Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Kurt Cobain and his band Nirvana are simply the hottest phenomenon to spring forth in the early '90s and are setting the tone for what's sure to be a raucous and riveting end to the century. Here a personal friend of the band looks at the rise of Nirvana and their effect on American youth culture.

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (June 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312093764
• ISBN-13: 978-0312093761
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,637,807 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good for the pictures, July 11, 1999

By A Customer

What could have been a great book is instead a muddled mess. Gina is happy to name drop and gush on her experiences to the point that it makes you sick. There are many mistakes in this book including lyric quotes from bands. Gina seems to put too much importance on Nirvana and "Smells Like Teen Spirit". The way she carrys on makes it seem that she just got involved when "Nevermind" came out, though she makes it CLEAR that she was in it from the "begining". This is a nice journey through the majority of "Safe" alternative bands that pretty much everyone knows or should know. However the pictures on the side lines are nice, including old concert fliers. It was a nice read, but not essential.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A muddled, overheated mess, August 25, 1999

By A Customer

Supposedly a story of how punk infiltrated the mainstream in the form of Nirvana, this is really the inconsequential ramblings of an undistinguished music fan who was inexplicably given access to a typewriter. Amidst the overheated prose (hell, outright bootlicking) about R.E.M., Nirvana and Fugazi are some "revelations" that wouldn't surprise a Franciscan Monk. (the music industry is only interested in quick profits over art? The hell you say!) All the soggy writing also can't hide Arnold's conflict: if she has a thesis, she kept it to herself. For all her self-righteous carping about indie-rock's elitism, she has no qualms in taking cheap shots at metal fans and artists. If she feels conflicted over indie-rock's mainstream success, she has no qualms about taking the money and running by writing a book "about" Nirvana (who only appear in a handful of sections) and prominently pasting their picture on the cover. Give your average fan at a Paul Westerberg show $100, and you'll get a book like this (or probably better).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Could have been better but not bad., January 31, 1999

By A Customer

I guess what troubled me most about _Route 666_ was the fact that each of the bands who Ms. Arnold spent an enormous amount of ink, were actually all crossover (mainstream) bands, except, perhaps, Fugazi and the Buthole Surfers (but even they had a fairly big hit with "Pepper"). There is no question that Nirvana, the Replacements, and Husker Du all started out as Punks. However, to make a blanket statement that these bands lived and died as punks is a gross misunderstanding. This is the story of music which may be considered a trifle left of center. This is not the story of truly punk bands like Flipper, Fear, Black Flag, the Minutemen and Minor Threat although I'm pretty sure she mentions them all. Punk rock is and always was underground. That being said, I think Ms. Arnold does a pretty good job of telling the story as she saw it unfold.