Choose Your Illusion: Table of Contents
W. Axl Rose was not always known by this name. In fact, his name evolved in a way. Many people STILL get it wrong though. This is what the correct order of his name changes are:
Interesting and Appropriate Facts
Remember that Axl has no E! Use this little device: God is three letters long and has no E: just like AXL!!
"I wasn't told I had a real father until I was 17. My real father was my stepdad, as far as I knew. But I found some insurance papers, then I found my mom's diploma with the last name Rose. I was never born Bill Bailey. I was born William Rose. I am W. Rose because William was an asshole." His first name is truly and legally just W.!!!
Axl was born on FEBRUARY 6TH 1962 in Lafayette Indiana
where he grew up. His mother is Sharon E. Bailey. His stepfather was L.
Stephen Bailey. Axl's mother always picked him over Axl which left Axl
with a sense of rejection. Axl's real dad was no model citizen either.
"I remember being sexually abused by this man and watching something
horrible happen to my mother when she came to get me. ... I got a lot of
violent, abusive thoughts towards women out of watching my mom with this
man."
"I've always felt this urge to go back and help my mom. I felt obligated
to, but I don't anymore. She fed me and put clothes on my back, but she
wasn't there for me."
Axl isn't completely unforgiving. He sent a stretched limo for his family
to bring them to the Indianopolis concert in May '91. Axl's Grandmother
is apparently a female version of him and sang along to all the words at
the show. There was a family reunion after the gig and apparently something
went wrong because Axl trashed his hotel suite that night, which he has
almost never done before. At least he tried!!
Axl's mother died on May 28, 1996. Axl, Amy, and Stuart did visit her before
she passed away.
Other Family Members
Axl went to Pentecostal Church where he sang and taught Sunday School! (I might actually START going to church if he still did that!) The Bible was "shoved down [his] throat, and it really distorted [his] point of view."
"Nothing ever happened to me. I watched my father speak in tongues and people interpret it. I watched him sing in perfect Japanese - and my dad doesn't know Japanese - and sing every note right on key with his eyes closed, driving 100 miles an hour down the freeway and not hitting a car. I don't know how that happened. I've seen people healed... I've seen people with no eyes read. It was very strang, but nothing ever happened to me. I always won all the bible contests. I taught Sunday school. I played piano. I knew more gospel songs than anybody I knew."
"My teacher had ears like a bat, so in order to get away with singing someone else's part, you'd really have to get it down. He used to wonder how come he's hearing a soprano in the bass section."
"When I was in the first grade, I wasn't allowed to cross the street until I sang two Elvis Presley songs. And then, when I was in the third grade, at recess, I would have to get up on top of a trees stump and the teachers would make me sing all the Top-40 Elvis tunes for the younger kids."
"I had to go to church anywhere from three to eight times a week. I even taught Bible school while I was beaten and my sister was being molested. We'd have televisions one week, then my stepdad would throw them out because they were satanic. I wasn't allowed to listen to music. Women were evil. Everything was evil. I had a really distorted view of sexuality and women. I remember the first time I got smacked for looking at a woman. I didn't kow what I was looking at, and I don't remember how old I was, but it was a cigarette advertisement with two girsl coming out of the water in bikinis. I was just staring at the TV - not thinking, just watching - and my dad smacked me in the mouth and I went flying across the floor."
Axl had an abover average IQ and he was a loner in school. He dropped out of Jefferson High School in his junior year. His bad attitude soon became bigger than Indiana could handle. When Axl was 17, he had some troubles with the juevinile officials and decided to get the fuck out of dodge. He left Indiana on a Greyhound, destination L.A.
Young Gun, Billy the Kid, front and center.
"When I came to L.A. five years ago [1982] from some hellhole in the Midwest, I was wearing cowboy boots and everyone said I looked like I just came off the boat. All of a sudden, it's become a fashion, so now I guess I drive the boat."
