Fargo Rock City

Acclaim for

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

and

FARGO ROCK CITY

“The best music book ever to cause me to spend not one red cent shopping for new CDs, an unusual bargain. But whether or not you take the bait and undertake a massive reconsideration of Ratt, Poison, Def Leppard and their ilk, you'll glimpse your lonely hearted and dreamy teenage self in Klosterman's confessions.”

—Jonathan Lethem,
Crawdaddy

“It's easily the most implausible (and the most comically agile) piece of wildcat criticism I've come across in years. … Klosterman's book is terrific for a lot of reasons—it's an act of cultural bravery, a convincing argument for why this cranked-up music was important to a generation of kids, and a delicious attack on the pretensions of baby-boomer rock critics, who hated this stuff. What makes
Fargo Rock City
sing, however, is Klosterman's good-natured enthusiasm. … Thanks to
Fargo Rock City
and another book,
Bebe Buell's Rebel Heart,
this has been the best year in recent memory for fresh and heartfelt American rock writing.”

—Dwight Garner,
The New York Times Book Review

“This is what Lester Bangs would have written had he been a farmboy raised on a diet of Skid Row and KISS. Unfailingly smart and demonically opinionated. …”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Klosterman starts up with a bang, shifts gears often, and rarely idles. [
Fargo Rock City
] will strike a power chord. …”

—
Publishers Weekly

“It takes balls to publicly defend hair metal bands and brains to explain why these cheese masters have had such lasting importance in people's lives. Combining memoir, cultural criticism and historical analysis with heart from America's heartland, Klosterman makes his case. Writing with humor and relentless fanboy zeal, Klosterman's exegesis on Mötley Crüe alone places him among rock's greatest scribes. Break out the babes, the Buds, the butts and the mousse, ‘cause—after
Fargo Rock City
—Cinderella, Poison and Bon Jovi will never sound the same.”

—Dr. Donna Gaines, author of
Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids

“Klosterman may be the first totally postmodern rock critic.”

—
The Hartford Courant
(CT)

“This is the best music journalism book of the year.”

—
The Independent Weekly
(Durham, NC)

“If Greil Marcus had grown up in some repressed, oppressive, cold and remote farm town up on the Canadian border, subsisted on tallboys and fried food, read
Mad
magazine instead of Heidegger, and kept Whitesnake's debut album in heavy rotation on the boombox, then he very likely would have written a book like Chuck Klosterman's
Fargo Rock City
. … [M]akes for smart, fun reading. It may even prompt you to spin “Rock You Like a Hurricane” or “Cat Scratch Fever” again—God help us all.”

—
Phoenix New Times

“Klosterman's hilarious heavy metal odyssey will flick the Bic of every headbanger who's ever found salvation in a great Mötley Crüe riff. His sly, swaggering prose struts across the page like Axl Rose in his prime.”

—Marc Weingarten, author of
Station to Station: The Secret History of Rock and Roll on Television

“I spend about half my time thinking and writing about music and this is the best damn book I've read in several years. Nothing written about metal comes close. It deserves a place alongside Dave Marsh's
The Heart of Rock and Soul
, Greil Marcus'
Mystery Train
, Peter Guralnick's
Sweet Soul Music
, and Gary Giddins'
Visions of Jazz
at the very top of the list of the best books ever written about American music.”

—Craig Werner, author of
A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America

“Though often analytical,
Fargo Rock City
is so much fun that it feels more like a tribute than an intellectual exercise. In reality, it's both … perhaps the best book written on the topic.”

—
Billboard

“Either one of the saddest or greatest music books ever written.”****

—Q Magazine
(UK)

“Chuck Klosterman has written a loving and thoroughly unrepentant apology for the hair bands of the 1980s … good for insight, and plenty of fun to read.”

—No Depression

“As goofy as its subject,
Fargo Rock City
is part memoir, part barstool rant, and it is ridiculously engaging.”

—Eric Weisbard,
The New York Times Book Review

ALSO BY CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs:

A Low Culture Manifesto

Killing Yourself to Live:

85% of a True Story

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious

People and Dangerous Ideas

Downtown Owl:

A Novel

SCRIBNER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Klosterman

Epilogue copyright © 2002 by Chuck Klosterman

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Scribner trade paperback edition 2003

SCRIBNER
and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

DESIGNED BY ERICH HÖBBING

Set in Electra

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Klosterman, Chuck

Fargo rock city: a heavy metal odyssey in rural Nörth Daköta/Chuck Klosterman

p.       cm.

1. Heavy metal (Music)—Social aspects—United States. 2. North Dakota—Social life and customs—20th century. 3. Klosterman, Chuck. I. Title.

ML3918.R63 K56 2001

781.66—dc21          00–51575

ISBN 0-7432-0227-9

ISBN: 978-0-7434-0656-7 (print)
ISBN 978-1-4165-8952-5 (eBook)

ISBN 0-7434-0656-7 (Pbk)

“Glam Rock Revival” by Chuck Klosterman, reprinted with permission of the
Akron Beacon Journal,
November 13, 1998

Dedicated to my parents (who I hope never actually read this book), and in memory of Thad Holen (who I wish could have had the chance).

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