Stairway to hell; the 500 best heavy metal albums by Chuck Eddy

The great thing about "Stairway to Hell" is how he resists the critic's impulse to equate liking something with having reverence for it. I think he's sometimes criticized for being "ironic" or insincere about records that he champions, but he really just approaches criticism the same way real people listen to music and talk about it.

I'd really love to read a piece by Eddy on what he thinks of "Stairway" now - what he missed, what he thinks he over- and under- rated, what he makes of his prediction that disco-metal was the wave of the future, etc. etc.

Easily done, m'friend -- this interview isn't even a month old or so.

The new edition has a much better cover. A grim B&W Alice Cooper mug glaring at you on a black cover.

ned, you need a vacation.

blah blah, chuck eddy, brilliant, etc. probably the only writer who i disagree with more than 50% of what he says yet i still read.

Thus New Zealand. But my assertion remains true. ;-)

I picked up a copy of the book recently and love it. (Hey, he had Teena Marie in his top 10; for that alone he's going to heaven.) Does anyone else in the Washington area want to help me start a "Stairway to Hell" dance night?

I looked up the interview. (also from rockcritics.com - it's an older one) When the interviewer pressed him a little more on this point, Eddy responded:

"the bottom line is, I want my writing to be GOOD WRITING, okay? And it's, it's like, I just don't know that I have any interesting good things to say about Springsteen. But that doesn't mean that I don't LIKE him. I write about stuff--the records I write about are not necessarily my favourite records, but they're the ones I think will make for the most interesting writing, and I say what, positively or negatively--that doesn't mean I'm lying, but because I write about Debbie Gibson a lot, that doesn't mean that she's my favourite artist, it just means that I think I have a lot of interesting things to say about Debbie Gibson. If I wrote about Springsteen as much as I liked him, I think what I wrote about him would be pretty boring."

I guess that's reasonable, but it sums up what I don't like about Eddy. He's a very good writer, very clever and observant and he's always coming up with lines I wish I'd thought of, but there's something dishonest about his writing. It seems like his main concern is writing 'interesting' reviews (i.e., reviews just overflowing with his trademark wit and penchant for saying outrageously stupid things which even he'll later recant by insisting that you should never take him all THAT seriously, come on, what are you some kind of nerd?), and the results are undeniably entertaining but ultimately empty and unrevealing. I don't think I've ever gotten any great insights from an Eddy review - as I have from Bangs, Meltzer, Marcus, and even Christgau, who I usually can't stand. I just can't picture Lester Bangs giving a fuck about Debbie Gibson, that's all. Even if he'd liked her music, he wouldn't have written dozens of pages on her just to show what an "interesting" writer he could be.

I mean, I think a lot of the people who post to ILM are better writers and more interesting thinkers than Chuck Eddy. And as for the humor, hell, Mark Prindle makes me laugh more often than he does.

Oh, and I always thought "Out Ta Get Me" was great. Just one long screaming paranoid freakout. Beats "Paradise City" by a mile.

I was surprised to find that his writing is less punchy than I remembered. It seems much more human now, more like what I might write - I used to think that his writing was compact and packed with more insights than anyone else I'd read.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/030680817X/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/002-2661522-2536830?%5Fencoding=UTF8&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Some sundry stuff I've been thinking about heavy metal lately can be found in my posts here, if anybody's wondering (as some people seem to be, upthread): Rolling 2004 Metal Thread

And not sure whether I've ever pointed this out before, but if there is a book that initially inspired my music-critijism (and eventually much of *Stairway to Hell*) the way *Stairway* allegedly inspired a couple people on this thread, it would probably be this one here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0316104299/qid=1097871290/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-3859423-1851969?v=glance&s=books

Before finding the book I was basically a little Jim DeRo-esque sprat (here's proof) who was feeling further and further alienated by the rockcrit world (as I knew it from Spin, Rolling Stone and stuff like Magnet and the Big Takeover - before that e-mail the only person I'd talked to at all was Jack Rabid). I was basically planning to give up on it entirely when I found the book and was finally reading something that joyfully praised the qualities that I actually took pleasure in rather than shit like authenticity and credibility. It did remind me of the Lester Bangs I'd read in middle school but without the whole "the world has betrayed me" bitterness. It was a real mind-blower.