As soon as Axl had thumbed it to L.A., history was in the making. He wasted no time reaching for his dreams, but it wasn't easy. "When I was in Indiana I was labeled a punk... a punk rocker. When I moved to L.A., the punks called me a hippy and didn't want anything to do with me. The Hollywood rock scene was a war-zone back then. I tried out for a punk band and I didn't make it because they said I sounded too much like Robert Plant." He looked for Izzy (who had previously left Indiana) for 2 days but didn't find him right away. But eventually he caught up with Izzy. All of the members of GN'R migrated from band to band before the Fab Five got together. Axl was part of L.A. Guns before fusing with Holly wood Rose to become Guns N' Roses. "I left Hollywood Rose and joined L.A. Guns and the drummer and bass player freaked out and we kinda broke up. In the meantime, Izzy had booked a gig for Hollywood Rose and there was no band left, then Tracii booked a gig for L.A. Guns and there was no band there either. We mixed what was left of the two band together and we got Guns N' Roses. Then Tracii left and went back to L.A. Guns and we got Duff. This line up was finalized on June 6th, 1985." (More celebrated by some than Christmas!) For more details about Guns N' Roses' evolution, check out the GN'R Home Page (in Axl's Links).
Axl's Tattoo's: Feelin' No Pain
Aerosmith
"Aerosmith are a tradition that I grew up with. They were the only
band that people who lived in my city in Indiana would accept wearing make-up
and dressed cool."
Nazareth
"It was 'Love Hurts', the Nazareth version that got me singing in
my high voice..."
Thin Lizzy
The Black Rose album was very influential on Axl. Just look at his black
rose tattoo on his right shoulder!
Hanoi Rocks (Michael Monroe)
"The only reason I put my hair up is because Izzy had these pictures
of Hanoi Rocks and they were cool, and because we hung out with this guy
who studied Vogue magazine hair styles and he was really into doing my
hair.."
Elton John
"When we did 'Bohemian Rhapsody' that was totally unrehearsed. Brian
asked me to do it that day, and it felt right. I spoke to Elton before
the show and he was kind of uneasy about meeting me - you know, I"m
supposed to be the most homophobic guy on earth. WHen we talked, I was
excited but serious, telling him how much his music meant to me. By the
end he was like 'Whoa'!"
Jim Morrison
Showing up late to shows, problems with the press, I can see a parallel.
Thank god Axl is still alive!! I think he once said (about the press) "They
killed Jim Morrison and now they're trying to kill me!!" LEMME SEE
YA TRY!!
It wasn't always Roses for Axl. At times he barely got by. "We tried to live on $3.75 a day, which was enough to buy biscuits and gravy at Denny's for a buck and a quarter. ... That's it. We survived." He lived in the "Hellhouse" with the restof the band for many months. It was pretty much a just a studio with beds. "It didn't even have a shower."
"Every weekend, the biggest party in L.A. was down at our place. We'd have 500 people packed in an alley and our old roadie was selling beers for a buck out of his trunk. It was like a bar and everyone had their whiskey. We could get away with whatever we wanted, except when the cops came... If there was a problem we'd escort them out. By 'escort' I mean we'd drag 'em out by their hair down the alley, naked."
"I remember for two years standing at the Troubador and people wouldn't talk to me."
Axl held several odd jobs before Guns made it. He did telephone sales, was a night manager at a Tower Video, and smoked cigarettes with Slash for $8 an hour for a UCLA medical test.
"Up until we got signed, I lived on the streets for five years. I never lived in one place for more than two month, always crashing at people's houses. My parents would say, 'Come back home and go to college and we'll pay for it' but I would reply, 'No, I have to do this now'."
"We were all sitting around with bits of paper trying to figure it out. Everyone came up with different numbers, but basically we stopped counting after we got past $100 million."
"I'd like to walk away knowing that, like, I can support my kids for whatever they want for the rest of their lives off my interest rates, you know? I'd like to have that security. I've never known that security in my whole life, you know? Some people are like, 'Oh, why don't you give money to this or that you know, you have all this money...' I'm like, 'Well, no, I got a certain interest rate and I bought my security. You bought your house, didn't you? I worked for my livelihood too, you know?"
