Last of the Giants

by Mick Wall

  The one thing nobody was talking about was the effect that Axl/DC’s success was having on Guns N’ Roses. In fact, nobody was talking about Guns N’ Roses much at all. When Angus Young enthused of his new singer, ‘I know he’s very excited, he keeps saying can he do more?’, it suggested Axl was more turned on by the prospect of fronting AC/DC than he was of leading his old band around the sheds of America.

  Ironically, the roles had been flipped. Where once Axl was the silent recluse keeping the world at arm’s length, now it was Slash and Duff’s turn to keep shtum. Aside from a tweet from the latter wishing Axl luck with his first gig, both maintained a discreet but noticeable radio silence. Perhaps there was some truth to those rumours of lingering bad blood.

  On 8 June, AC/DC pulled into London for a show at the 80,000-capacity Olympic Stadium. The same day Slash took to social media to announce that he was also in town. Word spread that Duff was with him, and that both had been flown in by AC/DC’s promoter to surprise Axl. Would they both reciprocate the favour Angus Young did GN’R at Coachella and make an appearance onstage that night? As it turned out, no, they wouldn’t, though a picture posted on Guns N’ Roses’ own Twitter feed showed Axl, Slash and Duff deep in conversation backstage. Not only did it counter suggestions that Slash had huffily refused to attend the show, but the trio’s body language indicated that perhaps there wasn’t any tension between them after all.

  Just three middle-aged millionaires hanging out and having a laugh, not friends exactly, but businessmen just out to make an honest dollar … Was that what the Guns N’ Roses saga had finally been whittled down to?

  Don’t be so easily fooled. Though nothing has been officially confirmed yet, there are well-advanced plans for Guns N’ Roses to continue to tour the world throughout 2017, even into 2018, assuming everyone is still speaking civilly to each other. It’s the thirtieth anniversary of Appetite in the summer of 2017, and there are plans afoot for deluxe editions of the album to be released, along with the usual plethora of alternative takes and extra tracks from the vaults. As I write this, Steven Adler has finally arrived for the party, playing two songs on stage in Cincinnati: ‘Out ta Get Me’ and ‘My Michelle’. Axl introduced the drummer to the Brown Stadium crowd by simply saying, ‘On the drums, you might know this guy. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Steven Adler.’ Cue berserksville! After hammering out a frenzied ‘Out ta Get Me’, Axl said, ‘I guess we should do another.’ Since then, Steven has reappeared at a handful more shows, again as ‘surprise invited guest’.

  The smart money is also on Izzy being involved at least in some capacity, probably in 2017. ‘Everyone knows Stevie would have given his soul to be allowed near that stage again. But Izzy? I think his attitude may we well be, “By the way, if I decide it’s safe and I want to come out and play at one or two shows, here’s what you’ll pay me if I do it,”’ says Alan Niven. ‘Because we all know that that sceptic doesn’t want all the palaver and he’ll sit on the sidelines until he feels safe.’

  Looking for an objective voice to end this with, I phoned Stephanie Fanning and asked her for her thoughts on the new-old-reunited Guns N’ Roses.

  ‘Well, they’re all thin!’ she laughed. ‘I think it’s great for them to get out and play those songs again. Especially for Slash, because I think he’s the one who probably missed it the most. That band and its legacy, for him to have that, I’m just really happy.’

  They simply belong together, she says. ‘It’s magic. It’s magic! It just is. I don’t know how it happened but it happened. Those five guys getting together – it was magic. That Appetite record? I mean, come on. The first time you put that on, I mean, come on! There’s nothing like it. I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking: what the hell is this?’

  ‘It’s too bad’ that Steven and Izzy aren’t a part of it, she says. But then Izzy, who she is still in touch with, ‘beats to his own drum, for sure. But I guess you could say the same for Axl and Slash, too. Which is what made them so special all along, right?’

  Right.

  After 30 years, many millions of words have been written about Guns N’ Roses, old line-up, new line-up, whichever one you might be thinking of most. But the fact is none of them ever really got to the truth. Which is this: Guns N’ Roses has always been a band out of time, the Last of the Giants. That solid gold, easy-action thing that every rock band since the Rolling Stones has purported to and nearly always failed to be: dangerous. Looking-for-trouble creatures from another realm, here to steal our souls, suck our blood. Fuck us.

