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A review by lpm100
Motley Crue: The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx
dark
sad
fast-paced
3.0
Book Review
"Motley Crue: The Dirt"
3/5 stars
Read one rockstar biography, and you've read them all.
*******
Of the book:
428 pages in 11 parts.
In tiny print, it does mention that Neil Strauss is the one who wrote the book. (This is the author of the bestselling "The Game.")
The chapters were very small and bite-sized and they were written from the perspective of different people around the same events, so that we could see the same thing from different perspectives. (Nikki. Mick. Tommy. Vince. But also the minor characters such as managers. 1 chapter from a womn's perspective: Sylvia Rhone.)
Even if I allow for whatever literary license that Strauss may have taken, the conclusion is that:
This book is disgusting.
1. The people are disgusting. ("The place was crawling with vermin. If we ever wanted to use the oven, we had to leave it on high for a good 10 minutes to kill the regiments of roaches crawling around inside."/"we couldn't afford --or were too lazy to afford-- toilet paper, so there would be shit stained socks, band flyers, and pages from magazines scattered across the floor.")
2. The overall energy is disgusting:
This is a story that I've seen I don't know how many times: you have some nice looking/obnoxious young white boy (Nikki Sixx/Vince Neil/ Tommy Lee were all quite nice looking before the tattoos and alcohol and drugs ruined them) that's a fuckup and is so bent on self-destruction that he could drown in a spoonful of water.
Yet, somehow he manages to avoid the penitentiary and ends up wasting a fortune of several tens of millions of dollars.
One of these idiots actually killed somebody and severely maimed two other people in a drunk driving accident and only did 30 days in jail. (He had to pay $2.6 million.)
Another of the idiots raped a girl in a closet, and actually put it in print in this book. And he didn't do a single day in jail.
And then the way that they abused/disrespected their fans and foreign countries such as Japan: they should have been imprisoned and executed.
Foolish Tommy Lee ended up in jail only on the second physical confrontation with his second wife.
*******
Second order thoughts:
1. Balance is a good thing in life. (p.134) "What do you do after the orgy?"
I think I've read 5 other of these celebrity bios, and it's the same thing over and over again.
They are constantly looking for some way to top the latest thrill, and it invariably leads to drugs.
If everyday is a sunny day, then what is a sunny day? If you could have sex with any person that you want to, what does a sexual encounter become? If you have unlimited access to a given hard drug, what does the hard drug mean?
2a. I know that the purpose of setting up a band is to meet women, but a lot of celebrities end up making more efficient use of the end goal. (How to say?)
These four guys that are the subject of this book fathered a total of 12 children in between all of them.
That is 3 per man.
(Meanwhile: Eddie Murphy, 10. Debarge, 11. Ray Charles, 12. BB King, 15. Isaac Hayes, 12. DMX, 15. Stevie Wonder, 10. Nick Cannon, 12)
The author of this book claimed that some of them would have sex with 5 women at a time before the show, and then 5 more after the show.
2b. These men also couldn't seem to make a relationship / marriage last longer than a week, in spite of having so much to choose from.
(Meanwhile: Ozzy Osbourne, 52 years. Dolly Parton, 56 years. Bono, 41 years. Keith Richards, 40 years. Elton Johna, 30 years.)
3. I don't understand why people knock themselves out to prove that they are celebrities, and then whine about it when they get there (p.239).
4. Bewildered Musician Redux: seems like only 1% of musicians realize that the music industry is a BUSINESS. All of these advances have to get paid back SOMEHOW. All of this investment and risk has to be compensated for SOMEHOW. So, they're going to have to sing the same songs night after night and some beancounter somewhere is going to have to make it work.
5. These guys sold a lot of albums, but they certainly are no Mariah Carey or Beatles. Not even close. With respect to other metal bands, I find the source that says that they are number 14 out of 20.
6. If you ever see a woman getting smacked around by a guy, don't get involved. She likes it, and she is getting what she deserves.
These filthy, unshowered men in this book (p.344: "I put on my dirtiest fucking leather pants, slipped into an old t-shirt the stank of bo, and didn't bother to shave or shower. I did, however, brush my teeth") had track marks all over their bodies, but there were women sending them anonymous ladybits in the mail.
And you had all of these women pass over perfectly normal/tame guys to find people with drug problems or outside children.
7. I guess musical intelligence and practical intelligence operate on two separate tracks.
Dumbass Tommy Lee ended up in jail, and it seems like that is the first time that he ever thought to sit down and invest some time in reading a book.
This is the 5th of these books that I have read, and they are listed in descending order of quality.
1. Gretchen Wilson, Redneck Woman
2. Joe Jackson, A Cure for Gravity
3. Elton John, Me
4. David Bowie, Living on the Brink (George Tremlett)
5. Motley Crue, The Dirt (w/Neil Strauss)
6. Dave Grohl, The Storyteller
Verdict: Weak recommendation. There is a minimal amount of introspection in this book, but the characters are so dislikable that it is easy to miss the message for despising the character.
Quotes:
We wanted to blow up the scene, rule the strip, and fight or fuck anything that moved.
We scrounge up enough money to buy an egg burrito from Noggles. Then we'd bite off the end and stick our dicks into the warm meat to cover up the smell of pussy so that our girlfriends didn't know we were fucking anything stupid or drunk enough to get into Tommy's van.
But then she realized that she was one of the five girls that he did in those 15 minutes.
Vince would do 10 girls before the set and 10 after.
Perhaps that's why celebrity relationships are so difficult: everybody puts you both on such a high pedestal that it almost seems like a disappointment when, at the end of the day, you discover that you're just two human beings with the same emotional defects and mother father issues as everybody else.
