way and This Wheel's On Fire (though the latter contained Levon Helm's baseless accusations of Robbie Robertson stealing songwriting credits). For some reason, working as the ghostwriter for someone else shows a great concern for accuracy and truth, and his independent bios the exact opposite.
A close second would be Mick Wall. Sadly, he started out doing quite wonderful work, as his unauthorized bio of Axl Rose shows. His book When Gods Walked The Earth was a very wonderful look into Led Zeppelin, except for his trashing the Celebration Day O2 Arena concert and unfairly comparing it to the shows they did in their prime. However, he began to slide into Stephen Davis territory with his Metallica book, Enter Night, as he did nothing but tar everything after Master of Puppets, especially Death Magnetic, calling everything on it worthless (not just valid complaints like the "what doesn't kill you makes you more strong" line in Broken, Beat & Scarred and the compressed and artificially louder sound, but outright fabrications and inventions about the record). His recent Black Sabbath book is much better, but it focuses too much on the original Ozzy period. While he gives props to the Dio years, he simply lionizes and fetishes that original lineup to a ridiculous amount, even letting that cloud the results of 13. His newest book, Love Becomes A Funeral Pyre, on The Doors, is his absolute worst book. He simply states that everything we know about them is wrong, and gives alternate explanations, but without the evidence to prove it. He also vilifies Ray Manzarek well beyond his genuine, documented faults, and renders him as absolute scum who deserves to burn in hell.
But these are my thoughts. What about yours?
I think your first paragraph is beyond awesome. And it's hilarious on top of that.
Nice chuckle that the dude who wrote about how bad Metallica was after MAST OF PUPPETS named the book after a lyric from a song from an album that's post-MASTER OF PUPPETS.
It amazes me that these people were allowed to continue writing books on music with such track records (Hammer Of The Gods seems to be often cited for some things as being factual). But, like FOX News, facts can be invented. The guy that slammed Zep's CELEBRATION DAY O2 show obviously didn't bother to listen to it.
The trashing of CHINESE DEMOCRACY is probably accurate even without having listened to it ha ha!
At the moment I can't think of anyone that's written that bad other than Ronnie Wood, whose book is beyond painfully funny, and Tony Sanchez.
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john lomax
Adam Clayson. His writing is dreadful, impossible to understand.
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From4tilLate
Victor Bokris
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detroitkenQuote
john lomax
Adam Clayson. His writing is dreadful, impossible to understand.
Yeah clayson gets my vote too.....
Thank you! If I am faced with choosing between Davis and Giuliano it will be the latter I reed...Quote
CaptainCorella
My nomination is...
Geoffrey Giuliano
(Not really disagreeing about Clayson, which is a shame as his early books were good).
Turning the thread on its head, one of the best Rock authors I've ever read was Tony Fletcher who wrote an excellent book about Keith Moon.
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Come On
I have hundreds of shitty ones so why not concentrate on them thats really good? Like for example Scaduto's Dylan-bio...
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Jesse1960Quote
Come On
I have hundreds of shitty ones so why not concentrate on them thats really good? Like for example Scaduto's Dylan-bio...
And Scaduto followed up the Dylan travesty with "Everybody's Lucifer." Double dumpster fire on that clown.
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Turner68
eric clapton's autobiography was pretty horrendous, although i don't know who wrote that.
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From4tilLate
Victor Bokris
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Come OnQuote
Jesse1960Quote
Come On
I have hundreds of shitty ones so why not concentrate on them thats really good? Like for example Scaduto's Dylan-bio...
And Scaduto followed up the Dylan travesty with "Everybody's Lucifer." Double dumpster fire on that clown.
Really So he lost it...
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Happy24Quote
Turner68
eric clapton's autobiography was pretty horrendous, although i don't know who wrote that.
I have actually really liked that one
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Happy24
"Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger" by Christopher Andersen is by far the worst bio I have ever read. In fact it is probably the worst book I have ever read. It is only about Mick's love affairs with women and largely with men, that the author keeps on claiming Mick has slept with. According to him. I have read Stephen Davis' Old Gods Almost Dead, which is a great book compared to the one by Andersen. I have thrown it into garbage when I finished it, which I have never done with any other book. I still don't understand why I spent my time on reading it.