Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal [Paperback]

DAVID Konow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 2002

“Bang your head! Metal Health’ll drive you mad!”
— Quiet Riot

Like an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music on steroids, Bang Your Head is an epic history of every band and every performer that has proudly worn the Heavy Metal badge. Whether headbanging is your guilty pleasure or you firmly believe that this much-maligned genre has never received the respect it deserves, Bang Your Head is a must-read that pays homage to a music that’s impossible to ignore, especially when being blasted through a sixteen-inch woofer.

Charting the genesis of early metal with bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden; the rise of metal to the top of the Billboard charts and heavy MTV rotation featuring the likes of Def Leppard and Metallica; hitting its critical peak with bands like Guns N’ Roses; disgrace during the “hair metal” ’80s; and a demise fueled by the explosion of the Seattle grunge scene and the “alternative” revolution, Bang Your Head is as funny as it is informative and proves once and for all that there is more to metal than sin, sex, and spandex.

To write this exhaustive history, David Konow spent three years interviewing the bands, wives, girlfriends, ex-wives, groupies, managers, record company execs, and anyone who was or is a part of the metal scene, including many of the band guys often better known for their escapades and bad behavior than for their musicianship. Nothing is left unsaid in this jaw-dropping, funny, and entertaining chronicle of power ballads, outrageous outfits, big hair, bigger egos, and testosterone-drenched debauchery.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a book that never quite gets rolling, Konow, a writer for Guitar World, sets out to give a timeline of heavy metal while answering "three key questions: what went right, what went wrong, and what the hell happened?" He begins in Birmingham, England, which he argues is the birthplace of heavy metal, with its most popular statesman today, Ozzy Osbourne. As a revolt against the hippie movement and in part to save himself from a life of crime, Osbourne formed Black Sabbath. At the same time, Led Zeppelin formed from the "ashes of the Yardbirds," and after finally gathering enough members (Keith Moon of the Who turned them down, quipping that they'd sink "like a lead zeppelin," which is how Jimmy Page decided on the name), held a jam session. Konow continues in a chronological fashion, briefly sketching band bios, triumphs and downfalls. Without exploiting each band's debauchery or disintegration, Konow covers such other metal acts such as Alice Cooper, Kiss, Van Halen, M"tley Cre, Dokken, Def Leppard, Metallica, Bon Jovi, Guns 'n' Roses and many others. The portraits of Alice Cooper and Axl Rose are the most engaging parts of the book. However, the chapters read more like magazine articles than a coherent book. Hardcore metal fans will likely find the book a bit soft and too pop, and they're unlikely to learn any new stories. In the final pages, Konow attempts an analysis of the fall of heavy metal, but by that point, so many bands have risen and fallen that his curt summation is hardly satisfying. This is an inspired personal effort that won't chart.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This book tells the story of heavy-metal music from its beginning in the late '60s through its precipitous decline in the early '90s. Black Sabbath, the first featured band, got its start in 1969 when its members were just out of high school, a scenario that repeats itself with many of the other groups. With Ozzy Osbourne arguably more popular than ever before, thanks to his family's MTV reality show, teens will enjoy reading how he got into music to escape jail or factory work. Most of the stories follow the same pattern-band struggles; band hits it big; band's success is derailed by money, drugs, and personality conflicts. Some of the groups, like Poison, Ratt, and W.A.S.P, will probably seem laughable to today's teens, while Metallica and the members of Motley Crue are still in the limelight. The author has a chatty, anecdotal style and spares no expense as he shares tales of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Often, those who abused drugs died prematurely, cautionary tales that won't go unnoticed. Several pages of notes show that Konow had firsthand access to many of the musicians. Black-and-white photographs, mainly by the prolific Neil Zlozower, open each chapter. There is no discography. This book will be popular with those who enjoy the heavy-metal genre, as well as with those who want to see how to succeed (or not) in the music business.
Jamie Watson, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (November 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609807323
• ISBN-13: 978-0609807323
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #716,968 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The History of (Hollywood) Heavy Metal, August 11, 2003

By 

oldtaku (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal (Paperback)

I read this back to back with _Sound of the Beast_ by Ian Christie and was pleased to find that they (mostly) cover different material. The first thing you'll notice is that except for obligatory coverage of Black Sabbath, Zepplin, AC/DC, Kiss and Metallica, this book focuses mostly on the LA metal scene, AKA the MTV Bands. This may leave you wondering, "Where the heck is the Black Metal?" even though Konow does cover Venom somewhat, as the progenitor of this style. Europe is pretty much ignored, and it'll probably feel like your favorite band got short shrift. Furthermore, the writing isn't very smooth - the book is mostly a collection of anecdotes and factoids. X did this, Y said that, Z was released and did well but not well enough...

