Bandsplain - Guns N’ Roses with Riki Rachtman

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

We’re back with guns blazing. Yasi dons her top hat and talks with storied Guns N’ Roses associate Riki Rachtman, former host of MTV’s Headbangers Ball and original co-owner of the legendary rock n’ roll hangout the Cathouse Hollywood. Follow Riki Rachtman on Twitter at @RikiRachtman. Further reading: “Reckless Road: Guns N' Roses and the Making of Appetite for Destruction” by Marc Canter “Slash” by Slash “It's So Easy: and other lies” by Duff McKagan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplaine? Do you know where you are? You're in the Bandsplain, baby. You're gonna die! Welcome to the jungle, also known as Bansplaine. I am your host, Yossi Sallak.

This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to explain a cult band or iconic artist to me and to you. Today's episode is about guns and roses. If you've never heard guns and roses, you're either a small child or you've never been outside of your home. This is what guns and roses sounds like. My guest today, you guys, my guest today is Ricky Rackman, the original co-owner of the iconic Cat House L.A. the former host of MTV's Headbangers Ball, the current host of the epic cat house podcast, and also the forthcoming show Hot Biscuit and Crescent. He also works in car and motorcycle racing because he's very cool.

However, he will not let me call him a journalist. He got Matt. Most importantly for our purposes, he is a known Guns and Roses associate. Welcome to the show, Ricky. Well, thank you very much. wasn't exactly sure you were talking about me when you said an expert, but I'm happy to be here. And yeah, it's fun when you talk about the band Guns and Roses because this was a band that we were just all a bunch of friends. Everybody was just, you know, hanging out. And it was, even to this day, it's still bizarre to me that, like, my buddies are now the biggest rock and roll band in the world.

It's still kind of weird. It was weird for me the first time I was ever at a sporting event. And I heard them play Welcome to the Jungle. I'm like, wait a minute. I remember when they recorded Welcome to the Jungle. And now it's, you know, it's a song that everybody knows. I feel like that's how my friends feel about Bansplain. They're like, wow, we just thought Yossi was our friend.

We went to Cheesecake Factory with. And now, look, she is the world's most iconic rock music podcast. It's almost the exact same thing. That's what I was going to say. It's just about the exact same thing. I know that's the analogy you were making. That's exactly it. I think normally we might do a little overview of Guns and Roses, but again, I think they're one of the biggest bands in the world.

So we can do just something real brief, Guns and Roses. If you don't know, fronted by Axel Rose original. The lineup situation is a bit meandering, and I did have to use one of those cork boards with the red string to really get it down from the beginning. but the classic lineup was singer Axel Rose, guitarist slash, other guitarist Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff McCaghan, and first drummer Stephen Adler, second drummer Matt Sorum. They were pretty active, 1985 through about, what do you say, 95, took a bit of a hiatus. They're back now, baby in the jungle, but we'll get to that. We don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

Ricky, do you mind if I just do the cork board red string of the formation and then I will ask you some important questions along the way because you were there and I was two years old. Ouch, everything was going great and see. Remind me that you were two years old. Ricky, I don't get to do that a lot. No, see, I don't get to that a lot because producer Dylan is, I don't know, 29. And most of the guests who come on this show are somehow younger than me. So I don't often get to do that. have to let me have my moment in the sun when I'm for once younger than someone. Yes. Make fun of the elderly person while you can. And you know what?

Before you start your cork board string thing, the thing that I was realizing, which I still find fascinating, is other than Axel, do you know who has been in Guns and Roses the longest? Duff. Dizzy Reed. Oh, yeah, Dizzy Read.

Well, we didn't get there yet because Dizzy Read didn't join until Matt Sorum joins. For me, though Gilby Clark is still one of my closest friends, even Matt Sohrm felt like a replacement to me, because I always think of the core ones, which are the ones that you're going to start with when you start talking about the core members of Guns and Roses. But I always think of that as being Guns and Roses to me. They're the ones tattooed on Axel's arm. They're the one that were on the cover of the iconic Apertight for Destruction album. And for reasons that we'll get into later, they kind of really, they are Guns and Roses.

at least in terms of like the musical output that people are the most familiar with. So according to my extremely deep research, this is a tale of two bands that became guns and roses through various shuffling arounds and addings and subtractings. Izzy and Axel went to high school together in Indiana. They moved to Los Angeles with big dreams. They started a band called Hollywood Rose. Were you familiar with Hollywood Rose and it's short. short-lived heyday. Well, interestingly enough, I was a DJ, a club DJ. And it's weird because, you know, L.A. is such a big city, yet it's still small or it's just weird the people that come in through your life here and there. I was a club DJ not playing rock and roll. I loved rock and roll, but I was, that's how I was making money. And this girl came in, Angela and she was like, you know, club scenester. And she came in there with her boyfriend.

friend. He's like, can he hang out with you in the DJ booth? I'm like, yeah. And it was Izzy. And Izzy, you know, could talk about rock and roll and punk rock with me because you couldn't talk to the other people in there that were waiting for, you know, their favorite bow-wow-wow Durand-Duran song to play. So me and Izzy started talking and he would talk to me about his band, Hollywood Rose and how they were just starting out. But I hadn't seen the band yet. I didn't even, you know, I wasn't really that familiar with them at all. But it was funny how you become intertwined with people through different times of your life that later becomes such a big part of your life. But that was the first time I had heard of Hollywood Rose.

Totally. We'll get more into the fact that Izzy Stradlin is my favorite member of Guns and Roses and I have developed a deep obsession with him. But we can save that for later. Ricky, you kind of started to talk about it. But what was the vibe on like, let's say Hollywood? Because I think we can agree that like in many ways like the nucleus. of LA rock music at that time was like in and around the sunset strip. Who were the big rock bands at the time?

It's weird because when you think about rock and roll during the mid to late 80s and you think, oh, that 80s rock scene. But there were so many scenes. There were so many different scenes. I mean, there was the scene with the warrants and the poisons. And there were the scenes with the. Wasps. And Guns and Roses weren't really part of that scene.

Guns and Roses did play with those bands occasionally, but I remember Guns and Roses playing with punk rock bands. I remember seeing Guns and Roses playing a festival playing right before Social Distortion. Oh my God, we'll get into that. I'm obsessed with that festival. Street scene, 1985. Oh, my God.

You guys, your fucking wigs are going to be blown back when I explained to you about this festival. But let's not get ahead. And I went there. I went to 85. and 86. And okay, we'll save that for later. But the thing is, imagine all of these different,

here's just going to be a weird analogy. Imagine all of these different groups of rats. And all these rats are just hungry, looking for scavenging for things, to pick up bits and pieces anywhere they can. And they're all in all these different flavors. I mean, you know, in the mid-80s, we also, L.A. had a great rockabilly scene

and a great mod. Scars scene and dance scene and hip hop. And it was so vibrant with so many scenes. Of course, when you're in it, you don't realize, wow, this is something magical. 30 years from now, it's going to suck. You don't think about that. You just think that's the way it is. But in Hollywood, there were all these bands working, struggling, trying to do whatever they

could to make a name from themselves. You know, what we had back then a way to promote yourself as a rock and roll band was flying. You would make little pieces of... paper that showed your band and your photo and your shows. So that was part of the band ritual. So everybody had, you didn't only go out when your band was playing. You had to go out every night just to promote your band. So everybody was hungry, hustlers trying to make it. Yeah. Just to be clear, you meant rats, the animals, not rat. The glam metal band from San Diego fronted by Stephen

Piercy. I should have said rat R-A-T, not R-A-T-T, which I still think of as a Los Angeles band, because they really made it in Los Angeles in the 80s playing the Sunset Strip. In the same time. Just to zoom out for a second before I dive back into doing the strings, in terms of like what was going on nationally in music, the biggest albums were Purple Rain, born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen, like a virgin by Madonna, make it big by Wham, and Centerfield by John Foverty.

So just to situate everybody. Now, Izzy and Axel have this band Hollywood Rose. Izzy lived with Tracy Guns from the band LA Guns. Tracy Guns also went to high school with Slash. This is really, like you said it, like L.A. is really big,

but I'm starting to feel like in the 80s, L.A. was like a village. because everyone knew each other. So basically what happens is members of Hollywood Rose and members of L.A. Guns form a band together. And it's Axel, Izzy, Tracy Guns, Rob Gardner, who is the drummer, and the bassist old bike. Is that you say his name? Bich. I don't remember.

I don't remember. I could be wrong. Oli. All right. Good old Oli, who didn't last long anyways. That was 1985. they start guns and roses. But not for long, babe.

Not for longer, are these people in this band? Tracy, who is, I put him up, there was also one of the great Los Angeles guitars, very, very talented, great guys. Totally.