  They’ve never denied it. Not even in the 1980s, when they were just starting out, these watch-yourself, flash-ass, tattooed love boys from the LA strip that said ‘fuck’ in their very first single. These neon-addicted freaks who refused to play by the rules. You had to look twice because you couldn’t quite believe your eyes. That at a time when smiling, MTV-friendly, safe-sex, just-say-no Bon Jovi was the biggest band in the world, here was a band that seemed to have leapt straight out of the blood-spiked, coke-smothered pages of the original, golden-age, late-sixties rock scene; a time when magical-mystical-musical acts like Led Zeppelin, The Doors and the Stones were writing their own rules, drawing maps to a world of weird dreams and forbidden fantasies. It didn’t seem possible but nothing about Axl Rose, Slash, Duff and Izzy (where did they even get those names?) seemed possible. Which is why, in the end, we fell for them so hard then. And why we so want them to bring that feeling back again now – when we need it even more.

  A mission statement more direct than crystal meth: Guns N’ Roses weren’t looking for a career. They weren’t begging for your love. They didn’t need to become rock stars first to have heroin habits, didn’t require the consent of the rock press to piss up your leg. Weren’t asking for permission, fuck you very much.

  And then the most wonderfully startling thing of all: the music. Axl and Slash and Duff and the gang may have looked like Mötley Crüe, but they always sounded like something else. Like Elton John meets the New York Dolls. Like Queen sharing a ride with Iggy and The Stooges. You heard ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and you knew you’d just turned a wrong corner into the very worst part of the neighbourhood. ‘We got everything you want,’ wheezed Axl as Slash flicked open his guitar like a switchblade, ‘Honey we know the names …’ And you shuddered to think of it, knowing it was true. Then you heard ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’, with that Disney-esque, carnival riff, Axl sweet-talking you suddenly, chillingly, felling you with pure poetry: ‘Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place where as a child I’d hide’, and you’d think: holy shit, Axl was once a child? Which means that all this is somehow … real?

  Yes. Hard to believe but … yes. It was all true.

  And that’s what this book has been about. Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with that song, though it is still one of the greatest putdown songs of all time, right next to ‘Positively Fourth Street’ by Bob Dylan and ‘How Do You Sleep?’ by John Lennon. But you know that. That is old news.

  What this book has been about is what happened when a gang of no-plan-B kids who would do anything not to be part of the so-called real world got together and, at no surprise at all to them, overnight became the biggest, greatest rock band of them all. A one-way ticket back to those times before heavy metal, before punk, before any of the pure stuff had been divvied up and stepped on and sold back to us as so-called good-time rock. The kind that made us sick to our boots in the Eighties, and has left us trembling feebly with withdrawal symptoms ever since.

  Most of all, Guns N’ Roses mattered because at a time when it looked like it was over for this kind of devil-don’t-care, sure-thing deal, along came this utterly impossible band that stood for the kind of no-prisoners revolution in the head we hadn’t known since 1969. Guns N’ Roses brought the bad times back again and for that they won the black hearts of the entire bad-boy, cool-chick world. Even the straights loved Guns N’ Roses, knew there was something real going on, even as it felt the bruises.

&
nbsp; So this book is something new. Written with the clear head that 25 years later brings you, if you can just live long enough; the same deep mindfulness that now sees Axl and Slash and Duff – and Steven and, who knows, later maybe even Izzy – back together. One last time, before the glory-daze effects finally wear off. Before it’s just too fucking late, dude. And while it can still be told with mad love and deep affection, with peace, love and understanding, no invisible strings attached.

  Because when Guns N’ Roses do finally go, so will the golden age of rock, gone for ever, no encores. When they go so will we, those generations of us that rejoiced in allowing our lives to become identified with this music, this message, this meaning. Those of us that recognise, finally, when all is said and done, that Axl Rose really is that thing we so desperately want him to be: the last of the truly extraordinary, all-time great, no-apologies, no-explanations, no-quarter-given rock stars. The last of his kind.

