A good book about the metal era from the 80’s music that I listened to but did not have a lot of time knowing a lot about each band except for Ozzy from Black Sabbath. The bands and the stories in this book are all really good and a good way to either go back in time or to find out about the bands since life for me back then was crazy. Overall a good book.

I am sorry I was never able to download this title and can not give feedback because of this situation.

This is a must read for fans of 80s hair metal! If you want to learn more about one of rock's wildest and most unhinged genres or if you want to relive it, then check out this book. Recommended for fans of Motley Crue, Poison, Quiet Riot, and Ratt. Definitely a fun read!

Fantastic read for hair band fanatics such as myself. I grew up on GNR, Poison and the Cree and still listen to them today!

Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion is not what I was expecting. I give it three stars.

4.2 STARS : I'm a big rock music fan though my tastes seem to run more towards the 70's. I do enjoy a lot of bands from the 80's but thought the talent level was less than their predecessors, Van Halen and GNR excluded. I thoroughly enjoyed this book though. Easy to read, humorous and a realistic up close and personal perspective from the major players in the decade.
Hard rock in the 1980s was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated—and maybe even helped to define—a spectacularly over-the-top decade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” are as inextricably linked to the era as Reaganomics, Pac-Man, and E.T.

Fun overview of a wild and crazy scene that feels like a thousand years ago at this point. For fans of The Dirt by Motley Crue and Pop/Hair Metal in general. A quick read and a great use of the oral history format.

If your a fan of 80’s hair metal and Behind the Music, this is the book for you. This interview style book feels like your sitting around a fire trading war stories. Interviews with original members of such bands as Guns and Roses and Poison and what the Sunset Strip music scene was like before hair metal blew up, it’s a wild ride you don’t want to miss.

I know this phrase will always get made fun of, no matter the generation or the decade, but I feel like I was born in the wrong decade and meant to experience the 80s as a teen. This is a great book for any fan of 80s music and style. It should really be on anyone's bookshelf that loves Guns N Roses, Motley Crue, Ozzy, Quiet Riot, Poison, and all of the other bands and musicians that shaped a wonderful decade of rock music.

I listened to the audio book and found it to be entertaining, though at times the “acting” was a little grating. The book is done in an oral history style, so the various readers attempt to sound conversational in ways that are sometimes very unconvincing. I’m very interested in this period of rock history and have read a lot about it, so this book didn’t offer a lot that was new for me. But I still enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone interested in this subject.

I loved this book! So much nostalgia, looking back at the decade when I first discovered music on my own. It's not a comprehensive history of the 80s rock scene, but more of an oral history, a compilation of quotes and anecdotes from the people who were in the thick of it.

I grew up during the 80s, listening to these bands, immersed in MTV, magazines, and interviews, and thought I knew all about my favorites. However, there was so much I learned about the music and musicians I loved - and truthfully, STILL love - from reading this book. Nothin' But a Good Time is an absolute must-read if you grew up in the 80s and remember the music fondly. I only wish it came with a link to a playlist... it would have saved me the time of looking up all the songs while I read.

I'm very grateful to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and review Nothin But a Good Time.

This was a really interesting oral history of rock and roll. I loved getting to hear from some of my favorite artists.

This was one bumpy ride of a read! I felt like I had my own personal backstage pass and key to all these rockers shows and houses!
A great "everything you always wanted to know" but were afraid to ask compilation of this huge list of included 80's rockers/hair metal /glam bands and others who knew or had interactions with them.
If you grew up listening to this music by these bands or are just a music fan this is a must read. So much insight and history in one book. 5+ stars!
Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martins press and the Authors, Tom Beaujour, Richard Bienstock for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review

As someone who was part of the late 80s hard rock/hair metal scene, I was excited to read "Nothin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion."

The book actually starts back in the L.A. rock scene of the late 70s/early 80s with bands like Van Halen and Quiet Riot, but the bulk of the book contains memories and anecdotes from musicians who ruled the charts and MTV's Headbanger's Ball in the late 80s and early 90s. Bands like Poison, Warrant, Cinderella, Guns'n'Roses, and many more.

I'd heard some of these stories over the years, but a lot of these interviews presented new information or pieces that were missing.

Towards the end, the book even covers what happened when grunge hit, and what some of the musicians are doing now.

