The bare truth about old rockers

Like quite a few impressionable old pop aficionados, I pounced upon

Feeling short-changed, I turned my attention to some other works which concerned themselves with the towering edifice of popular music.

Tommyland (Simon & Schuster, £17.99) is the story of Tommy Lee, once the drummer with Motley Crue. In rock 'n' roll terms, that puts him precisely on a par with any of the many drummers of Spinal Tap. It's just that Tommy hasn't had the good sense to selfdestruct yet.

If I tell you that the book takes the form of an energetic debate between Tommy and his penis, then you will have a full understanding of how much brainpower there is on display. Tommy does, to his credit, have two lovely children, courtesy of his marriage to Pamela Anderson, plus quite a line in home videos. The rest of it is a variation of the old Buddhist riff of one hand-clapping.

I was drawn to the biography of Big Star (Fourth Estate, £14.99) by Rob Jovanovic, even though it labels itself "The Story of Rock's Forgotten Bandî. Excuse me for disputing what's on the cover of a book, but people have been remembering Big Star ever since they imploded in the mid-Seventies. It is impossible to open a copy of any of the weightier music monthlies without tripping over an encomium.

Nevertheless, it seemed a good idea to have the full story, warts and all. Unfortunately, Rob is a dull dog who has managed to reduce the life of a bunch of spoiled, talented, druggy brats into what sounds like the minutes of a meeting of Pink Floyd's accountants.

Seduced by the posters that adorn every Tube station, I had a bash at Scar Tissue (Time/Warner, £18.99), the tortured tale of Red Hot Chili Pepper frontman, Anthony Kiedis. Ant's dad was a noted drug-dealer to the West Coast hippy and kinky élite, which meant that the young lad was introduced early to sex and drugs and what passed for rock 'n' roll in those heady circles.

Sadly, but not entirely unsurprisingly, Anthony turned out to be a humourless and selfimportant man, and this volume is a thudding testament to that fact.

The faux-shocking description of his regular ozone injections to maintain a healthy lifestyle sounds the warning bells. "For 20 years now," purrs clean and saintly Anthony, "I've been able to channel my love for music and writing, and tap into the universal slipstream of creativity and spirituality, while writing and performing our own unique sonic stew with my brothers, both present and departed."

One thing is for sure, and that is that this torso-in-your-face crooner has suffered most of the pain that an incredibly self-indulgent life can offer. I wonder, though, Anthony, if you ever considered boiling your head?

It was with an enormous sense of relief that I turned to Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal (Allison & Busby, £14.99) by a chap called, with immense appropriateness, Ian Christe.