Guess I'm selling two tickets for Bruce Dickinson show. No Skunkworks = No Spambot.
Sell it for 10x more money when Bruce passes away.
I have to weigh in on this a bit.
If we're saying that the book is poorly written compared to other autobiographies - yes (and there is a reason for that, but I'll come to that later).
If we're saying that the book is poorly written considering his writing abilities then - also probably yes, but there are a lot of other factors to be considered. First, Bruce really hasn't written a lot. If we're considering lyrics, that could be counted as poetry. Poetry and prose are worlds apart, and even within prose, there are genres that don't guarantee that if you excel in one area, you'll also nail another. Hell, even within the same genre, some authors have problems when they're encountered with a different approach for the same work (ask any author who has just written his novel to write a query for it, and he'll probably tell you to fu** off). The less we say about Lord Iffy Boatrace - the better.
I don't think Bruce had any idea how to approach his autobiography except to just sit down and start writing (and it shows). I can't remember how much was redacted from the original manuscript (at least a third of it, if I remember right), but it shows that Bruce was primarily going for content instead of style. How he delivered that content on paper is exactly how I expected him to do it. Disjointed, uneven, sometimes too obscure, sometimes too detailed. The final product (the way the book was published) made me feel like I sat across Bruce in a pub, and he shared interesting anecdotes from his life over a pint of beer - and I loved that approach. It really felt genuine—a story told in the way he wanted it to be told. And that brings me to my second point.
A huge chuck of autobiographies is written by ghostwriters. Once you discover that, it doesn't take long to notice how some people who don't use more than 20 of the same words per day after 50–60 years suddenly pull out several stylistic figures. I'm not saying it's not possible or that it hasn't happened. But if it happened so often, maybe those same people should think of changing careers or maybe starting earlier with their "talent". I'm not a super fanboy, but from what I've heard and read from him in the past 20 years: Bruce's autobiography was Bruce's, from the first paragraph to the last one, no doubt about it. That's what makes it wobbly in quality. There was an editorial intervention (as it should be AFTER it was written!) but it was his style, his words and more importantly - his idea (which I cannot say about Adrian's book).
In the end, it all depends on where you "come from" before you read this book. People who are much more into music than books rated it well (and I agree with Mosh's point about his writing style). People who were more into books than music didn't rate that well, although I'm surprised that a big part of the criticism was aimed at the content instead of the style.
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