Maximum Rock And Roll - The Story of ACDC
October 26th 2006 11:23
I think it's fair to say that the Motley Crue autobiography, 'The Dirt', opened a lot of doors for band-based biographies. Previously, music biographies were things reserved for long-dead bands and highly revered singer-songwriters. Walk into the music section of your local bookstore and you'd find about a dozen Beatles books, five or so Elvis books,a book or two on Bob Dylan, maybe a book on Johnny Cash, and about ten large format picture books about the Rolling Stones. And that was it.
Motley Crue's 'The Dirt' was a sensational tale of sin, debauchery and rock 'n' roll flavoured adventure and it was a smash hit. People who didn't normally read were interested in it, just to read about the infamous hi-jinks that the Crue got up to in their glory days. People who didn't even like the band's music were reading it for the same reason. All of a sudden the publishers realised they had a bigger market for this stuff than they had previously thought, and all manner of pending submitted biographies were given the greenlight, and previously out-of-print books were given a second life as well.
And so, finally, thanks to books like 'The Dirt', we have a proper biography of AC/DC - the worldwide kings of hard rock. The life of the band AC/DC could probably fill several books, and it's amazing that a proper biography about them has never been written before. I'm very happy and was very excited when this book turned up in bookstores this week... I had no idea it was even coming!
I'm also excited because Murray Engleheart (along with some chap named Arnaud Duriex) has written it. Engleheart is probably Sydney's foremost writer and journalist when it comes to home-grown hard rock... he lives and breathes it and can often be found behind the hard rock column in the Drum Media (Sydney's music street-press), amongst other things. I read the introduction of this book today and I'm feeling very enthusiastic about it... there's nothing better than reading an in-depth biography written by someone who is passionate about their subject. Good shit.
I'm hoping this biography helps keep the doors open for future biographical accounts of other big rock bands too. Recently we got a Midnight Oil biography with 'Beds Are Burning'... but I'd love to see a proper 'Guns n Roses' biography, that would be really ace, and I'm sure an in-depth account of Metallica's glory days would be a good story too.
Expect to see a review of 'Maximum Rock and Roll' sometime in the nearish future.
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