Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

A New Guns N’ Roses Biography Showcases The Band’s Contribution To Rock N’ Roll

There’s a new biography of Guns N’ Roses out and it confirms what we already know: the musicians led some crazy, crazy lives.

An excerpt from the Amazon description of the book reads, “Guns N’ Roses has always been a band out of time, the Last of the Giants. They are what every rock band since the Rolling Stones has tried and nearly always failed to be: dangerous. At a time when smiling, MTV-friendly, safe-sex, just-say-no Bon Jovi was the biggest band in the world, here was a band that seemed to have leapt straight out of the coke-smothered pages of the original, golden-age, late-sixties rock scene.”

This book doesn’t rely on archival research to tell its story. Instead, Mick Wall, the author, came up among the band members as a true problem child of the 80s and did all the research himself, as a member of the band’s entourage.

The deeply personal book tells the story of the sexual abuse Axl Rose suffered at the hands of his father, the drug and alcohol problems that plagued the band from the start, and the inseparable friendship between Slash and Steven Adler — the band’s sole Jew.

You can order the book on Amazon or buy it in your local bookstore.

Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter at @arr_scott

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.