"At times I enjoy writing and at other times I just hate it because it's definitely having to go back and experience some pain and express how you really feel."
"I think we've come up with a sound that's pretty interesting. It's got some elements that people will recognize, but we're not ripping anyone off."
"We're not afraid to go excess with substances, sexually and everything else. We know we're always going to be at odds with people on something. A lot of people are afraid to be that way, we're not. And the reason is that bands who have made it big have been that way. And Guns N' Roses plan on making it real big"
"When we started we wanted to be the coolest, sexiest, meanest, nastiest, loudest, funnest band. There was a group consciousness of rape, pillage, search, and destroy."
"...The only real rock n' roll band to come out of L.A. in the last 10 years." -1987
"It's hard to go off and have a thrashing time when you have to deal with these responsibilities."
"I always believed that the truth about what's going on in Guns N' Roses' lives is just as exciting and just as dangerous, heavy and real as people thought the hype scene to be."
"I personally love our songs. The bottom line is this, if this were all to finish tomorrow then at least I've got 'em on tape. I'm not writing this for anybody who listens to it. I'm doing it for me."
"I'm sorry, I'm not catering to the masses. We're in this band for ourselves, and if everybody else like it, that's cool too, and that adds to it. But we're playing what we want to hear. That main trick will be to come off not sounding like pompous assholes."
"We like to express our frustrations with life through our music. Instead of getting into a fight we put it into our music. That's why I like to play as much as possible, because it keeps us much calmer and I can deal with people better that way..."
"We're not the easiest people to work with and we basically got this 'screw you attitude that gives a lot of people cause to worry. But we do know our limits. We stop if we think what we are doing is going to screw our music up."
"Nothing every really works right for this band. Slash once said that God didn't want this to happen, and sometimes I believe that."
"The EP's a piece of shit compared to the ablum... that's the most contrived piece of shit we've done yet. It ain't a live record-if you think it is you're crazy. What we did was go into a room, record ourselves and put 50,000 screaming people on top."< br>
AXL SPEAKS, PEOPLE DO: "I want this to be the biggest selling debut album from a rock act ever!"
"The whole album is about someone we've known and hung out with or something we've done."
"I wrote the words in Seattle. Its a big city, but at
the same time, its still a small city compared to L.A. and the things you're
gonna learn... I just wrote how L.A. looked to me. If someone comes to
town and they want to find something, they can find whatever they want."
"Like everytime you turn around, someone is trying to
screw you over financially, or the cops are banging on your door and you
didn't do anything. It's just being railroaded into something and trying
to get out from underneath it. You know, parents, teachers, preachers...
everybody. The last verse Slash and I put together as a joke 'cause we
were talking about how we get in fights sometimes, and how some people
get pissed off that you're drunk. But they're the ones that bought the
bottle of whiskey to get your drunk on. Some people say I got a chip on
my shoulder."
"The verses are more about being in the Jungle. The
chorus is like being back in the Midwest or somewhere. It reminds me of
when I was a little kid and just looked up at the blue sky and went 'Wow,
what is all this? Its so big out there.' Everything was more innocent.
There are parts of the song that have more of a down home feel and when
I started putting down the over-layers of my vocals (I put five tracks
on there), it seemed that it came out like some Irish or Scottish heritage."
"I know this girl named Michelle and she became a really
good friend of the band's and I was going out with her for a while. It's
a true story. Slash and some other members of the band said that's kinda
too heavy to say about poor, sweet Michelle; she'll freak out. I'd written
the nice sweet song about her, and then I looked at it and thought, 'that
really doesn't touch any basis of reality', so I put down an honest thing.
It describes her life. This girl leads such a crazy life with doing drugs,
or whatever she's doing at the time, you dont' know if she's gonna be there
the next day. Everytime I see Michelle I'm really relieved and glad. I
showed her the lyrics after about three weeks of debating, and she was
so happy that someone didn't paint justa pretty picture. She loves it.
It was a real song about her."
