The Metal Files

The Crying Catman?

I’ve gotten into reading the autobiographies of some of my favorite musicians.  So far I’ve read the books by Ronnie Wood, Lemmy, Paul Di’Anno, Waylon Jennings, Tony Iommi, Ace Frehley and have just finished Peter Criss’ “From Makeup to Break Up”.  Much like Ace’s book, it was cool to read about the early KISS days and how they forged on through tough times until their imagery and music caught on to make them millions of dollars.  And typically in these sorts of stories, most of the money gets blown away up the nose, through the arm (not so much in Criss’ case), on women and extravagant living.  Criss talks about being the tough half-Italian kid who got in a lot of fights and hung out with mobsters yet cries like a baby almost every night.  I swear he talks about crying on almost every other page of the book.

Peter takes every opportunity to bash and insult Gene, who probably deserves it.  He also speaks a lot about Paul Stanley’s sexuality.  He calls Paul gay in just about every way possible without saying the actual word.

It was primarily an enjoyable read but throughout the book it was “Gene did this to hurt me” and “Paul did this to hurt me” and “Ace did that to hurt me” and “Fuck Gene”.  His claim of being taken advantage of through his stints in KISS, in my opinion, is more his fault than anyone else’s although he lays most of the blame on Gene, then Paul, then his ex-wife Deb and finally Ace.  This victim mentality drives me nuts and Peter rides that through the book.  He took poor decisions and he paid the price for them.  He could have also walked away early on, but chose not to.

If I was to recommend this book compared to Ace’s, I’d say go with Ace’s, even though his is probably a little more embellished than Peter’s.  Gene has a few books out now but I’m not really interested in them.  Paul supposed has one in the works, and I’m definitely picking that one up.