  I hope he turns up late for every show on the rest of the reunion tour. I hope he gives everyone hell with every big-deal step he takes. Because that’s who he is, the Great I Am. And that’s why people love him more than ever. The authenticity, the risk taking, the sheer guts. Few ever really had it even in the 1960s. No one else has it now.

  This ain’t Mick Jagger, there’s no growing old gracefully for Axl Rose. And Guns N’ Roses is not Metallica, the corporate franchise skilfully plotting their next move. And this certainly isn’t Black Sabbath, a tinker toy idea wound up by a big key in the back. A piggy bank.

  This is Guns N’ Fuckin’ Roses, baby. And, like the song says, they will never, ever come down.

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  The foundations of this book, in terms of quotes and the facts of the story – of both W. Axl Rose and Guns N’ Roses – are based on my own original investigations and archives, beginning with interviews and conversations with Slash, Duff McKagen, Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler, and, of course, W. Axl Rose. Up to the present day and dozens of hours of interviews with Alan Niven, Doug Goldstein, Vicky Hamilton, and several others who have never spoken on (sometimes off) the record before and some of whom do not wish to be named here.

  Other voices that have provided me with invaluable information and insights over the years, often from personal anecdotes or even chance remarks, include Scott Weiland, Lars Ulrich, Ozzy Osbourne, Vince Neil, Ross Halfin, Merc Mercuriadis, Stuart Bailey, Del James, Ola Hudson, Ross Halfin, Peter Makowski, Lonn M. Friend, Patrik Hellström and others who also might prefer to remain anonymous at this time.

  I have also spent a great deal of time over the years compiling as much background material as possible from as much published – and, in a few cases, unpublished – material as there is available, including books, magazine and newspaper articles, websites, TV and radio shows, DVDs, demo-tapes, bootleg CDs and any other form of media that contained useful information, the most important of which I have listed here.

  However, extra special mention should also go to a handful of articles that proved especially helpful, in terms of adding to my own insights and investigations. First and foremost to the series of excellently written articles back in the early 1990s by Kim Neely in Rolling Stone. Her interviews with Axl were particularly insightful, and full credit should be paid to her here for the impact these breakthrough pieces have had.

  Also, to Del James, whose superb series of Axl interviews in RIP magazine between 1989 and 1992 are to be loudly applauded. A close personal friend of the singer’s, James was in a position to ask the sorts of questions none of his music journalist peers of the time, including myself, would have been able to. They were enthralling reading when they were first published, and I found them no less so when writing this book.

  There were also occasional one-off pieces which were so exceptional they forced me to rethink several parts of the overall story, such as the Duff McKagan interview published in Hard Force magazine in June 1999 and the stupendous oral history published in Spin in July 1999 under the heading: Just A Little Patience. And, of course, the consistently amazing work of Rolling Stone, Mojo, Classic Rock, Uncut, Q, and newspapers like the London Times, The LA Times and the New York Times, to name just the obvious ones. All hail to quality print journalism now more than ever before.

  I would also like to draw attention to the sterling efforts of the most dedicated Guns N’ Roses fan websites – such as heretodaygonetohell.com and the official gnronline.com – whose Herculean efforts in keeping a detailed record of the ups and downs of Axl’s incident-filled career go way beyond the realms of dedication, venturing worryingly deep sometimes into obsessional delusion. Only true love is likely to do that to you – God bless them for it.

  Books

  Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story by Clark Humphrey David Geffen: A Biography Of New Hollywood by Tom King

  Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana by Michael Azerrad

  The Language Of Fear by Del James

  The Dirt: Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Motley Crue with Neil Strauss

  Red Hot Chili Peppers: True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes by Dave Thompson

  Walk This Way: The Autobiography Of Aerosmith by Aerosmith with Stephen Davis

  Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed by Gavin Edwards

  Reckless Road by Marc Canter

  The Days Of Guns And Roses by Danny Sugarman

  The Autobiography by Slash

  Watch You Bleed by Stephen Davis

  My Appetite For Destruction by Steven Adler

  It’s So Easy (And Other Lies) by Duff McKagan

  Appetite For Dysfunction by Vicky Hamilton

  Magazines & Newspapers

  ‘To Live And Die in LA’ – Spin, 1986

  ‘Colt Heroes’ – Kerrang!, 11–24 June, 1987

  ‘Guns N’ Roses Marquee, London’ (review of first night) – Kerrang!, 11–24 June, 1987