"I had written this poem, reached a dead end with it
and put it on the shelf. Then Slash and Izzy got working together on songs
and I came in, Izzy hit a rythym, and all of a sudden this poem popped
into my head. It just all came together. A lot of rock bands are too fucking
wimpy to have any sentiment or any emotion in any of their stuff unless
they're in pain. It's the first positive love song I've ever written, but
I never had anyone to write anything that positive about, I guess."
"I wrote this song for this girl who was gonna have
a band and she was gonna call it Rocket Queen. She kinda kept me alive
for awhile. The last part of the song is my message to this person, or
anybody else who can get something out of it. It's like there's hope and
a friendship note at the end of the song. For that song there is also something
I tried to work out with various people - a recorded sex act. It was somewhat
spontaneous but premeditated; somethign I wanted to put on the record...
It was a sexual song and it was a wild night in the studio. This girl we
knew was dancing; everyone was getting really excited. The night coulda
gotten really explosive, lots of trouble for everyone, and I thought 'wait
a minute, how can we make this more prod uctive?"
"I went back and forth from Indiana eight times my first
year in Hollywood. I wrote it about being dropped off at the bus station
and everything that was going on... the black guys trying to sell you drugs
is where the line 'Police and niggers, get out of my way' comes from. I've
seen these huge black dudes pull bowie-knives on people for their boom
boxes and shit. It's ugly... When I say 'I'm just a small town white boy'
I'm just saying I'm no better than anyone else I've described. I'm just
trying to get through life, that's all."
"This was the first song we ever wrote in Guns N' Roses."
All of the following information can be found in Makin' F@*!ing Videos Part I: Don't Cry.
All of the following information can be found in Makin' F@*!ing Videos Part II: November Rain (except the last one, which is in Part IV).
Check out the Musician June 92 Interview.
"Writing Coma was so heavy I'd start to write and I'd just pass out. I tried to write that song for a year... I wrote the whole end of that song of the top of my head. It just poured out."
Check out the Musician June 92 Interview.
Axl does a good job of explaing Estranged and what the videos means to him in Makin' F@*!ing Videos Part IV: Estranged.
Check out the trilogy breakdown on the Guns N' Roses Home Page.
Axl explains why there are two versions.
Check out the Musician June 92 interview below.
Check out the interview below.
Some info on Axl and Manson about "TSI?".
The latest I heard is that Axl heard his brother's band playin the song and recorded it even before he knew who wrote it!
Axl on Other GN'R Members: My Friends, They Always Come Through For Me
"Slash is usually thrown out of wherever he happens to live because he can't handle it. You give him a rehersal place everyday and he's fine. He's the nicest guy in the world."
"When we hired the plane, Slash was having trouble justifying our spending that much money. I said, 'But dude, you're a rock n' roll star!' He looked at me and said, 'You almost made me throw up'."
"Matt's amazing and it's a real pleasure to introduce
him to the world in teh way he deserves. He's up there with anybody."
"One night when I was bummed Matt came around and put his hand on
me and said 'It's alright, man'. Those little things are really special."
"I found out he was going to be put on the streets...
So I called Alan on Monday and I say 'secure this guy, hire him, write
up the contracts. Put him on a salary and give him an advance so he can
get an apartment'."
"...when I got the phone call that Izzy was leaving the band I was standing there crying... my friend of 15 years was leaving."
"Izzy's songs were on the record because I wanted them there, not because he gave a shit either way."
"My personal belief is that Izzy never really wanted something this big There were responsiblilities that Izzy didn't want to deal with. He didn't want to work at the standards that Slash and I set for ourselves."
"He didn't want to do videos. He just wasn't into it. Getting Izzy to work on his own songs was like pulling teeth. When Izzy had taped them on a four-track, they were done. I mean, I like tapes and that, but we'd get destroyed if we came out with a g arage tape." "If people think I don't respect Izzy or acknowledge his talent, they're sadly mistaken. He was my friend. I haven't always been right. Sometimes I've been massively wrong, and Izzy's been the one to help steer me back to the things that were right. B ut I know that I wanted to get as big as we possibly could from Day One, and that wasn't Izzy's intentions at all."
