Guns N' Roses Wrote A Children's Book, And It's Weirder Than It Sounds

Time marches steadily on for all of us, and that miraculously includes the members of Guns N' Roses. Despite all the drugs, brawls, and mountain lion roommates, the hard rock heroes have lived long enough to see themselves become lame geezers. From that perspective, a foray into children's literature might seem perfectly natural. We assure you, the Guns N' Roses children's book, scheduled for release this fall, is even weirder than you'd first expect.

First of all, it's co-written by James Patterson of all people, because at long last, he's apparently run out of books to write. It's also based on the lyrics of the Guns N' Roses song "Sweet Child O' Mine," which means ol' J-Pats is going to have his work cut out for him by the time he hits the second verse, where he can no longer hide that the song isn't about a child at all but Axl Rose's girlfriend at the time and shit gets very weird.

But the book is also somehow going to weave in the real-life story of two young girls, the daughter, and niece of their manager, who lived with the band on the road. Not to cast aspersions on those girls' parents, but a Guns N' Roses tour seems like the absolute worst place for a child outside the jaws of a great white shark and definitely the last place you'd find wholesome fodder for a children's book. What kind of shit must those girls have seen? Were they around when Axl got dragged off the stage by police after punching a security guard? Or when the Blind Melon guy delivered a pizza to the band onstage, fully naked? Or when the band started riots in St. Louis AND Montreal? It's not a great bedtime story, is what we're saying.

Maybe the band has simply forgotten what kind of hijinks they used to get up to. These days, they're more likely to make self-deprecating jokes in response to hecklers than put them in the hospital. Axl Rose, a man whose violent outbursts were once literally the stuff of legends, now spends most of his time (accurately) calling Steven Mnuchin an asshole on Twitter.

Like everything else that was cool in the early '90s, Guns N' Roses now fit squarely into the realm of dads.

Manna's Twitter was also much cooler in her twenties.

Top image: Geffen Records