The Rolling Stone interviews

by edited by Jann S. Wenner

  Yourself?

  Yeah. Myself. And it’s just made me crazy. I’m working on getting past those things, and the world doesn’t seem to be too tolerant of me doing that in public. It’s like, “Oh, you got a problem? You go away and take care of it.” All these relatives knew little pieces of this puzzle, and nobody helped me with shit. I’m angry about that. I can’t sit and think about Uncle So-and-So and enjoy it much. And if you’re talking with any of these people, they try to get you to just tolerate it and take things back to the way they were: “Let’s not get it public.” My family did everything they could, thinking they were doing what was right, to bury it all. My stepfather was just adamant that he was going to protect Mom and himself: “Your real father does not get brought up.” And he was also trying to cover his own tracks for what he did.

  Why are you talking about this publicly?

  One reason is for safety’s sake. My stepfather is one of the most dangerous human beings I’ve ever met. It’s very important that he’s not in my life anymore or in my sister’s. We may be able to forgive, but we can’t allow it to happen again. There’s a lot of reasons for me to talk about it publicly. Everybody wants to know “Why is Axl so fucked up?” and where those things are coming from. There’s a really good chance that by going public I’m gonna get attacked. They’ll think I’m jumping on a bandwagon. But then it’s just gonna be obvious who’s an asshole and who’s not. There are probably people that are jumping on a bandwagon. But I think it’s time. Things are changing, and things are coming out.

  It’s only been in the last few years that people have really been talking about what constitutes abuse. I’m not talking about molestation but emotional abuse.

  All parents are going to abuse their children in some way. You can’t be perfect. But you can help your child heal, if he’s able to talk to you. Then he can say, “You know, when I was five, I saw this.” I wear a shirt onstage sometimes that says, tell your kids the truth. People don’t really know what that’s about. Up until early this year, I was denied what happened to me, who I was, where I came from. I was denied my own existence, and I’ve been fighting for it ever since. Not that myself is the greatest thing on earth. But you have a right to fight for yourself.

  If you don’t have a sense of your own identity, everything’s going to seem like a losing battle.

  My growth was stopped at two years old. And when they talk about Axl Rose being a screaming two-year-old, they’re right. There’s a screaming two-year-old who’s real pissed off and hides and won’t show himself that often, even to me. Because I couldn’t protect him. And the world didn’t protect him. And women didn’t protect him and basically thought he should be put out of existence. A lot of people out there think so now. It’s a real strange thing to deal with on a consistent basis. I’m around a three-year-old baby now and then, and sometimes after a few days it’s just too overwhelming for me. My head is spinning because of the changes it’s putting me through.

  You mean Stephanie’s son?

  Yeah. Stephanie [Seymour, Rose’s girlfriend] has been very supportive in helping me deal with all this. People write all kinds of things about our relationship, but the most important thing in our relationship is that we maintain our friendship. The romance is a plus. We want to maintain our friendship and be really protective of how our relationship affects [Seymour’s son] Dylan. Dylan gets priority over us, because he could be greatly damaged, and I don’t want that to happen.

  You were talking about Dylan last night.

  Oh, man, they jump off things and stuff. It scares me. It’s like they could break at any time. It scares the shit out of me. I’ve been with Dylan and he’ll be upset about something, and I’m trying to help him, and he gets mad at me, and I’ve been offended. I’ve thought, “The only way I can deal with this is ‘Okay, he’s just being a jerk right now.’ ” But it was pointed out to me that he’s not being a jerk, he doesn’t know. What he needs is love. I thought about it, and I was like, “Yeah, because I was told that, too.” About my music, which is pure expression and honest emotion and feeling. I mean, I’ll be singing something and know, “Man, they’re not gonna like this” and “This isn’t right.” But it’s how I feel. The way I’ve been attacked has been strange. The press has actually helped me get my head more together. You know, my stepfather helped me, too. I learned a lot of things. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t also being an asshole. It’s not quite fair to bring a two-year-old into the realities of who’s an asshole and who’s not. There’s a part of me that’s still two and getting a little better every day.

  That would explain a lot.

  One thing I want to say is, these aren’t excuses. I’m not trying to get out of something. The bottom line is, each person is responsible for what they say and what they do. And I’m responsible for everything I’ve said and everything I’ve done, whether I want to be or not. So these aren’t excuses. They’re just facts, and they’re things I’m dealing with. And if you’ve got a real problem with it, don’t come to the show. If you gotta be home at fucking midnight, don’t bother. Do yourself a favor. I’m not telling you to come—I don’t think that I’d want to. If you’ve got a problem with me trying to deal with my shit and doing the show the best I can, then just don’t come, man. It’s not a problem. Just stay the fuck away. Because you’re getting something out of it, but I’m also there for myself. I’ve got a lot of work to do. A lot of work to do. I’ve done about seven years’ worth of therapy in a year, but it takes a lot of energy. And Guns n’ Roses takes a lot of energy. It’s a weird pressure to try to deal with both at the same time. And I’m gonna do it the best I can when I can and how I can. And I’m the judge of that—not anybody in the crowd.

