A first taste of WATCH YOU BLEED: The Saga of Guns N' Roses

A first taste of WATCH YOU BLEED: The Saga of Guns N' Roses (August 26,
2008; Gotham Books) the stunning and gritty new rock biography by former
Rolling Stone music editor Stephen Davis,  is now on newsstands in the
September issue of Playboy.  The excerpt, which focuses on the early days of
GN'R as the Gunners first came together and started working their way out of
the gutters of West Hollywood, is filled with great behind-the-scenes
stories:

*    How the band almost fell apart at the outset when Axl slept with
Slash's girlfriend-and what Axl did to make it up to GN'R's lead guitarist.
*    A look at GN'R's disastrous first "tour" when a broken-down car left
them stranded in the middle of nowhere dressed in full rock regalia,
desperately trying to hitch a ride north to Seattle.  (After many hours in
the desert rescue came at the hands of a truck driver and his empty
18-wheeler followed by a couple of ex-hippie girls from San Francisco with a
stash of ganja-coma-inducing pot brownies.)  The song Axl began to write on
what the band ended up calling the Hell Tour eventually became "Welcome to
the Jungle."
*    Jaw-dropping new accounts of the band's famously decadent West
Hollywood rehearsal space: ground zero for what became a vile supermarket of
sex, drugs and rock and roll and the place where the legendary street buzz
about Guns N' Roses started.  (It was from here that rhythm guitarist Izzy
Stradlin ran his heroin enterprise.  With all the drinking, drugging,
smoking, whoring, fighting and extra-loud music that was going on, it wasn't
long before the L.A. cops and West Hollywood sheriff's deputies started
paying attention.)
*    The July 1985 gig at the Hollywood Blvd. dive Raji's, where Slash
snorted too much smack and was blowing chunks behind his amplifiers.
*    Axl's confrontation with Poison's singer Brett Michaels after
Michaels slagged the Gunners onstage.
*    The incandescent gig at the Roxy in January 1986 where Guns mania
started to surge with an unstoppable momentum.  (When the subsequent
feeding-frenzy went into full-swing GN'R's manager scheduled meals with
record people with expense accounts at all the best restaurants and the band
started eating well for the first time in years.  Suddenly it was filets of
beef and the finest champagne, lobster flown in from Maine and trips to the
WC for gleaming rails of Peruvian blow.)
*    How Geffen Records' A&R whizz, Tom Zutaut, convinced the Gunners to
sign with Geffen after an all-night session with the band at his house in
Beachwood Canyon listening to Aerosmith records and discussing minutiae and
secret lore about the band the Gunners still considered superheroes.
*    The problems that cropped up in the weeks before GNR signed with
Geffen-during which time the band starved and went into serious debt with
its drug suppliers-including Slash not wanting his real name to appear on
the contracts, and the little mater of outstanding warrants for Axl in
Indiana for stuff like grand theft auto, assault and bail jumping that
needed to get taken care of.
*    The day of the signing with Geffen when the band showed up hours
late because Axl, having flipped out after misplacing his contact lenses,
ended up on the roof of the Whisky a Go Go in a meditative pose and had to
be coaxed down.

But the excerpt is just the tip of the iceberg.  Spanning from the
prehistory of Guns N' Roses to their fizzling dissolution and beyond WATCH
YOU BLEED offers a wealth of new information and revelatory details:       

*    A fresh account of Axl Rose's troubled infancy.  Davis explores the
claims Axl made about his biological father later in life after undergoing
intense psychotherapy that resulted in recovered memories.  He also looks at
Axl's subsequent childhood in a strict family of Indiana holy-rollers with a
stepfather who beat him for minor infractions and a mother who feared her
husband and was powerless to protect her son.
*    A look at Axl's troubled history with the law in Lafayette and the
significant criminal record he amassed before heading to L.A. for good.

*    A complete untangling of the confusing sequence of events that
involved multiple bands, crossed and double-crossed alliances, serious dope
dealing, abandoned loyalties, blatant careerism, manipulation of friends,
abuse of girlfriends, fortuitous accidents, and a messy collaboration
between Lady Luck and the Hand of Fate that brought about the creation of
Guns N' Roses from a jumble of young musicians yearning for rock glory.
*    A look at the backgrounds of all the Gunners, especially Slash.
*    How the Gunners kept body and soul together during the early days,
as they were touring, when they were completely broke and scrambling to
scrape up enough money to eat after their shows.
*    How the music was forged.  On individual songs and entire albums
Davis tells the origin stories of how they were inspired; brings readers
into the sound booths, rehearsal rooms and recording studios for each
release; and reveals the unknown stories and backstage dramas that were an
inevitable part of the process.
*    The stories of several people close to Guns who overdosed and
perished.
*    The story of Michelle (immortalized in a Guns N' Roses song), the
criminal charges that resulted from Axl's encounter with the 15-year-old
groupie and forced the band to go on the lam, and how Axl supposedly made
the charges go away.
*    Additional details of Axl's public exposure of drug problems in the
bad at the Los Angeles Coliseum when Guns opened shows for the Rolling
Stones in 1989.
*    A new look at Axl's dysfunctional relationships with wife Erin
Everly and supermodel Stephanie Seymour.
*    How Axl took inspiration from Mick Jagger in seizing control of the
band and the entire organization and in transforming Guns N' Roses from a
guitar band into a multi-musician extravaganza.
*    An extraordinary account of GN'R's monster combined tour in
1992/'93-the longest in rock history-that included 195 shows in 27
countries.
*    The breakup of the original Gunners.
*    The further adventures of some of the Gunners under the banner of
the hard-rocking Velvet Revolver and more.
*    The full back story of Axl's unrelenting quest to release the
long-awaited, mystery-shrouded Chinese Democracy album.

Thanks to their controversial albums and an abundance of bad-boy behavior
Guns N' Roses has been a magnet for national and international media
attention from its inception.  Yet despite all the news coverage during
their fast rise and slow burnout the full tale of Guns N' Roses has never
been told.  Until now.