"Izzy wanted the financial rewards and power rewards of my vision."
"That's OK, but when the guy's getting up at six thirty in the morning and riding bicycles and motorcycles and buying toy airplanes, and he's donating all this energy to something else, and it's taking 100 per cent of our energy to do what we're doing on the stage, we were getting ripped off."
"I have nothing against the guy except for the things
he said about me in the press."
Steven: "I want peace of mind."
Axl: "He really needs peace of mind because when he was young he had
to go to the hospital and they took a piece of it."
"I never wanted 'Steven Adler's on vacation,' I wanted 'Steven Adler's in fucking rehab'."
"The misconception is that we kicked him out for the hell of it and I was the dictator behind it. The truth is, I probably fought a little harder to keep him in the band, because I wasnt' working with him on a daily basis like the other guys were. They grew tired of not being able to get their work done because Steven wasn't capable of it... At one point, in order to keep this band together, it was necessary for me to give him a portion of my publishing rights. That was one of the biggest mistakes I've made in my life, but he threw such a fit, saying he wasn't going to stay in the band. We were worried about not being able to record our first album (without him), so I did waht I felt I had to do. In the long run I paid very extensively for keeping St even n Guns N' Roses. I paid $1.5 million by giving him 15% of my publishing off 'Appetite For Destrucion'. He didn't write one goddamn note, but he calls me a selfish dick! He's been able to live off that money, but a shitload of drugs and hire lawyer s to sue me. If and when he loses the lawsuit he has against us, and he has to pay those lawyers, if he has any money left, it'll be the money that came from Guns N' Roses and myself." Check out his suit against the band in Axl's Suits.
"At this point I really don't care what happens to Steven Adler, because he's taken himself out of my life, out of my care and concern, completely. I feel bad for him in some ways because he's a real damaged person, bu he's making choices to keep himself damaged. There's nothing we can do at this point. We took him to rehabs, we threatened his drug dealers [the might Duff confronted them with his gun...Check out the picture in the Guns N' Roses section of the picture pages], we helped him when he sla shed his wrists. I even forgave him after he nearly killed my wife... I kept the man from being killed by members of her family. I saved him from having to go to court because her mother wanted him held responsible for his actions. And the so of a bitc h turns on me?! I mean, yeah, I'm a difficult person to deal with, and I'm a pain in the ass to understand, and I've had my share of problems, but Steven benefited greatly from his involvement with me - more than I did from knowing him. Steven had a lot of fans, but he was a real pain in the ass."
"Everything about [Axl] as a performer and singer comes from his personality, so the shit that makes him crazy or the shit that he finds hard to deal with is, at the same time, what makes his talent."
"Axl is not a person who wants to spend even one second in a police station if he can avoid it."
"Some of Axl's lyrics are fucking hilarious!"
"Axl is just another version of the Ayatollah."
"The biggest fights are between me and Axl. But that's also what makes it happen."
"Axl might seem like a pain in the ass to everybody in volved, but at the same time he's as dedicated to it as I am... even more so in many ways."
"THAT'S JUST THE WAY HE IS, ALRIGHT!!?"
"I must say that Axl has fucking balls."
"In the press Axl gets all this shit which I feel sorry for him about. Sometimes he asks for it, but a lot of the time he doesn't... there are times when I can't believe the shit he does, and a lot of the time he can't believe the shit that Slash or myse lf do, or Izzy does."
"In a lot of ways he's the most normal guy in the band."
"He ain't EVER gonna lost this anger!"
"Axl, lyrically, is brilliant in my eyes. Some of the shit that goes through his head is like, WHOAH!" (I bet you can just picture Duff saying that)
Found in MFV.
"He's a bit eccentric, one of a kind. You've just got to kind of go with it. We get along really well. He's, you know, a different kind of cat."
"Axl's so fucking great. Anything he does or says, it's just because that's the way he really is. He's beyond real, you know. I've never seen anyone dare to talk shit to him, ever. I love that."
