Everyone Loves You When You're Dead: Journeys into Fame and Madness

by Neil Strauss

Overview

Neil Strauss can uncover the naked truth like nobody else. With his groundbreaking book The Game, Strauss penetrated the secret society of pickup artists; now, in Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, his candid, surprising, and often hysterical interviews reveal the hidden sides of 120 of the world’s biggest celebrities, from Hugh Heffner to Johnny Cash to Snoop Dogg and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061543678
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/15/2011
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	134,756
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Neil Strauss is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Game, Rules of the Game, Emergency, and Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead. He is also the co-author of three other New York Times bestsellers - Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Mötley Crüe's The Dirt and Marilyn Manson's The Long Hard Road out of Hell. A writer for Rolling Stone, Strauss lives in Los Angeles.

What People are Saying About This

Brian Wilson

“One of the longest and greatest interviews I’ve ever had.”

Britney Spears

“The best interview of my life.”

Bo Diddley

“If you were a girl, I’d f*ck you.”

Chuck Berry

“We could do fifteen minutes in Vegas.”

Phil Collins

“Well Neil, f*ck you.”

Lady Gaga

“We might as well have had sex now.”

Dave Marsh

“The best and most honest daily newspaper reporter rock has ever seen.”

Nikki Sixx

“God bless the demons—and Neil Strauss too.”

Editorial Reviews

Journalist Strauss, who has coauthored books with the band members of Mötley Crüe (The Dirt) and porn superstar Jenna Jameson (How to Make Love Like a Porn Star) now offers a terrific look at the dysfunctional livelihoods of stardom, a theme based on his many interviews for various publications. Strauss went back to his original interview tapes and notes in search of moments—mostly unpublished—that reveal "the truth or essence of each person, story, or experience." He liberally and ingeniously cuts back and forth between scenes, such as pairing the youthful, arrogant claims of Oasis that the band could have been the Beatles in the 1960s with the tortured feeling of the Who's aging leader Pete Townshend ("All we can do in the future is look back"). In other instances, he shows the self-doubt shared by Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner and actor Orlando Bloom. But the best moments come when Strauss has earned such trust of his subjects that he becomes part of some very weird scenes, all of which are presented in all their often hilarious detail: shooting guns with Ludacris, getting kidnapped by Courtney Love, making Lady Gaga cry, and shopping for Pampers with Snoop Dogg. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"We might as well have had sex now."

Lady - Gaga

If you were a girl, I’d f*ck you.

Bo Diddley

We could do fifteen minutes in Vegas.

Chuck Berry

One of the longest and greatest interviews I’ve ever had.

Brian Wilson

The best interview of my life.

Britney Spears

Well Neil, f*ck you.

Phil Collins

The best and most honest daily newspaper reporter rock has ever seen.

Dave Marsh

God bless the demons—and Neil Strauss too.

Nikki Sixx

We might as well have had sex now.

Lady Gaga

This book contains unpublished tidbits from 227 interviews that rock critic Strauss—who's coauthored books with Mötley Crüe, Jenna Jameson, and Marilyn Manson—has conducted over his career writing for the New York Times and Rolling Stone, among other publications. Each snippet is only a few pages long, with a brief introductory paragraph, and the book rarely lists interview dates. Most pieces emphasize the celebrated subjects' more controversial moments or disturbing attributes but reveal little about them that is not already common knowledge. The majority of the interviewees are musicians—e.g., Snoop Dogg, Pink, Rick James, Patti Smith, Jerry Lee Lewis, Brian Wilson, Lady Gaga—with a smattering of other cultural icons, including Timothy Leary, Jackie Chan, and Ben Stiller. VERDICT Celebrity gossip can be addictive. This excellent bathroom read is boiled down like little rocks of crack.—Lani Smith, Ohlone Coll. Lib., Fremont, CA

Library Journal