My Appetite for Destruction by Steven Adler Review by Eleni

Author: Steven Adler
Release Date: July 27th 2010
Publisher: It Books
Pages: 286
Rating: 2 STARS
Buy At: Amazon , Barnes and Noble

No secret is too dark.
No revelation too sick. But you must have the appetite for it.

After forty years, twenty-eight ODs, three botched suicides, two heart attacks, a couple of jail stints, and a debilitating stroke, Steven Adler, the most self-destructive rock star ever, is ready to share the shattering untold truth in My Appetite for Destruction.

When Adler was eleven years old he told his two closest friends he was going to be a rock star in the world's greatest band. Along with four uniquely talented—but very complicated and demanding—musicians, Adler helped form Guns N' Roses. They rose from the streets—primal rockers who obliterated glam rock and its big hair to resurrect rock's truer blues roots.

They were relentless rock stars, onstage and off, taking "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" to obscene levels of reckless abandon. By the late 1980s, GNR was the biggest rock band in the world, demanding headlines, awards, and sold-out shows, with one of the greatest rock albums of all time: Appetite for Destruction. But there was a price to pay. For Adler, it was his health and his sanity, culminating in a brutal banishment by his once-beloved musical brothers. Adler digs deep, revealing the last secrets, not only his own but GNR's as well: Slash's betrayal, Axl's unpredictable temper, and Duff's revenge. He bares it all with this shocking fuck-the-fates exposé that charts his meteoric rise and devastating collapse.

Adler was humiliated and disgraced when Axl Rose kicked him out of GNR in front of an MTV audience of millions. Adler plunged into the dark side, spending most of the next twenty years in a drug-fueled hell. But he finally beat his epic addiction to crack and heroin under the care of Dr. Drew Pinsky.

With Adler's newfound clarity comes a fierce determination to tell it all. Revelatory, heartbreaking, hilarious, and ultimately inspirational, you will never read anything more jaw-droppingly honest than My Appetite for Destruction.


REVIEW:

I have a really bad feeling that the synopsis of the book will be longer than my review and I feel bad for that.

I am sure by now that you all know that I am a huge GNR fan and that I read all the three biographies (Slash , It's So Easy and Other Lies). I liked the other ones so much especially Duff's but I am a little disappointed with this one if not completely.

Ok so like every autobiography book Steven starts with his painful childhood but he doesn't really give to the reader the chance to understand how he felt back then when his mother kicked him out of the house repeatedly because of her boyfriend. He doesn't even analyze why his mother chose her boyfriend over her kid. It's crazy.

As the book moves on we can see how Steven came to be a punk of the street and how his love for music begun. And that's where I start to hate the book. Slash said in his autobiography that Steven acted like a 10 year old all the time and that he could never shut up and that;s exactly what i saw in this book. A kid telling us about his mischief's and bragging about himself all the time through the end of the book and seriously that was so so so so so annoying. It would never be over.

Of course that didn;t stop there. He went on giving us disturbing and disgusting descriptions of stuff he did with girls and how he liked to do this and that with them. Ok I take back the thing i said about rock stars describing sex situations, I dont want to read something like that ever again.

I really felt bad for his wife after Adler got kicked out of the band and I really dont believe any of the accusations he has against his ex bandmates. There were all kids at the time and they didn;t know how to control some things especially since they were under pressure from the record company and half of the time lost in their own little world of drugs BUT i can never believe that they were so cold hearted and mean. I just think Steven saw it that way towards the end of his career because most of the time he was paranoid from drugs. 

After the fall he goes on about his hardships and how he dealt with it but what i didnt like is that he was still stuck up with the idea of GNR doing this to him. Well he would have continued with the band and he would get the same results like everyone else did. 

To sum it up real fast Steven Adler wrote a-ok book about his life but he gave me the impression that he is one of those stuck up 80's rockstars that had fame once and don't want to move on and do something else and even if they do it;s similar to what they achieved back then. 

p.s. the review was as long as the synopsis after all.

Slash by Slash and Anthony Bozza Book Review by Eleni

Author: Slash and Anthony Bozza
Release Date: Ocotber 30th 2007
Publisher: It books
Pages: 458
Rating: 5 stars
Buy on: Amazon , Barnes And Noble

From one of the greatest rock guitarists of our era comes a memoir that redefines sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll

Here, for the first time ever, Slash tells the tale that has yet to be told from the inside: how the band came together, how they wrote the music that defined an era, how they survived insane, never-ending tours, how they survived themselves, and, ultimately, how it all fell apart. This is a window onto the world of the notoriously private guitarist and a seat on the roller-coaster ride that was one of history's greatest rock 'n' roll machines, always on the edge of self-destruction, even at the pinnacle of its success. This is a candid recollection and reflection of Slash's friendships past and present, from easygoing Izzy to ever-steady Duff to wild-child Steven and complicated Axl.

It is also an intensely personal account of struggle and triumph: as Guns N' Roses journeyed to the top, Slash battled his demons, escaping the overwhelming reality with women, heroin, coke, crack, vodka, and whatever else came along.

He survived it all: lawsuits, rehab, riots, notoriety, debauchery, and destruction, and ultimately found his creative evolution. From Slash's Snakepit to his current band, the massively successful Velvet Revolver,Slash found an even keel by sticking to his guns.