"Axl has never been one to stand by and watch an
injustice being done to his fans." (Reffering to the St. Louis Riot)
"Axl was like a serious lunatic when I met him. He was just really bent on fighting and destroying things. Somebody'd look at him wrong and he'd just like start a fight."
"The first thing I remember about Axl - before I really knew him - is the first day of class, eight or ninth grade, I'm sitting in class and I hear this noise going on in the front... then there's this scuffle and I see him, Axl, and this teacher bouncing off a door jamb. And then Axl was gone down the hall with all these teachers running after him."
"I expressed my feelings to Axl and they very next night on MTV I saw that I was going to be replaced by the guy in Jane's Addiction. So I took that as an indication that I'd really pissed him off."
"Axl wants to do stuff his way, at his pace, in his time."
"If Axl was the nicest, quitest guy in the world he'd never sell any records."
These pretty boys claimed that GN'R was stealing their
glam appeal, such as make-up, Slash's top hat (which Slash made CLEAR was
HIS trademark), and the spandex/leather outfits. Never again would the
band wear l ipstick, or Axl poof his "Jungle" hair out. But GN'R
still made it big, bigger than Poison could ever hope. So scratch that
thought. "I used to fluff up my hair and tease it out, but I don't
really do that anymore. It's not that I don't like it but I don't do it
well unless I take a long time at it and I don't bring someone on the road
with me to do it. Also, after our falling out with Poison - even though
it's been patched up - I just want to get away from anything glam until
such a tie I can go out and do it if I want to and not get hassled. It's
not so much I'm worried about what other people think, but I know me. If
someone walks up to me and says, 'Oh, you're a glam faggot like Poison,'
I'm gonna go to jail, 'cuase I'm gonna break somebody's jaw."
After Steven and Slash save Nikki Sixx from DEATH, Motley's
record company stabs GN'R in the back and blames the event on them. Also,
Vince's wife accused Izzy of making a pass at her, when in actuality she
made the pass at him and was denied! Vince pun ches Izzy. Vince and Axl
have words. Axl challenged Vince to a fight to the death, but Vince declined.
Despite all attemps to calm the crowd, 2 fans were crushed
in a crowd surge at the Monsters of Rock Festival. Of course, the papers
reported it as Axl's fault. His departing words were "Have a good
fucking day and don't kill yourselves." So obviously, Axl had planned
the entire event out!! Yes yes, it's ALL Axl's fault. Actually, the band
didn't even know about the two deaths until they were well on their way
home.
Living Colour as you might know is a black rock group. There was all sorts of controversy about the song One In A Million at this time. The singer for Living Colour, Vernon Reid, had the crowd chant against racism in an attempt to stage up the Gu ns N' Roses performance following their show. (It was a failed attempt since 86% of the audience decided to MISS the Living Colour show. The Coliseum was PACKED by the time Guns hit stage. Not to mention that two more shows, for a total of four, were b ooked in L.A. after Guns N' Roses joined the bill.) The day before the first show Reid expressed his problems with Axl's lyrics. Axl confronted their bassist and said "I heard on the radio that you guys got a problem with some of the things I got to sa y." Axl also addressed the issue before their show on 10-18-89: "...If you got a problem and you think I'm a racist, shove your head up your FUCKIN' ass!"
Axl allegedly punched David Bowie for hitting on Erin
Everly (his current girlfriend). Bowie later approached Axl with a humble
apology. Stay away from Axl's women!
Leader of a local biker gang, Stump of The Saddle Tramps,
wass harassing fans in the front rows. Axl instructs the security to remove
him. The security were friends with the biker gang and refused to act.
The biker then taunted Axl by waving a camera. Axl asked the security to
get him again. Finally, Axl has just about had it with the security. Too
many fans were able to grab his ankles (one of which was recently injured)
and two bottles managed to hit Duff. Axl jumped into the crowd in the middle
of Rocket Queen to get the biker's camera. "Thanks to the lame ass
security, I'm going home!" Axl lost a contact lens, goes back stage
to find one, with full intention of coming back. "I went backstage
and found a new lens. It was getting crazy, and we decided we were going
to go back out and try to play, because we didn't want' people to get hurt..."