Hey, neat. And it's cheap!

xpost

I don't have time to make a full reply, except to say that the 311 (a rather easy target, no? -- but given the kinda rap-metal that's come since, not all that evil; they actually had a kind of Sublime-like dub thing going on) stuff I've heard actually struck me as more interesting than the Sloan stuff I heard (they were OKAY, but pretty generically post-Husker weepy-jangly from what I remember, which isn't that much -- mainly the first album, which I reviewed for a Canadian magazine --, so maybe I'm wrong; don't recall being especially rocked by them or made to laugh -- a little too beatlessly "pure" pop for my tastes, but hey, it's cool that they hail from the Maritimes and all..) Can't even remember if I kept my copy of "Midinite Vultures" for that song "Debra" (which once inspired by 11-year-old daughter to draw a great picture of Beck-as-a-little- girl!); let me check....um, I don't see it on the shelf in the hall, but I also doubt I'd sell it, so maybe I loaned it to someone then never got it back, goddammit.

Oh well. I thought he did the artsy-guy-going-soul move okay, but not nearly as convincingly, as say, Bowie around '76 or so (which struck me as the obvious comparison, unless you wanna talk mid-'80s Prince, though rhythmically/ vocally Beck doesn't quite stand up to that, either, and Prince himself was pretty restrained rhytmically and vocally compared to say, Michael Jackson or Teena Marie.) Plus, I remember the first single from *Vultures,* whatever it was called, as being a completely awfully boring late-Beatles ripoff; of his four (right?) major label albums, I probably like this one *least.*

Oh and to correct Blount's Albert Goldman-esque assertion on ILX and on Matos's site that my fan letter came with a resume attached, I had no idea Chuck was an editor. If I had, I wouldn't have titled the e-mail (dear...god...) "Know any Mere Pseud Mag. Editors?"

*shoots self*

It was actually another two years before I sent him anything (an article on Desaparecidos article). And that was mainly because Chuck had put my name on the Pazz'n'Jop list for '01 and I felt like I should earn it by at least submitting something. By the time I did I was embarassed by about 85% of the letter I had sent.

meaning you can't check it out (too important as a resource)

i actually used to own a DIFFERENT '52 A's card as a kid, but i forget who it was off hand. it was the oldest topps card in my collection. (oldest card total was, um, vern bickford or vern bickman or whatever his name was, on the boston braves -- a little 1949 bowman card.)

Irrelevant Writings of a Half-Formed Pretentious Wannabe Metalhead. Post Modern Schlock Galore.

- did you just once in your book hit 'it' right on? i think not.

x-x-post

I would totally buy a 500 MOST metal albums book without having looked through it though. What albums are there NONE more metal than??? I want to know. Best,? Bah, critic stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0816011001/thebompbookstore/103-9292186-0275866

i didn't get ahold of a copy until after *stairway* came out, but the authors include tom petty and rick springfield (which means their defintion might be even *wider* than mine!)

and oh yeah, another big influence i remember on *stairway*'s scope was a special CREEM metal issue from 1980 or so, with rob halford on the cover. i remember being shocked at the time that they included the runaways, the dictators, and mx-80 sound. and i think that might have helped open the floodgates for me....

I'm trying to remember if I did! I saw it at the UCLA bookstore, I was a fan of Led Zeppelin, I loved the joke of the title and I thought it would be fun. And it was. Shortly thereafter the book was mentioned briefly on MTV.

actually Poison is one of the few metal bands Christgau ever seemed to have any time for, judging by his consumer guide (them and Motorhead). And Kix and Hot Wire got four stars in the Rolling Stone Album guide from J.D Considine (Blow My Fuse got four and a HALF!). Since that was the first album guide I ever read, I always assumed Kix was a critic's band.

High Fidelity.
Posted by Spinny on May 17, 2006 12:19 PM.

1 new from $9,900.00
+ $3.99 shipping

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/030680817X/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&qid=1268027257&sr=1-2&condition=new