But Tracy and Slash and Axel, they were different. They were on a different level. And when I say this, I don't mean this insulting to Tracy, but they were more dangerous. They lived life, like these guys were into different drugs,

these guys were into much heavier, more dangerous things. Even Tracy, who's told me on one of the Cat Ollular Podcast, he said it was a whole different thing. It was much more dangerous. They were into some heavy-duty stuff. Not to say that. Yeah, totally. It seems, I mean, I'm only speculating here,

but it seems like the vibe was like, you know, Axel and Izzy had like escaped a fate worse than death in Indiana. and they were just like, what the fuck ever? We're going to just, we're going for it. And Duff, who does join Guns and Roses pretty, like, shortly after the formation. They have their first show with the old members, and then OLEA is fired, and they hired Duff, who's from Seattle and came up playing in punk bands. So he had a complete punk sensibility, which I think adds, obviously, to what you're talking about,

the danger, like the not giving a fuck. He said something about how Rob and Tracy Guns to his ear sounded too metal, like he thought that they were too metal for the kind of band that, like, Axel was envisioning. What do you think about that? I've heard other people say stuff. I mean, I know that Izzy said that when Matt Sorham joined the band, it sounded too metal. You know, Guns and Roses, as much as each one of these guys is a character, there's something gritty, dark, and very similar among all of them.

So it's sort of all fit because, you know, Duff was in punk rock. He was in the legendary punk rock band, The Farts in Seattle. Totally. And 10 minute warning, great band. Right. I remember, and I know that we're still skipping it a little bit, but I remember in the early days, Guns & Roza, seeing them play with a lot of punk bands.

And there was something that was very punk and gutteral to the band. Totally. I totally agree. I think that's like, in my opinion, they were like really synthesizing punk and like something more edgy as a bad word. But you know what I'm saying? That made them really in a different league than like glam metal stuff that they were kind of being grouped in with like the poisons of the world because that just wasn't their vibe. Guns and Roses are so good and true. It's just we forget how raw and edgy and brutal they were because they became the biggest rock and roll band in the world, you know? I totally agree. Yeah. There's just something where like when someone becomes that big,

you kind of forget about, yeah, not only say their credibility, but kind of their credibility. Okay. No, you do. Credibility is a good word, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to play the first song in a second,

but I'm going to quickly get us to the iconic lineup finalizing. Duff was already in like a short-lived little band with Slash and Stephen Adler, who you mentioned, who were childhood friends. Steve Adler played drums. Slash, we know who Slash is because he is one of the most iconic people alive, killer guitar player. And so when we lose Tracy Guns and Ole and Rob Gardner, Duff brings in Slash and Adler, and he's like, they'll be great. and they fucking take off on what came to be known as Hell Tour, where Duff used his punk rock band Know How to just book them a bunch of shows up the coast up to his hometown of Seattle. They didn't play any of them because everything went wrong and they car broke down and all this stuff.

But they played one show in Seattle. And Duff's former bandmate in the Fastbacks, also an amazing band, if you guys haven't listened, lent them the drum kit. at the amps and they played their fucking first show as that lineup. And it was like, we're off to the races. It was, according to Slash, I didn't realize it was until years later, but that trip cemented us as a band more than we knew. Our commitments were tested on that journey. We partied, we'd played, we'd survived, we'd endured, and we'd racked up a lifetime's worth of stories in just two weeks. Let's play a song off that first EP, even though I'll back explain how they

ended up even getting signed and putting out an EP. But what song do you want to hear off Live, like a suicide? Well, I love this record for so many reasons because selfishly I like it. Because when this EP came out, you know, we decided let's do a record release party and they did it at the Cat House. So this is before they had a record out. We did the record release party for this. I can talk about the record release party a little bit.

But the song that I'd love to play from this EP is great because the first thing, you hear on it. The very first thing you hear is slash saying, hey, fuckers suck on guns and fucking roses. And then a fake audience from a 1970s concert called, I think it was called Texas Jam. Like it's a live album. It's not even in front of a live audience. It's a fake live audience that makes the band sound like they're playing in front of 50,000 people, even though at that time, they would play like in front of maybe 500 people, but it's still, I love this song because if this is the first song you ever hear from Guns and Roses, it's like, oh, here's a band that's grabbing me by the back of the hair and going to punch in my teeth.

This is Reckless Life from Guns and Roses. All right. Let's hear Reckless Life. You are listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments live together in gorgeous harmony only on Spotify. Guess what? You can also create your own music and talk show for free. with Inker, Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm slash music and talk.

That's anchor.com slash music and talk. That was a reckless life. I feel like the first fucking thing you're punched in the goddamn face with when you hear guns and roses is nobody sings like Axel Rose. When I first heard Axel Rose's voice, the only person that I could compare it to, And I remember this was before they ever had a record deal and I go, for some reason he reminds me a little bit of Janice Joplin.

Oh, totally. That was the only thing that I could see was like a little bit of Janice Joplin. But nobody sings like Axel. You really hit on something just now, though, because I think people do not give enough credit to Axel for how much soulfulness and sort of like swing he has in his voice, you know? like he really is like a talented singer in that regard. Just the song that we just played with Reckless Life,

it's like, I got a red. I mean, he's all over the place, you know. When a guitar is just doing da-da-da-da-da-da. He's like playing, going up and down like a roller coaster with his voice. And I mean, for him to do that live, running up and down the stage. And, you know, that was what made that band so exciting. Totally. Okay, let's talk about how they even got to putting out the CD because I think it's

important and also it's just fucking fascinating. So once Guns and Roses gets back from that quote-unquote hell tour, they just like loved something clicked. They loved writing music together. I think one of the first songs they ever wrote was Welcome to the Jungle, which is truly insane. But they were just like vibing. They played anywhere they could like slash, I think said in his biography.

Like they'd play like the punk clubs. They'd play like you said also like anywhere. they were all independently cast as extras in Sid and Nancy. That was one of my favorite fun factoids, but none of them showed up except for Slash. So he's in the background of Sid and Nancy at the Starwood. A bunch of people tried to manage them, including Kim Fowley, which is L.O.L.

And they're just playing all these crazy shows. Like there's bands in this scene at the same time. Red Cross, Jane's Addiction, the Minutemen are playing. So back to, okay, I do want to hear a story about it, because L.A. Street scene, I think, maybe still exists, or it existed for a while after, but it moved to San Diego. But it was a short-lived, I think, two-year festival in L.A. The lineup for 1985 included the Minutemen, Fishbone,

the Meat Puppets, Midnight Oil, James Brown, T-S-O-L, Chris Isaac and Poison, and Guns and Roses, and, of course, Social D. And we'll talk about the other band that was scheduled to play, which did play Fear. So Guns & Roses was supposed to play right after Fear. But what happened after Fear played, because Fear was a fucking sick, ferocious punk band, their fans tore down the stage, tore the whole thing down. So there was no stage to play on. And that's how they ended up playing before social distortion on the other stage.

The police are overreacting to a typical L.A. street scene here. And as you notice, they are marching down the student formation, ready with the batons at their size, ready to spread more blood and more misery and more pain. First of all, we're in downtown Los Angeles, okay? You are putting stages all over the place in downtown Los Angeles. Of every kind of musical genre you could think, I remember the band Candy, which was like this pop band,

which Gilby Clark was in. in playing right before run DMC. It's like you had every, I saw Jezabelle play the same stage. You had all these bands playing all over and it's free to get in. And it's everywhere in the heart and the heart of downtown L.A. Guns and Roses is supposed to play, but everything's running late. And I believe that social distortion was going to go on at around 8 o'clock, but everything was put on so late

so Guns and Roses ended up going on at about that time. So here's Guns and Roses playing in front of all these fans that want to see social distortion. And some people that were there for S.D. liked Guns and Roses. Some were actually surprised. And some kind of dug them. Some didn't.

You know, the spit was flying, of course. Some people spit on Slash. But I was surprised how many social Distortion fans actually did like Guns and Roses, and the place went ballistic. It was just, it was, stuff was flying. Yeah. If you haven't heard Social Distortion, I think you will play a clip right now because it'll make sense to you why the fans may or may not have been prepared for Guns and Roses.

I love social distortion, but it's a very different vibe. Very different vibe than Guns and Roses. This was before Mike Ness was doing all like Outlaw Love songs. and stuff. They were still like... Yeah, this was when they were still punk rock. So it fit.

But, I mean, just the thing is, the whole thing about punk rock, you hated people with long hair. And these guys have got big hair at the time. So you look at them and you think this is everything that we're kind of against. So they wanted to hate Guns and Roses.

Funny tidbit in both Duff and Slash's bios was that when Duff first showed up to meet Slash and Steve, he had short, like, punk blue hair. And they were like, what's the deal with this fucking guy? They were like, you don't have long hair? What's wrong with you? Which to me is very funny.

