Despite the provocative name this book has nothing to do with with the devil. It is a tale of sex, drugs and rock & roll as it traces an alternate Randy Pratt through a debauched rock career that takes in the sixties through the present time. A cast of characters both real and imaginary come in and out of his life, as you would expect in a tale of rock & roll excess. It's a fantasy life that could have happened and bits of which probably did.
My biggest observation is that this novel is a tad long at over 500 pages and does drag a bit. Then again the malaise era of the late seventies is tedious, no matter what kind of novel takes place in it. Some of the sex and drug scenes are so samey that they get tedious. At times it seems that the novel needed a bit of an edit to make it move along with more pace.
That said if you enjoyed Motley Crue's The Dirt and Hammer of the Gods then you might like this. The novel is all together believable if you know anything about the excesses of sixties and seventies rock stars. Some of the musical stuff in this book is quite interesting and fun. And the band evolving to keep up with times is interesting.
If you fancy a novel, told in the first person, about a musician and a band(s) that never existed as they evolve through the history of heavy rock this might be just up your street. Lucifer actually existed for a brief time in 1969-1970 but never got anywhere; Randy Holden (of Blue Cheer fame) was in the band.
Randy Pratt, the author, is part of the band reviewed in my weekly hard rock column, The Lizards, with a bunch of fellow heavy rock survivors.
Article comments