Lucifer is a fictitious band that features Blue Cheer replacement guitarist Randy Holden. The band joins up with the main character and his buddy and together they form the ultimate power trio. This book is more of a fantasy than anything else as no band, not even the mighty Led Zeppelin, could have done what the fake Lucifer did.

The novel is in the 500 page range, making it a tough one to read, as there are times it really drags and turns into a musicians equipment wank off book; too much tech talk. There are numerous scenes of group sex and orgies. I never thought group sex and orgies could get boring but author Randy Pratt found a way – namely having to many of them!

The band Lucifer ends up being the biggest band in history, makes the last recordings with Jim Morrison, splinters off into mega-successful pop bands, cures cancer and even makes the reader a peanut butter sandwich to enjoy while reading the book. In other words, Lucifer is too successful to believe, even if this is just a fictional book. The main character becomes the Jesus Christ of the rock world and does everything but walk on water. It is just too damn farfetched to believe. Sure, tales of sex and drugs ran rampant in 1970’s hard rock bands. The scenes described concerning these issues are probably pretty accurate. It is the do good nature of the main characters that just becomes too hard to believe. People like this just do not exist. Everyone has a bit of evil in them.

Now that I have dissected all that is wrong with the book, I will tell you what is right about it. Lucifer is a very cool fairy tale. It sticks a fake band into the real world of hard rock. It takes the reader on an inside trek to the way it was in the music business. There are tragedies that befall our characters, there is self-indulgence that catches up to them and there is death. The book is a very fun read for any fan of rock n’ roll. It will captivate you at times, and even take you to another world filled with everything you could imagine the rock n roll world to be.

Randy Pratt, who is a member of the rock band The Lizards, is the author of the book. He writes the story from a mix of “how cool would it have been if this actually happened” and strange but true stories from the dark alleys of rock n’ roll. Could it be better? Sure it could. Is it still worth checking out? Hell yes.

The final thing to say about this review is that there was a band called Lucifer that started out in the late 1960’s that actually did contain guitarist Randy Holden. Unlike the fairy tale band in the book, however, they failed to conquer the world.