All that to say, they are getting huge in L.A. You were there, right? It's like the shows are growing. Their fan base is growing. Obviously, labels start to get interested. Yes. You know, we didn't have the internet then. But word spreads quickly because you go to shows

and everybody finds out who is the biggest draw in all in in town which are the bands that are getting you know the bigger gigs who are the bands that are playing you know a weekend night at the whiskey who's the bands that are playing two nights at the roxy and guns and roses start getting some pretty good slots opening up i remember i had to well this was actually after the EP came out that they got a gig opening up for cheap trick and i had to drive stephen adler to that gig i remember that one but that was i think after the EP came out so tom Zutot. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name, right? Is the visionary man? Yeah. The Gaffin A&R who signed Guns and Roses. Well, back up. Okay. Please.

Joseph Brooks was the DJ at the cat house. Okay. Joseph also owned a record store called Vinyl Fetish, which was on Melrose across the street from retail slut. And Joseph called Tom Zutot and said, you have got to see this band Guns and Roses. So if it wasn't for, the Cat House DJ Joseph Brooks, who knows? And Guns and Roses has mentioned Joseph many times. I think one of the videos is dedicated to Joseph Brooks. I mean, Joseph Brooks was the one that called Tom Zootot and said,

you have got to see this band Guns and Roses. Shout out Joseph Brooks. Shout out vinyl fetish. Shout out retail slot. And just for you little kids, just for your children, who go to Melrose now to go to the urban outfitters or have a Starbucks, I want you to understand that this was a lawless. land at one point. This was truly, I mean, there's still some remnants. Like, there is,

headline records is still there, which is like a cool punk record store. I don't know how it stays in business amongst all the rest of the malarkey that's there. I mean, even when I was in high school, which was, you know, the early 90s, it was still pretty fucking wild on Melrose. Like, we would go there to, like, go to, like, one of the first ever, like, vintage stores, art barks and, like, we'd buy punk clothes at the Japanese punk show. shop. Like, that's what it was like, but it's just, that's a for gone time. It's completely gone. People would go. It's like, it was like, what do you want to do? Let's go to Melrose. It's like, that's people would go and just go to Melrose and they'd walk down. You had retail slut, which is

where Tamie worked. Which is where Slash got his famous top hat. You had a store called Let It Rock, which was where you'd get all your cool rockability clothes and creepers. And it was alive. And, uh, it was alive. And it was a place that I had to go to go to pass out flyers to get people to go to the cat house. So Melrose was alive. So they get signed to Geffen. Tom Zutot was really smart because let's talk about live like a suicide. You already talked about how the live part is a heavy air quotes because it was not at all live. And they did this really smart thing where they released that EP under the label Ouzi Suicide.

So it seemed like an indie release. but actually Uzi suicide was simply a part of Geffen, and it wasn't actually live, and it looked live. So they did this kind of, like, fun trick that I think, like, gave an extra layer of credibility. Because, like, obviously, like, it's cool to have a release before your major label release, right? And it's like they kind of, in a roundabout way that people didn't really know, did have that sort of, like, underground release, which is probably why, and Ricky, I want to hear your thoughts on this. They had already written a lot of the best songs, even once. that don't show up till use your illusion.

But they didn't put them on here. Like they didn't put Welcome to the Jungle on here. They didn't put Paradise City on here. Those were already written. They were playing them in their shows. As well as Don't Cry. And don't cry. November rain.

November rain. These are songs that are old Guns and Rosa song. But the Live Like a Suicide, which they only released 10,000 copies of, it felt raw. It felt like our local band is releasing this little independent, quote, live EP. that's got two originals, two covers. And, you know, yeah, Mama can, doing an Aerosmith cover is kind of like, okay, but it wasn't a really well-known Aerosmith song. And then doing Rose Tattoo, which is, was a band that was A, the first rock and roll band with heavily tattooed people. But also a band that really had that punk rock, rock and roll feeling when most bands didn't, you know, there was, there were very few bands in the world that were.

liked by punk rockers and metal kids. And I can think of Motorhead and Rose Tattoo and maybe Hanoy Rocks, you know, and these are the bands that the punk rockers like too. Hanow Rocks, I'm glad you brought up as well as Aerosmith because I think those are two major Guns and Roses influences. Wouldn't you agree? I would say Hanoy Rocks more than any other band. Hanoy Rocks was sort of the band that everybody wanted to be like. Hanoy Rocks was the only time in the mid to late 80s that when I said glam band, I meant it like, hell yeah. Instead of like gross. Instead of it becoming like, yeah.

Like, Henry Rocks was just great. Okay. Now I have an important question for you. Uh-oh. You tell us if Wikipedia has led me astray. But it says that like you said, they had the EP release at your club. Did they or did they not perform all of the songs live acoustically? Because that's what Wikipedia says.

let's back up just a little bit. So this was something that it was either Axel or Stephen that said, let's do. And I had opened up this rock and roll club called the Cat House in Hollywood. And this is where we all hung out. It was only opened so we could meet girls, get free drinks. And all my friends were starting bands and I was starting bands, but I wasn't making it. And all my other friends band. So I'm like, here, I've got the safe haven of a place that's not going to have a velvet rope that we can hang out at.

So I made a strict rule No bands could play the Cat House ever Because once one band plays And everybody says who's playing next week Who's playing next week If you don't have bands Let me get on Just showing up exactly

And an ax would always be the first one To go to the club And just start dancing on the dance floor With nobody there There was nobody there And he'd be dancing there So he's like, let's do a record release party I'm like, okay

So we called it the live like a suicide record release Christmas party at the Cat House. And we did it. And we said, look, I can't get amps. I can't afford to get amplifiers and all this other stuff. Let's do this acoustic. This was way before MTV had ever thought of doing unplugged. Totally.

So I said, okay, can I ask like some other bands to do it? And he's like, yeah, we'll have a Christmas party. So it was their record release party, but I asked the other three biggest drawing LA bands at that time. It was Guns and Roses, L.A. Guns, Faster Pussy Cat, and Jet Boy, which all of those four bands are the epitome of what that L.A. guttural cat house rock scene was.

And everybody played acoustic. I could not tell you what anybody played. I can't tell you a thing that happened because I don't remember a damn thing because we were so drunk, and other things. Except I do remember that I remember Axel wore a big fur coat. I remember I got up and I did some songs. I remember everybody got up and played songs.

I remember vaguely Stephen Adler with Maracas. And everybody kind of interchanged each other and everybody played with each other. And we just, I mean, there was no stage. And I think that that night there were like maybe four or five hundred people there. and that was by far the biggest night ever at the cat house. And that was their record release party. But it wasn't like, you know, record labels there and setting up posters and it was just like, here, let's go here.

We're all going to drink for free. And there you go. That's so fucking cool. I wish I remembered it. I wish you had a recording of it. Well, here's the other thing. I had a strict rule that I would not allow cameras in the cat house and I always kept that rule there because that way

anybody could do whatever they want. Yeah, but now I don't have any photos. I don't remember any this stuff. I wouldn't have cared in that time because it's like what are you going to do go develop the rule five years later and fucking throw it on where? But now you wouldn't care. But if you're in a

band and if you're Stephen Tyler or Billy Gibbons or any of the biggest rock stars in the world and there's naked girls and drugs everywhere, somebody else might care. You're right, girl. That's why.

But in hindsight, I would have a really nice coffee table book. I'll tell you, in homage to this episode, last night, I did go to one of my all-time favorite restaurants. You know which one. Cantors, Los Angeles, deli. Cantors. Now, Mark Canner, who owned Canters, was a very good friend of the band since day one. And when Guns and Rose was played their shows, we'd all go to Canters. Canners was a deli on Fairfax, a really good deli.

It still is, first of all. It still is. It's the only deli. And Mark Canter was just a really good guy. And he would videotape and he's got, like, if Guns and Roses played at the Cat House and somebody was going to take photos, it would either be Mark Cantor or Robert John. And that was the only people that could ever allow to have cameras inside the cat house. Totally. Actually, a shout out Mark Cantor did a great book about the making of apartheid for destruction.

You can buy it wherever fine books are sold. And if you look in the book, there's a couple of Guns and Roses early flyers, like right when they got signed, they started selling out shows and they played at the whiskey and they played at the Roxy. And it says alibi artists, alibi artist was me.

Oh, look at you. It was a promoter. Also, I'll give one more tidbit for the LA heads just because I think this is amazing and it ties back into Cantras before we move on. Apparently Stephen Adler did say that Guns and Roses got Rodney on the Rock. Shout out to the God, the legend.

Rodney on the Rock from K. Rock. What is after midnight? Anyway, you listening to Rodney on the Rock? Who used to put little Yossi on to every music she ever loved, and I would sit and wait for his show and tape it on my little boombox. And me. And you on Loveline, of course. We take your calls at 1-800 Love 191.

