My Appetite for Destruction by Steven Adler

He blames everyone but himself and actively works against those who love him and want to help him. He does what he wants, regardless of the consequences, and wonders why he keeps having 'bad luck'. In fact, his whole story shows a distinct lack of understanding of what's going on around him.

I'm not even sure that Adler knows or thinks hard enough about it to understand. However, in Adler's account, I never get the idea of what makes an addict behave the way he does. It's relevant in this review because parts of Adler's story intersect with Sixx's. Sixx isn't a great writer, but he's not a bad one and he knows how to tell a good story. Nikki Sixx's Diaries weren't the highlight of good writing, but they still painted a compelling story of addiction and allows you to get inside the mind of an addict. A competent editor would have either pressed Adler for more details - how was this important to you? What did the Naked Skydivers do? Was it a one time thing? - or would have left it out entirely. It comes up one other time in the story as a side mention that all of them were attending the same event - again, I have no idea who was in this group other than Adler. There's no interesting or funny story to go with it, and it has absolutely no impact on his life at all. That's about all that's mentioned about the Naked Skydivers. At some point, Adler and friends got naked and jumped from some hotel balconies into a pool. For instance, there's a throwaway paragraph midway through the book that talks about 'The Naked Skydivers from Hell'. Too many details are brought up that don't have a good story to go along with it and don't contribute to the overall story. However, a good writer and editor could make better work of the mess that's in this book. Some of that is Adler's fault - he's just not a very good storyteller and gets sidetracked on tangents that he finds interesting but don't contribute to the story.

The biggest problem is that it's not well written. Most of the rest wasn't worth my time and I'm kind of embarrassed I stuck with it. There was just enough history sprinkled throughout that I kept looking for more, but now that I'm done, most of what I learned could have been summarized in a chapter. I stuck through to the end but I kept looking for an excuse to stop. Having read other rock memoirs, such as Nikki Sixx's Herion Diaries, I wasn't expecting much, but I did expect some good stories and some understanding of exactly what lead to the breakup of Guns and Roses. As a huge Guns and Roses fan, I was really looking forward to this book.

My Appetite for Destruction by Steven Adler