Nothin’ but a Good Time: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Glam Metal

British music journalist Quirk channels his passion for metal—“one of the largest forces in popular music”—into an illuminating cultural history in this entertaining debut. Quirk’s focus is glam metal—a subgenre marked by “hook-laden tracks”—which was “as much a visual phenomenon as a musical one,” fronted by such rock stars as David Bowie (“at its more nuanced end”) and bands including Kiss and Skid Row. The movement began in the 1970s, when, as Quirk trenchantly observes, the “spaced-out, wide-eyed optimism of the Sixties was jettisoned in favour of a harder, more focused sound.” Though many consider glam metal to be “a hilarious relic,” Quirk convincingly argues that, instead of being a footnote to 20th-century popular music, it was a legitimate creative force in the 1980s—helping build MTV, expanding the global reach of pop music, and attracting sellout crowds at concerts. He doesn’t shy away from his subject’s dark side—recounting deaths at concerts due to inadequate crowd control—and lends his narrative depth by noting how the genre functioned as an “embodiment of a positivity culture” amid the political and cultural crises (such as the Iran-Contra affair and the crack epidemic) happening in America during the Reagan administration. This is a head-banging good time. (Dec.)