Andy Warhol was so enamored with Polaroids that he made special arrangements with the company to purchase all the overstock film of a discontinued model of camera. A similar photographic fetish is the organizing principle of Don't Try This at Home. For kicks, rocker and author Dave Navarro installed a carnival-grade photo booth in his L.A. home. The book documents a year's worth of visitors to Navarro's pad who all stepped into the booth to get their mug shots snapped.

The resulting dispatch from Hell is as hard to draw one's eyes from as a twelve car pile-up. Intermingled with a parade of rock stars, models, prostitutes, drug dealers, pizza delivery guys, and housecleaners are a series of observations and interviews with Dave and his co-author Neil Strauss. Strauss, co-author of other tomes for Jenna Jameson, Marilyn Manson, and Motley Crue, operates less as an editor than as a ringmaster to this debauched thing rock stars call a lifestyle.

Don't Try This At Home is one rollicking contact high of a memoir. Just set it on the coffee table at your home and watch how quickly it snares its readers. -–Ryan Boudinot


From Publishers Weekly
In a book originally scheduled for publication in 2001, rock guitarist Navarro (Jane's Addiction; Red Hot Chili Peppers) and rock journalist Strauss (coauthor of bestselling celeb autobios including Mötley Crüe's thrillingly crude The Dirt, Marilyn Manson's The Long Hard Road Out of Hell and Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star) chronicle the year Navarro turned his house into "a cross between a crack den, an after-hours club, a halfway house and Andy Warhol's Factory" to test his theory that "[t]he only people who stay in your life are the ones you pay." Navarro had had messy breakups with his girlfriend and his record label, and he'd decided to start using drugs again. He installs a photo booth and low-tech surveillance equipment to record every rock star, sycophant, drug dealer and prostitute who stops by his house. The book's 57 episodic chapters (some of which are simply transcripts) relate the demise of a relationship, drug overdoses and detoxes; they include Navarro's jokes about a "committed three-way relationship" and his pseudo-philosophical ruminations about the impossibility of romantic love for the emotionally challenged. Drug-addled chapters such as "Ten Ways to Tie Off" and photo strips of wacked-out, cosmetically enhanced women speak to a sort of quasi-glamorous, semisick, half-desperate pathos. Navarro's experiences turn out to be a lesson in accepting the "rainbow of emotions that come along with life," and there's even a happy ending, as he sobers up, restarts his career and gets married. Weirdly fascinating for a while, but ultimately for the fans. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Book Description

Step into the booth. Check your judgments at the curtain. Close your eyes. Listen: you can hear the voices of the visitors who sat here before you: some of the most twisted, drug-addled, deviant, lonely, lost, brilliant characters ever to be caught on film. What do you have to offer the booth?

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One day, Dave Navarro opened the doors of this house in the Hollywood Hills to the chaos of the valley below. His only rule was, "You come in the house, you get in the photo booth." The result is a shocking, rocking, not-to-be-believed diary, sociological experiment, Hollywood documentary, and exercise in exhibitionism. From strippers, drug dealers, record execs, cleaning ladies, and pizza delivery guys, to celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Marilyn Manson, Rose McGowan, Keanu Reeves, Flea, Billy Zane, and Natalie Imbruglia, anyone who entered Navarro's house was caught on film. And it didn't matter if they were wild and crazy, inebriated, naked, hamming it up, looking gorgeous or downright ugly. Accompanying the photo-strops are hilarious stories, musings, tell-all anecdotes, and other rare glimpses into the lifestyle of one of the most decadent rock stars of our time. Visually stunning and deliciously readable, Spread is truly an irresistible guilty pleasure.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In a book originally scheduled for publication in 2001, rock guitarist Navarro (Jane's Addiction; Red Hot Chili Peppers) and rock journalist Strauss (coauthor of bestselling celeb autobios including M tley Cr e's thrillingly crude The Dirt, Marilyn Manson's The Long Hard Road Out of Hell and Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star) chronicle the year Navarro turned his house into "a cross between a crack den, an after-hours club, a halfway house and Andy Warhol's Factory" to test his theory that "[t]he only people who stay in your life are the ones you pay." Navarro had had messy breakups with his girlfriend and his record label, and he'd decided to start using drugs again. He installs a photo booth and low-tech surveillance equipment to record every rock star, sycophant, drug dealer and prostitute who stops by his house. The book's 57 episodic chapters (some of which are simply transcripts) relate the demise of a relationship, drug overdoses and detoxes; they include Navarro's jokes about a "committed three-way relationship" and his pseudo-philosophical ruminations about the impossibility of romantic love for the emotionally challenged. Drug-addled chapters such as "Ten Ways to Tie Off" and photo strips of wacked-out, cosmetically enhanced women speak to a sort of quasi-glamorous, semisick, half-desperate pathos. Navarro's experiences turn out to be a lesson in accepting the "rainbow of emotions that come along with life," and there's even a happy ending, as he sobers up, restarts his career and gets married. Weirdly fascinating for a while, but ultimately for the fans. Agent, Ira Silverberg. (Oct.) Forecast: If Strauss's track record is any indication, this book should do well despite its flaws-and booksellers who stack this near Anthony Kiedis's autobiography (Forecasts, Oct. 4) may find their aisles clogged with the Tower Records crowd. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly