Nöthin' But a Good Time

I had high hopes for this one but, even though it's an entertaining read, it failed to deliver on several fronts. The biggest problem is the book's structure. The authors wrote nothing but a few interludes. The bulk of this work is a collage of snippets of interviews which at times can be a bit hard to follow.

I grew up in that era and hard rock was definitely part of my teenage years. Nöthin' But a Good Time does a good job chronicling the rise and fall of hair bands, especially the early years. The focus on the heydays of the genre centers around the popularity of Poison. Probably because the bands refused to participate, both Bon Jovi and Def Leppard, by far the bestselling groups of the 80s, get very little to no coverage. Weird that bands like Stryper and Winger get a lot of air time, while popular bands like Whitesnake and Europe are barely talked about.

Still, it's a fun trip back down memory lane, when hair and spandex ruled, and a panoply of bands sold millions of records during that decade of decadence. It brought me back to my younger self, when I owned a Mötely Crüe tshirt that said "The Motherfucking, Ass-Kicking, Ear-Splitting, Loudest Tour on Earth!"

Those were the days! =)

Here's the blurb:

Nothin' But a Good Time is the definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1980s hard rock and hair metal, told by the musicians and industry insiders who lived it.

Hard rock in the 1980s was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated―and maybe even helped to define―a spectacularly over-the-top decade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” are as inextricably linked to the era as Reaganomics, PAC-MAN, and E.T.

From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-Platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock's Nothin' But a Good Time captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians, managers, producers, engineers, label executives, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies, and hangers-on who lived it.

Featuring an impassioned foreword by Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist and avowed glam metal fanatic Corey Taylor, and drawn from over two hundred author interviews with members of Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Winger, Warrant, Cinderella, Quiet Riot and others, as well as Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford, and many more, this is the ultimate, uncensored, and often unhinged, chronicle of a time where excess and success walked hand in hand, told by the men and women who created a sound and style that came to define a musical era―one in which the bands and their fans went looking for nothin’ but a good time…and found it.

For more info about this title, follow this Amazon Associate link.