If you're a fan of the 80s hard rock bands, I heartily recommend checking this book out. If you're looking for all the sleazy groupie stories and tour hijinks, this book has some, but more as a passing story than a focus of the book.

I'm giving Nothin' But a Good Time a 4.5 out of 5 stars. A full review will be posted 4/23/21 at zengrrl.com.

As a teenager whose bedroom was plastered with posters for most of the bands covered in the book, it was a no-brainer that I would want to read this. Although I was expecting more of a narrative, I actually enjoyed the odd transcript format that pieced together interviews with different people into topics. I remember a lot of the events, from the chaos Sebastian Bach caused on the Skid Row tour to the Moscow Music Festival, from when they happened, so it was cool to hear about them from the band member's perspectives. This is a LONG book and I'll admit to skimming through some of the sections with bands I wasn't interested in, but if you were a fan of the era, there will be something in this book for you.

4 stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

As a teen in the 80’s who was a little metal head (and proudly, I still am), I loved this book! All of my favorites are packed in to this gem. Mötley Crüe, Guns ‘n Roses, Van Halen, Ratt, Skid Row, Poison and countless others detail the good and bad that shaped their lives and careers back in the day. Not only musicians are giving details - we also have band managers, roadies and club managers giving insight.

The interview format is genius and gave the reader a realistic view of rockstar life in the 80’s. The “cast of characters” at the beginning of the book is awesome! I’m super nostalgic when it comes to music and still listen to these bands daily. They will always be my favorite and a big part of my life. Now if we could only get concerts to start back up again I’d be in heaven! I can’t wait!

Rock on! 🤘🏼

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Tom Beaujour & Richard Bienstock for my advanced copy to read and review.

A well researched, extremely fun, oral history of the 80s rock scene. The authors talk with many of the essential figures associated with the genre and collect some great stories along the way. The only thing I would have loved to hear from were more of the stories from the woman, the girlfriends, groupies and music video stars of this mostly male-centric form .

Oh my goodness did this book take me back to my teenage years of rushing home after school to watch Dial MTV and see which of my favorite "hair bands" would be on the countdown that day. All of my favorites are represented here from Motley Crue to Poison, Skid Row to my ultimate favorite Bon Jovi. It was fun learning about how these bands started and what ultimately led to their demise. The interviews with the band members, from the well-known such as Nikki Sixx to the less-known like Steve Brown from Trixter, this book was packed with anecdotes about the rise of fall of the 'hair band" era. For anyone who was or still is a fan of these bands, I highly recommend this fun read!

Subtitle: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

I was in my twenties for nearly the entire decade of the 1980s. I enjoyed a lot of the popular music of that era, but was always a bit puzzled by the success of the hard rock “hair” metal bands. When I saw the listing for this book on Net Galley, I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn more about those bands and the music they produced.


The book began with the story of Van Halen playing the L.A. club scene and signing their first record deal in the late 1970s. Although they became wildly successful, the record companies hesitated to sign more rock and roll bands afterward, preferring to invest in punk or new wave music. The early 1980s saw groups like Quiet Riot, Ratt, Motley Crue, Poison, and many many other form and prosper in the Los Angeles area. Groups like Bon Jovi, Twisted Sister, and Skid Row emerged from the New York/New Jersey area at the same time. Hits by Quiet Riot, Ratt, and Twisted Sister earned major airplay on MTV, leading to the golden age of the hair bands.

It was fascinating to learn how the various groups came together and how they adjusted their lineups during their quest for success, signed with recording labels, and fine tuned their music and stage performance skills. The advent of grunge put an end to the hair band era but not permanently, as many of the groups have become as popular as ever on nostalgia tours.

I gave Nothin’ But A Good Time five stars. I’ve read a lot of non-fiction books so far this year, but I think this one is the most fun read yet. If I could change one thing about it, I would add reminders every now and then about which band is being discussed – there are simply so many bands, group members, producers, agents, etc. that it became difficult to keep them all straight.

A fascinating, personal, memoir to the behind the scenes of rock music of the 80’s. They are all covered here, the ones that allowed you to let your hair down and bang your head around, swept you away in love ballads and the ones you wanted to live vicariously through. Unapologetically, the bad boys and girls tell of their glory days, in their own words. Warning, no censure or filters. It is a big book and reads more like a transcript, broken up by topics. Not an easy read, but certainly enlightening. I received a complimentary copy from the publisher through NetGalley and all opinions expressed are my own, freely given.