Well, no, no, no, no. I wasn't asking for Prop Sat. Oh, okay. You would also tape his show is what you mean. Rodney on the Rock is without a doubt the biggest unsung hero in music. It's so true. Well, Stephen Adler did say it's because they gave him a gram of cocaine. But who can ever prove that?

But we love Rodney on the Rock. You can still give him props. I think he still frequents canters. He has his own booth. It has a little plaque for it. It's right by the stairs. And if you haven't yet, there's an incredible documentary. It's called Mare of the Sunset Strip, and you should definitely watch it.

Okay. So this EP comes out, like we said, December 1986, hence the Christmas party. Now, they have their Geffen signing bonus, but that doesn't mean they have money. They're living, like you mentioned. I believe Slash and Axel lived in the literal practice space, which was a storage unit. And the other guys, I don't know, lived with girlfriends or I think Izzy and Duff had their shit a bit more together and they had apartments. But they're really like living the real street life here. Yeah, I remember they played one of the shows that they played. I, you know, now people get like, you know, cars for bonuses and they just played a show. And I went and I had a little money. So I bought a big bottle of Jack Daniels to bring to Slash. And he was like, wow, man, thanks. That's so much. Like, because they were all in these apartments or staying in this crazy haunted house on Sierra Bonita, which I remember going to.

And it was exactly what you would think would be like the flop house, like pizza boxes on the floor. it's exactly what you would think it would be. Yeah. Sorry. Also, I haven't mentioned this, but I think it's so important. These guys are super young. Like, at this point, Slash is maybe 20. We were all about 2021 because I know when I opened the cat house, I could just drink.

So we were about 2021. So they're really young. I think Axel is a couple years older than Slash, but they're like real in the young man range. So they get to recording appetite for destruction. That album, sorry, I just need to take a breath because this album is very interesting in the way that it became what it became, which was a huge album. But it didn't happen overnight. So they record this album. It's ultimately produced by this guy Mike Klink.

They went through a couple of other people. It's not that important. They had already written all the songs, you know? So they're like, you know, they're club songs. And then they also leave off a bunch of songs. We had kind of hinted this earlier, but like November rain and Don't Cry were already written, but they don't put them on this first album, which is truly insane. Now, this album comes out in July of 1987, and the first single was only released in the UK.

It's so easy, which I think, is that the song you chose that you wanted to play? Yes. Let's hear that song now. I would like to situate everyone on what the first single was, even though it was only. in the UK. And then I want to talk about what happens, basically why it takes one full year for this album to actually make the impact that it does.

Okay, this is, it's so easy. That was, it's so easy. You have a bit of a story about this song. Am I correct? Well, of course I'd like to tell you why I selfishly picked it so easy other than just being such a kick-ass song. And whenever I hear that song,

especially because some of these songs, I haven't heard for a while. You know, I don't go back to listen to my old Guns and Roses stuff as much as I should. So when I go back to that song, I see in my mind them playing that song. So Guns and Roses in 1989, they decided, okay, we're going to do a video for It's So Easy, which I always thought was a little bit bizarre because the lyrics are, it's so fucking easy. So Axel says, I want to do this video and we're going to do these bondage scenes in it. And we're going to do it with Aaron Everly and this girl, Diane, that was my girlfriend at the time.

And Diane didn't really, I think, make the final cut. But Aaron did. And he had a ball gag in her mouth and was doing this stuff. Axel's wearing this leather cat house vest. And he's doing these crazy bondage scenes. Then he's like, okay, we're going to do a live show at the cat house. This is when Guns and Roses was big. They were really, really big.

So he's like, look, we're going to play two shows. we're going to film one of them and we'll make a video out of it and I'm like, whatever you want you know, whatever you want. So they play and they film it so easy but this is also the infamous night

that David Bowie showed up at the cat house so wasted so drunk trying, again a story in my Cat House Hollywood podcast but David Bowie tried to pick up on Aaron and then David Bowie was like,

I want to get up on stage. And he's talking to Joseph Brooks. He's like, I want to get up on stage. And Joseph is like, David, this is their night. They don't want you to go up on stage. Like on one hand, it'd be like, how badass would it have been if David Bowie was up on stage at the Cat House? But he was a waste.

And this was all about Guns and Roses. And to this day, Alan Niven, who was a one-time manager of Guns and Roses, said this was the best Guns and Roses show ever. This is when they were at the time. their peak. They were big, but they were about to be the biggest. And so this is the place the night where Axel chased David Bowie down the street saying, I'm going to kill you, Tin Man. And all that stuff happened because David Boy was in Tin Machines. Selfishly, when they play the It's So Easy Video, which never really got full release, not only because of the profanity in it, but because

there were simulated bondage scenes in it that weren't really that bad. But that, that, that it's a easy video was shot at the cat house. Besides the fact that song fucking undeniably slaps and is really slapped on, this story has blown my mind on several thousand levels. And I'm just going to add one more detail to truly push everyone listening over the fucking edge, which is that David Bowie also one time dated Slash's mother. So Slash already knew him from when he was a child when David Bowie was his mom's boyfriend. I mean, you know, that he was always over.

they were always together. I caught them naked once. They had a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, it was Slash that invited David Bowie to come to the cat house, which, by the way, I never met David Bowie that day. And when your security guard comes up to you and he says, Ricky, Axel's chasing David Bowie down the street saying he's going to kill him. And I stand there and this is exactly what I did.

I stared at my at the security guard. I stared at him, paused, and then I just turned it and walked away. Because what are you supposed to do when one of your best friends who's in one of the biggest rock and roll bands is going to kill one of the greatest rock stars of all time down the street? You don't do anything. Even though it would have been cool for just like if I could have jumped in the middle and tried to break it up. I don't know why he just walked away. I just didn't know what to do. But it was, I think it was a little bit too much for Ricky's little mind to take.

It's like Axel's chasing David Bowie down the street would never have guessed that this has been written about in every single book, every single, podcast everything, and they all have the story wrong. Your mind just said, that was the truth. But when I think of it so easy, I think of that night, of Guns and Roses playing. And I think of Guns and Roses live because Axel has so much swagger and confidence. It's like when he's like, I see you standing there. You think you're so cool. It's like I see them playing that live.

And it's like, you know, you can't bottle that much self-confidence and swagger. You know, it's just he was, he's the man. When he's up there, he's the man, you know? Totally. It's interesting because this album makes them the biggest band in the world. But it takes a weirdly long amount of time. So the album comes out in July. They put out Welcome to the Jungle as a single in October, along with the music video.

Famously, you guys remember Axel, he gets off the bus. He's in a flannel indicating Indiana. carrying a suitcase, a homeless man screams at him, you're in the jungle, you're going to die. You know, like I did earlier. Which allegedly really did happen. Yes. A homeless man really did come up and say,

do you know where you are? You're in the jungle. You're going to die. That supposedly really happened. If I ever write music, I have to include the one time a homeless man in San Francisco told me that I was so hot, he wanted to break my ankles.

And the reply is not, thanks? I was like, because I have to go. I've got to go a bit. So, Welcome to the Jungle. Like, doesn't really land. And it's not because it's not a good song.

It's just, you know, again, we're living in the time of Bon Jovi, Bruce Hornsby, Paul Simon's Graceland, and Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill, which is a sick record. But that's kind of what's dominating. So apparently, the legend goes,

that their manager, Alan Niven, like, and the ANR pushed David Geffen himself to be like, can you help us? And he got on the horn with MTV and was like, you need to play this video. Zutat said to me that the only way we're going to break this record

is if we can get it on MTV. And MTV did not want to play it. And I called my friend Tom Freston, and I said to him, just play it in the middle of the night. And so they played it, again, this is the story. They played it three times. Once every night for three nights, apparently like in the middle of the night.

And even just that, people saw it and it quickly became the most requested video on MTV. Like, people went fucking nuts. And from then it was kind of off to the racist. Like, it took a year, but within a year it was the number one album in the country. So that doesn't happen often. Like a record doesn't come out and then a year later hit number one on the Billboard chart. But this one did. And it was very surreal because it's a good song.

And when I say that, I mean, usually a song this cool, this good, doesn't become such a hit. This is a type of song that's like by the cool people, not by every single person, but it was that good. And, you know, we just, nobody expected it to become that huge. And it did. No. It's a fucking banger. So they, on the strength of that being so good, they put out sweet child in mind. That's the second single.

Because that's what you do At those days. What you do, and you're in a hard rock band, you put out a heavy rock song and then follow it with a ballad. Skid Row did that. Motley Crew did that.

Every rock band at the time came out with the heavy song and then the ballad is the second song. That was the formula then. I selfishly want to hear Sweet Child of Mine. I think Sweet Child of Mine is a really fucking good song.

