Thursday November 1, 2001

Grade:

B

Rock star or not, chances are most people have had times when they've blurred the lines between fantasy and reality, hallucination and actuality, beauty and that thing you just woke up with - so much it would make Keith Richards hang his head in shame.

To common people, this is mere experimentation. To many rock musicians, however, this obscuring of reality is a lifestyle, the likes of which many never get a chance to reminisce about.

When will someone publish a brief alphabetical encyclopedia of these types of rock 'n' roll celebrity stories, telling the beginning and end of their strange days, so that one may neatly rest it on the coffee table for guests to peruse?

Exhale, because "VH1 Behind the Music" has already beaten "The E! True Hollywood Story" to the punch. "Casualties of Rock" is a somewhat comprehensive encyclopedia of the bizarre and tragic moments leading up to each dead musician's ultimate breaking point.

Some of the stories are world renowned. Many people already know Jim Morrison simply pushed the envelope, testing quantities of substances no human body should ever have to endure. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon and plenty of others all fell victim to their excesses and had to pay the ultimate price.

Some became the victims of their vices and probably wish they had burned out instead of fading away - people such as Syd Barrett of early Pink Floyd fame. The book says Barrett dissolved acid in his daily morning coffee back in the '60s only to later suffer a full mental collapse and disappear completely from public vision to this very day.

At its worst, the book fails only because it too quickly grazes over many, many interesting individuals, so as to keep the length as brief as possible and thus the price down. Truly, this book could have been as fat as a "Webster's New World Dictionary" and still leave a lot out. It seems that an ultimate but in-depth portrait of each person's life was not the goal for this author. Moreover, it is a quick overview through the world of rock infamy.

Gritty, attention-holding details are what are missing here in most of the more obscure rock stories - the stuff that only a tell-all biography can deliver.

At its best, though, the book succeeds when it focuses on bigger names and gives some truly interesting information through intimate quotes and facts. For instance, Dave Grohl of Nirvana fame is quoted as grieving yet being angry about Kurt Cobain's suicide.

"I miss Kurt. I dream about him all the time - I have great dreams about him and I have sad, heart-wrenching, fucked-up dreams about him," Grohl said. "I mean, I miss it·all·a lot. But if you're dealt a fucking hand, then you deal with it. And I'm not about to drop out and just stop living."

As far as interesting facts go, the book tells of Cobain leaving his driver's license sitting out before he took that lethal dose of heroin and the shotgun to his mouth so as not to be mistaken for anyone else once he became unrecognizable.

Without a doubt, this book will ascend to the toilet-reading royalty and flip-through excellence it so strives to achieve. The thought of anyone reading this book cover to cover seems farfetched, but at times of willed boredom and sheer distraction, this book will serve its intended purpose.