Paranoid: Black Days with Sabbath and Other Rock Icons - Softcover

Like all the greatest rock books ever written, this is not a book about rock music; it is a book about rock life. Hard-hitting iconoclastic tour de force, written with affection, rudeness and wincing honesty, PARANOID proves that music can be an era for moral choices - that it can quite literally change your life. Mick Wall was a teenage Black Sabbath fan who, leaving school with no qualifications, somehow found himself working with the band. These people, whom he first new only as pictures on his bedroom wall, would help seal his fate forever. As he writes, It was never about what happened on stage, it was about what happened afterwards, when the crowd had gone and the bands could really start to play. Written in prose that pulsates with rock's own rythms, and featuring a remarkable cast of characters - including Sabbath and their notorious singer Ozzy Osbourne, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, Kate Bush David Bowie, Guns & Roses, Stevie Nicks and many, many others -PARANOID is not just the story of one man, or even one band, but a remarkably frank inside look at the rock industry in all its tawdry, self-deluding glory. Far too slowly the truth dawned, writes Wall For much of my life, I had been a desperate, hand to mouth junkie in a corrupt, multi-billion dollar industry that didn't give a fuck

This is not a book about rock music: it is a book about rock life. A Black Sabbath fan from a working-class family in London, Mick Wall found a job with the band when he left school and began an association with a group of individuals who would seal his fate forever. In this book, he tells the story of Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, and provides a frank, inside look at the rock industry. A cast of characters appears throughout, including Jimmy Page, Axl Rose, Jon Bon Jovi, Lemmy, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Def Leppard and Deep Purple.