Life on Planet Rock

by Lonn Friend

  I was intrigued but didn’t take the bait immediately. I told him I’d have to have total editorial autonomy and that the magazine needed better color and heavier paper stock. The bands selling the most records were the big-arena rock acts like Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Scorpions, and Bon Jovi. We needed to cover them and the heavier acts, like Metallica and Slayer. “RIP can be the hard-rock Rolling Stone,” I said. “Editorially credible but still a fan’s magazine, loud and fun.”

  My instinct told me that my personality and ability to bond with people regardless of their trade or title would be key to the success of the magazine. Becoming friends with the bands while producing the slickest, most honest, well-intentioned, journalistically superior rock magazine seemed to me the right path. The test was how to remain plausible while catering to the artists and their heroic, egotistic agendas.

  In the late ‘80s, the best metal mag in the world was being published six thousand miles away in England. It was called Kerrang! America had nothing like it. Metal Edge was a teenybopper rag, fun to read but possessing little editorial grit.

  Circus was an established name with a strong fan base run by an upstanding music fan named Ben Liemer. It took few risks and ran mostly live-concert photos. Hit Parader was the low-budget benchmark of metal reportage, bent on covering anything and everything that rocked whether they were given access to the artist or not. It wasn’t unusual to find a rewritten press release pawned off as a new feature.

  This unholy magazine trinity competently covered the scene, but they all lacked one key ingredient: soul. To set itself apart from the field, RIP needed to access that elusive element and infuse it into every page.

  The memo went out from Kohls’ office on July 15, 1987. It read, “Lonn Friend has been elected executive editor of RIP magazine. I think Lonn’s enthusiasm and expertise can help to improve the look and sales potential of RIP.” I had my mandate. All I needed was a set of earplugs and faith the size of a Marshall Stack.

  Within days of my appointment, I was invited to a showcase in Memphis for a Van Halen-clone metal group that had no major record deal but, instead, a band member whose father was rich and wanted his kid to have a shot playing for the rock press. This was where I first heard the words, “You have to hear the Guns N’ Roses record,” from not one but several of the scribes who had flown in for the gig.

  When I returned to L.A., I summoned my brand-spanking-new editorial staff and sent them out to get to know Axl, Slash, Izzy, Duff, and Steven, up close and personal. Half the bunch had already partied with the guys and gotten home phone numbers. Most of the bonding came from serendipitous meetings at local clubs or bars. To their credit, nothing about GN’R was ever scripted.

  During the latter months of 1987, RIP ran several raw and wild stories of the group, accompanied by equally raw and wild photos. During this period, I also took on the raw-and-wild image by sprouting a beard and letting my hair grow to shoulder length. The shape-shifting had begun.

  Then in early spring 1988, my staff and I were contemplating which badass buzzing band of the land should dis-grace the next RIP cover. I’d been listening to the advance of the new Poison record, Open Up and Say … Ahhh!, and thought that they were ready to break big. It was my assumption that a cover story featuring the glam rockers would be a hit. That was until one of my editors bitch-slapped her boss—me—to wake up and smell the chaos.

  She had been hanging out with Slash, GN’R’s affable and often intoxicated lead guitarist. “Lonn, you’re making a mistake,” she said, shutting my office door behind her. “Poison is cool but they’re not hard enough. Our readers are heavier. You should put Guns N’ Roses on the cover. No one’s given them a full cover yet. Hit Parader won’t give a band a full cover until they’ve sold platinum [one million units]. We’ll be the first!” GN’R was still months from that at this stage, but the word of mouth on them was deafening. And frankly, I didn’t feel that commercial-unit-sales criteria were a proper gauge for who should make the cover of RIP. But I was still reticent. I told her I’d think about it.

  “Hello, Lonn,” came the voice over the phone the next day. It was clear, coherent, not a hint of afternoon-bottle-tipping slur. “This is Slash from Guns N’ Roses. We think RIP is awesome and we want to be on the cover. Lonn, Guns is going to be bigger than Poison, dude. Give us a shot.”

