Cons’n’Pos ers (Appetite for Destruction: The Days of Guns n'Roses - Daniel Sugerman)

Member Name: amygdala

Product:	Appetite for Destruction: The Days of Guns n'Roses - Daniel Sugerman
Date:	17/08/00 (85 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You learn why Guns N' Roses achieved some of their success.

Disadvantages: You don't learn where the first apostrophe in their name went.

If you’re a Guns N’ Roses fan, I hope whoever is reading this to you isn't reading it too fast. And the book this review is about might just interest you, because it's got quite a few pictures in it. If, like me, you’re not a GNR fan, those same pictures might go some way to solving one of the two great mysteries associated with GNR.

Mystery number one, of course, is where the first apostrophe in their name went; mystery number two is how they managed to achieve the enormous success they did. Neither the pictures nor anything else in the book help to solve mystery number one, at least as far as I saw before I gave up reading properly, but the pictures do help to solve mystery number two. GNR achieved the success they did because they looked good as rock’n’rollers, some of the time anyway, and maybe the rest of the time too to the sufficiently undiscerning – and the sufficiently undiscerning surely make up a huge proportion of their audience.

Their music certainly isn't anything to do with their success, except maybe, again, to the sufficiently undiscerning. Even the hyperbolic author of this book, Danny Sugerman, admits that not all their songs are "great" and falls back partly on the "they look good as rock’n’rollers" hypothesis, though he wraps it up in a great deal of waffle about Dionysus, Bacchus, and shamanistic use of tattoos, animal skins, and scarves. And in fact I suspect he's attracted to W. Axl Rose (an anagram of W. Oral Sex, apparently, though you won't learn that here) more for the beauty of his ass than for the beauty of his lyrics. "Ass" is certainly a word that comes to mind a lot as you read about Rose's antics, though it's always accompanied by "hole". He was earning huge sums of money for his record company and so he seems to have been able to get away with whatever he liked, cheered on and no doubt imitated by mi
llions of fans. Most of the time his boorishness and crudity don't raise much more than a yawn, but occasionally they’ll manage to raise a laugh instead:

"...We're up here and what we are doing is something that is dying in America -- it usually stays at an underground level and doesn't get as successful as Guns N' Roses -- and that's freedom of expression. And, basically that's all we are. Guns N' Roses are just a prime f**king example of freedom of expression." (pg. 238, first paragraph)

In Denver, Colorado, Guns N' Roses are barely into their fifth song when trouble erupts. Axl halted the show midsong and demanded that a security guard remove a front-row spectator who'd been flipping the bird all during the show. Fearing a repeat of St. Louis, the guards ejected the offender immediately. (pg. 238, penultimate paragraph)

You might manage to laugh too as lead guitarist Slash – "half man, half beast" – wakes up in beds swimming with piss after all-night drinking and shooting-up sessions, but even if you do boredom will probably set in quickly. I thought GNR were sordid and talentless before I picked up this book and I think it still.

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