  ‘Thorn To Be Wild’ (Appetite For Destruction review) – Kerrang!, 23 July–5 August, 1987

  ‘Guns N’ Roses Marquee, London’ (review of second and third nights) – Kerrang!, 23 July–5 August, 1987

  ‘The world according to W. Axl Rose’ by Del James – RIP, April 1989

  ‘The Rolling Stone Interview With Axl Rose’ – Rolling Stone, August 1989

  ‘Guns N’ Roses Working Up A Sweat’ – Metal Muscle, May 1991

  ‘Guns N’ Roses The Illusion Of Greatness’ by Lonn M. Friend – RIP, June 1991

  ‘Tears Before Bedtime?’ – Q, July 1991

  ‘Danger Lurks Beyond The Doors’ – The Observer, 25 August 1991

  ‘Guns N’ Roses’ – Sky, August 1991

  ‘Fans Riot at Guns Show’ – Rolling Stone, 22 August, 1991

  ‘Guns N’ Roses Here Today Gone To Hell (And Lovin’ It)’ by Del James – RIP, September 1991

  ‘Guns N’ Neuroses’ by Dean Kuipers – Spin, September 1991

  ‘There’s A Riot Going On!’ – Musician, September 1991

  ‘Guns N’ Roses – Outta Control’ – Rolling Stone, 5 September, 1991

  ‘Guns N’ Roses: Wimps ‘R’ Us’ – Village Voice, 1 October, 1991

  ‘Slash Speaks’ – Music Life, 17 November, 1991

  ‘Axl gets in the ring’ – Metallix, 1992

  ‘Guns N’ Roses From The Inside an Exclusive Report’ by Lonn M. Friend – RIP, March 1992

  ‘Axl Interview’ – Interview Magazine, March 1992

  ‘Axl Rose: The Rolling Stone Interview’ – Rolling Stone, 2 April, 1992

  ‘No Axl to Grind: Rock Star Pleads Innocent’ – New York Post, July 1992

  ‘Axl Rose: The Mussolini Of Mass Culture’ – The Modern Review, Summer 1992

  ‘I, Axl Part I’ – RIP, September 1992

  ‘I, Axl Part II’ – RIP, October 1992

  ‘I, Axl Part III’ – RIP, November 1992

  ‘Trial by Fire’ – Guitar World, November 1992

  ‘On the Road w
ith Guns N’ Roses’ – Life Magazine, December

  ‘Guns N’ Roses Interview’ – Hit Parader, July 1993

  ‘Duff McKagan Talks’ – Kerrang!, 1993

  ‘Guns N’ Roses’ – Okej, November 1993

  ‘Guns N’ Roses Blazing Hot’ – Moving Pictures!, 1994

  ‘People’ – 1994

  ‘War Of The Roses!’ – Kerrang!, 24 May, 1994

  ‘Four Bust-ups And A Single!’ – RAW, November 1994

  ‘Welcome To Slash’s Snakepit’ – Toronto Sun, 24 January, 1995

  ‘“I Spent A Week Jammin’ With Guns N’ Roses”. Zakk Wylde to join GN’R?!’ – Kerrang!, 28 January, 1995

  ‘Coiled and Ready’ – Rolling Stone, April 1995

  ‘In Bed With … Slash’ – Kerrang!, July 1995

  ‘Excerpts from a Slash Interview’ – Folha De Sao Paulo Journal, 21 July, 1995

  ‘Guns N’ Roses: Is It All Over? Does Anyone Care?’ – Metal Hammer, November 1995

  ‘Q&A with Slash’ – Kerrang!, 1996

  ‘It’s All In The Wrist Action …’ – Metal Hammer, February 1996

  ‘Review of the Marshall 2555SL Slash Signature Amp’ – Guitar World, April 1996

  ‘At Home with Matt Sorum’ – Metal Hammer, July 1996

  ‘Outsiders responsible for Guns N’ Roses reuniting?’ – Toronto Sun, 4 September, 1996

  ‘Neurotic Outsiders: Duff and Matt Talk Records’ – Kerrang!, September 1996