Book Review.“Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks” by Stephen Davis.

[ricohv]

This is all SO disappointing. Although I haven't read his book HAMMER OF THE GODS I know it was very popular & I thought it was regarded as the definitive biography of Led Zeppelin. I was hoping for the same for this bio but apparently it's dreck like all the rest & I will have to continue waiting for the definitive Stevie bio
Ricoh V.
I just Googled HAMMER OF THE GODS to see if it is a highly regarded as I thought it was & turned up this on Wikipedia (and this actually says a lot about the author):

"The book has been the subject of much criticism. Chicago Tribune music reviewer Greg Kot, called it "one of the most notorious rock biographies ever written".[3] All three surviving members of the band have cast doubts on its accuracy,[4] with one article summarising their collective view of the book as a "catalogue of error and distortion."[5]

Guitarist Jimmy Page has stated:

I think I opened [the book] up in the middle somewhere and started to read it, and I just threw it out the window. I was living by a river then, so it actually found its way to the bottom of the sea.[6]

According to the band's vocalist Robert Plant:

The guy who wrote that book knew nothing about the band. I think he'd hung around us once. He got all his information from a guy who had a heroin problem who happened to be associated with us. The only thing I read was the "After Zeppelin" part, because I was eager to get on with the music and stop living in a dream state.[7]

The band's bassist, John Paul Jones stated:

It's a very sad little book. It made us out to be sad little people. He ruined a lot of good, funny stories.[8]

One of the author's primary sources of information was Richard Cole, the band's tour manager. As Plant explained:

He [Davis] did a lot of investigations with a guy who used to work with Led Zeppelin, Richard Cole, who, over the years, had shown deep frustration at not being in a position to have any authority at all. He was tour manager and he had a problem which could have been easily solved if he'd been given something intelligent to do rather than check the hotels, and I think it embittered him greatly. He became progressively unreliable and, sadly, became a millstone around the neck of the group.

These stories would filter out from girls who'd supposedly been in my room when in fact they'd been in his. That sort of atmosphere was being created, and we were quite tired of it. So eventually we relieved him of his position and in the meantime he got paid a lot of money for talking crap. A lot of the time he wasn't completely well. And so his view of things was permanently distorted one way or another.[9]

Former manager Peter Grant in an interview with Proximity magazine called the book "completely unreliable" and that Davis had asked for money from him over the manuscript, before publication. Grant refused.[10]"