Customer Reviews

Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N' Roses

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This book was a total disappointment.

This was my third Stephen Davis book. Maybe he set the bar too high in the first two. The problem with this book is that it offers no more insight than the VH1 Behind the Music on Guns N Roses that aired a few years ago. As a matter of fact, he quotes that episode throughout the entire book. It doesnt seem like he talked to anyone close to the band. It seemed to me that his research was limited to the Behind the Music, Mtv interviews, and Rolling Stone articles. All of which I had already seen or read. This book told me nothing that I didnt already know.

Davis mentions in his credits that most employees of GNR had to sign confidentiality agreements in order to keep their jobs and that 13 people interviewed for the book asked to remain anonymous. Maybe thats why this book lacks any punch. Nobody in the band wanted anything to do with it, and nobody that knows anything is talking. The inside information feeling that I got from his other books didnt show up this time around.

If you insist on buying this, I would recommend that you at least go to the bookstore and read the credits. When you see that its all from interviews that you remember watching or reading, you may think twice about spending your hard earned cash on a rerun.

Davis' book is passably written but marred by factual errors that even a 13 year old rock fan would pick out. Jimi Hendrix is described as lighting his Les Paul on fire (he played a Strat 99% of the time), Paul Stanley is apparently Kiss' bass player (even my mother knows Gene Simmons plays bass), Joe Perry and Brad Whitford typify a kind of guitar playing known as 'flash' (never heard of it) and didn't play on Get Your Wings, Slash showed up at the studio to record Appetite with the 'original strings on his guitar.' (absolutley unbelievable). Davis attempts a fly on the wall approach that never lets the truth get in the way of a good story...Axl apparently arrives in NYC where an old black wino yells "do you know where you are? You're in the jungle, baby! And you're going to die!" And on and on and on...

Having said that, the Guns' saga is too filthy and compelling to not read. Too bad a better writer willing to do the proper research (never mind a publisher that employs a fact-checker) hasn't picked up the ball yet.

First of all, I'm not a die-hard Guns n Roses fan. For those who, like the gentleman below, already know a ton about the band, I suspect this volume will add little to their understanding of the Guns for the simple reason that the book seems written mostly from library research, footage and interviews that were already out there along with original interviews with ancillary characters. There is no indication that Davis talked to the band at any time or knew them.

That said, since I knew little about Guns n Roses beyond fond teenage memories of Appetite for Destruction, Davis' book was a breezy, enjoyable read. He does a great job bringing those hundreds of interviews and insights together, and by the end I felt I knew Axl, Slash and the rest of the band as well as anyone not witnessing their wild lives first-hand ever could. The book is almost 80% about Appetite and the lives of the band until then. It devotes little time to Use Your Illusion and the lesser albums like Lies and Spaghetti Incident, and that's probably a good thing. I finished it in a few days.

If you are a general reader just looking for a great book about the glam-metal-rock era, there's a much better book out there: The Dirt, the story of Motley Crue, by Neil Strauss. It's hard not to compare the two works, and what makes The Dirt so great-- it's told largely in the voices of the band members, looking back on their years of debauchery-- highlights the weaknesses of Watch You Bleed.

By no means a must-read, but an enjoyable and easy trip into the insane lives of Guns n Roses. A whiskey bottle is thrown, on average, every ten pages.

I'll be mercifully brief here as this book is hardly worth the effort to tear it apart.

The previous reviews are quite correct when they point out the copious amount of laughable errors in "Watch You Bleed". My personal favorite, which these reviews seems to have missed was The Scorpions being from England. Yep.

Stephen Davis is not a bad writer. I've read and enjoyed his other error-riddled tomes on Zeppelin and Aerosmith. They are typically engaging and briskly paced, and deliver the kind of minutiae that we rock bio dorks crave. The main reason he strikes out so badly here is simply his clear and obvious ignorance and disdain for Heavy Metal in general (at least Zeppelin and Aerosmith were bands that this child of the sixties could somewhat wrap his noodle around). I don't think there is a single example in the early chapters (concentrating on the Sunset Strip scene)where he doesn't feel the need to flat-out insult and sneer at every band he mentions. Ratt, Motley Crue, Poison, etc all mentioned only with a nasty adjective preceding their name. Although there are chuckles galore to be had at his utter cluelessness in this regard. German Power-metal pioneers Helloween being referred-to as "Kiss clones" was one of my personal favorites (as if this clown had ever heard Helloween, no less heard OF them). His smarmy contempt is even directed at the very band he's covering, describing Slash receiving an award for his "alleged" virtuosity.

