MUSIC | NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME: UNCENSORED HISTORY OF 80s HARD ROCK EXPLOSION BY TOM BEAJOUR & RICHARD BIENSTOCK

NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME

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 200 new 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.

★★★★☆

The synopsis will tell you that this sets out to be "the definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1980s hard rock and hair metal..." Oral history is the operative word here. Maybe my own mistake, but I went into this expecting something with more of a scholarly setup. While the presentation may not be traditionally academic, quite a bit of work went into compiling these stories. Browsing over the book's appendix, it looks like the first interviews started around 1997, carrying through to 2018, with supplemental facts and follow-ups carried out until 2020. The history, nearly 530 pages worth, made more cohesive through the efforts of music journalists Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock, is put on full, raw, unfiltered display by the men and women who lived it, and makes for one seriously fun, sometimes cringey read. If you're at all a "delicate flower" type of reader, this might be a tough one for you, because there's no censor button on these rockers! Seriously. None. A good bulk of this book is full-out locker room talk about --- you guessed it --- sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.

The format Beaujour and Bienstock chose to go with actually does make for pretty fast reading, considering the size of the book. Perfect for fans of Rolling Stone Magazine-style interviews, each chapter is given that kind of layout (think play script dialogue, if you will). Set up with a chosen topic, the interview style format then gives the reader the opportunity to feel as if you're backstage in the green room hearing these stories first-hand (which, I mean... in a way, you are). My one critique of this would be that at the start of each chapter I would have appreciated something like a subheading to let the reader know which band would be featured in any given chapter.

While the emphasis may often be on the sexual exploits and hardcore drug use of these bands back in the day, there are also times where these guys get real about how hard they worked to become "overnight successes" and later, a similar struggle to stay relevant in the industry once punk rock / new wave came onto the scene. Some of these testimonies paint a real picture of just how competitive the business truly is, how hard these bands had to work to get noticed by record labels at all. The reader is left with a better, more honest understanding that not ever day was fame and glory. A lot of clawing...and maybe even a little backstabbing... had to be done to get them to the level of being in any way enviable.

Along the way, there are also a few quick "cameo" stories where otherwise famous faces crossed paths with these guys --- names such as Stevie Nicks, Milton Berle, Sam Kinison, and Christina Applegate.

As far as bands covered, much of the focus seems to be placed on the genesis of Motley Crue. Given how successful these guys became, it's wild for a reader to try to picture the early days described in these pages: being so poor in the beginning you're having to live off of other people's food scraps; hooking up with girls to have a guaranteed place to sleep... and then stealing shirts from them the morning after because you don't have money for new clothes; stealing phone books to use for TP... I've been painfully poor before but I don't know that even I've ever been yellow pages-for-tp poor! Eeesh! But if MC is not your band of choice, other bands offered the spotlight here include: Guns n Roses, Stryper, Warrant, Skid Row, Quiet Riot, Van Halen, Poison, Ratt, Cinderella, W.A.S.P., Dokken, and Twisted Sister, just to name a few. There's even some conversations here with Nelson (as in, singing twins Gunnar and Matthew Nelson, sons of singer Ricky Nelson and nephews of actor Mark Harmon). Not to leave out the ceiling-shattering ladies, interviews also include those with Lita Ford (check out her story of touring with Poison and referring to the area of backstage girls as "the cattle pen" -- that's a visual!) as well as the ladies of Vixen.

Some of the stand-out stories for me:

* Quiet Riot: This book left me with mixed feelings on the whole QR history situation. On one hand, I get why they might still be a little salty over how they were treated by the industry... but a few of these guys came off REAL salty still... I mean, it's not like they were denied success. Later in the book, it's said that QR was the first metal band to go #1 (with "Bang Your Head"), knocking Michael Jackson's Thriller and The Police's Synchronicity out of their spots *Note: The band said they celebrated with lots of champagne and cocaine...and then completely forgot they were supposed to open for Black Sabbath hours later. QR also held title of biggest rock debut album ever (Metal Health) until GNR came into popularity. And then there's this whole rivalry with Van Halen? Well, it read to me like a rivalry, but the interview with Michael Anthony claims that there was no rivalry that he knew of... still, QR guys seem pretty sore that KISS chose VH to mentor rather than them...

* Van Halen: Speaking of Van Halen and KISS, I had a serious facepalm moment reading that Gene Simmons didn't like the name "Van Halen", instead wanted to change it to "Daddy Long Legs", complete with a logo of a spider in a top hat.... yeaaaa, props to the VH guys for pushing back on that one LOL That image might work for a swing revival band, but a metal band? (On the topic of band names, some of these stories regarding the evolution of the names gave me serious Parks and Rec Mouse Rat visuals).

* W.A.S.P. : Chris' Holmes' mom saying the band Warrior was "100x better" than his band... Don't know that I'd want a mom THAT real with me, but I loved the laugh from that story!

* Stryper: The backstory of Stryper (originally Roxx Regime) cracked me up, the competing metal bands of the time being confused by the shift to religion-based rock, like "They found religion? Since when? They've been partying with the rest of us!" And then the whole thing with them throwing full size bibles into crowds, surprised that people were getting pegged in the face -- OMG! Yeah, it's a mystery why most musicians go with t-shirts and guitar picks.... why did hardback books never catch on?? LOL 

* Winger: It was interesting reading that Kip Winger was always against naming the band after himself. They went with it after Alice Cooper made a comment about it being a great name, but to this day Kip Winger says he's still not fond of the namesake decision.

* Cinderella: The story of Fred Coury remembering touring with David Lee Roth, and how DLR urinated in Coury's road case, but Coury ends by saying, "He couldn't have been a nicer guy!"

* Ratt: The band having to get the tour bus fumigated because of a crabs infestation (of the STD variety) -- Blech! Oh, and that hilarious story of the album cover shoot involving Tawny Kitaen (RIP) and the "rented rats".

* Guns n' Roses: Ohh, the crazy train that is GNR. I loved learning about Slash and Axl pre-GNR fame, and how Slash sometimes couldn't make rehearsals because he couldn't get time off from his job at Tower Video (apparently both guys worked there for a time)... I just love the image of walking into a video place and seeing someone with Slash's classic look saying, "Hi! help you find something?" LOL But that's nothing compared to the story of Axl Rose reportedly chasing David Bowie down the street outside a club where Axl was having a sound check because David Bowie popped in to see this band GNR he had heard about and dared to strike up a conversation with Axl's-then girlfriend. Maybe no surprise after reading that, but there is an interesting part later in the book that discusses how label execs became SO frustrated with GNR's general lack of professionalism that Appetite for Destruction almost didn't happen. Can you imagine?! (Sadly, no such luck for Chinese Democracy.)

My attention waned some during the parts that got heavier into studio politics, and, if I'm being honest, I actually had to take a break now and then from reading these stories because as fun and wild as they are, part of me would just become exhausted from page after page of just, sheer immaturity mixed with my realization that several of these stories closed on the guys, now in their grandpa eras, STILL whining and moaning over some of this stuff from literal decades ago. But then of course I'd want more rock gossip, so I'd get back into it LOL 

Fun times, with probably plenty of stories you've never heard before, straight from the mouths of the people who were there. An easy recommend for fans of metal / hard rock. 

FTC Disclaimer: Macmillan Publishing kindly provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The opinions above are entirely my own.