Rating: 
Summary: Needs a discography
Review: This book takes the subject seriously, which is refreshing: not too much time is wasted on trashed hotels or wanton groupies, althought there's enough there to amuse.The prose is a little scattershot...the chapters DO read like magazine articles, and the whole project needs an editor. A discography of recommended listening at the end would have been very helpful. The author ignores some of the subtexts inherent in metal (misogyny, homosexuality, reactionary politics) but that's probably just as well--he does not seem to have the appropriate style or command of the subject to deal with those issues effectively.
Rating: 
Summary: Puff Piece
Review: This book was a fun enough read; if it were a movie, one might say, "I'm glad I didn't pay to see it in the theater, but it was ok as a rental." But while its subtitle and some reviews have suggested this work is definitive, it is far from that. It reads like a very long magazine article, and no wonder, since it appears to be a compilation of many such preexisting sources. The book is well peppered with anecdotes, but it never rises beyond entertaining to thought-provoking. Konow purports to have a thesis - grunge killed heavy metal - but falls short of ever making an argument. He spends a lot of time on "the hair bands," exposing them in all their shallowness. Fairly early on, the reader can't help but notice a similarlity between these glam bands and the book itself: big image, little substance.
Rating:
Summary: Puff Piece
Review: This book was a fun enough read; if it were a movie, one might say, "I'm glad I didn't pay to see it in the theater, but it was ok as a rental." But while its subtitle and some reviews have suggested this work is definitive, it is far from that. It reads like a very long magazine article, and no wonder, since it appears to be a compilation of many such preexisting sources. The book is well peppered with anecdotes, but it never rises beyond entertaining to thought-provoking. Konow purports to have a thesis - grunge killed heavy metal - but falls short of ever making an argument. He spends a lot of time on "the hair bands," exposing them in all their shallowness. Fairly early on, the reader can't help but notice a similarlity between these glam bands and the book itself: big image, little substance.
Rating:
Summary: Hard Rock Heyday Revisited
Review: This is a fast, esay & fun read about the rise and fall of hard rock/heavy metal looked at in an 80's "hair-rock" perspective. Most of the material is from the major rock magazines at the time completed with the actual participants contributing their take on what it was like. If you where growing up with the scene, than you'd probably be aware of most of the storyline, but even the most hardcore fan will enjoy revisiting the era and pick up a few new tales they didn't know about. The book covers most of the bands at the time and their story of rise and fall (Well, some bands are still rocking like back in their prime!) and gives some interesting portraits of the people behind it all.
Rating: 
Summary: ALL THE OTHER REVIEWERS ARE MORONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: This is an amazing book. If you like heavy metal, this book has inside information on all of the important events and the motivations behind them. I have other books on this subject, documentaries, behind the music episodes, music magazines, and there is info in here that you simply cannot find elsewhere, such a description of a fistfight between George Lynch and Don Dokken in a limo.
If you like Heavy Metal, YOU WILL LOVE THIS BOOK. I have loaned it to 4 people, and they all loved it. The people who do not like this book simply do not like 80s metal, and they are the fools for buying a book on a genre that they do not enjoy. No one who likes this music would be shallow and pretentious enough to call it "hair metal" when hair had nothing to do with the music. Notice the negative reviews below are from people who use the term. Go figure.
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