Sean Delaneys Hell Box
By: Bryan Kinnaird
Published 2005, 118 pages

A very thin but informative book.

The book about the man who together with Bill Aucoin discovered Kiss. The man who had a big part in shaping the band into the super-group they became. Sean was their first road manager, who loved them and was willing to sacrifice everything for them. This is a book that most fans had looked forward to since Sean first talked about It in 1995. Unfortunately Sean died in 2003 before the book was finished. So Bryan Kinnaird had to finish it after Sean’s death.

It’s a fairly short book with It’s 118 pages. But It’s 118 pages that are worth reading. Maybe not so much because of the Kiss stuff. But the book really paints a good picture of what kind of person Sean was. The first part of the book tells about Sean’s life before he met Bill Aucoin. Homophobes probably will have a problem with the content, but I found It very interesting. Bill seems to be the big love in Sean’s life, a love he was willing to sacrifice everything for. But who let down Sean after ten years, because of a situation were Sean just had tried to help Bill out.

If you have read some interviews with Sean It’ easy to get the impression that he is a real big mouth, who takes a lot of credit for Kiss making it. But in the book he really seems quite objective. He gives the band members most of the credit for the success themselves. He just tries to show how he polished the band into becoming a super-group instead og just another great band.

As a tour manager he seems to have been a pretty uncompromising, and helped Kiss a lot in difficult situations were a lesser personality would have had big problems.

The last part of the book is about is about his break up with Bill and Kiss, and his fight with drugs, until he fought the habit in 1983. How he came back from Australia just to find that all his bank accounts had been emptied. He also speculates about a death at the Aucoin management employee in the 70′s, who he believes was a mob hit. How this let the mafia have a big influence in the late 70′s and later. A situation who led up to his breakup with Bill Aucoin. Very interesting details that haven’t been told about before.

So a little about the book itself. Is Hellbox the book Sean spoke about from 1995 until his death in 2003? Probably not. The book is more like a skeleton to a book that could have been really good. It seems very strange that not more material was ready after eight years in the making. How much material Bryan J. Kinnaird had to work with I don’t know.

Sean also talked a lot about a lot of different people he would feature in his book that would confirm his stories. But non of them are to be seen in the book. The book is also completely without pictures, and that’s a big shame. There are so many pictures with Sean and Kiss so It’s strange that none are featured in the book.

I must admit I was very disappointed when I got this book. It could have been so much more. So when you read the book it feels like we only get a little peak of what this should have been. On the positive side stories are good and Kinnaird’s writing is great. It’s just that the book is so damn short.

Verdict: 6/10