Fargo Rock City

This memoir by the author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs details growing up in a small Midwestern town in the 1980s while loving heavy metal music.

Empirically proving that—no matter where you are—the kids wanna rock, this is Chuck Klosterman’s classic memoir of growing up as a shameless metalhead in Wyndmere, North Dakota (population: 498). With a voice like Ace Frehley’s guitar, Klosterman hacks his way through hair-band history, beginning with that fateful day in 1983 when his older brother brought home Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil. The fifth-grade Chuck wasn’t quite ready to rock—his hair was too short and his farm was too quiet—but he still found a way to bang his nappy little head. Before the journey was over, he would slow-dance to Poison, sleep innocently beneath satanic pentagrams, lust for Lita Ford, and get ridiculously intellectual about Guns N’ Roses. C’mon and feel his noise.

Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award

Praise for Fargo Rock City

“Writing about American pop culture doesn’t get any better than this, or any funnier, or any more readable. If you love rock ‘n’ roll, you will love Fargo Rock City.” —Stephen King

“You NEED to read this book. This man is a great writer, and the book is not just about hair metal bands but about how music feels, how media-saturated culture feels, and how it’s all in the details.” —David Byrne

“The Great Gatsby of heavy-metal literature.” —Rolling Stone