Near the end of Motley Crue's autobiography The Dirt, Nikki Sixx is talking about how Pam Anderson never liked him--even though Pam set him up with his wife. He talks about how Pam's face looks like someone had beaten it up too many times and everything else on her body was just a little bit wrong. She looks like the girls Vince is always sleeping with, Sixx says. Oh yeah, Vince did sleep with her, he finishes.

The book is filled with these kind of observances. Half of them seem to be from a 12-step clarity and confession session, and others are gleefully hateful about people they claim to love. I was surprised, somewhat, with the lack of music stories. Y'know, how did it feel to play with these guys? Why did they write the music and lyrics they did? What were their influences?

There is a small bit of this info. Clearly Cheap Trick was instrumental (Vince emulates Robin Zander), Sixx professes his love of the Beatles (and claims almost every song he wrote is based on them) and Tommy just loves to beat on the drums (I understand this emotion). Mick Mars, who everyone figured was the odd ball out, is the odd ball out. He's in love with Clapton and Cream, even though there seems to be very little blues in his playing. When I saw them live, Mars was in the middle of a tedious guitar solo when the audience started throwing stuff on stage. He asked us if he wanted to hear him play or if we just wanted to throw stuff. Most of us yelled to throw stuff.

But 95% of the book is the swirl surrounding the music and the scene and using fake breasts as flotation devices. Does this make The Dirt useless? No, it just means you ain't gonna figure out how to be a musician by reading it.

I've read books that take apart pop music until it doesn't make sense anymore. There is a book about Frank Zappa's music called the Dialectics of Poodle Play, which goes so deep into music theory, by the time you get done with it, you don't want to listen to music again. I didn't even recognize half the songs the writer was talking about--and I have about 25 Zappa CDs. Frank's own autobiography (The Real Frank Zappa Book) talks about music, but it's somewhere in the middle of Poodle Play and The Dirt.

I do this from time to time. Dive into descriptions of the musicians apart from the music being played. There is always a divide to cross. Always reasons for why albums sound like they do, and how the artists feel about them. Well, except for the Motley Crue thing, where they love Dr. Feelgood and the crappy post-Vince album more than any of their other stuff--mostly because they were somewhat sober when they put the later stuff together. It's amazing how none of them seem to remember actually recording Shout at the Devil--just that most of them died at least once while they were recording it.

David Lee Roth, who also peppers his autobiography (Crazy From the Heat) with lovely stories of groupie gatherings, is concerned about the music. He comes from a different generation of music than the Crue guys. I think he kind of sees himself as a Frank Sinatra of the Rock world. He talks about how the lyrics are supposed to be a bit cryptic--they should sound a certain way, even if they don't really make sense. This was one of the huge fights he had with the Van Halen brothers--they were concerned no one else could sing the songs Roth wrote. And Roth didn't want anyone else to sing them anyway, so he didn't mind his own slightly off-key slurring.

By the way, if you were wondering, almost every band hates the singer. Almost every producer hates the singer, too. Because a voice can be such an imprecise instrument. The very thing that gives a voice interesting character probably makes it go off-key--especially in the recording studio.

Reading about Nirvana presents an interesting paradox. You can't truly believe a lot of what Kurt Cobain says about himself--he was a smack addict during almost the entire time he was in the intense glare of the spotlight. One entire book based extensively on interviews with Kurt and Courtney (Come As You Are) has about as much bullshit as reality. It is the nature of a smack addict to lie and try to cover up his problem. It's not a problem to them, but they are aware of what other people think about it.

That being said, these books do show the different and varied ways people feel about being rock stars. Both Roth and the Crue wrote their books long after their time as superstars had passed. Zappa wasn't ever a superstar (his biggest single was "Valley Girl" in the early 80s--more than fifteen years after he got into the business). Nirvana was going through it as they tried to describe it--interestingly, the surviving members of Nirvana aren't out penning their own version of events now. Maybe they're a little bit smarter from their experience than others.

As a member of a hard rockin' local bar band, I know my stories of being a rock star will never be as big as these examples. But when it finally comes time to write the story of Old Beans, I'll try to include both the dirt and the poodle play.

Matt Worley hasn't died, had illegitimate kids or been married multiple times to women of inflated chests, but he does know how to beat those skins.