Mick Wall's Axl biography

Just finished reading Mick Wall's Axl Rose biography this weekend. I only read it because I wanted to find new interview sources. As suspected, it wasn't a very joyful read, but it wasn't that bad either. From the start it was quite obvious that Wall has a thorn in his side towards Axl. He candidly talks about the animosity Axl shows towards him and he doesn't convincingly succeed at coming across as not being bitter and resentful. This bias colors the whole book and it is hard to not feel he has been cherry picking stories and quotes to make Axl come across worse than he might be. Which is sad, because you want a biography to appear balanced so as to give a true, factual description of the person. For instance, no where did Wall talk about Axl loyalty and humour.

Another problem with the book is Wall's obvious distance from the object, at least from the time when he as ostracised from Axl. I would like this to be an insider book, giving us new glimpses into Axl, but it felt just like a biased collection of stories that paint him in a bad picture. Not that I don't believe the stories, it just felt very skewed.

Wall also ends by with a passionate plea for Axl to reunite with the AFD lineup using the huge sum of money promised, as an argument, hence displaying that he doesn't really get the object at all, something I would prefer the writer of a biography to do.

All this being said, the book was well enough written and presented an interesting summary of the rise and fall of GN'R. It was released before 2008, so unfortunately there is no happy ending to it.

And oh yea, do I recommend it? Nope. Especially not for casual fans.