Even though Slash famously said it was not his favorite. And then he said, but then it became our biggest song, so what do I know? This is the only G&R song to ever hit

as a single, number one on the Billboard charts. So this is Sweet Child of Mine. That was Sweet Child and Mine. You mentioned how much you loved the guitar riff while the song was playing.

You were mentioning like, and I like the bass, how the bass comes in, and it's like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, totally. Name a more iconic duo than that riff and that bass line

starting off the song. No. No. So then August of 1988, Guns and Roses performs Welcome to the Jungle, famously, iconically, live at the MTV VMAs. They also won Best New Artist. And the winner is Guns and Roses. Slash does think that he might have left the moon man in a cab. It feels like to me, from like here on out, MTV is.

really behind guns and roses? Yes and no. Because when they are, I would say yes, but they didn't really know what they were dealing with because, you know, when Slash and Duff are accepting these awards and they go upstage and they can't even stand up. All right. So listen.

We're, we, God, we didn't even expect this. And this happened at award show. It was like, you know, it got to be a point that we thought it was funny that they were winning these awards, but it was like, oh my God, who's going to go up stage two except it? You know, is it going to be Slash or Duff? Because these guys could not, it's funny that Slash and Duff were such, and I, please, I love them so much, both of those guys in particular. But back then, they were drunk blubbering idiots. We all were. And it's funny because I've never met two people in my entire life that it could not be more different.

now. They're two totally different people, and I love both versions of them. But on stage, it's like they were so drunk, it was like, uh, like. It's like really, you said, come down, hang out at the show and stuff. Have a drink on us. You never knew what was going to happen. This band really partied. So there's some songs on here on this album that talk about it in a more lighthearted way, night train, which is about, I believe, a no longer existing. wine, like a malt wine. You have never drinking nitrain?

No, but I've drank plenty of other stuff, babe. Night train was in a bottle, and it was this like wine that was so potent, but you could get like a sparklet bottle size for like $2. We would drink it because we didn't have any money, but it would mess you up.

Bad. I was more of a Boone's Farm girl, if we're just for the record. That's what that song is about. And then on, again, the more serious tip, Mr. Brownstone. Who is Mr. Brownstone, Ricky? That would be about heroin. That would be about heroin. So this is chronicling a sort of like long-lasting dalliances with heroin for various band members.

I think came into play to their reputation, to some of the behaviors that they became famous for, and also, as you said, not being able to stand up slash fell asleep in many places during many interviews, I believe. So, you know, it's all there in that first album. They're not pussyfooting around. It was amazing that as completely obliterated as slash would get some time

that when you put up like honestly he'd be like nodding at and yet you put a guitar in his hand he's on stage and they still sounded good I don't know how they did it I really don't but they did this album

it has we already played it so easy it has Welcome to the Jungle it has Paradise City which we're going to hear in a second it has sweet child in mine it has my Michelle fucking banger it has Rocket Queen.

Apparently they thought Rocket Queen was missing a little something during the mixing. And they did have Axel have sex with his girlfriend in the live room. Well, not necessarily his girlfriend. Was it someone else's girlfriend? At first, I believe, was going out with Stephen. And then I think she went on a trip with like Axel Slash to New York or something and then came back. So Stephen figured it wasn't her girlfriend. But Adriana is great, but she kind of been around, and I'm trying to say not in a bad way, but I don't know if there is an okay way to say it, but she was.

She liked a good time, and she was sexually progressive and free. Adriana was crazy. Like Adriano had no problems getting on stage and just stripping, you know. She was sex positive. She was great. She was a sex positive woman. Yes, she was and generous. but Axel

and I didn't think Adriana was with but if Slash said it was his girlfriend I thought it was also Steven's girlfriend but I know that Adriana and

Axel did it and even though the song Rocket Queen was not written about Adriana no didn't bother her though she was calling herself the Rocket I'm Rocket Queen girl

I'm Rocket Queen girl I would too babe immortalized yeah yes so like I said this song this album Bangor after Bangor we do

need to hear Paradise City. All right, let's hear Paradise City. That was Paradise City. Another fun tidbit. Apparently they were like kind of, the way they wrote this song was they were like in the van, kind of acoustically jamming. And Axel was like started singing,

you know, take me down to Paradise City. And Slash's line was where the girls are fat and have big tities. Yeah. But it was not chosen. I don't know who makes those decisions. I think that things might have gone different if it was. I mean, you got to remember, like, we think of this big, deep cerebral band, which they are, but we're still dirt bags. You know, it still comes up with things like that.

Totally. So in between, and you just, you kind of referenced the Monsters of Rock Tour, and I think it's important to talk about for a couple of reasons. But what Guns and Roses was doing in that year between the album coming out and then it hitting number one and people caring about it was they were road-dogging. Like, they toured for over a year in support of this record. They first started by opening for the cult, which I think is very cool. They opened for Faster Pussycat, Your Friend's Band. Also, iconically, the story of when they tied the drummers of the drummer, they tied him to the chair and threw him in the elevator shaft.

Wait, tied the drummer of who tied up who? A Faster Pussy Cat. He passed out in Duff's bed, and so they tied him up in the chair and threw him in the elevator shaft. Just some fun hijinks. They opened for Motley Crew. They opened for Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith. Here's something I want to ask you. So Slash had said in his book that Motley Crew was the only band from the LA scene that we came up with,

that we ever worked with on a national professional level. And that made sense because they were the only band we respected, the only one that we could share a camaraderie. Tell me where Motley Crew stood in the scene. at this time. I don't think Motley Crew is like Guns and Roses, but Motley Crew is a band that came from the streets in L.A. They came from a band that they didn't have money. They scrounge. They fought. They clawed.

They did everything on their own terms, even though maybe Guns and Roses changed stuff musically and did weird, bizarre things. Motley crew might have been a little bit more gimmicky, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. but they were a band that was, you know, doing big, huge arena shows, and they started in the streets of Hollywood, and there was a camaraderie. And so if, you know, Nikki was at the cat house, he'd be hanging out with Slash.

Right. And there was a sort of, you know, camaraderie with the exception of the two singers. We'll get into that, babe. Yes. But Motley Crew had also, they started earlier than Guns and Roses, so that had something to do with the fact that they were bigger at this. time. They started in 1981. By the time that Guns and Roses came out, I was actually friends with Nikki before I ever met the guys in Guns and Roses. And we were getting them to go out

to see some of these bands. I remember when Nikki saw Faster Pussy Gaddy goes, ah, they sound like punk rock to me. I can't see anything happening. And then they ended up opening up for Maltly crew. And then they did like Guns and Roses and sort of championed them. You know, when we'd have these little get-togethers, usually a member of Guns and Roses would be there, whether it be Stephen Adler or Slash or something like that. And Motley Crew was a band that made it to great success. It didn't seem as polished as, let's say, a poison did. Right.

They famously hated poison. Poison was, I mean, in the early days before everybody was signed, it was like, do you like guns and roses or poison? It was a feud. It was a rivalry. When I start on MTV, you know, there's videotape of C.C. DeVille saying, Ricky doesn't like us because he's with guns and roses. You know, that was, so it was like an obvious feud between G&R and Poison because they were both who's the kings of L.A.

Fun fact. Slash did audition. Yes, he did. To be the guitarist of Poison and C.C. DeVille auditioned, I think, right after him. And the guy, he showed up to the audition. I really do love this story. And I think it'll help people understand the core differences here. Slash shows up for this audition in his like leather pants,

moccasins, a fucking Mickey Mouse t-shirt or something, and, you know, whatever. And they look at him, they're all in like their full glam makeup. And they're like, sorry, is this what you wear when you play? And then Cece de Ville walks in, you know, straight from the Mac counter. There wasn't a Mac counter back then, but you're seeing what I'm putting out there. And they were like, obviously Cici DeVille is going to be in poison. And so it was really.

But the word in Hollywood was that, you know, when you talked about, guitarists that was Slash and Cece. They were the two and Tracy guns. And those are the guitarists that a lot of people would talk about. Yes. So I think talent being all equal, the blush and lipstick did push Cici DeVille over the edge. I bring up the touring to say that they start to get a reputation. Axel is, I think, a genius.

I'll say it. I think he's a visionary. I think like many geniuses and visionaries. He's struggled with some mental health issues, and he's gone on record and been very open about that. Part of how that played out in the beginning was, you know, there was lots of assaults on security guards. Well, thanks to the lame man's security, I'm going home. They're not placing blame because it sounds like from these stories, like the crowds were simply insane. And like, you know, Axel had some boundaries.

He didn't like people shoving cameras in his face. He didn't like people, you know, tormenting him. He didn't like Hell's Angels showing up and beating up on other fans. So he tried to kind of get involved. But this ended up a lot of times with assaults on security guards. Monsters of Rock, famously, two fans were crushed to death during Guns and Rose's set because they were slam dancing so crazy. But that was not Guns and Rose's fault.