"Motley Crue: The Dirt"
3/5 stars
Read one rockstar biography, and you've read them all.
*******
Of the book:
428 pages in 11 parts.
In tiny print, it does mention that Neil Strauss is the one who wrote the book. (This is the author of the bestselling "The Game.")
The chapters were very small and bite-sized and they were written from the perspective of different people around the same events, so that we could see the same thing from different perspectives. (Nikki. Mick. Tommy. Vince. But also the minor characters such as managers. 1 chapter from a womn's perspective: Sylvia Rhone.)
Even if I allow for whatever literary license that Strauss may have taken, the conclusion is that:
This book is disgusting.
1. The people are disgusting. ("The place was crawling with vermin. If we ever wanted to use the oven, we had to leave it on high for a good 10 minutes to kill the regiments of roaches crawling around inside."/"we couldn't afford --or were too lazy to afford-- toilet paper, so there would be shit stained socks, band flyers, and pages from magazines scattered across the floor.")
2. The overall energy is disgusting:
This is a story that I've seen I don't know how many times: you have some nice looking/obnoxious young white boy (Nikki Sixx/Vince Neil/ Tommy Lee were all quite nice looking before the tattoos and alcohol and drugs ruined them) that's a fuckup and is so bent on self-destruction that he could drown in a spoonful of water.
Yet, somehow he manages to avoid the penitentiary and ends up wasting a fortune of several tens of millions of dollars.
One of these idiots actually killed somebody and severely maimed two other people in a drunk driving accident and only did 30 days in jail. (He had to pay $2.6 million.)
Another of the idiots raped a girl in a closet, and actually put it in print in this book. And he didn't do a single day in jail.
And then the way that they abused/disrespected their fans and foreign countries such as Japan: they should have been imprisoned and executed.
Foolish Tommy Lee ended up in jail only on the second physical confrontation with his second wife.
*******
Second order thoughts:
1. Balance is a good thing in life. (p.134) "What do you do after the orgy?"
I think I've read 5 other of these celebrity bios, and it's the same thing over and over again.
They are constantly looking for some way to top the latest thrill, and it invariably leads to drugs.
If everyday is a sunny day, then what is a sunny day? If you could have sex with any person that you want to, what does a sexual encounter become? If you have unlimited access to a given hard drug, what does the hard drug mean?
2a. I know that the purpose of setting up a band is to meet women, but a lot of celebrities end up making more efficient use of the end goal. (How to say?)
These four guys that are the subject of this book fathered a total of 12 children in between all of them.
That is 3 per man.
(Meanwhile: Eddie Murphy, 10. Debarge, 11. Ray Charles, 12. BB King, 15. Isaac Hayes, 12. DMX, 15. Stevie Wonder, 10. Nick Cannon, 12)
The author of this book claimed that some of them would have sex with 5 women at a time before the show, and then 5 more after the show.
2b. These men also couldn't seem to make a relationship / marriage last longer than a week, in spite of having so much to choose from.
(Meanwhile: Ozzy Osbourne, 52 years. Dolly Parton, 56 years. Bono, 41 years. Keith Richards, 40 years. Elton Johna, 30 years.)
3. I don't understand why people knock themselves out to prove that they are celebrities, and then whine about it when they get there (p.239).
4. Bewildered Musician Redux: seems like only 1% of musicians realize that the music industry is a BUSINESS. All of these advances have to get paid back SOMEHOW. All of this investment and risk has to be compensated for SOMEHOW. So, they're going to have to sing the same songs night after night and some beancounter somewhere is going to have to make it work.
5. These guys sold a lot of albums, but they certainly are no Mariah Carey or Beatles. Not even close. With respect to other metal bands, I find the source that says that they are number 14 out of 20.
6. If you ever see a woman getting smacked around by a guy, don't get involved. She likes it, and she is getting what she deserves.
These filthy, unshowered men in this book (p.344: "I put on my dirtiest fucking leather pants, slipped into an old t-shirt the stank of bo, and didn't bother to shave or shower. I did, however, brush my teeth") had track marks all over their bodies, but there were women sending them anonymous ladybits in the mail.
And you had all of these women pass over perfectly normal/tame guys to find people with drug problems or outside children.
7. I guess musical intelligence and practical intelligence operate on two separate tracks.
Dumbass Tommy Lee ended up in jail, and it seems like that is the first time that he ever thought to sit down and invest some time in reading a book.
This is the 5th of these books that I have read, and they are listed in descending order of quality.
1. Gretchen Wilson, Redneck Woman
2. Joe Jackson, A Cure for Gravity
3. Elton John, Me
4. David Bowie, Living on the Brink (George Tremlett)
5. Motley Crue, The Dirt (w/Neil Strauss)
6. Dave Grohl, The Storyteller
Verdict: Weak recommendation. There is a minimal amount of introspection in this book, but the characters are so dislikable that it is easy to miss the message for despising the character.
Quotes:
We wanted to blow up the scene, rule the strip, and fight or fuck anything that moved.
We scrounge up enough money to buy an egg burrito from Noggles. Then we'd bite off the end and stick our dicks into the warm meat to cover up the smell of pussy so that our girlfriends didn't know we were fucking anything stupid or drunk enough to get into Tommy's van.
But then she realized that she was one of the five girls that he did in those 15 minutes.
Vince would do 10 girls before the set and 10 after.
Perhaps that's why celebrity relationships are so difficult: everybody puts you both on such a high pedestal that it almost seems like a disappointment when, at the end of the day, you discover that you're just two human beings with the same emotional defects and mother father issues as everybody else.