More Guns N Roses Books In The Works, Promising To Cover The Eighties Insanity Of Addiction

Back in the eighties, a lot of metal and hard rock bands partied themselves into oblivion, but there’s probably no band that wrecked themselves worse than Guns N Roses. Thankfully most of the major players from the band, including guitarist Slash, are now sober and made it to the end of the tunnel alive, and there are several new books in the works about the band that are sure to scare people sober.

Slash, Duff and Steven Adler have all written books about their tenures in GNR, and now former drummer Matt Sorum promises to write “the juiciest of the juiciest of the GNR books, which is really saying something because Slash’s autobiography is one of the craziest memoirs about rock n roll and addiction you’ll ever read. (And if he left anything out of it, I’d be afraid to read it.) 

Sorum recently revealed to podcaster Matt Pinfield that he was a drug smuggler before he hit the rock n roll big time. “I used to smuggle cocaine across borders,” Sorum says. “Most of my deliveries were in Hawaii because I had a big connection there.

“The last time I smuggled two kilos to Hawaii, I remember thinking I was being followed,” Sorum says. “I wasn’t because I was paranoid on cocaine – I really felt that I was being followed.” Sorum got out at the right time. His replacement got nailed and ended up in jail for twenty years.

Sorum’s drug days are now behind him, but the drummer he replaced, Steven Adler, has struggled with addiction throughout his life. Adler is now working on another book that also promises to contain a lot of insane behavior, with the working title The Sh*t My Friends Remember I Did. It’s called this because he hears stories about his past insane behavior from friends that he has no recollection of today. 

Once they get sober, a lot of musicians will get candid about their addictions as a way of closing that chapter on their life, literally, and this may be part of Adler’s motivation, and it’s also a strong reminder of the kind of damage substance abuse can to do your brains over the long term.