Slash: The Autobiography

I bought the e-reader version of this book and it was so cheap that I wasn't expecting much beyond endless tales of mindless debauchery in order to get my money's worth.  This book delivered the excess in spades, but wasn't the superficial read I was expecting.  It's a moderately heavy book (160K words -- hardly a quickie, grade school level read that you'll plow through in a day, like certain other cash grab memoirs are) and contains quite a bit of depth.  For instance, the years in LA leading up to Slash joining GNR are recalled in fascinatingly vivid detail.  The writing (and/or ghostwriting) is superb, Slash's writing persona comes off as affable and highly believable. 

In fact, Slash's life up to the recording of "Appetite for Destruction" takes up well over half the book.  The idea that the journey to become famous is more interesting that actually being famous (and more enjoyable for the protagonist, both at the time it happened and in the present day) is a notion that rings loud and clear.  Once GNR take off, most of the characters practically disappear from the story.  There's a good deal of philosophizing about the Axl Rose that he knew pre-1987 (they even lived together for a short while) but after that, almost nothing.  Like many wildly successful groups do, GNR split into separate camps and Axl become a side plot, a person who turns up on stage (most of the time) but is otherwise a shadow character who only exists via his managers and lawyers who act as his conduit.  This is really a book and Slash and Slash only.  Anyone looking for insight on what the other main players in the GNR story were "really" like at the height of their fame will find almost nothing to chew on.  Thus, the second half of the book is far less interesting than the first half.  Being the biggest band in the world was a succession of gigs and bottomless alcohol and drug binges, but by that point those stories have mostly lost their sordid power. 

After reading this, I'm even more baffled at how GNR became the biggest rock band in the world for a few years.  There was no grand plan to flip the music industry on its head and expel the multitude of wimpy 80's "rockers".  They weren't following existing trends, there was nothing like "Welcome to the Jungle" on the pop charts in 1988, but the public somehow managed to buy into what they were doing.  It may be a cliche, but at its heart, beyond all the drugs and parties, it's a story about never compromising and believing in the artistic merit of what you're doing.  Slash emphasizes it repeatedly as GNR are getting rolling, but the message may be drowned out by all the tabloid-ready stories throughout the book. 

One final note -- this was published in 2008, i.e. years before the GNR reunion tour.  Toward the end of the book, there's no inkling of any reconciliation taking place in just a few short years. Could there be an updated and expanded edition at some point?   

The Caretaker, "Everywhere at the End of Time Stage 4"

The first three installments in the series chronicle a slow descent into the clutches of dementia, with an emphasis on slow and barely discernible.  Melodies, used as a stand-in for memories, were blanketed by the persistent crackle of a scratched record, with gentle shifts in their intonation and overall clarity.  But the fourth installment takes an abrupt turn toward noise and chaos.  "Post Awareness Confusions" is the title shared by three of the four tracks (each running over twenty minutes) and essentially sums up the current diagnosis.  The patient took a sudden turn for the worse since the end of Stage 3 and their personality became unidentifiable seemingly overnight.  Snippets of the old melodies can be picked out here and there, but anything approaching a recognizable tune has vanished completely.  You can't even characterize it as sad, there's simply no trace of the human being who was once there. 

The first half of the album is a trying listen, which is certainly the intention.   The sudden transition between Stage 3 and 4 feels like cheating the concept of the series a bit -- without knowing exactly how to proceed, The Caretaker launched into noise for noise's sake.    The beauty in The Caretaker's music was always in the subtle details, which are now obscured by the change to a more generic noise-based sound.  But the second half of the album is far more alluring.  "Temporary Bliss State" offers nothing in the way of coherent thoughts -- it's not a reprieve where a few memories come back into focus -- but does settle the torment of the previous forty odd minutes. 

As a state of mind, Stage 4 it undoubtedly succeeds, but as an album you'll want to hear regularly, less so.  But like so much experimental and noise music, to enter that state of mind, you'll need to subject yourself to nearly the entire thing.