Guns N’ Roses Reunion Coming to Chicago

Even if you couldn’t stomach the hefty fees for the upcoming Guns N’ Roses show July 1 at Soldier Field, you can still experience the life and times of "the most dangerous band in the world." The gritty group came from nothing, living and practicing in a storage space, forced to eat onions out of a field on their first tour when the car broke down. They rose up through the ranks of the 1980s LA music scene to fame, before losing the band to ego and dysfunction.

Eternal teenager Slash's memoir follows the lead guitarist’s rowdy exploits yet manages to convey his experience as a gifted musician whose brilliance and hard work are rewarded with fame.

Affable bass player Duff McKagan’s memoir It's So Easy is surprisingly articulate and an inspiring story of transformation. He beats alcoholism through mountain biking, martial arts and academics to become a happy family man raising daughters with his supermodel wife. By the end you are fully convinced that Duff is someone you should be friends with.

The more complicated story of W. Axl Rose is told in an unauthorized biography W.A.R by Mick Wall, the rock journalist so hated by Rose that he is called out in the song "Get In the Ring." Unauthorized is the only kind of biography ever likely to be published about the famously litigious singer. Rose is portrayed as a deeply troubled man combating personal demons by trying to control and in the process destroying most of his personal and professional relationships. W.A.R. is a page turner—you witness the rise and fall of a great rock band. And yet somehow you end up still loving Axl, like the bad teenage boyfriend whose pain you can never truly cure.

If somehow you lost your cassette tape of Appetite for Destruction during the past 30 years, you can still check out the CD, along with GNR’s other albums.

Want to go back in time to GNR’s heyday? You can read articles like this 1992 Rolling Stone interview with Axl Rose via our EBSCO Magazines & Journals online resource.