2010.07.30 - Boston Herald - A Healthier Appetite (Steven)

A healthier ‘Appetite’

By Jed Gottlieb

Here are the highlights (lowlights?) of ex-Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler’s new memoir, “My Appetite for Destruction”: three suicide attempts, two heart attacks, a stroke and 28 overdoses.

It’s a daunting list of abuse Adler incurred while dancing with Mr. Brownstone – one the newly sober Adler hopes he’ll never have to add to.

“I got sick and tired of coming to in the hospital or having some kids wake me up naked in the middle of the street,” said Adler, who brings his band Adler’s Appetite to Showcase Live Saturday. “I can say that I was lucky that I only had a stroke. At least I can still play drums.”

A regular on VH1’s “Celebrity Rehab” and “Sober House,” Adler’s life was a very public mess for a very long time. All the juicy, and disgusting, details are chronicled in the tell-all.

But Adler, speaking from a Midwest tour stop last week, said the book isn’t just an attempt to cash in on stories of watching Nikki Sixx OD and being tackled naked (clearly a fetish) in a hotel parking lot.

No, its primary goal was therapeutic.

“I wouldn’t be sitting in the Cracker Barrel in Wisconsin right now if I didn’t write the book,” he said, laughing through his stroke-induced lisp. “There are some really devastating things in the book, and getting those things out and actually reading the thing once I got them out made me realize I could move on with my life.

“Working on the book, I did my crying and yelling and pounding on the wall and throwing bricks through the windows. Whatever it took to get those emotions out of me and onto the page, that’s what I did to heal.”

Clean and clearheaded for the first time in decades, Adler has learned to lean on the few friends who haven’t abandoned him. There’s his band – singer Rick Stitch, bassist Chip Z’nuff and guitarists Alex Grossi and Michael Thomas – most of whom have worked with Adler for years. Then there are his ex-junkie, now-sober peers in Motley Crue, Aerosmith and Guns N’ Roses.

“So many of us have gone through the same thing,” he said. “When somebody like Steven Tyler tells you that he’s been through what you’ve been through and that you’re going to be OK, you’re going to listen.”

Adler’s sobriety has helped him repair some of his relationships with his ex-band mates. Slash has been supportive of Adler’s recovery and invited the drummer to play on a track on his recent solo album.

But don’t think that a few of the Guns boys making amends is leading toward any kind of reunion.

“It’s not up to Slash or Duff or Izzy, who wouldn’t do it for the money but for the fans,” he said. “It’s all an Axl deal. He’s got to be the one to say OK. But I won’t pray to God to talk to Axl because if God tried to talk to Axl he’d make him wait. So I’m not going to bother God with that because he’ll come back to me saying, ‘Steven, you made me go talk to him and the (expletive) made me wait outside all day.”

And Adler’s not waiting.

After so much life wasted, he wants to work. He’s on a 50-city tour with Adler’s Appetite, playing “Appetite for Destruction” in its entirety along with other G N’ R hits. He’s released a new single, “It’s Good to Be Alive,” as a free download with the book. He’s learned to love studio sessions – something he can’t remember much of from the G N’ R days – and hopes to have a new album out next year.

It’s not the same as releasing “Appetite for Destruction,” the biggest (and best) American metal album of all time. But it’s a life. And after too many brushes with death, that’s more than good enough for Adler.

Adler’s Appetite, with Anchored, at Showcase Live, Foxboro, Saturday. Tickets: $15; 508-543-0609.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2010/07/30/a-healthier-appetite/