Duff founded and played bass in Guns N' Roses. But while that may be his autobiography's top billing, events before and after life in that seminal band offer comparable value from the side stages. Humbled by experiences and anchored in the spiritual and physical disciplines that brought him sobriety, Duff offers an uncomplicated version of a band's rise and unsatisfying end (more of a suspension, really). On Guns' demise, Duff faults the band's inability to confront each other about problems rather than the problems themselves--everyone's drug use and lead singer Axl Rose's volatility and musical takeover.
Maybe it's a result of his singular drive to make and play music, or maybe it's the functional result of his focused narrative, or maybe it's a social strategy employed to fit in the scene, but on paper Duff exudes a real simplicity of character, despite his having since undergone a kind of spiritual and physical rebirth. The pre-soberiety Duff is a former self whose problems, in his words, "seems to have hinged on a failure to grapple with a few basic definitions--of what it meant to be successful, of what it meant to be an adult, of what it meant to be a man".
Although much less lurid and infinitely less indulgent than Nikki Sixx's autobiography The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, I found It’s So Easy (And Other Lies) to be the better read.
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