It was both an intensely interested and incredibly frustrating book. The interviews with Chuck and the information on the band's difficult early years were pure gold. The back story on how Patton joined and it's connection to Mr Bungle's first record deal is something every Faith No More fan should read.
But the book damn near drove me insane. It's in a large format and full of photos. That's great. But the layout is all over the place. Black text on white text, white text on black text the next page. Huge illustration images behind the text in not-quite-grey-enough so that the text is difficult to read. It's obvious something majorly wrong happened to the layout. Bold starts and finishes when it shouldn't, there are large spaces in strange places. It's almost as if the book was finished then something was added which ruined the spacing and they didn't bother to fix it.
I'd complain about the spelling and the typos but I'd be opening myself up a bit there.
Most frustrating for me was that none of the photos were labelled. They weren't even referred to. Here are so many fantastic photos and I've no idea when they were taken. There are some of the early years that could have done with a note on who the unfamiliar faces were. But no.
It was fantastic though... and I'm glad it exists. The large format helps to hide the fact it isn't really all that long (although MUCH longer than I expected). I wonder how it would go reprinted in "real" book for and the photos plonked in the middle in a glossy section like most band biography's these days.
Unfortunately it finished at 1993, just as the band kick Jim out of the band. There is no follow-up. The book has long been out of print.
I think if someone was to reformat it, source more interviews, it could do really well. I think the band has been broken up for long enough you could get some really good quotes out of everyone. But they've also been broken up long enough they might not be interested anymore...