Hammered: Heavy Tales from the Hard-Rock Highway – Kirk Blows (Plexus Publishing)
Written by Jamie Richards
Sunday, 15 July 2012 04:00
Books about heavy rock, or even music in general, can tend to be a bit hit and miss – one quick peruse of your local out of print book stockist will show you that – so it was with a great deal of trepidation that I approached this collection of ‘Heavy Tales from the Hard-Rock Highway’ brought to us by former Metal Hammer and Metal CD editor Kirk Blows.
I’ll be clear from the off, I read all the rock music press throughout the late eighties and early nineties, it was my time, I loved it and lived it, and by a country mile Kerrang led the pack; I bought Blows’ publication each month, but frankly I saw it as a poor man’s version. It came across as almost tabloid-esque compared to the creative, un-biased, in depth journalism and humour that I found within the mighty K; but maybe that was just me?
So, for me this book is an obvious comparison to Kerrang main man Mick Wall’s personal collection of interviews from those classic days, ‘Star Tripping’, that came out a few years ago; and by and large my original perspective is seen to be under-lined.
That’s not to say Blows doesn’t serve up the occasional nugget, his 1993 interview with Bruce Dickinson, late of Iron Maiden in those days, is a great read, as is his reprinting of a very telling phone call he shared with Pearl jam’s Eddie Vedder just before the band made their live debut in the UK. Also of note is the controversial interview with the recently passed Wurzel, then of Motorhead, and the face to face our man Blows endures with his boss Lemmy in the aftermath. Where it stutters in comparison to Mick’s book for me is where Wall served up an intense six page conversation with Axl Rose, conducted one to one in a hotel room at the height of the GN’R man’s fame, notoriety and paranoia – Blows gives us an article where Axl keeps him waiting and, wait for it, doesn’t show. Where Mick Wall gave us a personal tale of actually physically bumping into Led Zeppelin on their way to the stage at the legendary Live Aid Philadelphia concert, and a stark peak into life behind Berlin’s iron curtain during a fascinating interview with the still Fish fronted Marillion, Blows gives us bum flashing with Dumpy’s at the Reading festival, and getting pissed down the local boozer with Buster Bloodvessel of Bad Manners.
As with the aforementioned Dickinson story, the majority of tales are indeed quite interesting to look back on with the benefit of hindsight, although hardly revelatory for the most part. For instance, Ian Gillan wants to kill Richie Blackmore, Gene Simmons likes talking about having sex, Ozzy Osbourne hates Don Arden’s guts, the Black Crowes don’t get along that well, and Tyla likes a drink…..as do UFO, oh and also the Quireboys: really, you don’t say?
Rarely does the book stray from the path of decadence, with booze, drugs and sex seeming to underpin the whole thread, which may well be argued is the way it is in the rock world, but it seems a little tired on the whole, and the Wolfsbane story is probably one the guys would have been happy to never see in print again, such is the unpleasant nature of it. The Joe Walsh and Jim Steinman articles are pretty pointless and uninteresting – “really?” I hear you cry: they may even be seen as a little desperate, as is the Gypsy Queen story. Yes Gypsy Queen appear, alongside other seemingly trapped in time names like Screaming Jets, Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts and Gamma Ray. It’s fair to say Blows wasn’t flush with material then. It’s padded out with some personal tales of late night drinking and the occasional game of hide the sausage, which all comes across a little too laddish for me; it’s fair to say if offered the role of Blows in a movie even Robin Askwith would turn it down on grounds of amateurish distaste. At times it’s really only missing a ‘wahey’ or ‘nudge-nudge’ such is the basic level of primal instinct recollection.
Overall it’s a book you may want to pop under your coffee table to help you pass the occasional TV ad break, or probably even better, the downstairs bog.
To pick up a copy of ‘Hammered: Heavy Tales from the Hard-Rock Highway’ – CLICK HERE
