Another book I have been reading is Hell Bent for Leather by Seb Hunter.  Here is some opinion….

The subject might be heavy metal, but the book itself is an easy read.  It is being described by a lot of critics as doing for heavy metal what Nick Hornby did for football with Fever Pitch, and I can see their point of view there, although I think it is more like Giles Mith’s Lost in Music, but there is more to it than that.

For a start, I should point out that this can be appreciated by those with no knowledge at all of metal.  Where they will miss out on some of the pleasures of recognition, they will get a bit of an understanding of what people get out of being a rocker.

Personally I think I was approaching this book from both directions: I thought I liked heavy metal, but reading this I realise I was only scratching the surface.  For a start I just like the music and was never part of the metal sceen.  However, I used to hang out with some people who were a lot more like Seb Hunter and there was a wry smile when I read how he judged how good a band was before hearing them just by the length of their hair – my friends were exactly like that.

In one way this is an important book.  I hope that some people who are total outsiders to the world of heavy metal do read this because they will realise that, just like punks, skinheads, or goths, heavy metal fans are just like everybody else underneath all the tribal trappings.
Sometimes the fashions and lifestyle make it easy to see such members of musical tribes as just fully-formed archetypes so it is interesting to read a first-person desciption of this life.

Here we have the sort of person many would think of crossing the road to avoid, with his long hair, make up, excessive jewellery, and mixture of women’s and men’s clothes but he is describing his home life, school experiences, relationship with his father and so on in a way we can all identify with one way or another so the book helps to re-humanise scary-looking metal fans.

Even apart from the subject matter, which I have a bit of an interest in, I am always a little intrigued by the idea of autobiographies of people who are not celebrities and are unlikely to become one. Its a bonus when the story of their life is just as good a read as someone you have heard of.  Actually it adds a bit of suspense to an autobiography since you genuinely don’t know how it is going to end.

With a celebrity biography you can read the story of early struggles in the world of music, acting, sports, politics or whatever, knowing that where it is all ultimately going.

I’m full of respect for Seb Hunter after reading this book.  Look at the life stories of some of the big stars and you will find that they burnt their bridges along the way, failing exams, dropping out of school, getting fired from a succession of jobs etc. gambling everything on getting the big break.  It shows commitment and its a big risk but without doing that they may never have made it.  But for every one of them there is someone for whom the gamble did not pay off.  You don’t hear about them – or rather you didn’t until now.

Obviously this is a must-read book for anybody who is into heavy metal themselves, but the rest of the world can find something in it for them too.

The real surprise was how little I knew about any of the music talked about in the book.  Seb Hunter’s obsession started with AC/DC, which I can understand, but he then describes his journey to fandom of bands that are just names to me – Ratt, Hanoi Rocks, Kiss.   I always wondered who did listen to them – and now I know.