Slash is everything the man, the myth, the legend, inspires: it's funny, honest, inspiring, jaw-dropping . . . and, in a word, excessive.

Review:

I am a huge fan of guns and roses and naturally of Slash. When this books got into my hands I started reading an amazing and hard to believe story of one of the hardest and toughest rock stars on this planet.

Since I am a huge fan I knew some things but I didn't know others. This book took me aback. 
Slash start the book with where he was born and a brief telling of his first years. He then moves on to live in England and how he remembers his parents and of course the big move to L.A. and how that and the fact that he grew up in the seventies changes his life dramatically.

From a very young age drugs, music and excessive alcohol drinking lead his to weird and scary situations. He took those habits with him through the years and he never stopped living on the edge. In comparison to Duff's memoir Slash was tells all about the ugly side of GNR and how each member of the band and what lead them to eventually estrange from each other. It seems that everyone wanted the same thing - to perform and be a great band - but no one stood up when Axl did what he did. I think Axl had a really good ego and took advantage of it when he knew that the alcohol induced band mates wont bat an eye or confront him for his actions. 

From page one of the book you can see that Slash was indeed a very clever man but he didn't always use his brain when he had too part because of the drugs that kept him in a haze...i have to say that in some parts some situations either were the wrong date or he wasnt quite sure about them. Slash himself said that he was using some of his agendas to state a few facts because he wasn't sure if something happened or not.

I would like to know more about the lawsuits for the rights and everything after GNR broke up and a lot more about Axl although Slash tries to do its best to excuse his weird and ego centered behavior by saying that ''I'm sure Axl had his reasons''. Of course as Duff said Axl could be more than a good friend with you if you took him on your good side but overall he was a very unpredictable person.

After the GNR years you can see how difficult it was for Slash to create another band and how everything went to hell after the industry changed in the late 90's. Also you can see that those people were used a lot from the industry because simply they were dollar machines. The book describes the process of the creation of Velvet Revolver and how difficult it was for them to find a singer that fits with the group.

Both Slash and Anthony Bozza did a great job with writing the book and making it ''sound'' like Slash. It was a book of almost 500 big pages and small little letters it drove me crazy to finish it but I loved every bit of it.

I wouldnt recommend this book to a kid under 14 due to strong language and mature situations.

It's So Easy and Other Lies by Duff McKagan book review by Eleni

Author: Duff McKagan
Release Date: October 4th 2011
Publisher: Touichstone
Pages: 366
Rating: 5 stars
Buy At: Barnes and Noble , Amazon.

''A founding member of Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver shares the story of his rise to the pinnacle of fame and fortune, his struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction, his personal crash and burn, and his phoenix-like transformation via a unique path to sobriety.

In 1984, at the age of twenty, Duff McKagan left his native Seattle—partly to pursue music but mainly to get away from a host of heroin overdoses then decimating his closest group of friends in the local punk scene. In L.A. only a few weeks and still living in his car, he answered a want ad for a bass player placed by someone who identified himself only as “Slash.” Soon after, the most dangerous band in the world was born. Guns N’ Roses went on to sell more than 100 million albums worldwide.

In It's So Easy, Duff recounts GN’R’s unlikely trajectory to a string of multiplatinum albums, sold-out stadium concerts, and global acclaim. But that kind of glory can take its toll, and it did—ultimately—on Duff, as well as on the band itself. As GN’R began to splinter, Duff felt that he himself was done, too. But his near death as a direct result of alcoholism proved to be his watershed, the turning point that led to his unique path to sobriety and the unexpected choices he has made for himself since. In a voice that is as honest as it is indelibly his own, Duff—one of rock’s smartest and most articulate personalities—takes readers on his harrowing journey through the dark heart of one of the most notorious bands in rock-and-roll history and out the other side.''

Review:

I don't know what to say about this book or the author. Duff Fucking McKagan has been a huge inspiration to me since my early teens. Guns N' Roses is my favorite rock band and i love all the members but a little more Duff. I always knew that rock has to do with drugs but that was something else. To be honest i never read anything like that in my entire life. Neon Angel by Cherrie Currie is not even close to the things described in this book.

When i started the book i didn't know what to expect, i just wanted to read about Guns N Roses and the life they led before they become famous and its true that Duff did a great job with describing his early childhood/teen years and how everything shaped around the name of GNR. I was surprised from a lot of things and i needed more and more and more. I loved the way he wrote.

As the book progressed we could see how deep in addiction Duff and his bandmates fell and how fame and money eventually changed everything. How the band mates got estranged from each other and how a certain member suffered from megalomania which resulted in the band to eventually split in 1997. Although the book answered a lot of questions it created new ones and at some points i found myself screaming Why????

I would loved to have read a little more descriptive situations and especially about the fallout between Axl and Slash. For obvious reasons there is no sex scene descriptions in the whole book (im sure no rock star would want their daughters read about their fathers um....experiences (?)).

I was amazed on how Duff got out of the cocaine-alcohol addiction pit and did his best to recover and how to this day he is still suffering from his past. Although i think Duff doesnt realize it he got out from one addiction with another - exercising and i think although this is kind of healthy it can also destroy you if you are not careful. 

The book also focuses on the musical career of Duff before and after GNR and the differences that he saw. How people accepted him back then and how they accept him now - everything is easy when you are a legend.

Duff did a great job with a book and i would totally recommend it to any GNR fan out there and not only.