BetterDay7 Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 (edited) I have been working my way through the various band-related books, including those by the band members (Slash, Duff, Steven). Which other books do you like? I read Mick Wall's book about Axl. I thought it was totally bobbins (UK northern speak for sh**.) Turgid and misleading. I might have a go with Reckless Road next. Edited January 31, 2015 by BetterDay7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amir Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Reckless Road and Duff's book. Don't bother with the rest. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Cnut Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 (edited) I read one ages ago...as in like 20 years ago called Guns n Roses In Their Own Words by Mark Putterford. Quite liked it Slashes book too.Reckless Road and Duff's book. Don't bother with the rest.Whats wrong with Slashes you mini Iran startin' motherfucker? Edited January 20, 2015 by Len B'stard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DangerousCurves Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 I loved Duff's book. Reckless Road was good. Slash's was pretty good. The rest have thus far been....meh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoGer99 Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Reckless Road and Duff's book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amir Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 I read one ages ago...as in like 20 years ago called Guns n Roses In Their Own Words by Mark Putterford. Quite liked it Slashes book too.Reckless Road and Duff's book. Don't bother with the rest.Whats wrong with Slashes you mini Iran startin' motherfucker? I've only read half of it but the ghost-writer pretending to be bad-ass subject style is pretty boring. Duff may not be Hemingway (and he did have a little help with the writing), but there's still a sense of greater authenticity and genuine excitement in his book. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfierose Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Slash's book was an okay read, a little clichéd but it does give you a vibe of that whole time period. Duff's is better written and a bit more personal, you're left with the impression he has really learned from life's journey. Reckless Road is an excellent record of the band's rise.I haven't read any others. Still holding out for Axl's story. *takes a deep breath* 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post DangerousCurves Posted January 20, 2015 Popular Post Share Posted January 20, 2015 Steven's book annoyed me immeasurably. It was essentially a "then I banged this chick" egomaniacal rant. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amir Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Did his mum's book ever come out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Len Cnut Posted January 20, 2015 Popular Post Share Posted January 20, 2015 See this is where i think a lot of yous misunderstand Slash, i don't think he really is egomaniacal or saying it in a way where he's like 'aren't i just the fuckin' lad?', i think thats just what he's like, he always struck me as really happy go lucky, path of least resistence 'as long as i get a bird and a line of ching out of it i'm doin' alright' type of fella.Slash is the fuckin' boy as far as I'm concerned, Slash and Izzy, between the two of them, thats where the whole groove was at. Y'know what i think? i think people started looking really really really hard in Slash's behaviour for instances of cuntiness just off the fact that Axl has gone on about that shit. I mean i remember his book coming out and the dates on it being all messed up and people on here going *gasp* THE CHARLATAN! And it's like nyaaah, who gives a fuck, it's Slash, what were you expecting, like clear recollections? I'm suprised the bastard can find his shoelaces 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amir Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 But it's not Slash trying to be hard, it's Anthony Bozza. That's why I specifically said ghost-writer. It's not a knock against Slash specifically, it's just a lot of these ghost-written "autobiographies" of rock stars end up trying to live up to expectations of bad-assery and become cliched and stale as a result. I'm sure Slash's life story could be told in a much more interesting and exciting manner than the Bozza book. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Cnut Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Don't ghostwriters just write what the cunts saying and just like, make it sound proper, so it don't come out like the written equivalent of Keith Richards clearing his throat over 300 plus pages? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfierose Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Compared to Duff's it lacked an emotional depth, seemed a bit detached in places. This was probably a combination of ghost writing and memory loss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amir Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Don't ghostwriters just write what the cunts saying and just like, make it sound proper, so it don't come out like the written equivalent of Keith Richards clearing his throat over 300 plus pages?Yeah but a man's life isn't just a series of bullet points, it's also about his own passions and thoughts, and a ghost-writer often doesn't get that across as well as a man capable of putting his own words to paper. Like I said, Duff's book isn't high literature but you can feel the excitement between the lines a lot more than in Slash's, even when they're recounting the same stories of getting drunk or getting crabs or whatever.I did enjoy Arnie's "Total Recall", though, which was most likely 95% ghost-written, thought that guy did a pretty good job of getting The Spirit of Arnold across. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ace Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 I've read Slash and Watch You Bleed. I liked WYB better, probably because it came from an independent source; biography versus autobiography. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZoSoRose Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Reckless road then slash, the rest are mostly crap (except duffs which i still have to read) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jekylhyde Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 I've read Mick Wall's WAR (or whatever it was called) and Slash's and Duff's book. Duff's was the best. The other two were crap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nico_france Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Reckless Road is perfect to start. I'm not sure of the degree of accuracy in Slash's book but it was nice to read Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jwalker19 Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Slash. Duff's was just so depressing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dando Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Reckless road was brilliant, duffs book was also good, slash's was ok, Adler's was so depressing I thought I'd gone thru it all by the time I'd read it all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhazUp Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 (edited) Reckless Road, Duff's, and Slash's book. Reckless Road is just badass, history in the making and a visual snapshot of that period in time. Steven's book was obviously not written by him and contains the least amount of real interesting information so that is the only one I would outright not read. Edited January 20, 2015 by WhazUp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tentonneskeleton Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 I've read Slash and Watch You Bleed. I liked WYB better, probably because it came from an independent source; biography versus autobiography.I read Watch You Bleed as well, and I liked it a lot. Not a bad read, but sometimes I feel like they got some of the facts wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kater Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Reckless road is incomparable with others as mostly photographic history and it is a great one for every true fan of a band.Among others, I would put Duff's on first place. Other books vary depending on what you expect from them, and I always put autobiographies in front of second hand stories. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stella Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 (edited) I concur with what the others have said here: Duff's book, Reckless Road and Slash's book, in that order. I think Duff''s book is really perceptive and entertaining. He's legitimately a great writer. and I loved that at the end of the book, I had a clear picture of who he was as a human being, not just as a member of Guns N' Roses. And I also liked that he was very honest about his own shortcomings and addictions and didn't make excuses about them.Reckless Road presents amazing documentation of the birth and development of the band, and those photos are golden. I don't think that sort of full photographic record, with dates, places, times and supporting documents, exists for any other big group.Slash's book comes across as just another ghostwritten celebrity memoir in a lot of ways, but it's got some great insights nonetheless. Among the three book mentioned, Slash's is the only one I didn't buy; I just checked it out from the library to read.It's not really a GnR book per se, but I also liked the GnR bits in Lonn M. Friend's Life from Planet Rock.I'm not one for the "unathorised biographies" of the band, because I've never read one that's been accurate, and some of the biographers do have an axe to grind. I remember with the Mick Wall one he insisted on calling Axl "William Axl Rose" which isn't even the man's actual name. The most accurate third-party book about the band I've read, where the author actually seemed to do his homework for the most part, is Danny Sugerman's Appetite for Destruction. Considering he spends 85% of the text philisophizing about William Blake, Rimbaud and Shiva and comparing and contrasting Axl to them, that's saying a lot. I don't even count that as a biography; it's an esoteric philisophical study. Edited January 20, 2015 by stella 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DieselDaisy Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Basically it is now the, excepted position that, somehow Duff''s is better than Slash's. Nobody has actually challenged this conception. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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