  How do you think all of this will affect your songwriting?

  I really think that the next official Guns n’ Roses record, or the next thing I do, at least, will take some dramatic turns that people didn’t expect and show the growth. I don’t want to be the twenty-three-year-old misfit that I was. I don’t want to be that person.

  Who do you want to be?

  I guess I like who I am now. I’d like to have a little more internal peace. I’m sure everybody would.

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

  by James Henke

  August 6, 1992

  The music scene has changed a lot since you last released an album. Where do you see yourself fitting in these days?

  I never kind of fit in, in a funny kind of way. In the Seventies the music I wrote was sort of romantic, and there was lots of innocence in it, and it certainly didn’t feel like it was a part of that particular time. And in the Eighties, I was writing and singing about what I felt was happening to the people I was seeing around me or what direction I saw the country going in. And that really wasn’t in step with the times, either.

  Well, given the response to your music then, I think you fit in pretty well during the Eighties.

  Well, we were popular, but that’s not the same thing. All I try to do is to write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it. And I guess I feel that if what I’m writing about is real, and if there’s emotion, then hey, there’ll be somebody who wants to hear it. I don’t know if it’s a big audience or a smaller audience than I’ve had. But that’s never been my primary interest. I’ve had a kind of story I’ve been telling, and I’m really only in the middle of it. . . . I want to sing about who I am now. When I was young, I always said I didn’t want to end up being forty-five or fifty and pretending I was fifteen or sixteen or twenty. That just didn’t interest me. I’m a lifetime musician; I’m going to be playing music forever. I don’t foresee a time when I would not be onstage somewhere, playing a guitar and playing it loud, with power and passion. I look forward to being sixty or sixty-five and doing that.

  You mentioned the ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ tour as marking the end of one phase of your career. How did the enormousness of that album and tour affect your life?

  I rea
lly enjoyed the success of Born in the U.S.A., but by the end of that whole thing, I just kind of felt “Bruced” out. I was like, “Whoa, enough of that.” You end up creating this sort of icon, and eventually it oppresses you.

  What specifically are you referring to?

  Well, for example, the whole image that had been created—and that I’m sure I promoted—it really always felt like, “Hey, that’s not me.” I mean, the macho thing, that was just never me. It might be a little more of me than I think, but when I was a kid, I was a real gentle child, and I was more in touch with those sorts of things.

  It’s funny, you know, what you create, but in the end, I think, the only thing you can do is destroy it. So when I wrote “Tunnel of Love,” I thought I had to reintroduce myself as a songwriter, in a very non-iconic role. And it was a relief. And then I got to a place where I had to sit some more of that stuff down, and part of it was coming out here to L.A. and making some music with some different people and seeing what that’s about and living in a different place for a while.

  How’s it been out here [in Los Angeles], compared with New Jersey?

  Los Angeles provides a lot of anonymity. You’re not like the big fish in the small pond. People wave to you and say hi, but you’re pretty much left to go your own way. Me in New Jersey, on the other hand, was like Santa Claus at the North Pole [laughs].

  What do you mean?

  Hmm, how can I put it? It’s like you’re a bit of a figment of a lot of other people’s imaginations. And that always takes some sorting out. But it’s even worse when you see yourself as a figment of your own imagination. And in the last three or four years, that’s something I’ve really freed myself from.

  I think what happened was that when I was young, I had this idea of playing out my life like it was some movie, writing the script and making all the pieces fit. And I really did that for a long time. But you can get enslaved by your own myth or your own image, for the lack of a better word. And it’s bad enough having other people seeing you that way, but seeing yourself that way is really bad. It’s pathetic. And I got to a place, when Patti [Scialfa, Springsteen’s second wife] and I hooked up, where I said I got to stop writing this story. It doesn’t work.

  And that’s when I realized I needed a change, and I like the West. I like the geography. Los Angeles is a funny city. Thirty minutes and you’re in the mountains, where for a hundred miles there’s one store. Or you’re in the desert, where for five hundred miles there’s five towns.

  So Patti and I came out here and put the house together and had the babies and . . . the thing is, I’d really missed a big part of my life. The only way I could describe it is that being successful in one area is illusory. People think because you’re so good at one particular thing, you’re good at many things. And that’s almost always not the case. You’re good at that particular thing, and the danger is that that particular thing allows you the indulgence to remove yourself from the rest of your life. And as time passed, I realized that I was using my job well in many ways, but there was a fashion in which I was also abusing it. And—this began in my early thirties—I really knew that something was wrong.

  That was about ten years ago?

  Yeah, it started after I got back from the River tour. I’d had more success than I’d ever thought I’d have. We’d played around the world. And I thought, like, “Wow, this is it.” And I decided, “Okay, I want to have a house.” And I started to look for a house.

