The Hal Leonard Acoustic Metal 37 book has been out since 2005, and I still get requests from people to borrow this book. To which I say – buy your own! It’s always good to learn things by ear or by getting the tab online, but books like this are often more useful because you get the words and music in book, along with a play along CD. On the CD you get backing tracks, so once you learn the songs you can play along and practice.
I probably like this book because it has some of my favorite hair metal songs of all time, and let’s face it – I am a child of the 80’s. This printing is now in version 2, and you get 16 songs in the book, including Every Rose Has Its Thorn (Poison), Love of a Lifetime (Firehouse), Signs (Bob Dylan cover by Tesla), When the Children Cry (White Lion), She Talks to Angels (Black Crowes), and To Be With You (Mr. Big). One of my favorite songs is the one done on 12 string guitar, Hole Hearted (Extreme). It’s funny, the first version of this book and CD set basically was acoustic 80’s hair metal (with the exception of maybe The Black Crowes). In 2014 when the reissued this songbook they changed the name to “Acoustic Unplugged Volume 37” and added in some pop songs like Fake Plastic Trees (Radiohead), Lake of Fire (Nirvana), Wake Me When September Ends (Green Day), and Hey There Delilah (Plain White T’s). All in all these are great songs, it’s just not an acoustic metal songbook anymore. The original songs from v1 that were acoustic metal, however, are still there – so all is not lost.
This is nice little book that you can build up a little repertoire from. Trust me, once you have it, your buddies will want to borrow it too.
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