What You Make It

Examples of hard rock musicians who’ve appealed to multiple generations are pleasantly frequent. Examples of such musicians who simultaneously straddle the black and white worlds, the gay and straight worlds, and the Christian and secular worlds are much less so. Doug (dUg) Pinnick—bassist, vocalist, songwriter, frontman, and focal point of King’s X—is that rare musician. His story is equal parts rock n’ roll survival and personal evolution. Sometimes these paths support one another, more often they clash. Their ultimate resolution is not just Doug’s story, or a musician’s story, it is a universally human story. Telling Doug’s tale requires also telling that of King’s X, and “What You Make It” goes further into the details of this beloved band’s evolution than any work so far. Doug, of course, is a musician. And ‘What You Make It’ is a music biography. But Doug is also black, gay, Christian and a child of the 1950s and ‘60s. The book fully explores each of these aspects of his life as well as how this combination had the unlikely outcome of creating a globally famous hard rock musician.