Probably the all-time award winner for the "I was much too busy to research anything" award though, is his hilarious contention that Motley Crue, immediately following the Girls, Girls, Girls tour, were consigned to "the scrapheap of history". No, I'm not making this stuff up. According to this Tacitus of rock biographers, Motley Crue disappeared after their 4th album. You really have to be a special kind of microcephalic to let something like that get into a major published book. I assume the idea of editing and proofreading, at least by someone born after WWII was not even considered.

Now I am no fan of the hair bands, and generally don't like them either, but his overall snotty and disdainful attitude soon becomes intrusive and annoying, and makes you wonder why this aging hippy insists on writing a book on a genre he knows and cares nothing about.

Of course we do know why. Because a book on Gun N' Roses will sell a lot of copies, that's why. Because there is no large demographic clamouring for a book about Moby Grape, that's why.

Avoid this ridiculous book at all costs.

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.

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.

How does a supposed rock historian get away with printing Hendrix lit a Les Paul on fire and Paul Stanley played bass for KISS?

Davis claims fans showed up at the Rosemont Horizon gig in Chicago on April 9, 1992, and were surprised to find the show had been cancelled.

Ha ha! That's a lie because I was there, and the show was fantastic! I still have the ticket stub.

Such inexcusable mistakes make the reader believe the average GnR fan could write a better book considering we've seen and read all the same sources Davis has. And we wouldn't include the egregious errors.

The only insight this book offered me was what a true vagrant Axl was, sleeping on park benches and behind dumpsters, but then, I'm not sure how much of it I can believe, considering other HUGE factual errors in this book.

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.

Only half way through the book and I am really surprised by the lower quality. I have read Davis' other books, Walk this Way and Hammer of the Gods, which I thought were great. So this book was highly anticipated.

But now I am finding myself very disappointed. Besides the fact that most of the stories leave you hanging or wanting more details, the book reads like a pieces of stories were thrown together from the old Circus or Hit Parader mags with no semblance of order. Couple that with bad proof-reading. You have to know that Paul Stanley was not the bassist in KISS and that Slippery When Wet was not Bon Jovi's debut album if you are writing this book. Just 2 of the numerous errors that I noted and remember through the first half of the book.

I would highly recommend Slash's book if you want the story with many more details over this book.

Overall I was disappointed with this book, maybe because I had high expectations from the author of "Hammer of the Gods".

My trouble began with the glaring errors that made me question the validity with the rest of the book. Most notably, he mentions Paul Stanley as the bass player for Kiss which is completely untrue as Gene Simmons is the bassist. Maybe it's a typo but I think it's pretty bad that an author covering rock music doesn't know who the bass player of Kiss is, especially since Gene Simmons is the most visible member of that group.

This error made me question the rest of the book. How could I know if what I was reading was true?

The author also spends a lot of time talking about the impending grunge movement that takes place in the 90's, almost saying the GNR's Use Your Illusion albums may have been more successful if it weren't for Nirvana. I don't know about you, but I remember how HUGE the Use Your Illusion albums were when they came out. MTV played November Rain almost hourly and there was a lot of press about the tour following the release. Grant it, the grunge movement impacted the music industry and put a lot of heavy metal acts into obscurity, but in 1992, heavy metal was alive and well. Plus, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at first was lumped into the heavy metal genre (remember Kurt Cobain wearing a ball gown on Headbanger's Ball?) The author neglects the fact that Guns was so dysfunctional that they would have broken up even in Nirvana never existed.

Also, the author spends time actually reviewing, song-by-song, each album. While it's not a big deal, but this a biography, not a Rolling Stone review. I don't need your opinion on the songs.

My recommendation is to not buy this book and simply just enjoy the mystery behind Guns N' Roses because we will never know the full story.