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Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N' Roses
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List Price: $27.50
Special Price: $15.45
Your Savings: $ 12.05 ( 44% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Gotham
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.421660922
EAN: 9781592403776
ISBN: 1592403778
Label: Gotham
Manufacturer: Gotham
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 448
Publication Date: 2008-08-26
Publisher: Gotham
Studio: Gotham
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Editorial Reviews:
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From the New York Times bestselling author, the complete story of the last rock supergroup— from their drugfueled blast-off in the 1980s to the turbulent life of legendary singer Axl Rose and his fifteen-year, multi-million dollar effort to make the perfect hardrock album.
With 90 million of the band’s records sold worldwide since 1987, Guns N’ Roses prolonged rock music past its sell-by date with controversial albums and immense, often riotous world tours. But the band’s complete story has never been fully told—until now. In his sixth major rock biography, Stephen Davis details the riveting story of a band that originated in the gutters of Sunset Strip and went on to set attendance records on the biggest stadiums on the planet.
Watch You Bleed documents the improbable story of W. Axl Rose, the biggest rock star of his generation. Taken from an abusive father in his infancy, he was raised as “Bill Bailey” in a strictly religious Indiana household by a stepfather who beat him for playing Led Zeppelin songs on the family piano. After quitting high school, and on the run from the police in his hometown, Axl arrived in Los Angeles in the midst of the street battles for supremacy among the top music genres of the eighties—post-punk, thrash, hair metal, and glam. The book also charts the backgrounds of every band member, especially Slash, a Hollywood street kid whose designer mother dated David Bowie.
Davis brilliantly captures the birth of Guns’ raw power, which—despite rape charges, drug-induced rampages, and a general appetite for destruction— launched the band into the pantheon of rock gods such as Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. With a wealth of detail, Davis looks at Axl’s unrelenting quest to release the long-awaited, mystery-shrouded Chinese Democracy album, as well as the further adventures of some of the Gunners under the banner of the hard-rocking band Velvet Revolver. For the first time, millions of Guns N’ Roses fans will learn the whole truth—sometimes funny, sometimes tragic—about the last of the great rock bands.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Short opinion
Comment: This book may be interestign for those who doesn't know much about the band. But I don't recommend it if you are searching for more additional information.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A badly written book report
Comment: Where do I begin with this review? For starters, if you're considering buying this book...do NOT waste your time or money! Now, to further elaborate...
We all know that the TRUE story of GN'R will never be told because there are way too many sides to this sordid tale, how and why it ended, and why it is allowed to continue. However, if you want something close to a true account from an insider's perspective, read Slash's book.
While I did enjoy reading some of the text offered here, for the most part, it was all stuff I had heard, read, or watched before. This book, essentially, offered NO new revelations or information. Speaking of information...
Whoever fact checked this tome needs to be fired. Off the top of my head I found the following errors...Jimi Hendrix did not burn his "Les Paul", he burned (and played almost exclusively) a Fender Strat. Aerosmith's "Draw The Line" album was released in 1977, NOT 1979. This mistake is completely and totally inexcusable because Stephen Davis WROTE A BOOK ABOUT AEROSMITH! Skid Row was not, to paraphrase the book, a trio from Philadelphia who added a white hot Canadian singer. They were a quartet from New Jersey who added a white hot Canadian singer. Oh, and the final one that lead me to even write this review about what a waste this book was...Sebastian Bach (known as Baz, not Bas) did not turn down the Velvet Revolver vocal slot. He jammed with them and Slash decided his sound wasn't right for the band (Skid Roses was the term he used). Bach's behavior after VR chose Scott Weiland is all the proof you need that the didn't turn the gig down, they turned him down.
The bottom line of all of this is that Stephen Davis has written at least three bar setting rock n' roll biographies...Hammer of the Gods, Walk This Way, and Jim Morrison. This excuse for him to spout his opinions (which were way outta line within the context of a biography) on GN'R is completely and totally unacceptable. Simple fact checking alone could've saved this book from being a total disaster. Unfortunately, that never happened and, as a result, more die-hard GN'R fans like myself wasted time and money on something that could've been so much better considering who the author is.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Another smashed bottle, another show starting late ... yawn.
Comment: WATCH YOU BLEED reads like a quickie bio that was researched by reading a bunch of articles on the band rather than actually talking first hand with anyone who was in Guns n' Roses or knew the band intimately (though I doubt many folks who were in Gn'R are interested in talking about the band's history at this point). While the group's story is full of drama and Axl Rose's mood swings generate a certain amount of suspense, David doesn't reveal anything someone who has followed the band's career isn't likely to already know, and the book is full of factual errors, awkward jumps in the timeline, and clumsy editorializing. The ongoing train wreck that is Gn'R's career is certainly entertaining, but Davis lacks the skill to bring this story to life. Don't waste your time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Juvenile
Comment: I'm certainly no Guns expert, but I can say that this book is not to be taken too seriously. Mr. Davis' text is peppered with significant inaccuracies. I'll mention two. Davis describes Guns opening slot for The Cult during their tour for the "Electric" album. He says, numerous times I believe, that this period was The Cult's most successful, that the band would never be bigger. Apparently he never listened to the radio or watched MTV after 1988 because The Cult's "Sonic Temple" was HUGE. Three successful singles, multi-platinum sales, an opening gig for Metallica and then their own headlinging tour. Davis also says that "Girls, Girls,Girls" was Motley Crue's shining moment. I don't have to remind Crue fans of "Dr. Feelgood", which charted at #1 on Billboard. Not to mention the fact that "Girls..." is a fair record at best, while "Dr. Feelgood" is a relatively high water mark for the band artistically as well as in terms of their popularity. Davis' silly editorializing at times borders on a teenager's hero worship. If you want to read a great book about rock n'roll, read "The Dirt". I never really liked Crue all that much, but this book depicts LA glam and hedonism better than anything else I've read. It pulls no punches and is not for the faint of heart. Read it at your own risk. As far as Guns N' Roses is concerned, I guess we'll have to wait for someone to write the definitive work. This ain't it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: So many factual errors, it's hard to take seriously
Comment: There are real serious issues with this one;
1) Multiple Factual Errors: Stephen Davis' fact checking is poor and he missed what I consider to be common knowledge for a crowd that would read this book....he refers to Paul Stanley as the "bass player of Kiss"; He's 2 months off of John Lennon's death date; "Slippery When Wet" is noted as Bon Jovi's debut album; He notes "In Through The Outdoor" as "Led Zeppelin's masterpiece", when it is almost unanimously viewed as their most unfocused album. All these were within 20 pages. Davis really has some shocking errors throughout the book and while I'm not an expert on Rock Trivia, I figure if a luddite like me can easily find those errors, there's probably a heap more. At least twice he actually misquotes some GNR lyrics that he should have had handy because they are included with each album. All in all it makes me question the entire book.
2) Too Much Editorializing: This book has several portions where the author feels the urge to go beyond just telling a story and provides his opinions. For instance, there's a section where he does a track-by-track analysis of the "Appetite" album, and his descriptions, likely meant to be flamboyant and show off his rock n roll street-cred, come off as laughable. He should stick with writing a biography and present the facts.
3) Tabloid journalism: He really presents the worst of Guns N Roses. While I'm sure they had their issues, Davis concentrates on the tabloid fodder. If they were truly as bad as he makes them out to be, there is no way they could have produced the music they did.
"Watch You Bleed" is less of a biography than a long comic book with no pictures and only partial basis in reality. It's still entertaining, but how much you want to believe is up to you. I think the author has done a great job of providing a book he thinks people want to read rather than to do proper research and give us the true story.
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