Of course not. I'm just saying in the public perception, they do start to get, you know, Of course. CNN is going to report on that. And so it adds to their dangerous mystic and persona because it's like, oh my God, their shows are fucking dangerous. You could die, you know? That really contributed to their notoriety as well. I want to talk about two things that Axel and Slash said when they were interviewed about, like, did you ever think that this would be such a huge album?

And he said, no, but it was like this. I thought about trying to sell more records than Boston's first album. I always thought about that, and I never let up. Everything was directed at trying to achieve the sales without sacrificing the credibility of our music. So I think it's very true. And Slash said, the truth is all we ever cared about was to top the bullshit hair metal bands that enjoyed undue success for their subpar existence. Who is Slash talking about there?

Poison. Poison was making videos and selling a lot of records and came from the same place. And Poison and Guns and Roses are not the same type of music in any way, shape, or form. There is no similarities whatsoever. Slash wouldn't say something like that now. What about like Def Leopard? Def Leopard is a different thing because Def Leopard has been in the game longer.

And I think we all liked Def Leopard at one point. We listened to Def Leopard. And that was an English band. But Poison. be it from Pennsylvania made it from the streets in Hollywood. Poison might have been on the same show that the day before it at Guns and Rosewood play

and Poison was selling a lot of records. It's like, you know, when Talk Dirty to Me video came out, we saw this video with all the green neon and the hair and the makeup and the girls and the lolly lollies and the happy music. You know, we're like, oh my God, one of our bands, one of us made it big, you know, and they were the ones that made it big.

It was like, it's a typical thing of like the angel and the devil. It's like, look, the angel made it big. Well, here is the devil guns and roses and they made it big too. And Molly Kru had already been big. So that's why you think of poison and guns and roses. I'm so glad you said that because I think it was a big deal. It wasn't expected and it did kind of like change the game like you're saying. And I feel like I really want to drive that home because people kind of either don't know or forget that

because they've become just like the monolith of guns and roses, you know? You know, when we're talking about appetite for destruction, let's not forget that it was first released with an album cover that was banned. Oh, sorry. Are you referring to the portrait of the robot who was avenging the rape and murdering someone? I just saw this big robot and a girl that was living on the sidewalk with her panties or her ankles. That's the name of the album. It came from the name of the artwork. For destruction.

Yes, by Robert Williams. Right, you release your first album and it's banned because of the album cover. They're not putting that on Walmart, babe. No, they're not. And now you think about it and you're like, wow, you think what a bad move, but it was like, it just added. It added more to the dangerousness. Like, this band is bad. Nobody ever said, yeah, I saw Guns and Roses, two nights in a row, each shows were the same.

It doesn't matter how many times they played. you might go see the greatest show in the world, or you might see them play one song, and they walk off stage. I mean, you know, when we talked about Guns and Roses opening up for bands in the early days, there was a show where I think it was Alice Cooper that they were opening up for, and Axel wasn't even there that they had to play with Izzy and Duff taking turns on vocals because Axel didn't even show. Axel showed up late and then he didn't get into the show,

so they just still played the show with Izzy singing and with Duff singing. And I want my rock and roll dangerous. I don't want my rock and roll to be predictable. And that was what Guns and Roses was giving us. Absolutely. And, you know, I'm glad you brought up Rolling Stones because I think Guns and Roses has so much in common with Rolling Stones that people do not see. And, you know, I think part of that, and I can say this because I wasn't there,

part of that is it's very difficult to come out of the 80s without having some aesthetically questionable choices. because it's just in the harsh light of day looking back at the 80s. It was a weird time. It was a weird time for some hairstyles. It was a weird time for some clothes. But, like, I think they were taken less seriously, both because of their association, like you said, with glam metal,

even though they had nothing to do with it. But I think, you know, unthinking people, they put them in the same bucket and didn't give them the credibility that they sort of deserved, where it's like they are making songs that are like, soulful bluesy songs like in the vein of Rolling Stones in the vein of Aerosmith. If you look at Izzy

and you listen to the time Izzy sings on songs, you hear Keith Richards. That's Keith Richards. You look at the Rolling Stones and you see the similarities with Stephen Adler as being just this kind of happy guy

that's just playing in the back doing his own thing, not as crazy dangerous drummer. In the pocket drummer, yeah. And that's what Stephen was. You know, Stephen was not the br-l-l-blah-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-d. No offense to anybody that's ever drummed in guns and roses afterwards. But when Stephen was in the band, there's something different about Guns and Roses.

There was something, and even though, like I've said, Gilby is, to this day, one of my great friends, and I love everybody that's in Guns and Rose and has been in the band. But there was something about that key nucleus, you know, having slash and duff makes a big difference. But the simulators of the stones, I definitely see simulators in stones and any other band. Again, we'll talk about Izzy and why he is the best member of Gunther N'Roses at a later time. But I do recommend you all do a little Google Izzy Stradlin in 1989 because not only was he extremely gorgeous, he also had a very distinctive style and he did look like all of the strokes were one hot guy. Oh, why would you say that?

You could, no, no, no. You could just listen. Ricky, what do you know about how hot the strokes were as men? Exactly. I know that Keith Richards' solo records were really good, and so were Izzy Stradlin and the juju hands were really good. And I hear Keith Richards all through that record in a good way. I was not talking about musically, babe.

I don't know what the strokes look like. And I don't want to. Well, they are very hot, and they all look together put into one hot man like Izzy. So my King Izzy, to round out the interview quotes, did famously say at this time, rock and roll in general has just sucked a big fucking dick since the pistols. And you know what? I can't argue. But I think there's a lot of similarities. I mean, sex pistols in the stones.

That's guns and roses and then pour some gasoline on it and fly at it. That's guns and roses. They did choose Alan Niven as their manager because he was instrumental in signing sex pistols to EMI. So there's that connection. I want to talk really briefly because there wasn't much happening before we move on to Lies about critical reception. I know this is not your favorite part, but we have to talk about it because it's important. This album, it wasn't particularly well received by critics. The guy from Metal Hammer, Dave Ling, Heist was really dismissive of the album, said it was like a derivative of like Aerosmith, Hanoi rocks and ACDC.

In England, I think the critical reception was more popular. positive. They liked it a little bit better. And then in hindsight, this album has been ranked as like one of the best albums of all time. So it goes to show you that like the context of them at the time, I think made people take them less seriously than they should have. And it's not that the music didn't hold up. It's just that their reputation and their vibe and their look and then also their like mistaken association with things that they had nothing to do with made people see them in the wrong light. Yeah, I would think that's it because, you know, you didn't put them up there as you put even the big polished huge bands.

And like I've said a million times, I don't think Guns and Roses was supposed to be huge and because they're too good because some of my favorite bands are not huge bands. Some of the bands that I'll still listen to were bands that never ever made. I mean, we mentioned Hanoi Rocks. You know, Hanoi Rocks never made it at all in the States. And that was a band that was a great band that had different flavors to them. Guns and Roses did everything for Guns and Roses, and everybody else jumped on a board. Instead of a record label saying, I think you should do this, or a manager saying, I think this is the right direction.

I mean, it was G&R that made the decisions what to do. And that's why certain parts imploded because you have all these different personalities wanting to do. things in different ways and, you know, everybody thinks they know what's right. Sometimes people are just quiet, like a dizzy read and going along with the flow. That's not putting down dizzy either. Totally. So they, like we said, they toured nonstop, but they need to basically like the label, the manager, everyone's like, you've got to put something out to sort of like keep the interest. It is a music business after all. And that's how we get G&R lies, which comes out in November of 1988, the band's shortest album. It's 33 and a half minutes long.

What song do you want to hear from lies to kick us off? Move to the City is the song that I want to hear from lies. Move to the City was also on the original EP Live Like a Suicide. But the reason that I like Move to the City is not only Del James is one of the writers of the song. And Del James is one of the few people that have been with Guns and Roses since day one. I'm sure when I met Axel, Dell was with him. But move to the city right away said, we are not. not just this regular street band because we're going to bring in a horn section.