  I looked for two years. Couldn’t find one. I’ve probably been in every house in the state of New Jersey—twice. Never bought a house. Figured I just couldn’t find one I liked. And then I realized that it ain’t that I can’t find one, I couldn’t buy one. I can find one, but I can’t buy one. Damn! Why is that?

  And I started to pursue why that was. Why did I only feel good on the road? Why were all my characters in my songs in cars? I mean, when I was in my early twenties, I was always sort of like, “Hey, what I can put in this suitcase, that guitar case, that bus—that’s all I need, now and forever.” And I really believed it. And really lived it. Lived it for a long time.

  In a ‘Rolling Stone’ cover story from 1978, Dave Marsh wrote that you were so devoted to music that it was impossible to imagine you being married or having kids or a house. . . .

  A lot of people have said the same thing. But then something started ticking. It didn’t feel right. It was depressing. It was like, “This is a joke. I’ve come a long way, and there’s some dark joke here at the end.”

  I didn’t want to be one of those guys who can write music and tell stories and have an effect on people’s lives, and maybe on society in some fashion, but not be able to get into his own self. But that was pretty much my story.

  I tend to be an isolationist by nature. And it’s not about money or where you live or how you live. It’s about psychology. My dad was certainly the same way. You don’t need a ton of dough and walls around your house to be isolated. I know plenty of people who are isolated with a six-pack of beer and a television set. But that was a big part of my nature.

  Then music came along, and I latched onto it as a way to combat that part of myself. It was a way that I could talk to people. It provided me with a means of communication, a means of placing myself in a social context—which I had a tendency not to want to do.

  And music did those things but in an abstract fashion, ultimately. It did them for the guy with the guitar, but the guy without the guitar was pretty much the same as he had been.

  Now I see that two of the best days of my life were the day I picked up the guitar and the day that I learned how to put it down. Somebody said, “Man, how did you play for so long?” I said: “That’s the easy part. It’s stopping that’s hard.”

  When did you learn to put the guitar down?

  Pretty recently. I had locked into what was pretty much a hectic obsession, which gave me enormous focus and energy and fire to burn, because it was coming out of pure fear and self-loathing and self-hatred. I’d get onstage and it was hard for me to stop. That’s why my shows were so long. They weren’t long because I had an idea or a plan that they should be that long. I couldn’t stop until I felt burnt, period. Thoroughly burnt.

  It’s funny, because the results of the show or the music might have been positive for other people, but there was an element of it that was abusive for me. Basically, it was my drug. And so I started to follow the thread of weaning myself.

  For a long time, I had been able to ignore it. When you’re nineteen and you’re in a truck and you’re crossing the country back and forth, and then you’re twenty-five and you’re on tour with the band—that just fit my personality completely. That’s why I was able to be good at it. But then I reached an age where I began to miss my real life—or to even know that there was another life to be lived. I mean, it was almost a surprise. First you think you are living it. You got a variety of different girlfriends, and then, “Gee, sorry, gotta go now.” It was like the Groucho Marx routine—it’s funny, ’cause it runs in my family a little bit, and we get into this: “Hello, I came to say I’d like to stay, but I really must be going.” And that was me.

  What was it that woke you up to the fact that you were missing something or had a problem?

  Unhappiness. And other things, like my relationships. They always ended poorly; I didn’t really know how to have a relationship with a woman. Also, I wondered how can I have this much money and not spend it? Up until the Eighties, I really didn’t have any money. When we started the River tour, I had about twenty grand, I think. So, really, around 1983 was the first time I had some money in the bank. But I couldn’t spend it, I couldn’t have any fun. So a lot of things started to not feel logical. I realized there was some aberrational behavior going on here. And I didn’t feel that good. Once out of the touring context, and out of the context of my work, I felt lost.

  Did you ever go to a therapist or seek help like that?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I got really down. Really
bad off for a while. And what happened was, all my rock & roll answers had fizzled out. I realized that my central idea—which, at a young age, was attacking music with a really religious type of intensity—was okay to a point. But there was a point where it turns in on itself. And you start to go down that dark path, and there is a distortion of even the best of things. And I reached a point where I felt my life was distorted. I love my music, and I wanted to just take it for what it was. I didn’t want to try to distort it into being my entire life. Because that’s a lie. It’s not true. It’s not your entire life. It never can be.

  And I realized my real life is waiting to be lived. All the love and the hope and the sorrow and sadness—that’s all over there, waiting to be lived. And I could ignore it and push it aside or I could say yes to it. But to say yes to part of it is to say yes to all of it. That’s why people say no to all of it. Whether it’s drugs or whatever. That’s why people say no: I’ll skip the happiness as long as I don’t have to feel the pain.

  So I decided to work on it. I worked hard on it. And basically, you have to start to open up to who you are. I certainly wasn’t the person I thought I was. This was around the time of Born in the U.S.A. And I bought this big house in New Jersey, which was really quite a thing for me to do. It was a place I used to run by all the time. It was a big house, and I said, “Hey, this is a rich man’s house.” And I think the toughest thing was that it was in a town where I’d been spit on when I was a kid.