Cover for the new Steven Adler Book

[Faridbak]

[Faridbak]

STEVEN ADLER Says 'Chinese Democracy' Is 'Not GUNS N' ROSES' - Aug. 11, 2010
Nicole Powers of SuicideGirls.com recently conducted an interview with original GUNS N' ROSES and current ADLER'S APPETITE drummer Steven Adler about his new tell-all autobiography, "My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, and Drugs, and Guns N' Roses". A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

SuicideGirls.com: The last time we saw you was on VH1's "Sober House" when you'd very much relapsed. How did you get back from that?

Adler: Well, as you recall, I got arrested on the show. I went back the next day and they showed me the film of how I looked and acted. I was devastated. It crushed me that I looked so terrible and that I was such an asshole. And it's all because of the drugs. It made me see. I think everybody who has somebody in their lives that has a problem with drugs or alcohol, they should videotape them and show it to them the next day. I guarantee you'll change your mind on what you're doing with your life. I was devastated. I don't want to ever look like that again.

SuicideGirls.com: Did that give you a new perspective on how you must have appeared to the other members of GUNS N' ROSES back in the day?

Adler: Exactly. Exactly. Working with Dr. Drew I learned so much about myself and about life. It's been nothing but a pleasure and an honor having him in my life. Also, in recovery there are relapses. I relapsed a couple of times in the last two or three years. The last time I relapsed was five months ago. I had to start all over again five months ago. Out of all the drugs that I've done in my life, I never did that OxyContin stuff. And I was at the wrong place accidentally at the wrong time and somebody gave me a couple of those, and then three weeks later my wife shows me a picture of me passed out in the hallway of the house. I saw that and it reminded me, it brought me right back to "Sober House". I called Dr. Drew and Slash up and I said, "I got myself into this predicament and I need some help. Can you do something for me?" He said, "When can you go into detox?" And I said, "Right now!" And see me, just showing an effort to take care of myself, I have everybody backing me.

SuicideGirls.com: What prompted you to write the book?

Adler: Well, I hail Dr. Drew, because he has opened my eyes to things. What I wanted to do with this book, I wrote [about] everything in my life that bothered me and hurt me, and when I get off tour in two months I'm going to build a bonfire and I'll take the book and I'm going to throw it in the fire and I'm going to leave the past behind. Maybe in fifteen years from now I'll write a new book. Maybe I'll have a crazy interesting life again. But for now, I want to keep that in the past. I can't change the past. And with the band, we're brothers. We're always going to be brothers. And what do brothers do? They fight with each other.

SuicideGirls.com: You hurt the people closest to you.

Adler: You might not like each other all the time, but you're always going to love each other. And what the five of us have, no one — not even Axl [Rose] and his lawyers — can take away. We have something special, and if we got into a room together again I would hug all those guys and tell them how much I love them. I'm hoping that Slash and Axl and Duff [McKagan] and Izzy [Stradlin] read this book, but I want especially Axl to read it because I want him to see, maybe it'll open his eyes to what a special thing we do have. More than anything I would love to do something with those guys because I feel like I want to finish what I started with them. We could be bigger than ever.

SuicideGirls.com: The GUNS N' ROSES legacy shouldn't end with "Chinese Democracy".

Adler: That's not GUNS N' ROSES. He should have called that W, dash, A, dash, R. W-Axl-Rose, W-A-R. I think it would have worked out much better for him. Because GUNS N' ROSES is five guys. The last song I recorded was "Civil War" and tell me if I'm wrong, but I know I'm not, after that song it's a completely different band.

SuicideGirls.com: Right.

Adler: It is so hard to find four or five people that you can get in one room and everybody has the same feeling, the same direction, the same love, the same desire. Where everybody knows what everybody is going to do before they're going to do it. That's what makes something special. There's millions of great musicians, millions of bands, but there's only those rare few that are special. There the PINK FLOYDs, there's the LED ZEPPELINs, there's the QUEENs, the AEROSMITHs, GUNS N' ROSES.

Read the entire interview at SuicideGirls.com.


source: www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=144400

[Faridbak]

BOOK REVIEW - My Appetite for Destruction: Sex Drugs & Guns N' Roses

* August 13th, 2010 11:19 am

My Appetite for Destruction by Steven Adler
Photo: It Books

My Appetite for Destruction: Sex Drugs & Guns N’ Roses By Steven Adler (It Books)

Hardcover, 304 pages

Just how screwed up do you have to be to get kicked out of Guns N’ Roses for being a druggie?
If you’re originally drummer Steven Adler, pretty screwed up.

In his highly addictive (see what I did there?) memoir, Adler with a little help from co-author Lawrence J. Spagnola, will likely garner very little sympathy from most. Yes, he had a rough childhood, kicked out of the house as a teen, but even as he tries to relay how tough it was growing up, he comes off like spoiled brat and you can’t help but side with his mom for tossing him out.

The book is chock full of early GN’R lore - that which Adler can actually remember – but he was already out of the band by the time the group started work on its second full length, so it’s hardly a definitive look at how one of the world’s most successful bands managed to implode. Yes, Axl comes off as an asshole, and Slash, Adler’s best friend going back to junior high, comes off looking not so stellar either, but after reading story after story of Adler trying to explain how he just ended up drinking too much or taking just a little more drugs than the others, it is extremely difficult to try and side with the drummer.
The book was clearly written as an apology, of sorts to those he has harmed, and reads like countless other autobiographies of cleaned up rock stars, but Adler vacillates between apologizing and blaming those around him. He directs a lot of his vitriol at his mother, though never really explains why (you’d think a memoir would be the best place for an explanation like these, but…).

Hearing Adler recount his backstage conquests with other hair metal has-beens like Motley Crew in detail that would appeal to a 12-year-old boy just sounds simply pathetic in 2010. It’s also odd how Adler glosses over how he actually achieved sobriety after decades of drug uses. In the last few pages he mentions that he was on the VH1 train wreck realty show Celebrity Rehab and Sober House, but aside from crediting Dr. Drew with saving his life has very little else to say about the topic.

The book, vulgar at times and often frustrating given the mind-numbingly stupid things Adler does is still nearly impossible to put down and rather aptly titled.

Source: www.examiner.com/punk-music-in-philadelphia/book-review-my-appetite-for-destruction-sex-drugs-guns-n-roses-2