And I think Stuart Bailey, who is Axel's brother, even played horns when they played live. And move to the city is just a real like R&B kind of jazzy. This really kind of almost 50s boppish feel with horns. And remember, they were doing it with horns

before they were guns and roses. To do horns when you're a local hard rock band. Yeah, but the horns are usually friends, you know, or Axel's brother. Right. So I like that song. It's a song that sounds like it would have been a cover that they stole from some Detroit R&B band, but in fact, it's an original. All right, let's hear Move to the City. That was Move to the City. Also, one of the older Guns and Rosa songs, that song, I don't know if they did it with Hollywood Rose, but I know that, like, Izzy wrote that and Chris Weber wrote that and

Del James wrote that who was never really even in Guns and Roses but sort of is. We'll get to Del James. He's a very important figure in the Guns and Roses. I love Del James. It feels to me like it's got almost this Motowny feel which just shows that it's

you know, Guns and Roses just has so many different flavors. Sure. And move to the city is just not the same song as you know out to get me. Yeah. I mean that has a lot to do their influences, right? We've talked about it. Like, Hanoy Rocks was for everyone, but Slash, again, has gone on record again. He loves Aerosmith. He loves Lemmy. Izzy loved Johnny Thunders, you know,

and I'm sure a lot of other bands. And obviously, Duff had this punk background, but also had an appreciation for Iggy and the Stooges, who I think you could, you can hear some of that all in this song, as far as I'm concerned. I agree. This record basically combined that first EP that, that live question mark explanation point, et cetera, with some new songs that they record it all acoustically. And you know what we have to fucking talk about now, even though it's not on your list.

That's on my list of my heart forever. Patience. What a beautiful song, Patience is. You'd think you wouldn't think Axel like, just a little patience. It's like, here's a guy that probably has no patience, you know? Maybe he was asking the Lord and Savior for some patience. When you hear patience and towards the ending of that song,

if you're not picking up your life, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's people that started smoking just so they could buy a lighter, just so they could see guns and roses and hold the lighter during the song Patience, because that is the ultimate swaying like kumbaya song, especially the ending of it. This song, I think, shows the range of guns and roses

in such a way And again, we'll really see the like, I think, broadest and most impressive display of the range of this band when we get to the Use Your Illusion double albums. But like patience, again, an earlier song that they had written but hadn't put on is just like it's a ballad. You know, it's a total ballad and it's gorgeous. But it doesn't sound not like guns and roses. No, it has because of this frontman that to me feels like gospel. in the way of when everybody, you could see a church

with everybody in white robes singing just a little patience, yeah, yeah. And then the Reverend just steps in front, like holding a book and just saying, I've been walking the streets and everybody's like, hallelujah. And he's preaching, you know, just while everybody else, while all the chorus behind him is just singing patience, you know, before him.

And he's out there just testify and just, he's like proclaiming when he sings that part with such, you know, such power behind the words. I mean, you can be heavy on a very soft song, and he's heavy. And, you know, God forbid, I don't ever want to be in a place where somebody's doing, except I think Chris Cornell did that song, didn't he? But I don't want to see other people do that song.

Because when Axel does it, you want the chorus and you want Axel walking in front of the choir, singing that part of it, because every stuff is going on behind him. And once again, everybody, I'm going to take control the show and I'm going to drive the ship. And that's what he does in patience. You know, it's such an infectious, contagious, incredible song. It's really funny that you brought up church because Axel Rose sang in church as a child. I bring it up not only because it's funny because it didn't burst into flames, but also because I think that really informed his singing style.

And you just said it. Like, he has that in his bag of singing tricks as well. well, like a place he as a young person shaped his voice in singing was church and singing in a church choir. I believe that. And also commanding a crowd. Totally. You know, like a preacher, Mike, like being up there with a good book when he talks, you listen.

You know, he, because you don't know what he's going to say, but it's going to be something with very few words. I mean, sometimes Axel's been known to go on rants, but he can go on rants with very few words. And he uses it's like. as if we were only given so many words to use. So he's going to make sure every word that he uses is important. Well, let's hear Patience. This goddamn gorgeous beautiful song.

That was Patience. Gorgeous whistling. God damn, gorgeous whistling. If you went to a Guns and Roses show and you sat in the front row eating saltines if he'd still be able to pull off the whistling. Because of the dry mouth, like the transference of dry mouth psychologically.

He's quite good at whistling, you know. He's very talented. That's not very easy to do whistling like that. This album, because of this on the Strength of Appetite, hit number two on the Billboard 200. There was a little bit of curfluffle and controversy around one of the other new songs on here, one in a million. I would say there was a lot of car fluffle and controversy.

Huge amount. Even before you look at the record, the album cover alone is kind of saying, look at all the controversy that we have. It's like a tabloid. The cover of it alone, it's like, you know, lies. You know, like you're hearing, all this stuff you're hearing about us is true or not true.

It looks a bit like the John Lennon, I think, did a similar cover before that's kind of like a newsprint thing about like a tabloid or whatever. There's actually a little part of the cover that even already talks about one in a million. For those people that don't know, The controversy around 1 in a million is for a couple of things.

The use of the N-word and also the F-word, which I'm not going to say here either. The F-word is a derogatory term towards homosexuals. And then also the line about immigrants and F-words. They make no sense to me. They come to our country and they do as they please. They'll start some mini-Iran or spread some fucking disease. they talk so many goddamn ways. It's all Greek to me.

So tell me a bit about what you think was going on with this song because it had a really negative blowback. I mean, I think people felt that these lyrics were racist, homophobic, xenophobic, you know, all of the things. If Ted Nugent came out with those lyrics, it would make sense to me. Yes, because Ted Nugent is probably all of those things that we just said. But for Axel Rose, when I know that he, it's a tough one for me. And there's somebody that there's certain people that we know in our inner circle that are homosexual and a very important part of the Guns and Rose family that had commented to Axel and said, you know, why would you even say that?

Totally. I wish I knew what his response was. But I can't sit here and defend him. him saying you're not a racist because he's not a racist, but why did Slash not say anything? It's very odd. That's something, exactly, that's something that's complicated that for me to make any comment on that would be, you know, unlike what most journalists do is comment their personal opinion as fact, I don't know.

I don't know why Slash didn't say, I'm not going to do this song, considering that slash is half African American and why knowing homosexuals and knowing immigrants and knowing all those things. I mean, I can't really comment on this because I don't know if Axel was writing these lyrics as somebody else is saying this. Like as a persona. Yeah. I can't comment because I don't know.

And anything I would be saying would purely be guessing. But I just know that Axel isn't a racist, isn't a homophobe, isn't any of those. those things. The lyrics say otherwise and the lyrics not only just throw out a comment, just saying it out there, the lyrics say some fairly damaging and angry things that are wrong, you know, the immigrants spreading the disease and trying to start a mini-Iran and, you know, or homosexuals spreading their disease and, you know, it's... It's dicey. Yeah. As an Iranian, myself, I love to see myself represent.

did rock music. Just kidding. Slash actually apparently did say something. There's a interview he did in 1991 with Rolling Stone about this where he basically just said, when Axel first came up with the song and really wanted to do it, I said I didn't think it was very cool. I don't regret doing one in a million. I just regret what we've been through because of it and the way people have perceived our personal feelings. So I think he was kind of saying like, I wasn't that down, but I also feel like people misinterpreted it. Axel has said many different things. things over time. In the beginning, I think he said, you brought up Gigi Allen pooping. It felt like a very Gigi Allen vibe of like, I don't like when people tell me what I can't do. So I just don't like

boundaries and, you know, this and that. I'm not going to read the exact quote because I think as time has progressed, whatever his thinking was at the time, definitely the consensus of guns and roses in today's day and age is that it was wrong. They removed it from the 2008 box set reissue. I think even just that is like showing how they recognize that this is not cool and have removed it, you know? Yeah, many times you would look back at something that was done 20 years ago and say, hey, well, it was a different time back then, you know, and it might have seemed sexist

at the time, but we were all living different. But you look back at that song and you break down the lyrics and there is no part of it that's okay. You know, there is no part of it saying it was. was a different time. The lyrics are angry lyrics or wrong. And anything that I say about it is just is my personal opinion. But I don't think there's anybody that stands behind that song saying it was a different time. It was, it was, but whatever. Totally. I mean, just like to close it up, what you're saying is no matter what was going on then, it's a very hard thing to defend. And,

you know, it just is. I want to talk about Axel. this band has an insane astrological profile of members. They are basically all air and fire, which is going to make an insanely volatile band because there's no grounding, there's no water to go with the flow. There's just energy and let's do it and impulsiveness and, you know, emotion and it's a lot going on. And Aquariuses are well known for marching to the beat of their own drum. Three Aquarius is in this band, including one Mr. Axel Rose. What I wanted to talk more specifically about Axel, though, and not that he's an Aquarius. Ricky just dead silent.

He's left the room. What about Steve? But isn't Stephen like water or one of those things? No, Stephen's also an Aquarius. Stephen and Duff are both Aquarius, so is Axel, and then Slash is a Leo, which totally checks out, and Izzy, my king, and Ares. Matt Sorum later joins the band and he's a Scorpio. The lineup ends up changing.

