false 6 25 18 true 6184234 read 3 true 3464222 currently-reading 4 true 3464221 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/53537405 to: Ronnie: The Autobiography (Hardcover) by Ronnie Wood
I picked this up because I enjoy the Faces, Wood's early work with Rod Stewart, and the Stones.

I found this book terribly depressing.

In the beginning, the book is rather interesting and full of tales of mischievous boys who play music, pull pranks, and live a little wild. Some of the stories are quick little portraits of famous musicians, and the insight into how some of the music of the time period was made is cool. There's a whole bunch of blanks, however. There's some stories of the Faces' tour (rearranging furniture, wrecking hotels...) but very little about how the albums were made. It's quite odd and I wonder whether Ronnie just plain doesn't remember those years.

Ronnie's obviously one of those friendly, easy going when you meet him guys. He seems to get along with most of the people in his book and had very little negative to say about anyone (with the occasional exception of an ex-manager).

The amount of drug use and abuse is staggering, and is the main reason I found this book so hard to finish. Ronnie shows all the classic abuser behavior. He is seemingly helpless in the face of his managers, for example, and hands over the running of his fortune to a random stranger more than once (!) and complains about their bad behavior. He gets involved with mafia who supply him cocaine. The most depressing portion to me was how he recounted the story of his children. He briefly mentions that the drug use did affect his kids: they sometimes picked up joint butts around the house and so on. *headdesk times infinity* Uh, Ronnie? I think if you're locking yourself in a room to freebase cocaine for DAYS, your kids might be a teensy bit affected, yes. Towards the end of the book, Ronnie does enter rehab, but (oddly to me) he seems to think that the booze is the big problem and doesn't mention much about going off the rest of the huge pharmaceutical arsenal. There are many grim tales about the actions he performed while doped, like a bloody fight with Keith Richards involving knives and broken bottles.

Anyway. It seemed to me like there were many sad tales that lingered in the margins of the book. Stories of broken marriages and abuse, lost lives, overdoses, and so on. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/53533158 The Demon's Lexicon (Demons, #1) by Sarah Rees Brennan
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