The Big Book of Hair Metal

Big Book of Hair Metal: The Illustrated Oral History of Heavy Metal's Debauched Decade
by Martin Popoff, 23 out of 221 pages

I was still pretty high from reading Mad World when I selected this, so I was excited for another oral history related to a musical genre. Unfortunately, this book did not hold my interest even remotely as well. This book was set up starting with the decade of the 60s with some outline of the influence of hair metal (both hair metal and new wave took inspiration from black blues musicians in the 60s), continuing with the decade of the 70s (both also took inspiration from British glam) and then of course detailing each year of the 80s, where hair metal reached its heyday (also new wave's heyday). The way this book was organized was not that great, as it had lots of timelines with uninteresting details, album cover pictures scattered throughout, and it was very text heavy. None of these details are really that terrible, but I realized as I was reading this that I was never really a big hair metal fan. I could remember some of the big radio singles, but it was never really a genre that appealed to me. I do like seeing photos of anorexic dudes with huge hair and lots of makeup, similar to many of the new wave artists I adored. The hair metal guys did have a distinct feature, in that they wore lots of skin tight leather and many sported very high heeled platform boots. So, I did flip through the whole book so I could at least see all the photos. But even those weren't really that great.
If you were a true hair metal fan, this book might appeal to you a little more than it did me. If nothing else, it's good for a giggle.