West of Mars\' Rocks \'n Reads

When I was contacted about joining a blog tour for David Grant’s Rock Stars: The Rise, fall, and rise of 80′s glam frontmen into pop culture, I figured I couldn’t say no. Talk about right up my alley!

While the book wasn’t everything I’d hoped, chatting with Mr. Grant certainly was. Here’s how it went:

1. What was it that prompted you to break out from blogging and put Rock Stars together? That one special thing that made you say, “All right, I’m doing it and here goes!”

For the past couple years I have been writing a weekly column for MetalUnderground.com called “The Rockstar Ramblings”. What I was finding was how the bands from the eighties and individually, the lead singers, are more in the news today versus then. There are biographies on some of the bands, and a few that address the genre of music, but none of these books looked specifically at the front men of the heavy metal glam era. In my mind I pictured a visual aspect to the book to compliment the tongue-and-cheek style of my writing. This was accomplished by Joel Gwidt (Illustrator), who did an exceptional job drawing sketches and capturing each vocalist in their prime.

The mini-biographies, injected with humor wrote themselves. For me it was a perfect break from writing fiction. The research, that included many hours of watching old videos, was an interesting way to capture a time when matching your lip stick shade to your bandana color was just as (or more) important than the song itself.

2. You pick out some of the most influential men from the ’80s and pre-Nirvana ’90s. Is there anyone you realized you forgot?

There had to be a point where I just said no more. This is one of the reasons I put the “criteria” in the first section. You can make an argument that Marq Torien (Bulletboys), Taime Downe (Faster Pussycat), Carl Snare (Firehouse), and others could be included. I agree, they COULD have been added, but the specific group (28 in all) were selected based on their place in main stream pop culture as well as what they “brought” to the eighties.

Another suspicious inclusion included Josh Todd (Buckcherry), not because they were around in the eighties, but that they gladly carried the eighties torch through the nineties. Given this, Velvet Revolver could have been included given their Guns N Roses roots, but then do you include Scott Weiland? If so, you open the door to Stone Temple Pilots, the bands of the nineties, and pure madness.

In the end I am okay with my selections, after all, you always want to leave room for a sequel: “Obscure Rock Stars: The rise, fall, and rise of the unknown lead singers of the eighties.”

One thing is for sure, I will never include the band Europe. No band should be named after a continent. I have very strict beliefs in this area.

3. At the end, you speak of the music being the most fun and a great escape from our lives. Is this what makes the music (and the frontmen and women) every bit as relevant today as they were in the party-on ’80s?

Rock music often reflects the state of society and we are seeing more fans flock back to the feel good music of the eighties, a time of recession that in some ways mirrors our current settings. Popping up in reality television, reunion tours, and everything pop culture, eighties hair bands are as relevant as ever. People need an escape, and this music is exactly that, an escape. Most of us will never be in the convertible limo with a hot tub, waving a bottle of champagne while cruising down S. Las Vegas Boulevard, BUT for five minutes we can go there. For the listener, a fantasy celebration of over indulgence is like a good piece of fiction, or bad (read: reality) television.

4. Pick ONE of the stars you profiled. Who would join you for a rock star’s 2PM breakfast buffet at Denny’s (eager groupies focused on you as much as your companion, and held safely away by big, burly security dudes)?

Picture this: Your eyes are blurred from a night of partying, you hear music, but that’s just the lingering effect of the loud guitars from the evening. Several plates of stacked pancakes sit in front of you. Across the table sits David Lee Roth. He is yelling out “More flapjacks!” At multiple points in this early morning he is standing on the booth (you always go for the booth at Denny’s) and the groupies are in constant movement, often coming in and out of the revolving bathroom door to “powder their noses”. Our waitress continues bringing plates of pancakes. There are bottles of Heineken beer covering the open spaces on the table (in between the plates of pancakes). The waitress stops for a moment, David Lee Roth screams, “More flapjacks!”

5. And finally, the traditional West of Mars question: What ONE SONG makes you think of your book? Yep, only one.

“Nuthin’ But a Good Time”, Poison

For better or worse you have a band at the height of the glam eighties singing a song about partying. The video (often more important than the actual song) celebrates life and has more costume changes than a Broadway show. In the middle of song you even have Bret Michaels offering a toast “To all of us breaking our backs every day, if wanting a good life is such a crime, Lord then put me away! Here’s to ya!” An argument can also be made that this is the point that opened up the flood gates for the more “poser” type bands that ultimately led to a saturation of hair bands. Of course, that is if you believe Poison was not one of these bands to begin with…

There ya go. If you’re into the fun of 80s hair music, Mr. Grant and I have two copies of Rock Stars to share with you (US and Canada only). Leave a comment here with your e-mail and next Thursday, the 29th, I’ll pick the winners.

Whoa. Nothing like being a week and a half late to announce the winner for our Sandy Blair book. I guess I was hoping more folk would drop in to enter.

But the winner is Dawn M! She doesn’t have a blog for me to link to. I’m sad about that.

Look for an e-mail from me now, Dawn.

Yeah, I’ll start posting more than Women on Wednesday posts. It was a holiday; time to unplug.

If you’re new around here, the deal is that Women on Wednesday is our time to appreciate each other. If you’ve written a post featuring a woman author or merely one book that’s been written by a woman, leave your link in the comments and go see what everyone else is talking about. Even if you’ve written your post for another reason (another meme, or to complete a reading challenge), it still counts.

It’s all about getting exposure to women authors.