Before he got his lens back in, the crowd had destroyed the drum set. Sixty
fans managed to injure themselves and 16 were arrested. They caused a good
$200,000 worth of damage. The venue sued Axl.
First read what Axl has to say about Kurt and Nirvana in Musician June '92. Then read what America's favorite Shotgun-alterna-martyr has to say about Axl and you'll know why Axl now hates him.
10-96 Guitar World GW: Maybe this would be a good time to address some of the rumors that have plagued you. When Nevermind hit, there were reports that you were a narcoleptic. Cobain: No, no...that was just a story I made up to explain why I slept so much. I used to find myself sleeping a lot before shows. A lot of times the backstage area is such a gross scene, I don't want to talk to anybody. So I just fall asleep. There are so many people that we know now, so many friends and stuff that I can't ask them to leave. I don't want to act like Axl Rose and have my own bus or my own back room area. GW: Speaking of Axl, what is the story behind your altercation with him backstage at the 1992 MTV Music Awards? Cobain: Well, apparently Axl was in a really bad mood. Something set him off, probably just minutes before our encounter with him. We were in the food tent and I was holding my daughter, Frances, and he came strutting by with five of his huge bodyguards and a person with a video camera. Courtney jokingly screamed out at him "Axl, will you be the godfather of out child?" Everyone laughed. We had a few friends around us, and he just stopped dead in his tracks and started screaming all these abusive words at us. He told me to shut my bitch up, so I looked at Courtney and said "Shut up, bitch, heh!" Everyone started howling with laughter and Axl just kind of blushed and went away. Afterward, we heard that Duff [Mckagan, GNR bassist] wanted to beat Chris up. Later on, it says: Cobain:........But other than that, I've never thought of the Guns N' Roses,Metallica and U2 offers as any kind of legitimate offer. They just were never a reality to me.
Q: Didn't Axl Rose say something nasty to you at the MTV Video Music
Awards in September?
A: They actually tried to beat us up. Courtney and I were with the baby
in the eating area backstage, and Axl walked by. So Courtney yelled,
"Axl! Axl, come over here!" We just wanted to say hi to him--we think
he's a joke, but we just wanted to say something to him. So I said,
"Will you be the godfather of our child?" I don't know what had
happened before that to piss him off, but he took his aggressions
out on us and began screaming bloody murder.
These were his words: "You shut your bitch up, or I'm taking you down
to the pavement." [laughs] Everyone around us just burst out into tears of
laughter. She wasn't even saying anything mean, you know? So I turned
to Courtney and said, "Shut up, bitch!" And everyone laughed and he left.
So I guess I did what he wanted me to do--be a man. [laughs]
Kurt told this story to the crowd at the Portland OR 9/10/92 concert, try
to get it if you can.
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Q: Is there anything about Guns N' Roses' music you like?
A: I can't think of a damn thing. I can't even waste my time on that band,
because they're so obviously pathetic and untalented. I used to think that
everything in the mainstrteam pop world was crap, but now that some
underground bands have been signed with majors, I take Guns N' Roses as
more of an offense. I have to look into it more: They're really
talentless people, and they write crap music, and they're the most popular
rock band on the earth right now. I can't believe it.
Big words for a man with no head. If they're the biggest rock band on the earth then the majority of the planet must disagree with you, Mr. Nobrain.
James Hetfeild mocks Axl's list of items for backstage comfort. Mysteriously James catches fire in the Guns N' Roses/Metallica Tour. James catches fire heheh... Axl cuts show short because of sound problems (no doubt from Metallica's screw up). Metallica fans create a riot, destroying a cool $1,000,000 in property. Supposedly Axl verbally attacked Metallica at a San Francisco concert in 1992. For more info on Metallica, check out their homepage in Axl's Links. Don't fuck with the bad side.