With all that said, though, I enjoyed the book quite a bit. The fact density means that you're learning new things every page, at least if, like me, you weren't really into the scene itself, just the music. And if the book had been as wordy as _Sound of the Beast_, it would have been twice as large without giving you much more information. I had no idea Gene Simmons was born Chaim Witz in Israel. Funny bits like Henry Rollins's description of how bad Venom was on tour ('I expected them to break into Sex Farm Woman at any moment') amused me quite a lot.

Furthermore, Konow's concentration on a smaller population of LA Bands gives this book more depth than Chistie's in several areas. _Sound of the Beast_ just mentions that Quiet Riot's first cd sold 4 million, their second 1 million. Finis. _Bang Your Head_ goes into all the scheming and politics behind this, why their second record doing 'only' 1 million was a disaster, and how Quiet Riot leader DuBrow shot himself in the foot repeatedly.

Even though I never particularly cared for the hair bands (which is what most of the LA Bands were, especially in the tarnished Golden Age of MTV Metal), you certainly couldn't escape them, and it's quite fascinating to find just /how/ self-centered and talentless a lot of them were. Find out just /how/ bad a bass player Nikki Sixx was. Learn why Guns 'n' Roses hasn't released _Chinese Democracy_ yet after almost a decade, though Axl's put $8 million into it. Konow also touches on bands that never quite broke through, like Dokken and Armored Saint, and the whys and the wherefores.

So read _Sound of the Beast_ for a global but shallow view of metal, and then _Bang Your Head_ for a more in-depth focus of a few of the bands and more of the Why instead of the What. I had a hard time setting either down.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent but not great., February 4, 2005

By 

JW "Motorbath" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal (Paperback)

The best parts in this book are the stories and anecdotes about the bands or the individuals in the bands. Vince Neil is protrayed as the butt of a joke and David Lee Roth is portrayed as a spoiled rich kid turned professional jerk. The stories of the bands are entertaining, because it allows the reader to see just how ridiculous some people can be. However, the book falls short on many levels. Some of the most talented bands of Metal only receive very small sections of the book. I believe that Iron Maiden has a page. Judas Priest has a paragraph. Motorhead, while very influential is only mentioned in sections. The core of the book is made of the L.A. scene, focusing on bands such as Ratt, Motley Crue and Guns and Roses. While these bands were good, they were not the only Metal around in the 80's.
Another disturbing aspect of the book is that Konow claims that Metal was wiped out by the Seattle scene. This is untrue. Konow ignores that Pantera's album, "Far Beyond Driven" debuted at number one the week it was released. Konow also fails to acknowledge that Slayer released some of their most ferocious work in the 90's. I will say that Metal was not as mainstream in the 90's, however to say that it was dead is preposterous. David Konow has written for Guitar World magazine, which I used to read. The late Dimebag Darrel once wrote columns for the magazine well in to the 90's. Dime once said something along the lines of, "Some people think that Metal is Dead, but Metal ain't all assed up yet." I would say to potential readers, that this book is fair. If you want a better read then first check out, "Sound of the Beast" first. That book covers all genre's of metal fairly well and you get more of a history as opposed to the tabloid feaud-like rivalry that "Bang Your Head" offers.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and Provocative, December 1, 2002

By 

Rodger Jacobs (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal (Paperback)

Konow's exploration of the rise and fall of the heavy metal scene is a rich social and cultural exploration that reads like an oral history, which, in many respects, is exactly what the book is, given the voluminous musicians and social observers that Konow had access to in preparing his opus. It's fascinating to see how metal became, in the 80s, a parody of itself with the emergence of the "hair bands". And, as if that wasn't enough to ensure the demise of the metal sound,the Seattle grunge musicians were lurking in the background, about to unleash their own musical revolution with a little help from MTV. A swift read that should appeal to any reader with an interest in the pop culture of the 1980s.