"Iron Maiden": 30 Years of the Beast - The Complete Biography 1976-2006
 RRP £12.99 Lowest New Price £7.38 
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Chrome Dreams Number of pages: 320 Language: English (Original Language) Language: English (Unknown) Language: English (Published) |
RRP: £12.99
This book is complete and utter rubbish
Review date: 2008-11-19 Rating: 2 out of 10
I'm sorry but this book is utter garbage. The above reviewer Steve Kessler must be a friend of the author because no way does this book deserve anywhere near 5 stars.
Iron Maiden are my all time favourite band. I have collected so much merchandise, albums bootlegs etc over the years and also read the official run to the Hills autobiography 3 times (as it has been released in updated versions 3 times).
When I found out this book was going to be available I became very excited. I knew there wasn't a lot about Maiden I didn't already know but I thought this would be interesting as it was from a different perspective being unoffical and the back of the book promises lots of secrets unearthed.
I took this book along witha couple of others on my recent holiday to Sicilly as I new I could devote some serious time to reading. The book was so bad it took me a week to finish it as I had to keep putting it down in disgust!!!
First off to anyone who has read run to the hills do not bother with this. It tells you absolutely nothing that run to the hills does not cover. The book glosses over some of the most important parts of the bands career. For example it has about 3 pages regarding bruce leaving the band. WTF!! Even the official book had more regarding this. It gave very little info at all on the blaze era, didn't even mention maidens appearance at Donnington 1988, only the biggest crowd every recorded at Donnington and a fan died in the mosh pit crush. The author did not feel this important enough to even mention!!!
I could go on forever listing all the important events in Maidens history which either weren't mentioned or glossed over in a couple of pages, or the countless factual errors that appear. It really is one big joke. Too much of the books space is given to pointless stats at the end of the book which really are a waste of time. the only bit of info in the whole book which I found interesting which is why this gets 1 star is the interviews with Derrick Riggs. I had no idea that his relationship with Maiden had gotten so bad that in his words "I will never work with them again".
Please, Please avoid this book and don't waste your life as I did reading something that obviously has had no time or effort put into making it. It reads like the whole thing was researched using nothing but wikipedia. This was done to cash in on the Maiden name and nothing more.
Buy Run to the Hills, the official biography. Much more indepth and far better put together.
Reviews
Not the best of the beast ...
Review date: 2007-12-04 Rating: 4 out of 10
Certainly this book does not deliver on its promises, and is no less revealing than the Mick Wall book, despite Wall's offering being an official release and therefore likely to gloss over some harsh truths.
There are a few things that let this book down. One is factual errors. For example, "Gangland" is an instrumental, it is claimed at one point. Now these things aren't harmful, but it shows at best poor proof reading, at worst Stenning has no idea about his subject. It also calls in to question the validity of other claims if he couldn't get basic facts correct.
Secondly is the author's constant dwelling on somewhat irrelevant topics. This manifests itself on the first page proper, where we have a paragraph dedicated to West Ham's history during the 60s and 70s. Similarly, talking about Holy Smoke we have a paragraph or two dedicated to Jimmy Swaggart, the televangelist on whom Bruce based the Jimmy Reptile character. One feels that Stenning was trying to fill the book up due to a dearth of quality material from first-hand sources close to the band. This manifests itself moreso with the pointless interviews tacked on to each chapter. Want to know what erstwhile keyboard player Tony Moore, a man who spent a lunch break in Maiden during the late 70s, was up to? Wonder no further, although I suspect most of us couldn't give two hoots. Once again, it suggests that Stenning's primary sources were somewhat poor, due to the lack of novel input from the band, and others closely related.
Finally, and this is perhaps more personal taste, I found Stenning's style a little lumpen. In particular, his album reviews can be a little ernest, reading like Patrick Bateman musing about Huey Lewis or Phil Collins.
Stenning does a good job of cobbling together material from secondary sources: official releases, other interviews, old Kerrang interviews and other magazines. The material that Neil Kaye contributed, as about the closest source to the band Stenning had access to, is quite illuminating. For example, we find that he hated Blaze and thought he couldn't sing. Elsewhere there are other tid-bits: Holy Smoke was originally mooted as a title track for what eventually became No Prayer.
