Is the Paul Stenning book REALLY that bad? Advice please..

S

SClub7fan

Prowler
I have decided to buy my brother, a life-long Maiden fan, a book for Christmas. Unfortunately, I have read TOO MANY reviews about the books, I felt that the Paul Stenning book would be a good choice but the reviews I've read are mostly bad. Has anyone read it who could give me another honest review, to help me make up my mind? The Ross Halfin book is a few years old so that's put me off, and the Photo History doesn't have enough dialogue in. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Regards x
Sorry, I should have introduced myself instead of charging straight in. I'm not really an SClub7 fan although I do quite like Rachel Steven's dresses on Strictly..... You seem like a decent bunch, I hope you will be kind to me  :-/
 
Can't say I really read it, but I did spend about 10 minutes looking at the Stenning book out at a bookstore once. At least I'm pretty sure it was the Stenning book - it wasn't any of the others you mention. And if it was the Stenning book, it's a disaster. The only saving grace was that maidenfans.com is cited in the bibliography. (Material from the Commentary was quoted but attributed to the site as a whole instead of just the Commentary.)

It looked like a really amateurish publishing job. Typos abound; Mr. DICKtionary got a headache. While I didn't see any factual errors, I saw a lot of stuff that looked really questionable to me. Of those 10 minutes, about 8 of them felt like rubbernecking a train wreck.

The only other Maiden book I've read is Run To The Hills (an edition that must be 10 years old by now at least). But if you can find a modern edition of that, I'd get that.

This isn't really a 100% endorsement of the Mick Wall book, though. There really isn't any good Maiden bio, just a few mediocre ones. And Wall's is just barely the best of those.
 
Run to the Hills fails in one respect: it spends the first half of the book detailing every concert, tour and event with the band from 75-82, the ''golden era'' is covered in very few pages. I guess the ''old days'' are more interesting, but it would be nice to have the same details on that era as well.
 
Honestly, I don't really think so. There's a lot to tell about the '75-'82 era because so much happened then... while in the 'golden age' the tours just went by themselves, and there was more of a routine and very little change. From some point on, the only thing worth telling is classic rock 'n' roll excesses, and Maiden seem to have been a very boring band in that regard.
 
Perun said:
From some point on, the only thing worth telling is classic rock 'n' roll excesses, and Maiden seem to have been a very boring band in that regard.
Click to expand...
              that is why theyll never be on VH1s "Behind the Music" :D
 
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