This is Axl's mug shot from the most infamous of all arrests,
the St. Louis riot. He is listed as being 5'10" 170lbs brown hair
and blue eyes. Date of birth 2-6-62. Download a larger version is Axl's
Pics. Look at that shot! He's a pro!
"...we were headed to a Roxy show and got pulled over by four cops. They picked a bag off the street; said we threw it out the window and there were drugs in it. There were no drugs in it. And they were just trying to hassle us, saying our advance mone y in our pockets was drug money. They searched everything, pushed us around, and we were late for the show."
The only thing I've seen in print about the outcome of Axl & Steph's legal battles was in the Q & A section of the May 14, 1995 issue of Parade Magazine. I went a diggin' in my rat's nest to find it and here's what it said: Q: Not too long ago, Stephanie Seymour was suing Axl Rose for allegedly beating her up. Whatever happened to her lawsuit?--C.C., Portland, Ore. A: A source close to Rose, 33, told PARADE that the insurance company representing the rock star agreed to pay $400,000 to supermodel Seymour, 26, to settle the 2-year-old case out of court. "The papers still aren't signed," said our source, "but Axl won't do any talking. He's concentrating on his work." Rose's lawyers told us: "Both parties agreed to dismiss their claims against each other. The litigation has been resolved." But they vehemently denied that there had been a payoff.
"I'm very sensitive and emotional and things upset me and make me feel like not functioning or dealing with people... I went to a clinic thinking it would help my moods. The only thing I did was to take one 500 question test - ya know, filling in the lit tle black dots. All of a sudden I'm diagnosed manic depressive. 'Let's put Axl on medication.' Well, the medication doesn't help me deal with the stress. The only think it does is keep people off my back."
"Well, as you can see, being a fucking psycho basket-case like me does have it's advantages."
"In some ways I hate the way I was raised... the lack for supporting anything I was into or good at. But in a way, I can't hate it because this sense of drive... this mission to do something with my life."
"Sometimes there's these girls backstage going 'I love you'. I feel like telling them, 'Honey, if you knew me, you would hate my fucking guts.'"
"People say how wrong it was to doing drugs. Mabye they were the only tools I could find then..."
"I remember when I was in junior high and they talked about finding a goal - 'Yeah, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that' - all just trying to impress the teacher to get a grade. If they get a good grade, they get an allowance. I was like, "No. I wanna be in a band and I wanna do [great things]. So I got an F for thinking grandiose thoughts."
"I don't want to go solo, but there are areas I'd like to explore - maybe movies - where I might not be able to stay in the band to do it."
"When I was in school there were all these stereotypes. If you liked The Rolling Stones you were a faggot because of the time Mick Jagger kissed Keith Richards on Saturday Night Live. If you like the Grateful Dead you were a hippie. If you like the Sex Pistols you were a punker. I guess that would make me a faggot hippie punk rocker."
"A lot of people hold their anger back for a few days. I just explode right away."
"I've always wanted to have it written in my will
that when I die, the coffin shows up an hour and a half late and says on
the side, like in gold, 'Sorry I'm Late'."
Axl has taken great measures to arrive as on time as possible. One time
he even chartered a helicopter to bypass traffic en route to a show at
Nassau Colliseum in New York. I believe he was held up by Geffen or Rolling
Stone.
"If I didn't care about [the fans], I'd come out
and do a shitty show. I'd come out and tell them to fuck off. I'd sit down,
sing the songs off key, and just not care. But I do care, and I also care
too much about myself to do that."
Axl had the stage monitors placed in so the band could keep better track
of where they were in the song. With such a huge stage it was harder for
the band to communicate so the monitors were implemented. This also enabled
the band to move around more fr eely. Also, you ever try to remember ALL
the lyrics to ALL those songs!?
"They don't like it when I let them know they don't own me. Sometimes I don't even own myself!"
"How the fuck did I get so fucking important!?"
RELATED INTERVIEW: Rip Magazine:
I, Axl
RELATED INTERVIEW: Hit Parader
1995: WHERE WAS AXL!?!?!
TRUTH IS, WHO KNOWS! BUT HE SHALL RETURN.