What You Want is in the Limo by Michael Walker on the cover promises to go “On the Road with Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and The Who...” However, I was left disappointed with the lack of “on the road” content. I was born in mid 80s but my dad had me listening to the music of the 70s since I can remember. I have always told people I was supposed to have lived during the 60s and 70s. My first concert was Van Morrison at Jones Beach and I have so much Eric Clapton on my iPhone that when I shuffle songs it still plays 2 or more Clapton songs in a row. So needless to say, I was more than excited to get a behind the scenes peek at the life of a 1970s rock star. I was anticipating off-the-wall crazy stories.
The book's introduction had me all fired up to dive into the good stuff. I had YouTube up ready to play every song mentioned. In the first chapter, we are given a background into each band. Break-ups, make-ups, new members, and new names. It was a little tedious but necessary. We are then ushered into the making of each band's iconic album: Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, the Who's Quadrophenia, and Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies. Finally, we are told about the band's managers and how they, in time when music industry wasn't big business, handled their respective band differently.
At last, we are on the road. The tours have begun and I am ready to hear about the dirt. Well, NOTHING. The only stories we get are ones that were in the press at that time and pretty infamous stories in themselves. The one secret that was revealed was that most of the stories about the band and their antics were made up. Now I am disappointed and angry. Bring on the groupies! Again, NOTHING. I wasn't even given any deeper information about Lori Maddox! She was hardly mentioned.
The part of the book I really liked was the description of the bands shows. Michael Walker did a fantastic job of bringing the shows to life in his writing. This book left me feeling like a piece of me was missing because I never attended a live Alice Cooper show or got to see a Pete Townshend meltdown in person.
I give this book 2 out of 5 stars. Like the band's tours, the book lost steam. I keep hoping for more and I was only more disappointed each chapter. I wanted to know about the road life not a family tree for each band. The information provided was good and would be a great resource if writing a paper about one of these bands. Also, Michael Walker should have left the thesaurus at home. Some of the word choices were ridiculous. I would recommend reading this on an e-reader so you can quickly access word definitions. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person and I spent quite a bit of time between this book and a dictionary.
*I received this book for free through GoodReads First Reads.
