David Konow

David Konow is a music and film writer whose work favors oral history, industry detail, and the voices of people who shaped popular culture. Crown’s 2002 edition of Bang Your Head carries the full subtitle The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal. Konow spent three years interviewing musicians, managers, record-company figures, and others connected with the scene. The resulting history follows heavy metal from early groups such as Black Sabbath through arena success, music television, the hair-metal period, and the arrival of grunge. Rather than treating the genre only as a sequence of records, he examines the business decisions, personalities, fashions, and audience loyalties surrounding it. Konow has written for publications including Guitar World, Creative Screenwriting, and Psychotronic. He later brought a similar behind-the-scenes method to Reel Terror, his history of frightening films. Together, the books show his interest in genres that built devoted audiences even when critics dismissed or misunderstood them.