  I hung up, called the editor into my office, told her about the conversation. “I know,” she said. “I told him to call you.” That afternoon, I made the decision. The June 1988 cover story with the banner “Metal’s New Supergroup,” featuring a supercool, sleazy, sensational shot of Axl and Slash taken in a five-minute photo session backstage at the Celebrity Theater in Anaheim, was the defining moment when RIP soared in the blink of a newsstand-sweeping eye from underground metal fanzine to the most talked about rock publication in the industry. Poison’s record went on to sell five million copies—a huge success—but it would pale in comparison to Appetite’s gargantuan accomplishment.

  Hard rock music was approaching a crossroads, and the signpost read Sunset Boulevard. Freaky bands and freakier fans choked the infamous Strip every night from sundown till after 2 A.M., when the parking lot of the Rainbow Bar and Grill took on the look of a Fellini swap meet. The clubs now closed, metalheads of various persuasions would network on the sidewalk to determine where the drug-and-groupie-drenched afterparties were taking shape.

  The local glam-metal movement was ignited by Mötley Crüe in ‘82 with their lecherous landmark debut, Too Fast for Love, and taken to further cacophonous extremes in ‘83 by Quiet Riot’s Metal Health and Dokken’s Breaking the Chains. The following year brought Mötley running mates Ratt into the fray with their Out of the Cellar LP—a blistering out-of-the-box smash. By the time the cat dragged in four disparate cartoonish characters collectively known as Poison in 1986, the Sunset Strip had become the vortex of volume and decadence for not just Los Angeles, but the entire rockin’ planet.

  Into this fray stumbled Guns N’ Roses, catering to the deranged desires of both the hard core and hair farmer. They weren’t really “metal” in the archetypal Iron Maiden/Judas Priest sense of the word, nor were they KISS/Crüe lipstick glam. If anything, Guns N’ Roses evoked the beautifully bad image and riffage of early Stones and Aerosmith, intoxicating to the eye and ear, gloriously untamed, and absolutely authentic. Consult your front-man scripture: “Jagger begot Tyler begot Axl.”

  “Welcome to the Jungle” launched Appetite for Destructions fifty-eight-minute assault on the senses that seduced fans, critics, musical peers, and an entire nation of rock-loving misfits waiting patiently for something to wake America out of its pathetic, disco-pop ego-driven me-generation stupor. In its own demented way, Guns N’ Roses was the antidote for a civilization on the brink of collective narcolepsy.

  Appetite unfolded like a prurient postcard depicting the zeitgeist of Hollywood near the end of the millennium’s most dubious decade. “It’s So Easy,” “Nightrain,” “Out ta Get Me, “Mr. Brownstone,” “Paradise City,” “My Michelle,” “Think about You,” “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” “You’re Crazy,” “Anything Goes,” and “Rocket Queen”—the LP is a seamless glorification of excess where every recorded moment burns with ball-busting truth.

  Producer Mike Clink—who would prove to be the George Martin of GN’R, manipulating the dials to every release the band would create—told me that the female groans of ecstasy during “Rocket Queen” were authentic. “The guys were taking turns fucking this girl in the studio,” recalled Clink. “Those are actual sounds of sex, captured live on tape.” But above all, Appetite signaled the breech birth of the most charismatic, morally corrupted, possessed, and passionate front man since the mike-stand-wielding, loose-lipped junkie Steven Tyler stepped off the Cambridge streets fourteen years before.

  Growing up William Bailey in the heartland town of Lafayette, Indiana, W. Axl Rose sang, stalked, swam, and smelled like no other fish in the big-hair, heavy-eyeliner, poseur-pol
luted L.A. hard rock sea. While he borrowed bits in vocal technique and body language from his heroes Iggy Pop, Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, and, of course, Jagger and Tyler, Axl was a complete and inexplicable original, prone to personal misbehavior and public misunderstanding.

  With their record-breaking debut LP, Appetite for Destruction, the controversial EP, GN’R Lies, and the historic double release of Use Your Illusion I and II, the Gunners won the hearts, minds, souls, and ears of rock fans across the globe. Of course, along with the success came the scrutiny of a voracious, tabloid-driven media.

