Midnight Express & Jim Cornette-in book form!

This past Christmas I received the Midnight Express and Jim Cornette 25^th Anniversary Scrapbook written by Jim Cornette & Tim Ash. I have wanted this book for a long time after watching Cornette’s Youshoot where the book was brought up a lot and I wanted to read it. Over the past 2 months I’ve picked it up from time to time (not the biggest reader if I’m honest) but recently I went to London and the 1 plus hour train ride to and from really helped me finish it off. So I thought I’d give a little review of the book, promise I won’t spoil anything major.

Now in terms of the Scrapbook part of the title of this book there are a lot of pictures included here, there are odd ones put in to help tell a story and there are a few pages of just pictures including some hate mail which has one that is just a drawing of a hand giving a middle finger. So onto the main book it starts with an introduction/dedication to Ray Traylor who really got his first break in wrestling being the bodyguard of Jim Cornette, Ray would go on to become the Big Bossman in WWE.

The book starts of by looking at all 4 men’s (Cornette, Dennis Cordrey, Bobby Eaton & Stan Lane) careers before they would team up. During this chapter you really see how lucky Jim Cornette was in wrestling as he got his manager role with the team really early on in his career. You also see how often all 3 wrestlers would interact before teaming up. Now before the bulk of the book starts Jim explains what he believes “heat” is and this is a great chapter as heat back at that time was a great deal different to what it is today, wrestlers were literally attacked and almost killed due to the fans hatred of them.

So the bulk of the book starts at page 32 it covers the genesis of the group in Mid-South wrestling and the idea coming from Bill Watts. Over Jim’s career he kept detailed notes about every night they worked this included the match, the finish, how much money was drawn in and sometimes how many people attended. The book basically shows these notes off, which might sound boring but throughout this stories that occurred at the time are thrown in. There is also a chapter that explains the notes/results in details so you don’t get confused, to be honest that was a help as the odd DCOR, standing for Double Count Out of Ring, was there and I forgot what it stood for at some points.

The team consisting of Dennis, Bobby & Jim as a manager started off in Mid-South where they would win the tag team titles and the legendary feud between them and the Rock ‘n Roll Express would start off. In December 1984 the team wanted to head to Jim Crockett’s Mid-Atlantic NWA but ended up going to Fritz Von Erich’s WCCW which they hated a great deal and they only lasted a few months there before going to Crockett’s company. The majority of their career would take place there so a lot of the book is this.

A story about the team meeting up with Vince McMahon about going to WWF and the craziness that came out of it is a highlight. An interesting photo that is included for the Starrcade 1986 chapter is a pay check showing that they got paid $10,045 for their Scaffold match against the Road Warriors. Another pay check shows the talent would give up $25 to a wrestler who was injured (this happened for Barry Darsow and Magnum TA). Now one of the things I learnt in this book was why and how Condrey left the team and how Lane got in. I found out that Lane wasn’t the original choice, Jim wanted Tom Prichard but Dusty Rhodes chose Stan Lane a better choice in my view.

A story highlighting how a match against 2 jobbers who got over (the Mulkey Brothers) ended up being a super-heated affair in the jobbers hometown. After November 1987 a lot more stories are told in the book as this was when the team started to hate the company they worked for, they started having very few opponents which was surprising considering the company had 2 tag titles at the time and a packed tag division. In November 1988 the company was brought out and it began changing into WCW, Jim Herd would be introduced as the new boss and hell would commence. It’s amazing to see what they had to go through, like starting of a feud with the Original Midnight Express and having it killed off by Herd, having to work with the infamous Dynamic Dudes and the random duo of Z-Man & Brian Pillman. You really get the idea that working with the company was nothing but frustration and this ultimately ended up with Stan Lane & Jim Cornette walking out on the company, Bobby would stay and ended up working with WCW for years after.

That closed of the career retrospective of the book the next chapter looks at what each person did after the Express ended and then looks at the reunions the team would do at reunion shows (shock horror) including the first time that all 4 men would team together, in Ring of Honor. Near the end of the book Jim Cornette shares a few stories this includes some legal battles the team faced, a look at how Jim Crockett tried to explain how the talent was paid on shows and the theory being put to use, a look at the ring introduction that Cornette would do, a look at some of the comedy spots the team loved to use, some of Cornette’s favourite one-liners, ribs the guys played on each other and 2 Christmas poems Cornette wrote.

That closed out the book. Honestly this is a book you can power through if you wanted to but it’s worth the read. Granted running through the endless results can be annoying at times, you often get lost at times but it’s broken up very well with some great stories. The book is only £35, Jim Cornette will sign it as well for free. I really loved this book, the Express have a career that is worth talking about and it really highlights how underrated they all were at the time, I find that the Express is often overlooked when you look back at that time period but they were not only amazing workers but a great heel attraction that could get a real intense heat level to their matches. Again I would highly recommend this book to any wrestling fan out there.

I would like to add that this review was hard to do as I really didn’t want to ruin any of the book if you decide to go read it so I tried not to go into that much detail. The book is quite big and I only scratched the surface of what was inside it.