Mötley Crüe | The Dirt
- Confessions Of The World's
Most Notorious Rock Band
Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil
and Nikki Sixx with Neil Strauss
Harper Collins

It's the new rock'n'roll you know . . . books about rock'n'roll. Bizarre huh? The last Mötley Crüe album, good as it was, sold about four copies. The Dirt however, is whipping off the shelves of bookstores in its millions! The only explanation is that there's a nostalgia for nostalgia.
    The Dirt gives you an opportunity to relive the moment you gave up your Crüe virginity, in a way that cranking out Too Fast For Love just doesn't do anymore. Which just goes to show that while songs are fine and dandy for the two minutes you're paying attention, it's a story well told that lasts forever - which would be a great lesson for a band like Coldplay to learn. Good songs, but why the fuck do you have be so boring?! Yeah, yeah . . . I know it's only rock'n'roll . . .

Anyway, the bonus in all this nostalgia is that The Dirt is one of the great rock stories of our time. Well written every step of the way with contributions from all who should be contributing, The Dirt wins at every twist of the knife. Nikki Sixx lends himself more to its telling than the others, but it certainly brought to light a few things I never knew before. Mick Mars is not just weird, he's also sick - very sick. Tommy the L.O.V.E. Machine is just a little boy looking for true romance. Vince has had some hard times, but the worst of which was heartbreakingly not self inflicted. Then there's Nikki: As with all ringleaders, he's just a man looking for himself on the oddest of planets.
    John Corabi comes out smelling of roses - which is great because musically, the album that he fronted was the best album of their career, while Pammy looked the gift horse in the mouth once too often and gets a real rough time - and if this book is as soulful as I believe, she deserves everything The Dirt dishes out.

So why does The Dirt succeed where hundreds of others fail? Well, apart from being more addictive than the shit they shoved up their noses for ten years, there's nothing quite so enthralling as grown men being honest about life - and The Dirt dishes out honesty by the truckload.
    Will we see such a truthful tome from Gene Simmons? Good as the book will probably be, I doubt it, and the sales figures will reflect it too. The Dirt is successful, because like the Mick Foley autobiography; the time is right, the story is great and the story is always more important than personal pride.
    However, be warned: The Dirt is a one-sitting book. You know some of the story already - now read it all and weep. It's fantastic.

:: Sion Smith