Readers of the NYT Book Review will have noticed one drug-addled rocker's bio missing from its Music Issue this past weekend. While Clapton, Coltrane, and even seminal country rocker Gram Parsons all get the (usual) treatment, Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash's effort, Slash (HarperCollins, Oct. 30), is oddly ignored. Does the Times have a standards policy against books containing pictures of the subject getting his salad tossed by his wife at the Hard Rock Cafe? Seems prudish.

Like most, I prefer my guitar heroes served with a smack habit and a heaping helping of alcoholism, but too often their stories make for boastful, boring advertisements for legendary musicians' tired images. For all his own debauched history, Slash (born Saul Hudson)—along with co-writer and Radar contributor Anthony Bozza—gives his story of skyrocketing fame and varying heroin and alcohol addictions an incredibly, um, sober rendering. Slash's light-speed lifestyle is treated almost tenderly—an OD occasion breezes by in a few sentences—and it's somehow noble that he remains standing among his various comrades-in-track-marked-arms—mostly bandmates, dealers, groupies, and porn stars. Even if you're celebrating alone, what is rehab, really, without a vodka-drenched after-party?

Despite Slash's rich personal history, people will read this book hoping for the dish on Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses' demise. Slash and Bozza wisely hedge the relationship with Rose (and thus the band's collapse) in deft, diplomatic terms. He's as ready to highlight his own missteps and failings as he is to draw attention to Rose's renowned mercurial egotism. More than an airing of any dirty laundry (obviously there's plenty), Slash delivers with earnestness—to the point that at times it seems he may still not recognize the effects his antics had on his music (uh, Velvet Revolver?) and those closest to him.

Luckily, much of Slash is theater of the hilarious and absurd: Of course Izzy ejaculates on Slash's leg during a gangbang. Sure Liz Taylor sneaks a peek at Slash's man-snake. Is it weird for him to have sex with two chicks in front of hotel staff? Why wouldn't a bottomed-out Slash ignore spiritual counseling from David Bowie or get wasted with Billie Joel or hang with Michael Jackson and Brooke Shields or go partying with Gary Oldman? Someone has to.

But before you know it, Slash is (if you buy this) sober, and even more shockingly married—of course to the girl with whom he cheated on his first fiancé the night before his wedding. He's still playing music (seriously, Velvet Revolver?), but the knowledge of having survived a life of touring with one of modern rock's hardest living bands must leave Slash nostalgic for the challenge of having something to prove—and the blinding party that comes with it.