Motley Crue - The Dirt

Sometimes you really never can go back….

When a friend told me he was just starting to read the Motley Crue biography The Dirt I was down right envious, because I knew that I would never be able to read it for the first time again.

There are better books about music but The Dirt is the best music book. It's a rock book that rocks and it's a monstrous read.

It's an accurate Motley Crue biography because it is utterly, utterly stupid. It's also really funny and like all the best books it provokes deep searching questions….Like "Why?" and "Is that really a good idea?"

A good music book makes you curious about the music and usually ends up in a shopping trip. Yet I've read it twice and still don't feel the urge to listen Motley Crue's music, but I do now know far too much about the dimmest band in rock.

There's plenty of gross-out shared hovel stories and uncontrollable rumpy pumpy.

In the Motley Crue world safe sex means meeting up in Tommy's van after a night of sneaky shagging and clubbing together to buy an egg burrito so that the band members could wipe their band members on the burrito meat in the belief that this would throw their girlfriends off the scent.

Over and over again the bands complete inability to stay …out of trouble, off smack, in the studio, off each others toes, in touch with some form of reality, on stage and stay in the same room as each others' horrible personalities makes it even more incredible that they achieved what they did.

Of course that's partly because we all like car crash bands and car crash celebrities.

Singer Vince O'Neil's car crash killed Razzle from Hanoi Rocks and although there's plenty of regret, Vince's most touching tribute to his friend is the loving description of what Razzle was wearing " High tops, leather pants and a frilly shirt – a twenty four seven rock 'n' roll god, he wouldn't ever be caught in the jeans and Hawaiian shirt that I was wearing."………..A real rock n roller.

The layout of the book is great, from its Jack Daniels cover, silent movie style chapter introductions and the way that each character tells the story from their own view….A Robert Altman version of a chronic metal band’s story.

Refreshingly (and by the end of the book they had had lots of refreshment) even though deep down they all know they blew it (lots of that too) all of the band would do exactly they same again…because they're too stupid not too.

Vince O'Neil had a swimming pool heated to a bankrupting 90 degrees all year round. Ahem...it was also "Pussy Shaped"

The later chapters highlights include Mick Mars's (probably not his real name….that would be Methuselah) Aliens theory.

Tommy Lee's prison poetry, written to woo Pamela Anderson back, is staggering

I remember we used to meet

By a swing seat over the piano

And you chirped each pretty word

With the air of a bird

For real life poetry though it's hard to beat the conversation between Honey (possibly her real name) and Tommy.

"Guess what? She asked

"What?"

"I found a minister, I bought some rings, I got everything set"

"For what?"

"I wanna get married"

"To me? But you just sold our pictures to a porn mag and didn't even tell me"

"It was going to be a birthday present for you. And I needed the rings for our wedding. So I couldn't tell you"

Since the book came out the Motley Crue story has got even stranger with Red Hot and Crue, a greatest hits tour from a band that still can't stand each other, a hip replacement for Mick Mars and a reality TV show based on Vince Neil having cosmetic surgery.

There are some constants though. Tommy Lee still has MAYHEM" tattooed on his stomach and I've got "Lets all tidy up" biroed on mine.