Amazon.ca:Customer reviews: Everyone Loves You When You're Dead: Journeys into Fame and Madness

Top positive review

Entertaining

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 19, 2011

Definitely a very entertaining book! However, at times it can feel a bit like watching TV with someone who's channel surfing. Stumble upon something great and then in an instance its on to the next channel. I understand Strauss wrote this book in that manner, but some parts do leave you wanting more, while others you can't wait to get over.

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Christopher Lawrence

I thought it might be more like his other books

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 20, 2015

I thought it might be more like his other books. I really enjoyed "The Game" and "Emergency" but this one wasn't like his other books that grabbed my attention so I couldn't put it down. I'm almost half way though and really struggling to pick it up. I've read many others in the meantime.

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From Canada

David

Entertaining

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 19, 2011

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One person found this helpful

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Christopher Lawrence

I thought it might be more like his other books

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 20, 2015

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 1, 2016

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Great book, great condition, very happy customer!

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 19, 2015

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Amazing book. Worth multiple reads.

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Natalie Lipson

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 2, 2015

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Super

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Got Style

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 15, 2011

It occurs to me while reading this book that Neil Strauss has met a lot of people. Over 3,000 close encounters of the celebrity kind. Andy Warhol said; "Everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame." Not everyone gets more than 15 minutes, but thankfully most of those that do get some inclusion here, the permanent wavers. Presented in the form of dialogue. A veritable who's who of our cultural icons.

And, if you're a writer for the Rolling Stone, that's a tremendous entree into the rarefied world we all know perhaps not intimately, and would like to enter. Imagine being able to meet your idol.

Even a short encounter encounter can turn into an adventure, if you're hanging out with Motley Crue, and two band members get marched away in handcuffs, or the wife of a bluesman who cannot distinguish between perception and reality makes a ridiculous accusation, and the police get called. Maybe Tom Cruise will take you under his wing and explain Scientology, or perhaps Courtney Love uses you as her personal pin cushion.

Beatling o'er the bass, a Starr drummer, those guys who gather no moss, Pinball Wizards, Crocodile Rockers, climbing Plant's Stairway. Ozzy to Orlando. Bloom's flowering self doubt. Cruise control or lack thereof. Life after Love, how Ali Khan fawns fan mania, and puts his fans in trance, how dangerous it can be to perform music in certain parts of the world. Cher and cockroaches. Eight years to make a famous song, and many songwriters to make it number one. Mindreading with Britney. Success, excess, demon wrestling. Checking outrageous facts. Cockblocking copy editors. Some still haven't found what they're looking for. Sometimes you just want a girl who will sit on a bottle. All of life is here. Even aliens. Don't ask. Not everyone successfully wrestles their demons.

The one thing that I felt lacking was the Index. I wanted to look up Ali Khan again, p331. Almost no one mentioned in the book is mentioned in the Index. I suggest you highlight or bookmark what you may wish to refer to again.

Sometime ago, I looked up the most sampled artists. Rick James was one of the top 3, along with Parliament eg.Mothership Connection, and was famously sampled by MC Hammer. I found the Rick James vignettes fascinating, how drugs influence every decision he makes,an excellent and somewhat poignant peek into the murky mind of an addict.

This would make a great coffee table book. I read the epilogue several times. Derive your self esteem from within not from other people's opinions. If you are like me you may have some attention deficient friends, and this book with its short vignettes provides great talking points. You may also find yourself googling some of the more memorable yet less familiar names. As far as other Strauss books go, certainly get The The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, if you don't already have it, with its faux black leather binding, and a red string bookmark, it's the bible of seduction. The closer you look the more you can see its principles at work here.

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From other countries

Bradley Bevers

If Charlie Sheen Were A Book . . .

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 10, 2011

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Everyone Loves You When You're Dead is an addictive, guilty pleasure on the surface but much more that underneath. Reading these short interviews, never longer than a couple of pages, gives you insight into many famous lives. These short bursts of interviews, snapshots of one's life really, end up conveying more than entire biographies do. It reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking , and the discussion about knowing people. Gladwell contends that you actually know someone better after 5 minutes than you do after 50 years; that first impressions trump our ability to wade through someone else projection of themselves every time.

These short interviews are all interesting, many of them sad, many of them surprising. I particularly liked the Colbert interview, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Loretta Lynn, and others. The Marilyn Manson, Trent Reznor, and Russell Brand interviews were intense, exposing enough make it uncomfortable to read (Especially the Brand interview - skip it). The interviews with Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and other modern pop stars were profoundly sad . . .

