‘Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N’ Roses’
by Stephen Davis
434 pages, Gotham Books, 2008

A biography of Guns N’ Roses seems like an easy thing to write: musically inclined juvenile delinquents get together, drink, drug, fight, make incredibly significant hard rock album, get rich, drink, drug, fight and break up. End of story. In fact, the story of Guns N’ Roses is best kept to the basics.

Stephen Davis, author of such rock biographies as “Hammer of the Gods” (Led Zeppelin) and “Walk This Way” (Aerosmith), decided to take the GNR legacy to another level by dragging out all the band’s sordid details. “Watch You Bleed” painstakingly and painfully recounts every fight or instance of substance abuse witnessed during the band’s tenure. For the most part, it echoes Slash’s self-titled 2007 memoir, except with less rationalizing. “Bleed” instead paints a portrait of a band hell-bent on unapologetic destruction. The reader is supplied with account after account of the band breaking this, wrecking that, screwing friends over and having fun at the expense of others.

Davis’ writing style is stunted and the sentences clip along. Statements not pertaining to anything end up tacked on to the end of paragraphs, as though he’s trying to fit in as many things as he’s heard without any follow-up.
 
The book seems less a story of Guns N’ Roses and more a love letter to Axl Rose. It should be called “Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Axl Rose and These Four Other Guys.” Davis spends much of the text describing what Rose wears for interviews and concerts, every few pages mentioning what T-shirt he was wearing or the color of his bandana on a particular day. Rose is never discussed unfavorably, no matter what his behavior, whether he’s getting in fights or screaming at a band member. Nothing comes off as being his fault. And the other four band members hardly go a page without shooting up or punching someone, as well, all with a seemingly jovial lack of responsibility.

In the end, the saga of Guns N’ Roses is like hotdogs: it’s best not to see how they’re made. Most likely, the people reading “Watch You Bleed” are going to be fans of the band, and there is nothing in the book they don’t already know. It’s quite possible that Davis has created a very accurate portrayal of the band, but who wants to be reminded that their heroes are such jerks?

Perhaps, without the drinking and drugging, GNR would not have made the music that it did, but all the book succeeds in doing is reaffirming the fact that the band was populated by assholes. Sometimes you must separate the artists from their art and not be ashamed to enjoy the work of such badly behaved humans.