Here Today... Gone To Hell!

GUNS N' ROSES: New Book 'Watch You Bleed' Due In August - June 16, 2008

"Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N' Roses", a new GUNS N' ROSES book that chronicles the remarkable rise of Axl Rose's band, "from their days as a Sunset Strip street gang dealing drugs to AEROSMITH's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry to their eventual coronation as the kings of [sleaze rock]," is scheduled for release on August 26 via Gotham. Playboy magazine is publishing a 10,000-word excerpt in an upcoming issue. "Believe it or not, Playboy's sending a photographer over to shoot me," author Stephen Davis told the Boston Globe. "I just hope they airbrush my nipples."

For more information, visit Amazon.com.

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=99132


Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N' Roses
Davis, Stephen. Gotham Bks Pages 448.
The best-selling author of Hammer of the Gods goes behind the glitter to reveal the complete story of the
superstar rock group Guns N' Roses and its front man, W. Axl Rose, profiling each member of the band
and their turbulent history from the group's 1980s origins to its rise to the heights of the music world.
75,000 first printing. .

Sounds interesting. Hammer of Gods is great, atleast.

So we have to buy Playboy magazine for it's articles now?

I hope he is fair and balanced.  That's my only hope.

Ali

^^I agree with that. : ok:

A little more from the Boston Globe...

You still can't travel too far in Los Angeles without hearing "Sweet Child o' Mine" on the radio, and that bodes well for Milton music writer Stephen Davis, author of the forthcoming "Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N' Roses." "It's weird because I was watching the Celtics and Lakers while I put the finishing touches on 'Hammer of the Gods,' " says Davis, referring to his bestseller about Led Zeppelin. "Now, 24 years later, I'm watching Celtics and Lakers again and putting the finishing touches on the G N' R book."

http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2008/06/16/dialing_up_the_intensity/?page=2

Probably yet another book full of rehashed articles from Circus Magazine, Spin, Metal Edge etc..Yawn, I'll still buy it though..

what the fuck could be written about a band that doesn't exist anymore that hasn't ALREADY been written?!

See the part of the quote highlighted above?  Shit like that's why I won't be buying this book!

That is from the Boston Globe's reporting/article...not necessarily from the book? (the link is a few posts up)

You'll find this NEW book in the 'Dead Horse section' of your local friendly library  :hihi:

I thought it was common knowledge that Izzy was once Joe Perry's dealer? I'm sure it's in Walk This Way. Which was written by Davis, as well, mind you.

It's as bad as the Wall book. I'd give this one a pass...

After reading a few excerpts from the book, I was sorry I started this thread.  I was hoping it would just go away. :hihi:

I respect the fact that Mr. Davis has written a couple of acclaimed books on Led Zeppeling and Aerosmith, but the part of this book on the new GN'R is really inaccurate and disappointing.

He talks about 1997 and then he says the album's title is announced.  He says the show at Wembley with Baz taking over on vocals happened in 2002.  He says that when David Wild of RS heard some new tracks in 1999, that RS was politely unmoved.  Does this sound like "politely unmoved": 

Song after song combines the edgy hard rock force and pop smarts of vintage Guns N Roses with surprisingly modern and ambitious music textures.

I haven't read the rest of the book yet, but the Chinese Democracy section left me unenthusiastic to do so.

Ali

He rehashes the 1992 Kurt/Axl  MTV/VMA feud, saying that Kurt had ?dealt with assholes his whole life,? meaning that Axl  is just another asshole.

Yeah, real objective journalism.

I'll wait another 14 years for Axl to finish his autobiography...unless he was in the band, or 'around' the band ala Marc Canter, it is going to be the same old rehashed BS with, at best, a few new lies or exaggerations from outsiders and hallucinating groupies. :rant:

whats the best rock and roll book out there (besides the DIRT)? because at my school they make us read 15 minutes of the day so i need to get a good book to actually read then and when i'm in detension, whether its G'n'R or Led Zeppelin i don't care i just need somthing. Would any one recomend this one?


PS. for those that know i'm a KISS fan don't sugest those cause i've read the majority of 'em

:peace:

Damn, I was hoping this book would be decent after finishing Reckless Road and Slash, I was hungry for more.  Back to the drawing board.

The only thing interesting now would be if another member of the original band wrote a book.... Axl, anybody?