In short, there are over 500 pages guaranteed to entertain you, provoke you, and offend you. The people that Neil interviews do not pull any punches and some of them you will probably want to forget about as soon as you read them. The book accomplishes its goal surprisingly well - the author uses a few minutes of interviews to reveal much about their life. While you may not like the people he chose for the book, and you may not like their answers, you cannot argue that these are real portraits of very real individuals. Be sure and read the epilogue at the end, it sums up the purpose of the book and makes it easy to take away something from it more than the interviews themselves.

3 people found this helpful

Nooooo no no

The Best Storyteller of His Generation

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 21, 2011

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There's something truly special about Neil Strauss and his writing. It's hard to explain if you haven't read one of his books. It doesn't matter what you think of Rolling Stone, the pick up artist community or any of the celebrities that Neil has worked with - ultimately Neil is probably the best story teller of his generation and for that you have to give him the recognition he deserves.

I wanted to get well into ELYWYD before writing a review because I wanted to write as sincere a review as possible. It turns out that ELYWYD does not disappoint - Neil, using many of the tricks he elucidated in The Game, keeps you enthralled as you turn each page. Maybe tricks isn't the right word... maybe a better phrase is "best practices." Whatever you call it, Neil knows how to command the attention of people - certainly in his writing and, from everything I've heard, in person as well.

I couldn't care less about half the celebrities in this book - this book isn't really about them. This book is about exploring the psyche of famous people. There are a lot of celebrity interviews documented in ELYWYD and almost everyone will find at least one famous person whom they enjoy learning about. But the best part of this book is becoming enthralled in the story of someone you couldn't care less about. For me this was Madonna. I couldn't care less about her before I read ELYWYD because I had a generally negative impression of her. Reading Neil's interview with her definitely changed my perspective - I was really surprised to learn that Madonna is far more intellectual than her public image would lead you to believe.

I recommend you pick up this book and see if Neil can change your perspective on something or someone.

5 people found this helpful

Erik Ketzan

So much more than a compilation of interviews

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 15, 2011

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I was pleasantly surprised by Everyone Loves You When You're Dead (ELYWYD?). I was expecting a collection of Strauss' interviews over the years, assembled, like every other such book, in some kind of mundane order-- the interview with Madonna, then Gaga, then Bowie, etc.-- I was expecting to read the interviews I was interested in and skip the ones I wasn't.

Thankfully, ELYWYD is so much more than that. The book splices dozens of Strauss' interviews into a narrative so that, unlike most books of interviews, you actually want to read this one cover to cover. The narrative sometimes follows a theme (contrasting different rock stars' views on faith, struggles with addictions, their childhoods, battles with record companies, etc.), and other times explores a particular story (for instance why some members of Pink Floyd don't speak to one another and why Pete Townshend resisted re-forming The Who).

Like most of Strauss' books, this one's a page-turner. I read over 300 pages in one day. The book goes down so easy that it's easy to take for granted how *big* it is, in every sense. It's the condensation of apparently a couple decades worth of rock journalism, and assembling such a crazily entertaining narrative from what must have been thousands of hours of interview tapes must have been no easy task. But as entertaining and fun as the book is, it's also a deep and surprisingly illuminating exploration of fame, art, and ego. It's a major and important book on music, stardom, and, well, the times we live in.

There's a lot more to say, and I'm sure many other reviewers will jump in and say it. Anyone with a serious interest in music or pop culture in general will probably devour Strauss' ELYWYD.

14 people found this helpful

Duncan

Neil Knows People

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 22, 2011

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I've a big fan of Neil's writing style, and he delivers another book you won't want to put down with ELYWYD. What really makes this book a great read is how well Neil understands people. He builds trust and rapport during his interviews and you won't believe some of the fascinating answers he gets because of this. In ELYWYD, Neil has gone back through hundreds of his past interviews and picked the most honest, interesting parts to show you what really makes the celebrities he's interviewed tick.

One of the first things I noticed when I began reading ELYWYD was the format of the book is written entirely in an interview format. I was nervous this choice might take away some of the unique personality Neil's writing style brings to his other books. It didn't take long before I got lost in the story and stopped even thinking about the "interview format". Neil does an amazing job of piecing together parts of interviews with different celebrities in a way that tells a bigger story. The individual pieces are interesting to read in themselves, but the best part of EYLWYD, in my opinion, is how Neil intertwines all these stories throughout the book. Trust me, just read it from front to back (instead of skipping around) and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Overall, ELYWYD is another great book from Neil Strauss. It's entertaining, addictive, and even manages to teach you a lot about people. I would definitely recommend this book to my friends (and actually have now that I've had a chance to read it).

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

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