'DAVE MUSTAINE: A Heavy Metal Memoir'(file under 'Hidden Treasures')

I've been catching up on long-overdue reading lately, and took advantage of the Memorial Day weekend to read Megadeth mastermind Dave Mustaine's aptly titled autobiography Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir. I loved the book, and mentioned on Twitter yesterday that it was the best rock bio I've ever read, and a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in mainstream metal.

A friend of mine - a New York Times bestselling author in his own right - asked me what made it my favorite rock bio, and I told him my answer was too long for a text message. Here's my response...

Truth be told, rock bios aren't my favorite books to read, typically because I fear for the impact they may have on my relationship with an artist's art. Sound confusing? I can explain.

I love music because of the way it makes me feel, not because of the way the artists that perform it make me feel. When I was introduced to Megadeth, it wasn't Dave Mustaine that I developed a relationship with, it was his band's music. Maybe I felt a connection to a lyric. Maybe I was driven by the energy of the song. Maybe it was a combination of both, or maybe it was something altogether different. But it was the music that moved me, and it was my interpretation and response to that music that was (and remains) alive inside me.

Yes, I understand that by getting closer to the artist, you can get closer to their art - but after two decades of interviewing artists for a living, I have found that quite often the opposite proves true. The more I learn about an artist, the more distant I sometimes start to feel from their music - their music becomes more about their story, and less about my story with the music. And that is why I tend to not appreciate rock bios as much as other fans might...

Which brings us to this memoir.

My two favorite metal bands are Anthrax and Megadeth (consider them tied, I do), and my favorite metal personality is Dave Mustaine. Yes, he's a rock star, but I also see a lot of similarities between our personalities - from hearty cynicism and a dry sense of humor, to an outspoken personality and oft-misunderstood private nature.

I've interviewed Mustaine countless times, and being asked to appear in the Megadeth Behind the Music and on the band's Rude Awakening DVD are career highlights for me. After twenty years, I'd safely consider us friendly... friends, but not particularly close.

So it is with both thirst and trepidation that I picked up this book. I honor Mustaine's mystique as much as anyone's in metal, and while I'd love the opportunity to better understand him, the last thing I would ever want is for that understanding to sour one of my favorite bands, and favorite frontman.

But this book was remarkable. Mustaine's personality and spirit echo throughout, only enhancing what just may be the most fascinating story in heavy metal history. The underbelly of the book is Mustaine's place as an original member and principal songwriter of Metallica. Yes, this is only his side of the much-publicized rift between him and his former bandmates, but if you've seen Metallica's Some Kind Of Monster, you know that there aren't many, if any, discrepancies.

From a heavy metal perspective, that alone makes the book required reading. Even if taken with a grain of salt, you can't help but raise an eyebrow at the history Mega-Dave and Metallica shared.

From there, Mustaine's inner turmoil is the backbone of the book, and Megadeth is the spinal fluid that fills it - what I found most compelling about both is that Mustaine never points a finger at anyone without similarly pointing one at himself. The book doesn't mince words, and the book doesn't tread lightly. It hits hard, and takes as many punches as it lands.

But the best part isn't the grit. The best part is the way that the grit sands Mustaine's character throughout, shaping him into a different person by the book's end. This isn't the story of drug use and rehabilitation, it's the story of standing toe to toe with one's demons and knowing that even if you can't win every battle, life is a war worth fighting.

While I can't relate to Dave Mustaine's lifetime of drug use, I can relate to the spiritual core that he discovers more than 300 pages later, and that is the type of revelation that makes this book a triumph to read - and Megadeth's music twice as triumphant to listen to after you've turned the final page.

Why is Dave Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir my favorite rock bio? Because it did what I wish every rock bio could do - it offered me a profound insight into music I love, made me feel a heightened kinship with the artist behind the music, and it made me appreciate one of my favorite bands even more.


TWITTER: Dave Mustaine
TWITTER: Megadeth
TWITTER: Paul Gargano

Don't let Tommy Lee's penis scare you...Take a trip to 'Tommyland'

I honestly had no intention of reading Tommy Lee's book when it came out several years ago - not because I didn't care, but because when I heard it was co-written by his penis, well, yeah, then my interest admittedly faded.

