From 1983 until 1991, Glam Metal was the sound of American culture. Big hair, massive amplifiers, drugs, alcohol, piles of money and life-threatening pyrotechnics. This was the world stalked by Bon Jovi, Kiss, W.A.S.P., Skid Row, Dokken, Motley Crue, Cinderella, Ratt and many more. Armed with hairspray, spandex and strangely shaped guitars, they marked the last great era of supersize bands.
Where did Glam Metal come from? How did it spread? What killed it off? And why does nobody admit to having been a Glam Metaller anymore?
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Justin Quirk
Justin Quirk is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster from London. He first wrote for The Guardian’s music pages when he was 19, and began contributing to Kerrang! shortly afterwards as a reviewer. Since then he has written for everyone from Arena and Esquire to the Times, Sunday Times and The Independent about art, music and culture, regularly appears on the BBC World Service and Soho Radio, and DJs at places like Spiritland and Merchant’s Tavern in London. As a teenage metaller he spent an inordinate amount of time hanging around Kensington Market (because his friend Chris has met Slash outside there), covered his schoolbooks in posters ripped out of metal magazines, saw Guns n’ Roses twice, got stranded at a curfew-busting Skid Row show, made his older sister (a goth) take him to Donington Monsters of Rock, failed to get into an AC/DC video as an extra, played Metallica’s ‘One’ for his music GCSE exam, saw everyone from Thunder to Mötley Crüe, and got regularly chased through suburban shopping precincts by skinheads. This is his first book.
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3rd September 2020PUBLICATION DAY
So, today's finally the day that NOTHIN' BUT A GOOD TIME is fully published. If you've had a chance to read your pre-release and patrons' copies I sincerely hope you've enjoyed it - thanks again for all your support for the project. This has been a very small indie project, and the thing which really makes a difference now is just getting the book out there - the two most useful things you can do…
14th August 2020Thank you!
Happy Friday everyone. By now you should have received your finished copy of NOTHIN' BUT A GOOD TIME, or it'll be on the way to you. I just wanted to say thank you again to all of you who've supported the project and helped see it to completion, and sincerely hope that you enjoy reading the book once you get it. If you're able to leave a positive review on the book's Amazon page here, that would be…
14th April 2020NBAGT: first look at the cover...
Hello everyone
Just wanted to update you on the progress of Nothin' But A Good Time. The manuscript has been through its first edit and is currently having the final tweaks made to it by my excellent editor at Unbound. With turnaround times and printing etc we're currently on course for an August release, but if anything changes with the current situation I'll let you know as soon as I hear. So…
17th September 2019MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Hi everyone
Just wanted to send a sincere thank you to all of you for backing the project over the last year - as you'll have seen via Unbound, we're now at our crowdfunding target. Work's already ongoing on the final manuscript and progressing nicely.
Some of you have mentioned at various points in the past year that you've got either archive material which would be useful for my research,…
15th March 2019The (Very) Final Countdown
Hello!
Firstly, sincere apologies for the glam metal radio silence. There's been an extremely long haul of crowdfunding over the last few months, but I'm pleased to announce that we are now on the absolutely final leg of the home straight and inside the last £300 of funding on Nothing But A Good Time. That's 20 people pledging on the Patron Paperback and we're good. So, I'm asking if you could…
18th July 2018The Final Countdown!
Hello
Firstly, apologies for the radio silence: things have been busy with work and finishing the print on BATTLEJACKET NUMBER ONE, the sister publication to NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME. The good news is that we're extremely close to completion on the book - at the time of writing we're at 84%, which is where you come in.
You've obviously pledged already, but the one thing we've found which really…
7th May 2018Battlejackets!
Hello
Just wanted to update you on progress for NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME. We're closing on 75% at the time of writing after a busy week of new pledges. I'm also pleased to announce that copies of my other publication, BATTLEJACKET NUMBER ONE have just come back from the printers. This is a full colour, 60 page photographic study of heavy metal's greatest battlejackets, photographed by me at metal…
29th March 2018The Long Read on Glam Metal
Been a busy couple of weeks on glam metal crowdfunding. I was interviewed by Emma Finnamore for her long piece in i-D on Nothing But A Good Time - you can read the finished piece here, which explains some more thoughts around the project and why I'm working on it. I was also a guest on the 100th edition of the White Line Fever podcast, talking about the book (Adrian Vandenberg from Whitesnake was…
11th March 2018More metal
Hello
Apologies for the radio silence around Nothing But A Good Time - I was ill for a couple of weeks, so the crowdfunding went on the back burner temporarily. We're now on the final push for the book as we enter the last third of fundraising. Again, thanks for your ongoing support of the project: we should have more press coverage of it coming up in the next week or so, but if you missed them…
18th February 2018Every Record Tells A Story
Hello
It's been another busy week at the coalface of metal. More pledges have come in, my research was aided by a contact who was at Poison's appearance at Soho's legendary Shades record store in May 1987 (and there's some footage shot in the store on the same day here) and I was interviewed by the excellent Every Record Tells A Story site about the project. I also wrote a piece for The Quietus…
11th February 2018New week, more metal...
Hello - hope everyone had a good weekend. Just wanted to update you on progress for NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME. Last week was another busy one, with lots of pledges coming in after our feature in Classic Rock magazine. Another feature should be going live on The Quietus this week, so keep an eye out for that.
As usual, I'd like to thank you for your support of the book, but can't emphasise enough…
1st February 2018"Woooaaah-oooh. We're halfway there..."
Happy Friday
Just wanted to update you on the progress of NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME. Last week was a big week for 80s metal, thanks to the flurry of interest around Def Leppard announcing tickets for their Hysteria revival tours, and finally releasing their back catalogue onto streaming services. This also seemed to drive a lot of people towards our crowdfunder, and today we nudged over the 50% mark…
26th January 2018A very metal Friday...
Hello. Just closing out the second week of fundraising on NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME, and pleased to report that we've hit the 40% mark. An enormous thank you to all of you who have pledged, tweeted, publicised and generally banged the tigerskin-painted drumkit for this, as it means we're well ahead of schedule. However, we need to keep the momentum going, so once again, if you're able to post about…
21st January 2018Week One...
So, the first week of crowdfunding is out of the way on NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME and we're already through the 25% mark.
Firstly, thank you to everyone who's supported the project so far, and all of you who've posted about it online. The word of mouth helps enormously, so any further posting you can do about it, or messages you can send to people who you think would be interested would be an…
Steve Perkins asked:
Do you cover anything about Stryper in this book?
Justin Quirk replied:
They are going to feature - not as a lead band, but I think their story is interesting, and it touches on a few of the wider cultural themes at the time that I'll be covering, so will bring them in at points. Thanks, JQ
Do you cover anything about Stryper in this book?
They are going to feature - not as a lead band, but I think their story is interesting, and it touches on a few of the wider cultural themes at the time that I'll be covering, so will bring them in at points. Thanks, JQ