  The press, both metal and mainstream, exploited the GN’R phenomenon, zeroing in on the snake-walking, sandpaper-voiced lead singer. When the band finally put its foot down and refused to play the game any longer, ignoring requests for interviews and photo sessions, the backlash of negative opinion from the legitimate and metal media was astounding. I began to realize then, purely and simply, that these newshounds and gossip-mongers just didn’t get it. No one got it, except the ones who usually get it: the fans.

  Many nights on tour, the adored front man tested the patience of the good folks who put him on the pedestal. But it wasn’t out of malice or a sociopathic need to fuck with people’s heads. Axl was a pathological perfectionist when it came to getting on stage and delivering. He pushed his vocal ability to excruciating limits because he was emotionally and ethically unable to give a half-assed performance. Hence, if his throat or voice was not ready when showtime came, the show didn’t go on. Some nights when I was out on the road with GN’R, Axl was at the gig, raring to go onstage at 7:00 in the evening. Other nights, it was well past midnight.

  Axl could hypnotize a sold-out stadium or an empty room. I witnessed the latter miracle in June 1989 when RIP senior editor (and friend of Axl’s) Del James informed me that Axl and Slash were in Chicago working on material for the next LP. “You up for a road trip?” I asked Del. A rhetorical question to a rising scribe in the early years of his rockin’ journalistic journey. “Dude, let’s go!” and off to Chicago we flew for a glimpse of the creative process that no other magazine had a prayer of witnessing.

  The minute we touched down at O’Hare International, Del called Axl. “We’re going to the Metro,” directed my senior editor with the keys to the GN’R kingdom. “He wants to play us something. He sounds excited.” We grabbed a cab and headed for Chi Town’s most famous rock club.

  Club owner Joe Shanahan, an influential player in the local rock scene, had built a rehearsal space above the concert venue. WVVX 103.1, Chicago’s metal station, was known as the first station in America to play Metallica, and they were on Appetite months before mainstream radio hopped on the nigh train. Axl liked Chicago. He planned on hanging out there until mid-August.

  Del and I entered the airy Metro around 6 P.M. and were guided upstairs, where we found the most persecuted and venerated lead singer in rock seated at a grand piano in the middle of a large room. He was noodling the ivories as Del and I quietly took our seats.

  “Hey man,” said Del to his pal.

  Axl lifted his head, smiled, and replied, “Hey. You guys wanna hear something I’ve been working on?”

  We answered with enthusiastic unison, “Yeah, man. Go for it.”

  The fair-haired maestro then took a deep, cleansing breath, laid his hands on the keys, and in the blink of a jet-lagged eye, skated into a rhapsody that from the very first notes harkened a hero Axl and I shared, Elton John. With the exceptions of “Sweet Child” and “Patience,” ballads were nonexistent in the GN’R repertoire. That was about to change drastically.

  When I look into your eyes

  I can see a love restrained.

  These were the first lines of the artist’s moving aortic anthem that would eventually emerge on disc and video as a two-part orchestrated opus of love and loss the likes of which rock had never seen. “November Rain” had been floating around in demo configuration on bootlegs since the Appetite sessions of ‘86, but the structure of the composition was never right for Axl, so it didn’t make it on the band’s long-form destructive debut.

  “November Rain” eventually fell in the fall of 1991 on the ambitious Use Your Illusion double-disc package. Its companion track, “Estranged,” the second part of the tragic tale of love lost, was based on a short story written by the longhaired, ten-dollar-an-hour RIP editor seated next to me. Axl was possessed to create something larger than life and rock, heaven and earth. “November Rain” and “Estranged” presented a moment in music history when the bar would be raised so high, even the band members lost sight.

  When the song was over, Del and I glanced at each other, goose bumps rising off both his inked and my bare arms. Our golf clap in the dank room did not do justice to the awesome event we’d just witnessed, a first peek at what history may ultimately proclaim as one musician’s watershed creative moment. Then he played around with a couple other tracks and announced that dinner was on him tonight. “Hey, guys,” he said. “Batman just opened. I really want to see it. Let’s grab Slash and go later.”

