This book is the autobiography of Slash, lead guitarist of Guns N' Roses. The subtitle of the book is "It Seems Excessive But That Doesn't Mean It Didn't Happen", pretty accurate but really funny. While trudging through the remains of Dawkin's epic atheist rant, this was a welcome diversion. I saw this book at a Heathrow magazine store while mom and Reba and I were waiting for our flight to Paris, and decided to buy it as a "present" for Reba, of course she laughed once and refused to read it, which suited me just fine. I got started in Honfleur managed to charge through 458 pages in about 3 days. :)
Slash is clearly fairly bright, utterly uneducated, and a massive junkie. His writing isn't as "then dig THIS man, I was all like trying bang this hot chica-rella, and then this totally crazy dude busts in and: YOWZA!" as the David Lee Roth book, and it's not as gratuitously detailed as the Motley Crue biography (if I have received honest reports from my friends), but otherwise, it's about what you might think.
I feel that I should justify why I read a book like this:
1. It was just fun to read about rock stars screwing groupies, taking drugs, trashing hotel rooms, being losers, etc., especially as a change from all the HBR and SMR I've been choking down lately.
2. I naturally have an interest in rock bands and their screwed up dynamics, having spent most of my life playing in them.
3. I wanted to know the answers to a couple of basic questions: why did GNR break up, what was Axl really like, were those guys really as hardcore as they seemed to be, were those guys really as big of junkies as they seemed to be, what is Slash's real name, and what was Slash's reaction to the song lyrics where Axl famously attracted nationwide disapproval for singing a line about "police and niggers" (Slash is half black).
The answers to the above questions are, in order: because Axl is an ego-maniacal dick, an ego-maniacal dick, yes totally, yes totally, Saul Hudson, and we'll never know because it didn't come up in the book.
Of note are Slash's extensive drug and alcohol problems. A daily heroin user on and off (currently off) for years, at the height of his alcohol abuse he was drinking one half gallon of vodka per day plus shots and beer at nightclubs. The vodka started as soon as he got up, at one point he was leaving a glass of it next to his bed so he didn't have to have the shakes on the way to the kitchen in the morning. Eeesh. He also died once, ala Tommy Lee, and currently has a pacemaker at the ripe old age of 42. Weirdly, he was a competitive BMX rider as a kid, and predictably, he came from weirdo hippie artist parents who split up early and got high a lot. Finally, Slash managed to date both Savannah and Traci Lords, see page 207 for details on his experience with venereal warts.
All in all, a fun read!
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