Aside from the official bio there aren't many Maiden books around that are in print. However, this is not going to offer much new if you have read that or are otherwise a long-term fan of the band. On the flip side, there are too many mistakes in basic information to make this valuable to a Maiden newbie. It will take time and patience to wade through Stenning's somewhat stodgy style, and there is very little return for doing so. In the end, I admired Stenning for drawing together diverse material from secondary sources, but the lack of interesting and relevant primary sources hampered the material. I was left with the feeling that, as a fan, I could easily have written something of equivalent value, given time and access to a decent collection of Kerrang back-issues.
metal fans are smarter than this
Review date: 2007-11-10 Rating: 4 out of 10
Although this book is a pretty good basic introduction to the world of Iron Maiden, my main feeling after I had finished reading it was of annoyance. Several reasons motivate this:
1. The front cover and artwork are far from inspiring to a Maiden fan. It lacks the classic logo and portrays one of the ugliest Maiden pictures I have ever seen.
2. The editing is cheap and sloppy, with many typos and several unformatted and unjustified paragraphs. Combined with point number one, the overall presentation of the book is cheap and unprofessional. Doesn't anyone edit and proofread these works? Or do they think that metal fans are not smart enough to figure these things out?
3. Apart from the typos, the book is rife with poor grammar and spelling mistakes. Here are a few "pearls". Bruce Dickinson "compliments" the band. Now I'm sure he complimented them when he auditioned, but I'm also sure that the writer meant that Dickinson COMPLEMENTS the band. On another occasion Dickinson "would of" instead of "would've". Now, I don't mind the occasional spelling error. Mistakes do happen. But this is just bad grammar, and when I spend the money to buy a book, I want it to be well written. It is an insult to the reader to write this poorly, especially from a journalist who is supposed to know better.
4. For an unauthorized biography, there is surprisingly little background information on the various crises that hit the band. No reasons why Dickinson left, no reasons why Bayley left, no details on fights, arguments. Nothing. Disappointing to say the least.
5. The book is also padded with too much opinion. One of my favorites is the writers argument that grunge did not kill metal in 1992. I profoundly disagree. Grunge wiped out dozens of famous bands within months, despite the continuing success of some. He instead blames Wayne's World for contributing to the demise of metal bands like Iron Maiden, blaming the movie for showing metal fans with "mullet hairstyles". Pardon me, but what hairstyle did ALL the Maiden members wear? Did it stop them from selling albums? Another bizarre observation is that Somewehere in Time was written entirely by Harris, making it a weaker album which is absurd as Smith wrote one third of the album.
For these reasons, among others, I can only recommend this book to the new Iron Maiden fan that wants to learn the basics of their career and who doesn't mind zigzagging around typos, poor formatting, weak grammar and a fair amount of opinion.
Passable but pedestrian
Review date: 2006-12-30 Rating: 6 out of 10
The book description above paints this to be a comprehensive and weighty tome. I was therefore disappointed by the fairly shallow blow by blow accounts of each album and VERY glossed over and sanitised accounts of the various tiffs and strife. There's little in here that most fans won't already know, and nothing that can't be found for free on the various Maiden fan websites.
Having said that, the photos in the middle are nice, if sparse, and the accounts of the early days are interesting.
I'd recommend this book to a Maiden newbie (so long as they didn't mind the frequent typos and patronising tone of some of the book) but for most fans the only thing worth reading it for is the interview with Derek Riggs at the end.
barmy army rages on!
Review date: 2006-10-18 Rating: 10 out of 10
talk about thorough!
This massive books leaves no stone unturned in its quest to get to the essence of this longstanding metal band.
what i liked most about it was the range of people stenning spoke to. There's blaze, members of the current line up, as you might expect, but then he also does speak to people from behind the scenes, including the reclusive derek riggs (the dude who draws all the pictures of Eddie 'the head'. He seems really quite annoyed with maiden, but it's good to hear his point of view for once.
There's also chats with the woman who was the bands catering assitant on tour - i don't think you'd hear from her in lesser maiden books, that's how in depth this book is. It's a great book with a lot of secret to reveal, if you're a maiden fan, or just curious, you won't be disappointed.
Product Details/Specifications
Authors:
Paul Stenning
Recording label: Chrome Dreams
Manufacturer: Chrome Dreams
EAN: 9781842403617
Binding: Paperback
Dewey decimal number: 781
ISBN: 1842403613
Number of items: 1
Number of pages: 320
Publication date: 2006-09-07
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: English (Unknown)
Language: English (Published)
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