SLASH: Why I don’t read rock and roll books

Legendary Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash, who released his self-titled memoir, “Slash”, in 2007, was asked in a new interview with Barbara Caserta of Italy’s Linea Rock if there are any other rock autobiographies that he is particularly fond of. He responded:

To tell you the truth, I don’t read rock and roll books. I’ve read a book about national artists and I’ve read books about rock and roll, but I’ve never read anybody else’s… Well, I read the Jim Morrison one, and I read the most recent Joe Perry one, but for the most part, I stay away from autobiographies. A lot of it is because I know people — I know the people that wrote them — and it feels like spying on them. [Laughs] It’s like following people on their Instagram; if you know them, it feels like spying. But I also used to think that rock and roll books were 75 percent bullshit too, and I didn’t want to get into… ‘Cause autobiographies are largely written by other people, or biographies are totally written by other people, so it’s their own fantasy that they’re sort of building up in these books. That sort of inspired me to write my book myself and not rely too much on a ghost writer — to be as honest as possible. So they inspired me in that way.

Slash

Back in 2008, Slash told the Los Angeles Times about the process of writing his own book:

It was a different experience. I was resigned to writing the book due to the fact that some guy came out with an unauthorized Slash book. So, I just decided to do my own book, because doing an interview or press release to offset any of this stuff didn’t work. The guy who I wrote the book with [Anthony Bozza] had such a genuine zeal for my whole story. Not just the cliché stuff. It was a real collaboration between us. I wrote entire chapters of the book on my Blackberry… sending it to my co-writer. But you know, it was worth it, because finally after all my input, it turned out good.

Slash