A comprehensive look at all of the starts, lineup changes, contracts, debauchery, hits, fights, & deaths of the hair metal 80's bands. Interesting information on the bands coming together & memories of touring & trying to get record deals. From the start of Poison, Motley Crue, Winger, Cinderella, Skid row, Guns N Roses, etc. Chock full of information but then was repetitive on the debauchery and some of these guys have never grown up. Also touched on when grunge started and how a lot of the bands have had a resurgence in sell out tours & casino performances ( )

I just finished reading “Nöthing’ But a Good Time” by Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock, and it was amusing.

It’s a bunch of snippets of interviews with various rock stars, producers, photographers and other people associated with the hard rock or “hair metal” scene in the 80’s to early 90’s. The cover promises “a backstage pass to the wildest and loudest party in rock history” in a quote from Bret Michaels of Poison.

I wasn’t a fan of most of these bands back in the 80’s and early 90’s when it was on MTV, I was more into much harder edged heavy metal than any of them, and I particularly loathed the power ballads that most of these bands sprang to popularity with. However, in the intervening decades I’ve listened to more and more of them and enjoyed many of the songs, though I still can’t get into the vast majority of those power ballads…

The book itself is just so-so…. The format, with small snippets from the authors’ interviews with the musicians and other people make it hard to follow along. The vast majority of snippets are just a couple of sentences long, so there’s not much at any time to follow all of what someone is telling us. This works in a few places where a musician says something about another, then there’s a snippet from that other one in response, but for most of the book, it just makes it hard to follow a theme.

Then if you’re more accustomed to reading novels then sometimes when the next paragraph starts with who that speaker is it’s easy to feel more like it’s the previous speaker addresses the new one, which isn’t the case.

The first time a speaker is introduced it mentions what band, record label or job they have, which is good. But there’s so many people that it’s hard to keep track of most of them, especially as I was never obsessed with these bands to know all their members names by heart. Fortunately there’s a “cast of characters” at the beginning with all that for reference. But still, maybe if they’d repeated it each time a person appears in a chapter it would be less flipping around.

The various people have some interesting things to say about what they remember from that time, how they worked hard to get successful, how they failed, how others interfered. Some make a little mention of the sex and drugs, but it’s nowhere near what the cover promises will be in the book.

Overall, it was fun to hear the stories the people told and see what I can remember from a scene that didn’t interest me at the time. Some of it certainly brought back the feeling of being a teenager again, since I was exposed to the videos, the songs, band t-shirts and things in school. ( )

This is a fun trip back to a time when rock and roll were big, loud, and fun. The story is told as an oral history, and it's a pleasure to read descriptions of the times in the voices of those who created the genre that came to be known as "hair metal".

While the book is arguably short on depth, it certainly makes it up for it with breadth. Bands like Dangerous Toys, Junkyard, and Tuff share the stage with the usual suspects, Motley Crue, Poison, and Guns and Roses. All strung together to tell a tale of big hair, bigger guitars, and lots of debaucheries.

A great read for anybody looking to remember a time when we took ourselves a little less serious. ( )

I read this book as an electronic advance reading copy provided by Edelweiss, and I have submitted my comments to the publisher via that web site.

There are some funny, real life Spinal Tap moments in this book (for example, a member of Stryper patiently explaining that they did not paint their limo with black and yellow stripes; it was actually a black limo to which they added yellow stripes) plus plenty of variations of "What's wrong with being sexy?" sexism. This book is a primary source (an oral history) with minimal critique or analysis by third parties, but it would have been interesting to read more about how gender and sexuality played a part in this musical genre. The "cast of characters" section is invaluable for keeping track of the numerous individuals interviewed here; it would also have been useful for every chapter to note which years it covered, in order to reconstruct a timeline for the story. Recommended for all libraries. ( )