Best. Book. Ever.

Now, it's no secret that my favorite kind of reading material is the kind which entails carnal lust and debauchery, two things that are the easiest to find in the lives of rock stars.
 I've read about them all, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Guns N' Roses, Courtney Love, even that sucker Kurt Cobain, and the main reason I get so fascinated with them all is most likely that, well, my life is not the life of a rock star. I wish it were. I want the jets and the strippers and the narcotics, you know, but I'm a normal person with no specific craving for attention, hence, I have only experienced a limited time of illegal substance ingestion and slutty behavior. And I blame it all on the fact that I was, in fact, crazy at the time. And away from home.

 Another thing that is not a secret is my weakness for hair metal from the 80's and the fact that it was G'n'R and Mötley Crüe that got me interested in music in the first place. Interested in music, not to mention musicians. I never had the courage for the kind of cleavage it takes to get a backstage pass at a Skid Row concert, but I knew the groupies, and they were slightly impressed by the fact that I got guest passes to a few shows without putting a the genitals of a dirty roadie in my mouth. I got in for free, but needless to say, I never got backstage. Still, I was pretty convinced that I was gonna marry Vince Neil or Duff McKagan one day. I developed a lifelong taste for bad boys with guitars and tattoos, and look where it got me.

 Anyway...this book. I had heard about it from a bunch of people who told me how amazing it was, people who don't even know how obsessed I was with The Crüe and how much that band meant to me when I was a tortured teenager with two things on my mind - leather clad rock demons and how to make one get me out of Sweden. I bought the records, I went to one show, I had the t-shirts, the patches, and without my mother's knowledge I had the hair from time to time. I became a master of teasing my hair without a mirror on the Subway. When I heard about this book, I knew that my sanity and happiness depended on getting my hands on a copy. And finally, someone let me borrow their copy (someone who is also shamelessly holding on to my new Crüe t-shirt, I might add). The same night we went to the bar to see said person play with his band and I had to get very drunk in order to refrain from reading the book during his set. Finally, I got to take this treasure home with me. The excitement was almost too much for me to handle.

 I read almost the whole book in one sitting, I started around 9 pm and when my lifepartner in crime (who, by the way, is not Vince Neil but does play a mean guitar, has tattoos and F*cks Like A Beast) came home from work at around 7:30 the next morning, I was still reading. I couldn't stop. But when I had about 50 pages left I realised I had a pounding headache and had to leave the rest of the book for the following afternoon.

 Of all the rock star biographies I have plowed through in my life, this was the best one, no contest. Maybe because I love that band so much but also the way it's written, with each band member and a few business partners and managers taking turns in telling their story, sparing no gruesome detail, showing no mercy for the feelings of others involved. True awesomeness on a very high level.

 Nikki Sixx was, is, and will always be my hero. I was surprised that he never mentions a word about that guy who claimed to have replaced him for the Theater Of Pain period... I remember me and some friends having some very deep discussions about that back in the day, contemplating why his mouth was covered in all the pictures on the album sleeve, deciding that we hated that impostor guy, whoever he was, for making Nikki look bad when he was clearly The Man. You know. Nikki Sixx is the best writer of everyone in the book and it's he and Tommy Lee who contribute the most to the story.

 Ah, Tommy Lee. Tommy Lee and his flying, revolving drum set. I thought he was the toughest, meanest guy in the world but, really, all he wants is love. Mm-hmm. The chapters of the book that are written by him revolve mostly around his relationships with various women and why they didn't work out (personally I always thought he should have stuck with Heather Locklear, but that's a different story altogether).

 When it comes to Vince Neil -and really, the rest of the band as well - I don't think I would have had such a girl boner for him had I known then that he was a raging sex addict. They all have a lot of resentment toward each other, but his shows the most. Well, he was kicked out of the band. Or he quit. The stories differ depending on who the writer is. So there's a bit of whining on his part, but when it comes to writing about two of the most tragic events in his life, he is more lucid than anyone else, and almost surprisingly eloquent when he tells the story of the car accident where he was responsible for the death of one of his friends, and later, the heartbreaking story of his 4-year-old daughter losing the battle against cancer. That part should put a tear in anyone's eye when reading it, it certainly did in mine.  Aw, Vince, I would have been there for you, you know that.

 However, the true highlights of the book happen in the short chapters written by the silent, weird man, Mick Mars. Writing about meeting the other guys and the forming stages of the band, he'll tell you flat-out that he was the coolest one. The best musician. The coolest looking one. The one with the best taste in music. The others were just a bunch of dorks living in a dirty house, leading promiscuous lifestyles while he just wanted to play the guitar. He even named his first born son Les Paul!
 He has some quite fantasic theories about various things that don't have much to do with Mötley Crüe but are still in there, for example that the dinosaurs were killed by the Ebola virus, or that Titanic colliding with that iceberg was no accident.
 I have found a new kind of respect for that man. I always knew he was a great musician but since he never really did much talking in interviews, I didn't know what kind of stuff he had gone through in his life. I was surprised to find out that the fact that he always seems to be hunched over and hiding is not because of shyness, but something way more serious than that.

  I was completely blown away by this book and even if you happen to not be a Crüehead, you should definitely read it.

 If nothing else, it'll definitely keep you away from drugs.