I have a thing for Tommy Lee - not in a man-crush sort of way (not that there's anything wrong with that), but in a way where his passion for music resonates so much that it makes me feel a connection to him like I have with some of my best friends. I've got friends who I can talk about music with for hours on end - we don't even pause to refill our glasses, we just talk louder above the clinking ice and clanking bottles. Tommy seems like one of those guys.

The thing I like most is that Tommy isn't a stereotypical meat-head rocker who likes nothing that doesn't have screaming guitars and vocals that flirt with the stratosphere. No, he just loves music - and all kinds of it. Like me, he's drawn to anything that moves him, from Cheap Trick to Massive Attack to Daft Punk and beyond.

Music, to me, is about feeling a primal connection. It's about sparking that thing inside you that makes you feel like nothing else on the planet can make you feel in a given moment. It's spiritual, and it touches your soul.

And that's almost how I felt reading Tommyland, T-Lee's autobiography. I'm not getting Biblical or anything, I just really appreciate the man's zest for life.

I got a library card a few weeks ago, and Tommyland was the first book I saw when I walked over to the racks. It called out to me, and I grabbed it. Corny? Maybe. But it happens. Like I said, I never felt compelled to read a book narrated by a penis. And to be fair, since its release in 2004, not a single person has told me that this was a book I needed to read.

Which is why I'm telling you now - if you know how to read (which I think you've got covered if we made it this far) and have even a fleeting interest in the concepts of celebrity and pop culture, I highly recommend Tommyland.

Yes, I said highly.

To be clear, his penis only makes random commentary throughout (thankfully, less and less the further and better the book gets). And given that Motley Crue released their own band autobiography, The Dirt, in 2002, there's not even a lot of talk about Motley Crue.

Instead, it's an unflinching look inside the head of what makes one of music's biggest icons tick. The chapter about his meeting Pamela Anderson is literally laugh-out-loud funny, the two recounting their very different recollections of a weekend in Mexico that led to marriage. His discussions of his children are heartwarming, there is heartache in his divorce from Pamela, and we share heartbreak in the chapter that details the death of his son's 4-year-old friend in his Malibu swimming pool.

No, it's not Nobel Prize material, but Tommy Lee would never claim to be a budding laureate. It is raw emotion, and an honest and unwavering look at a side of celebrity that most people don't take the time to acknowledge - the human side. You sit right alongside Tommy Lee in his jail cell, and rant right alongside him at paparazzi.

And, in defense of his penis, as heavy as things do get (I'm talking about the subject matter, not... well, I'm sure you've heard the stories...), you can't blame the guy for trying to lighten the mood. I read a lot, and I'm partial to biographies and autobiographies - Tommyland is one of the more engaging bios I've read.

The book has its flaws, but don't we all? If you offend easily, it gets pretty raunchy, but in the end it's the passion and honesty of the writing that prevails.

I returned my copy to the library today, but I assure you I'll be buying a copy of my own. It's one of those books I want to be able to hand to someone, with the assurance that they'll come out with a whole new perspective on a person they thought they knew everything about.

It may have taken me 6 1/2 years to finally visit Tommyland, but it's a trip I'm glad I finally took.

"Anyone on Long Island need furniture?"Yes, Mankind is giving his love seat away...

From the 'Why Twitter Rules' department...

Professional wrestling superstar turned bestselling author Mick Foley - widely known as WWE legend Mankind, a tortured soul in ratty clothes whose finishing move involved putting on a sock puppet and sticking his hand down his opponents mouth until they couldn't breath - is giving his furniture away.

This via his Twitter account earlier today:

@realMickFoley Anyone on LI need furniture? Love seat, couch, TV, ent center delivered Fri from my home to yours. Free.

@realMickFoley Other cool stuff, too. Brand new log furniture-2 dressers+Queen bed frame. Decorate your home the Hardcore way for free.

That's right - if you live on Long Island (are you reading this, Diddy?), Mick Foley will even have the furniture delivered! The only catch? You need to be home Friday to meet the truck, and you also need to be willing to return any of the hardcore legends' teeth or ears that might be lodged between seat cushions.

