Life On Planet Rock by Lonn Friend
For fans of heavy metal music, RIP magazine was a cultural touchstone, every bit as crucial in its day as Kerrang, NME or Rolling Stone. Lonn Friend, RIP's legendary editor, helped launch and revive the careers of innumerable acts - including Guns n' Roses, Metallica and Pearl Jam - and created some of the most enduring rock journalism of the decade, rivaling the best work of Lester Bangs and Cameron Crowe. In Life on Planet Rock, Friend describes in lucid and lurid detail how he became the Zelig-like chronicler of the biggest musical moments of the 80s and 90s, providing revealing portraits of artists as varied as Gene Simmons, Alice Cooper, Axl Rose, Jon Bon Jovi, Kurt Cobain, and Steven Tyler, among others. A candid and humorous memoir which will appeal to fans of Motley Crue's The Dirt and Seb Hunter's Hell Bent For Leather.