  That night, after pasta and wine, the four of us hit a suburban Chicago multiplex and watched Tim Burton’s stunning celluloid comic-book adventure. One thing that stands out in my mind about that surreal night at the movies was when Axl got up to go to the bathroom. The minute he left his seat, the jingle of his bracelets acted as a magnet for about a half dozen girls seated behind us who were well aware of our presence in the theater. I wondered if he would make it back in time for reel three. To my surprise, he returned in five minutes.

  Guns N’ Roses’ creative wave was about to crash into some dysfunctional rocks as the trappings of success began to erode the makeup of the band. The childhood buddy with whom Slash originally formed GN’R, drummer Steven Adler, proved to be the first casualty. Steven was a case study in self-destruction who dove into drug abuse like a swan into a mountain lake. A likeable kid with a warm, playful personality, he couldn’t say no to anything that would alter his state of mind.

  Steven’s troubles started when he failed to show for the January 30, 1989, broadcast of the American Music Awards, where the band was performing their monster ballad “Patience.” Eagles drummer and Axl fan Don Henley ended up replacing the absent Adler on skins. When basic recording for Use Your Illusion commenced, Steven was virtually absent, and even when he did materialize, he was so wasted that his drum tracks proved unsalvageable. He only made the cut on one song from the double-disc release, “Civil War.”

  Then came the unreal week in October of that year when GN’R joined the Rolling Stones for four dates at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. As timing would have it, the third-anniversary RIP party was on the docket, and I pitched it to the guys to “warm up” for Mick and company at our gig, which was taking place at the Park Plaza Hotel in Echo Park near downtown. They went for it and at 1 A.M. on the night of October 13, 1989—after a thousand of my guests were thrown out by the fire department because we were way over capacity—the band rifled into what would prove to be the last formal club gig they ever played.

  The next day, I was getting calls from all over town applauding us for the soiree from Hell. But in the office, Del informed me that all was not well in Guns land. Eighty thousand others were let in on the secret a few nights later when, on October 18, the ever-forthcoming Axl did some very dirty public laundering.

  I hate to do this on stage. But I tried every other fucking way. And unless certain people in this band get their shit together, these will be the last Guns N’ Roses shows you’ll fucking ever see. Cause I’m tired of too many people in this organization dancing with Mr. Goddamn Brownstone.

  In this unprecedented act of public intervention, Axl was exposing both Slash’s and Steven’s demons for the entire world to see with the hopes of keeping the toxic tribe together. He didn’t realize, however, that his draconian control of the group was having a more poisonous effect on band unity than the finest china white. His lead guitarist ap
parently took the wake-up call to heart and began to curtail his drug use. His drummer, however, was too far gone to care.

  The straw finally broke the donkey’s back on April 7, 1990, at the high-profile Farm Aid benefit concert. GN’R was scheduled to play “Down on the Farm” and “Civil War.” When Steven tripped over his drum kit in front of national cameras and increasingly frustrated bandmates, it signaled the end of the Adler era. Matt Sorum was recruited out of the Cult—the group GN’R had opened for not too long before—soon after the barnyard debacle.

  Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin was the next victim. The nonconfrontational fellow Indiana rocker couldn’t handle the drama, even in the midst of earthshaking fame and fortune. No one was more laid back than Izzy. He had the most genuine Keith Richards’ “cool” of any rocker I’d ever seen. He could have been Keef’s son. They played, drank, even vocally sounded alike. I wasn’t in the room when he had his epiphany, but my gut told me that he’d ridden the night train about as far as his soul could handle, had tons of cash, and just didn’t care anymore. Steven’s ouster and Izzy’s exit pointed to the eternally fragile state of band cohesiveness that defined GN’R.

  RIP was becoming the unofficial GN’R scrapbook. We were the first to announce Steven’s departure for Matt Sorum, and we ran frequent quotes by Axl—who talked to no other metal magazines at this time. The Friend family had also become part of the Guns N’ Roses family, and nowhere was the strength of that friendship more evident than on the evening of July 29, 1990.

  Joyce, our baby daughter Megan Rose, and some friends were celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday at our tiny Culver City home when around 7 P.M. the phone rang. “Dude, is the party still going?” It was Del, calling from a pay phone somewhere in Hollywood. He sounded clear-headed and somewhat excited.