Yes, this is the same Mick Foley who bites his opponents' foreheads as a signature move... Imagine what went down in that love seat!

Kidding aside, Foley is one hell of a writer. "Scooter" is one of the most memorable pieces of fiction I've read in years - his dark sense of humor and jagged, real and uncensored look at adolescent life is compelling, and his prose is engaging. Even better? The story is bound by a love for baseball.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't read "Tietam Brown" yet - but it just shot to the top of my reading list.

He's also written three children's books and three memoirs. Foley's fourth autobiography, "Crossing the Line," is forthcoming, and his four-issue comic book series "R.P.M." will be debut this November. Currently active with TNA wresting, Foley writes a weekly column for the company's website.

See how that works? Mick Foley is giving his "brand new log furniture" away, and I end up buying his book.

Mr. Socko likes that a lot!

LINKS:
Mick Foley on Twitter
Paul Gargano on Twitter

Obama's Vision, America's Hope

--Hope, George Frederic Watts (1885)

The following is an excerpt from President elect Barack Obama's first book, "Dreams From My Father." The book was written in 1995, and the sermon he is writing about was, judging by the book's chronology, witnessed in early 1988. While the book leads us to believe that this Sunday morning service was a point of spiritual awakening for our next President, in hindsight we can see that it was much more. This passage was written before Obama would write his second book (which is named after the homily), and more than a decade before he would be elected President of the United States after running a campaign centered around Hope. While the Hope that Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr. preached of that day was one of prejudice between black and white America, Obama was elected on the shoulders of a Hope he preached to be colorblind. First the passage, then my observation:

The title of Reverend Wright's sermon that morning was "The Audacity of Hope." He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel-the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting titled Hope.

"The painting depicts a harpist," Reverent Wright explained, "a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single string. Your eye is then drawn to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

"It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere... That's the world! On which hope sits!...

..."And yet consider once again the painting before us. Hope! Like Hannah, that harpist is looking upwards, a few faint notes floating towards the heavens. She dares to hope... She has the audacity...to make music...and praise God...on the one string...she has left!"

Reverend Wright spoke of the black man's place in a white man's world, a concept Obama struggled much of his life with, being raised by his white mother and white grandparents while trying to come to terms with his own ethnicity. It's a struggle that, regardless of one's political inclination, makes for a fascinating and insightful read. While the book is subtitled "A Story of Race and Inheritance," it lacks the racial grandstanding one might expect. In fact, it offers quite the contrary, Obama's immersion into black America providing jarring parallels to today's economic and social divide in our country.

What I find most profound, reading Obama's account of Wright's rousing sermon more than a decade later, is how the white man's world the preacher described has evolved into a world where economics have become as divisive a factor as color. With America's dire financial straights growing nothing but deeper, Obama's message of Hope is one that we all can cling to. Is it audacious of us, regardless of the color of our skin, to want to believe in a man whose vision of making the world a more balanced place has been constant for more than a decade?

While I still find a mantra of Hope a bit too nebulous to hang a campaign on, in this case, the ambiguity of the word is eclipsed by the singularity of Obama's vision. Politics is just that, politics. I do believe that Obama transcends the political realm that we're accustomed to. He wasn't born into money. He doesn't have vested interests in oil. He doesn't have a family legacy. He's forging his own legacy. Yes, he's still a politician. Yes, he still has outside interests that he needs to satisfy. But he's different. He plays the political game well, but plays the social and cultural game, as well.

Do I agree with his politics? No, not particularly. But politics is a game of give and take, and his early decisions have indicated that he's more willing to practice that than many of America's most recent leaders. Where have politics gotten us lately? In an economic free fall. I'm ready for a change. If it doesn't work, well, we address that fact in another four years. Eight tops. I will say this much, I have nothing but respect for the fact that he's not afraid to admit there's a problem, and he's even less afraid to tell America to pony up and prepare for things to get worse before they get better. I'll take a straight-shooter over an ostrich with their head in the sand any day of the week.

I don't need to believe in everything that is said or done, I just need to respect the vision and hopefully understand the thought process that helps lead us there. America needs a drastic change right now. An audacious change.

An audacity of hope that all of America can get behind, and a foundation we can Hope to build upon.