A review by nilsjesper
Slash by Slash

3.0

I wanted to love this book a whole lot more than I did, especially after it gets off to a roaring start. It was fascinating to get an insight into the early years of guns n' roses and to realize just HOW drunk and strung out everyone was when that album came together. But from there it's kind of like Use Your Illusions, a few bright moments punctuated by a lot of crap and corporate rock. There's more talk about managers and lawyers and a&r guys than there is about songwriting basically and you realize that despite their scrappy appearance, GNR were on the major label payroll very very early on and I guess that's how it goes.

Slash spends about a solid 3 pages at the end of this book actually clean and in between yes, there's tales of amusing druggy debauchery but also just a lot of really sad pathetic stuff. It's made worse when the guy who admits he couldn't get out of bed without drinking talks about how other people like steven adler were too messed up to be of use to him. Between the drugs and serial self-justified unfaithfulness, slash just comes across as kind of a douche.

At the end of the day, any book where the climactic event is the formation of Velvet Revolver is going to be kind of a letdown. But hey, all of this negativity aside, I plowed through this book so it's got its entertainment points.