Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock-Review by Pat

Hello Everyone,

It was a lively and entertaining discussion today with a smaller turnout of only 5 attending the meeting.  The ratings ranged from 2.5 to 3.5 with the average at 3.10. 

We all enjoyed reading about Sammy Hagar’s personal struggle from rags to riches and how he overcame a disadvantaged childhood through hard work and his passion for music.  Sammy displayed a lot of qualities we felt were admirable such as his devotion to the people he loved and his dedication to his first wife, which although he cheated on her, he stuck by her for a long time period.  He had an interesting relationship with the Van Halen brothers and he knew not to get dragged down into their world of addiction.  Ultimately, Sammy’s business sense and success fueled fire to the disintegrating relationship with the Van Halen brothers and led to band’s demise.

There was agreement that the writing style of the book dragged down the rating as it was choppy, not fluent and his recital of events could have been condensed into a shorter, better written book.  We would have liked to have had more closure and an update at the end of the book as to what Sammy, his family members and friends were currently doing.  In general, it was interesting to have some insight into the life of a rock star and how truly different his lifestyle became as his fame increased – especially compared to our normal day lives.  Our feeling was that current day rock stars can’t get away with a lot of the experiences (i.e. group sex tents under the stage band) that happened in Sammy’s era due to cell phone cameras and the Internet.  

The next book on the list for next month is “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  We will at the Pinery on June 8^th at 9:30 am. See you all then and have a great weekend!

Pat