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Rating: I had just finished wrestling with a tangled book that had left me with a considerable number of question marks in my head. I needed something more escapist, and I found it.
"Her name was Bullwinkle. We nicknamed her that because she had a face like a moose. But even though she could have had any of the girls on Sunset Strip, Tommy didn't want to let her go. He kept telling us he loved her and wanted to marry her, just because when they had sex, she would spray all over the room."
The beginning looks promising, I tell myself, as I bite into the 2012 Italian version of "The Dirt". I've never been a great fan of autobiographies of famous Hard Rock/Metal bands. The ones I have read are boring and almost all the same: decadent background, desire to emerge, sudden and unexpected success, crisis, and breakup of the lineup. Sometimes a hyper-commercial lucrative resurrection with an autobiography that some fool like me might even buy. The end.
Although I'm a child of the '80s, I've never really liked Mötley Crüe, not even during my teenage years: "Too Fast for Love" and "Shout at the Devil" have been the paradise for the dust mites in my house for years. When I was in high school, I preferred, to stay on similar genres, bands that I later abandoned as I grew up like Pretty Maids, Tesla, Ratt, W.A.S.P., Quiet Riot, Scorpions, Kiss, Hanoi Rocks. Well, let's leave Hanoi Rocks out of this setting.
The most positive thing about the book is that it talks relatively little about music, also because, to be completely honest, there's not much to say on that front. Nikki Sixx, to showcase his talent, places a photo of his elementary school report card, highlighting the excellent grade he received in music. And then I say, we're good. I flip through the pages, and between the lines, I seem to perceive that not even he, the crazy Tommy Lee, the sick and sad Mick Mars, and the blond Vince Neil ever understood the reason for the worldwide success that overwhelmed them in the early '80s. However, I don't believe they ever asked themselves many questions on the subject: or maybe they just had sex, drank, and snorted on it for many years with great commitment.
They had the luck, the audacity, the arrogance, and the desire to emerge from the filthy degrading undergrowth they came from, exploiting with perfect timing a moment of transition in hard rock/hair metal/glam rock music. Call it what you will. After Kiss, who were in crisis in the early '80s, a new band needed launching. Before the explosion of Guns 'n Roses and Metallica, and the grunge wave that swept them away, the newborn MTV, after its quietly passed debut, focused on the most "plastic," incorrect band capable of embodying the worst stereotypes of the new decade. The truth is, if they had come five years later, I wouldn't be writing these lines.
Perhaps 400 pages are too many, but it's fun to follow the sci-fi-ish excesses of these four madmen. I want to hope that reality approaches a tenth of what's written in an extremely direct way, without mincing words. Our friends didn't miss out on anything: prison, rivers of alcohol and drugs, women like popcorn at the movies, fights with other bands from the period, purest animalistic decadence, involuntary manslaughter, and then the inevitable legal hassles. The autobiography follows an alternating path with the same event seen and experienced from the perspective of the band members, the producers, and the poor staff members condemned to try to control an impossible band during world tours. From the middle onwards, the book loses its bite; the band ages and gets embroiled in all those normal problems they never thought they'd have to face: divorces, family quarrels, issues with labels and MTV, disagreements among the band members themselves who can't stand each other anymore and stay in contact as little as possible. They can't accept the slow decline they're condemned to, and from immortal beings, they progressively transform into poorly grown adults full of problems and frustration at witnessing their decline in popularity. Only Tommy, with his innumerable performances with Pamela & Co., tries to keep the pace up.
Nonetheless, despite all the detractors, these four all-plastic delinquents, with hideous clothes and hairspray, enjoyed an intense period of fame that led them to play before vast audiences. And if reading about their filthy "exploits" makes you feel a bit envious, well, I believe it's a normal and understandable feeling because achieving such success (90 million records, I believe I've read) with so little talent is akin to winning the lottery. Then again, looking at the figures, it's what almost everyone aspires to. The fact that they completely lost control is also understandable considering where their story started.
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