It fits nicely with this week’s pick of mine. You see, when I was at the Romantic Times Convention in 2008, author Sandy Blair walked up to me. She was looking for readers to give a copy of her book, A Highlander for Christmas, to.

She’d run out of readers. Couldn’t find any. And she was about to leave. She didn’t want to lug her book home with her.

I volunteered to take it, with the promise that I’d give it away on my blog. Except… my desk ate it. My desk eats lots of things. It ate the cat once, but I guess cats don’t taste good, and it spit the cat back out.

It spit Sandy Blair’s book back out, too. I guess it read it and decided to share it with the world. Best of all, my desk took GREAT care of the book. It still looks unread. The shiny gold sticker that says “autographed copy” on the cover is still shiny and perfect.

And now, way too long after the fact, A Highlander for Christmas is headed for a new home. Leave a link to your own WOW post and you can be entered into a drawing, which I’ll do next Tuesday the 8th of December. Be sure to leave your e-mail address with your comment.

If you can’t do a WOW post, then leave your name and e-mail anyway.

Since I feel bad that my desk spent so long hiding this from me, I’ll make this an international give.

Stacie‘s the winner of Tommyland, Tommy Lee’s great romp through his life.

Congratulations, Stacie! Look for an e-mail from me soon. And more rockin’ books that ALL of you will have chances to win.

I thought I knew what to expect from Tommy Lee’s Tommyland. After all, I’d devoured The Dirt, the autobiography of Tommy’s band, Motley Crue. I’d been transfixed and even a little transformed by Crue bassist Nikki Sixx’s The Heroin Diaries.

And now, coming a little late to the party, I’ve got Tommyland in my hands. At last. And while I was expecting some of it — like tales of his first-ever girlfriend, who possessed a rather unique (ahem) talent — one thing I certainly hadn’t been prepared for was narrative asides in the style of a Greek chorus.

Only, this Greek chorus is provided by Tommy’s penis.

Yes, boys and girls, you read that right. I’ve got to note, too, that Tommy’s penis is quite the funny character. Maybe even a little bit wise, too.

That’s not to say that Tommy himself isn’t funny or wise. He’s quite entertaining, in fact, and for the most part, Tommyland is quite readable. This is actually high praise; Tommy comes off as a regular guy. He’s got his fan-boy moments. He’s also got his rock star moments. But perhaps the most poignant moments involve the death of the little boy, Daniel, in the Tommyland pool during a birthday party.

I remember that. I remember an awful lot of what happens in Tommyland, in fact, and I’m not the world’s biggest Crue fan. (Odd, given that I keep reading the books they put out.) Yet how could anyone miss the media circus that was his marriage to Pamela Anderson? The jail time Tommy served?

Seeing it from the inside gave me what I was hoping for in this book — a new perspective. Tommy’s made me stop and consider how it feels to need to have a few personal moments, only to find a photographer parked in the tree outside your bedroom. It’s hard not to empathize with Tommy and Pamela at times. This from me, who admitted to liking the train wreck they seemed to be.

I stand corrected. In fact, the romantic in me would love to see them figure out how to make it work — without the stresses they had to face, without the paparazzi, without the anger.

I always pick up these music-themed books with the hopes that they’ll inspire my fiction, or teach me something new. From that standpoint, Tommyland succeeded; the paparazzi bits aren’t the only things I learned or was inspired by. Perhaps the biggest inspiration came in Tommy’s comments about the almost-constant lawsuits. It’s his off-hand manner, the way he dismisses them all with mentions of the legal fees; it’s quite telling. His relationship with music, too, is special. It’s what a number of my own fictional characters share, so to hear Tommy articulate it the way he does… wow. Nothing like the reinforcement that I’m on the right track with, for example, Mitchell. His relationship with his dad, the houseboat episode, is both touching and mind-blowing.

Say what you will about Tommy Lee. I’ve got a newfound admiration for his gentle, tender side. He may be that bad-assed rocker we’ve all come to know and roll our eyes at, but there’s more to him. Much, much more.

I can’t say I loved Tommyland the way I loved The Dirt, or the absolutely brilliant Heroin Diaries. This book didn’t knock my socks off the way both of those books did. I don’t think it’s meant to; it’s merely meant to be Tommy’s story. His life, his explanation of this wild ride he’d been on up to that point.

I hope there’s a sequel, telling us what Tommy’s been up to since Tommyland came out. I won’t wait so long to read it.

***
Book obtained through Paperbackswap.com
’cause it’s about Rock and Roll!

If you’d like it, here’s the skinny:
Leave a comment here for entry. You gotta be 18 to enter and I reserve the right to ignore your entry (here or elsewhere) if you’re rude or otherwise offensive.

If you’d like bonus entries, flip over to the Meet and Greet and find some of my fiction to read. You can do this by picking either the fiction category, or the name of any of my characters. Yes, for the purposes of the contest, Roadie Poet qualifies. I, of course, recommend anything with Trevor’s name on it.

Once you’ve read the piece, leave a meaningful comment there. “I like!” is not meaningful. “I love it when Trevor’s right” is. (Trevor loves it when he’s right, too). You’ll get one bonus entry per comment — one comment per post.

If you REALLY want to suck up and get the mega-bonus entries, buy a copy of The Demo Tapes from any of the outlets it’s availble, including myself. You’ll get ten extra entries and my eternal gratitude.

Enter by Friday, November 27. I’ll let one of The Opening Acts pick a name out of a figurative hat. While I hate to impose mailing restrictions, until my royalties pick up, this is a US/Canada only give. But I love PO Boxes!