If Axl wrote a biography, or maybe even Duff would be a good read I'm sure, and probably more credible too.  Maybe after Axl's done with his music career lol...  Anyway will probably buy the book to add to the others, and to maybe pass the time reading it on occasion, prolly doesn't offer much that we don't already no. :-\

K I got the book today. Anyone else get it?  I guess if anything worthy comes up I'll post. :)

I got it....horrible, horrible, horrible. Someone else already mentioned it, but the guy didn't even bother to verify his dates. He gives detailed reports about shows that happened in 1992, which are all available on bootleg, and he even quotes Axl wrong. He firmly believes that Appetite was the only good album the band ever made, which I'm not one to judge a persons musical preference, but he basically says the Illusions sucked and the whole world thought the same thing. I'm pretty sure weveryones read the Del James interview that was posted like a week ago....but it makes sense, Davis' only source of info was old magazine and newspaper articles and disgruntled employees. What a waste of money. Either Del or Axl himself needs to write a book about this band. That one, I'll buy.

Thanks for the review.  I already made up my mind I wasn't gonna get it with previous mentions of notable errors, but your review certainly reaffirms that decision.

For those complaining about timeline problems, Davis credits Jarmo by name and this website for the "most credble timeline".

Even though he does credit Jarmo for the "most credible timeline", if you compare Davis' timeline to the HTGTH timeline, it does NOT match.   :confused:

I'm really not sure whether or not we should be congratulating Jarmo since that author totally ignored the correct info he admits was readily available to him so "CONGRATULATIONS HTGTH ON BEING MISQUOTED!!!" just doesn't seem to cut it.  :hihi:

Book review: Beginning to end, Guns N' Roses biography is flawed

Sep 24, 2008

by Neal Taflinger

According to Steven Davis, most people believe that the origins of Guns N' Roses can be traced to one of two times and places -- the Sunset Strip in 1985, when members of various struggling bands united, or Lafayette, Ind., almost a decade earlier, when Bill Bailey first met Jeff Isbell, before they became W. Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin.

Davis, though, believes the entire chain of events -- detailed in "Watch You Bleed" (Gotham, $27.50), his new biography of the band -- was set in motion by a hitchhiking trip Bailey and a friend, identified only as Paul, took to New York City in 1980. The introduction recounts a story from the trip, and a few pages later, Chapter One begins in Lafayette.

That false start sets the tone for the next 400-plus pages, which lack focus and gloss over important details in favor of non-sequitur tidbits and tangents.

The first chapter is dedicated to the early lives of four of the band's five original members: Axl, Izzy, Saul "Slash" Hudson and drummer Steven Adler. Inexplicably, bassist Michael "Duff" McKagan isn't introduced until much later.

Davis offers some interesting anecdotes here and there, but his narrative is often jarring, such as when he speculates that Rose's biological father may have abducted and molested him early in the singer's life, and moves on without offering any evidence to substantiate the claim.

The book is plagued with such throwaway lines as "(the band) lived off girls, peddled drugs, pulled shameless scams," but Davis rarely if ever deigns to explain what scams the band pulled.

His reporting is so shoddy that it leads me to believe that Davis had little to no access to the band, constructing the text from other sources.

But rather than work around limited access, Davis treats the reader to interjections of his feelings on other bands, the recording industry, and the political climate of America in the mid-'80s. The result is a bloated book whose content doesn't justify the page count.

"Watch You Bleed" is a picaresque tale set in squalor and thick with violence, booze, drugs and underage girls. It offers little to anyone not enamored of Guns N' Roses, but even 15 years after the band ceased to function, that's still a sizable audience.

I expected more, but I guess not every rock biography can be "The Dirt," Neil Strauss' captivating oral history of Motley Crue. Davis is less a journalist than a music critic, unable to get out of his own way and let the story tell itself.

I listened to this guy spew his rhetoric on the radio.

It must have been 2-3 weeks ago, but I couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth.

He kept calling Axl a crazy guy and praising Slash the whole time.  Every other word was "reunion."

Can we get this guy on fraud or false representation? 

Where's the HTGTH legal team?  Surely slander is against the law....

All the books are unauthorized ::)

NO SHIT!

It doesn't matter, people still buy into the bullshit and pass it off as fact.

Check out jconline.com for article - entertainment section!

Only the uneducated fools, but I get the point!!

what a piss poor book....i picked it up when i was at borders the other day....flipped through it and found about 10 wrong dates and quotes right at the outset...so i put it down and looked at some magazines instead....pile of shit...