A few months ago I read Duff McKagen's It's So Easy (And Other Lies), but if I could read only one Guns N' Roses-centric autobiography, I'd read Slash because the latter offers more thrills (courtesy sex, drugs, and rock n' roll). That said, I'm glad I read both because they are different kinds of autobiographies and don't compare.
Slash is an American rock music institution and his autobiography works as such; it's a tell-all that only reinforces the myth because it can never tell enough. Every juicy detail leads you to ask, And then what? And then what? And what was that like?
Duff's autobiography is more traditional; it traces a personal and spiritual journey, one man's rise, fall, and redemption, sharing wisdom gained along the way; Duff has undergone a transformation and, though rock remains important, life is a wholly different venture for him now. Slash on the other hand is just Slash but older and with a relatively cleaned up act.
One thing, though: These two books have reinforced a suspicion I had about Nikki Sixx's autobiography, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star--that some creative marketing contributed to its making.
Notes (and highlights)
- Mostly, Slash's version of Axl and the demise of real G N' R is that Axl just got too controlling and was either oblivious to, or totally unconcerned with, the needs and concerns of others.
But, more generally, " ... we didn't have a good line of communication among us about any of these issues, so the end result was serious misunderstanding. Since these points of interest were never discussed, since there was never a conversation about how to adjust our game plan to take everyone's needs into account, we kept doing things the way we had in the past, which considering that we'd changed caused us serious internal tension." Later, "None of us stood back and took a moment to ask one another or ourselves, 'How do we do this? How can we get everyone together and working and satisfied?' We needed to be clear-headed about it; if one thing didn't work, we'd need to keep trying. But we didn't do that."
- On hanging out around LA in the 80's: "I saw a lot, I liked very little, and I was fucking bored the entire time."
- On the past: "So I did everything possible to put distance between yesterday and the present. I've always been that way and I still am. It is why I don't have any memorabilia to speak of: I don't have gold and platinum records, only the guitars that mean something to me."
- About this girl Megan he had been living with for months, spent Thanksgiving with her family: "Before I knew it Christmas was around the corner and Megan started planning a lavish party: she was way into decorations, she bought a fondue maker, and she invited all of our friends to her winter wonderland. It was one of the most bizarre things I had been involved with for a long time, and the fact that I was straight made that feeling pretty hard to ignore. The day before the party, she came home with about $400 worth of useless garbage that she'd bought at the market to decorate the house. That was my breaking point. I watched her decorate our place, thinking all the while, I don't even know who you are. We had the Christmas party, we had our friends over; and as soon as they'd gone, I set about telling Megan that she had to go as well."
- On hanging out with James Hetfield: " ... I remember that there was a girl that James wanted to fuck and I let him take her into my bedroom. They were in there for a while and I had to get in there to get something, so I crept in quietly and saw James head-fucking her. He was standing on the bed, ramming her head against the wall, moaning in that thunderous voice of his, just slamming away, and bellowing, 'That'll be fine! That'll be fine! Yes! That'll be fine!'"
- Slash was co-written by Anthony Bozza.
