What else? Heavy metal at summer’s end!
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The Book: ‘Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga’ by Ian Christe (Wiley: 320 pp., $25.95)
Overview: If David Lee Roth’s 1997 memoir, ‘Crazy From the Heat,’ just wasn’t enough for you, Christe supplies the story of how an obscure band from Pasadena became a mega-act suffering from mega-dysfunction.
Overwritten?: ‘Like the stories of other great Americans from Henry Ford to Walt Disney to Fievel the Mouse, the saga of Van Halen began in an ancient land, far from the United States and its constant supply of hot water and electricity. As a narrator would say in the old movies: Among the windmills, tulips, and wooden shoes of lovely Amsterdam, Holland, there once lived a kindly musician named Jan van Halen.’ (By the way, Henry Ford and Walt Disney were born in the U.S.)
Most irritating: The chapter titles. Why do we need headings referencing Pink, R.E.M., the Beastie Boys and others? Then again, the timeline divisions--Rothozoic, Hagarlithic--are funny, but, hey, is Christe suggesting that the boys are musical dinosaurs?
Shocking revelation: Michael Anthony’s real name is Michael Sobolewski (Anthony is his middle name). Or maybe you already knew that.
Bottom line: Christe has sat through countless YouTube viewings of guitarists playing ‘Eruption’ to learn how to play Eddie’s show-stopping, finger-hammering epic. He’s not fooling around. And his prose is always playful.
****
The Book: ‘Rat Salad: Black Sabbath: The Classic Years, 1969-1975’ by Paul Wilkinson (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s: 240 pp., $24.95)
Overview: A biography-discography that looks at the band’s rise (first as Polka Tulk, then Earth and finally Black Sabbath), interactions and problems (one word: Ozzy) and includes Wilkinson’s analysis of their first six albums.
Overwritten?: Discussing the cover of the 1975 release ‘Sabotage,’ Wilkinson writes that bassist Geezer Butler is ‘kitted out in some prescient incarnation of Sonny Crockett from the eighties’ TV series ‘Miami Vice.’ His lapis lazuli jacket, boasting slightly padded shoulders, foreshortened sleeves and a tailored waist, sits over a skin-tight camisole-type top, horizontally striped, with a plunging ‘V’ motif drawing the eye to what, under normal circumstances, would be the cleavage.’
Most irritating: Sometimes the author tries too hard to push Sabbath into the realms of high art. Is the song ‘Children of the Grave’ really the metal equivalent of World War I poet Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’? Oh, c’mon!
Shocking revelation: Ozzy sat through the movie ‘The Exorcist’ six times (well, maybe that’s not so shocking).
Bottom line: Wilkinson’s a fan beaming with pride; some of the book’s best parts are about being young and rebellious in 1970s England and hunting in record shops for music that inspired him. Worth the price.
Nick Owchar