They Just Seem A Little Weird

★★★★ Doug Brod HACHETTE. £21

The glory (and not-so glorious) days of American hard rock revisited.

Subtitled ‘How Kiss, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith And Starz Remade Rock And Roll’, former Spin editor-in-chief Doug Brod zeroes in on the A, B and C-list of the mid-’70s US rock boom, while noting how the groups remain inextricably linked and later influenced acts as “diametrically opposed” as Bon Jovi and Nirvana. Brod’s love of the music will send readers digging deep into the back catalogues, but he also acknowledges the absurdity and fuck-ups with knowing humour, not least when Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley gatecrash a Kiss Expo where Starz’s down-onhis-luck ex-guitarist Richie Ranno is flogging Kiss merchandise. Meanwhile, Brod’s description of the production on Cheap Trick’s wretched 1986 album The Doctor – “simulates the experience of being in an MRI machine operated by the ape-men of 2001: A Space Odyssey” – might be the best line in a music book for quite some time.