After what feels like a lifetime, I finally finished this book. This is the end of my zig-zag line of musician biographies. I think this one drained the crap out of me. Reading Slash and Duff McKagan’s books gave me somewhat of a warning to who Steven Adler was, and even my mom told me a bit in the beginning of Slash’s book. I didn’t think it was going to be that bad, but I was so totally wrong. All of the books I read before were bad with experiences of what they faced in their pasts, but I think this one topped them all. I’m still pretty shocked by what all this book had in it, but it was all I was looking for into reading these types of books.
Steven Adler has had one tough life, and I am surprised with everything I’ve read about he is still here. I’m glad he was so open to tell his story from start to finish, or in this case now. Talking about his past with his family, Gn’R, drugs, and women. Good god! In every book I read about anybody in the music industry, I have to take breaks. I usually take five-minute breaks to relax my leg since it likes to go to sleep on me, but apparently I needed one long break in between these chapters. Certain places were funny, and then there were places were you could cry. I had to stop myself a few times. I think I was in the middle of the book, and he hadn’t talked about drugs a lot and I had developed a thought, “when did you start the drugs during Guns N Roses?” Three pages later, I got my answer.
I can’t tell you how much it hurts to read somebody talking about the highs and the lows of this stuff does to you. I’ve told people in my family, when I was in school, all I was told if you smoked crack, heroin, or meth you would start to see things. Our health teacher said, little spiders would crawl on you. That was enough for me. I hate spiders and I definitely didn’t want to be seeing it while being high. I was smart by then, that’s all it took to scare me. Nowadays, kids don’t care. I think this should be one of the books kids need to read beforehand. It would scare the living hell out of them, but in a good way. I’m glad Steven has gotten cleaned up and enjoying life. I hope it stays that way for him. He needs things to stay good. I always have a problem with feeling sorry for people who do stuff that know they’re just going to get hurt from it, but with reading this book I couldn’t help myself. He might’ve pissed me off a few times, but he certainly got to me. It’s always the drummers!