We're not there yet, but I think a lot of it has to do with volatility within the band, and I think of a lot of volatility in the band might have had to do with Axel. Do you agree? Probably. Probably. I think with Stephen, it was a drug problem,

which, you know, when you're thrown out of guns and roses for drugs, you're doing a lot of drugs. And Stephen's a beautiful guy. I mean, Stephen Adler is not like anybody else in the band. Stephen was this happy, sweet, goofy guy, you know. And I think it was drugs that even though these are all, you know, chaotic individuals, they're a locomotive that's going straightforward and they don't want anything to derail them. And I think they felt that Stephen's drugs were something that could derail them.

So that might have been something else. That's true. You know, they are very unique individuals. I don't know about the Zodiac stuff. But, yeah, I'm sure that it was certain things. I don't want to say anything about it. I want you to put a curse on me or anything. I don't know if he can do that stuff.

I just might do, babe. Keep it up. I'm a Gemini. What does that mean? Exactly. You know what it means. Producer Dylan knows what it means. I keep on saying I don't believe in any of the stuff.

But yet I do know that I am definitely a Gemini. But for me to comment on some of these things would be me commenting like a journalist as an expert thing that I don't know about. But I know that Axel is a very volatile person. There weren't a lot of times that Axel would go hang out with Slash or Axel would hang out. You would see, you know, Stephen and Duff, and you might see, you know, Izzy and Stephen. It's like on the times that I would go out with those guys and we'd go out for fun, it was me and Izzy and nobody else in the band. or me and Axel and nobody else in the band. Very rarely was everybody hanging out together.

It wasn't that, hey, let's all go out tonight and you'd go out to a club and the whole band would be together. Axel would show up with somebody else or Duff would show up with somebody else. But it wasn't like everybody was hanging out with each other, especially Axel. Axel was unique to everybody else in the band.

But you kind of want that. You don't want everybody the same. But yes, I think a lot of the volatility comes from Mr. Rose. I'm just kind of starting to set the stage for like internal band dynamic because I think, you know, that does come into play. It's also, I think we've said it a couple of times, but just to drive it home, like there's a lot of magic happening in this band in between the individual members and what they bring to the table and how special and unique they kind of all are, right?

Like, Izzy is just like a down-to-earth, you know, songwriting demon. Like, we'll get to it. But, like, I think on Use Your Illusion, he wrote more songs than any other member on those albums. He was a huge contributor to the songwriting, but he wasn't a big, flashy, showy person. You know, like, you watch performances of Guns and Roses, like, you fixate on Axel. The next thing you see is Slash because he's unable to be missed with his, like, signature look. And then maybe you see, you know, duff in his hair. But, like, in the corner lurking as Izzy with his, like, you know, black hair.

sort of like more rock, classic rock outfits. And like he wasn't so much of a look at me kind of guy. So there's just a lot of interesting personalities and dynamics going into this band. And Axel maybe being the most unique one, there's a Rolling Stone article, I want to say from like around the year that Lies comes out. And part of their lore is, you know, all this breaking shit. You know, they were a rock band and they did the stuff the rock bands did. They broke stuff in hotel rooms. They did all that kind of stuff.

You know, this person went on tour with them and noted, you know, Axel travels on a separate tour bus, but not because he was like egotistical, because he sleeps all day and wants to like preserve his voice, which is, you know, he was very serious about performing in his craft. Slash says that he's temperamental. He's hard to get along with, but he's awesome. And Izzy says, you know, that I think this is a really strong statement. obviously at this point Izzy had known Axel for 13 years.

They went to high school together. He says that if it wasn't for the band, I just hate to think what would have happened to him. I don't know. There's something so powerful about the idea of like this band saved your life, you know? Or saved each other's lives. Saved each other's life.

I mean, but like these, especially I think in the case of Axel, but yes, we can say it all of them. There were sort of like misfits, miscreants, like, you know, where were they going to go? But like, there's something about Axel that felt like it was like either this or nothing.

I think you're right. I think that would be correct. I mean, he would be, I can't say the driving force behind the band, especially nowadays. I mean, now the dynamics change so many different ways because they're all so smart. They're all great businessman.

Yeah, they're adults. They've matured. I disagree a little bit about what you say about Izzy because when I saw Guns and Roses play during Chinese democracy, I really noticed the lost. of Izzy not being up there. And there was a show when Izzy did get up with that formation of the band and played a show with them.

And it's like, I like the, and I hate to say the Izzy character, but I like that Izzy on stage because he's that, to me, Izzy is that Keith Richards in that band. He's that Joe Perry. You know, you always watch Stephen Tyler and you always watch, you know, Mick Jagger. but the Keith Richards and the Joe Perry's and all three of those guys have a very similar style. The thing that I found interesting and was when I went to go see Axel

when he sang with ACDC. Axel Rose was singing for ACDC. Axel Rose didn't talk during the shows. He sang his stuff. So basically it was like he knew what his role was and his role was not, look at me, this is Guns and Roses. It's like, I'm a,

Phil and Singer for ACDC, which I think is pretty brilliant to be able to do that and not make it about Axel when ACDC was playing. When Guns and Roses is playing, it's about Axel. Totally. You know, and everybody else has their part. And there's times when it's all about Slash. And there's time when it's all about Stephen or, I mean, Duff or whoever it is, you know. Yeah. Which really makes it unique if you watch Guns and Roses these days because it's so different.

It's so different. Yeah. There's some funny stories of how Axel dealt with things back then. Like there's one story, I think Slash tells in his book, before success and fame, I think Axel was like sleeping on his couch at his mom's house. And like, there's some like altercation Axel had with her grandma. And Slash just like went to like talk to him about it just like in the car like, hey man. Like, you know, my grandma just made me want to apologize to her.

They were in a moving car. He just opened the door and got out in the moving car. Disappeared for four days. Never brought it up again. Never came back to the house. Just one showed up four days later and was like, what's up, guys? I'm only bringing it up because I was really interested in this interview because Axel is very open in the interview where he says, a lot of the things about my mood swings are like, I have a temper and I take things out on myself, not physically, but I'll smash my TV knowing I have to pay for it rather than go down the hallway and smash the person I'm pissed at.

This wall has only been smashed once. Some guy's head, but it's been repaired. It's like me now. And then he talks about how a psychiatrist had diagnosed him as manic depressive and how he's like really trying to like tackle it head on. You know, like he's going to therapy and like, you know, but he's very self-aware of how he's a bit different and how it's difficult for him to like deal with emotions and impulsivity and recklessness. And I just, I found that really interesting to hear someone of that level in that scene talk so open. about mental health. He's a very dynamic person.

Axel and I were very close, and there was a time that there was a woman that was in his life, not romantically, and he was talking about things that he could feel, whether there was oras orbs or things like that. And it was, I didn't ridicule what he was saying. It was something that I didn't fully understand.

And then we sort of just never spoke since, and it wasn't a falling out. never spoke. And, you know, there was, you know, a time when Sebastian Bach from Skid Row calls me. And he's like, I'm backstage with Axel and he's talking about how much he misses you and you got to come out on the road and hang out because, you know, Axel is a very important part of my life. But it never happened. He just, you know, I don't know if that really answers your question. He's just a very dynamic individual and thinks things differently than some of us do. He's kind of an unknowable person. And I would go. further to argue that we kind of all are. But like to your point about journalists, you know, like I think this is like a far more layered and complicated and dynamic person than he's remembered

for and is given credit for. And I think he was reduced to like a caricature or a cartoon without people really taking the time to be like, no, actually there's a lot more going on to this person than just like, you know, swaying hip. and mental breakdowns or whatever. I'm heavy air quotes, you know? If somebody looks at an axle rose like that, that's a shame because I just think he's just this dynamic individual. And whether he does things that I agree or disagree with,

he's very volatile, very spontaneous. Maybe he's not. Maybe everything is calculated. I don't know. But I don't look at guns and roses as the hip swing and the kicking and the... Breaking? Yeah, whatever.

Okay. So a million, I think, different things conspired to start the dissolution of guns and roses. And that's not going to happen yet. But like the first maybe like kink in the facade is Stephen Adler getting fired in 1990. Yes. Would you agree? Yes. Yes.

Yes. That was a weird situation. It's guns and roses have always been, you know, this notorious rock band. And it's not hype. It's all real. We all did a lot of drugs and alcohol. There's even one time there's an article about how Slash had said to Axel that I was a bad influence on him because I was doing a lot of speed at the time. And during the whole time what they were doing it so easy, Axel and I were up for like five days nonstop doing drugs.

And Slash supposedly, this is what I think it was either Alan Niven or Doug Goldstein had said that Slash had said that I was a bad influence on Axel for drugs. I don't know if that's true. I don't believe it. It sounds like a lot of like the Spider-Man meme of like two Spider-Man's pointing at each other where it's like it sounds like everyone in this band was doing drugs, but it was like you're doing too much drugs. Right. Well, during Use Your Illusion, it took Stephen Adler forever to do Civil War,

which when you think of it, you know, it's not that hard of a drum thing, but they kept on trying over and over. and over again and he could not nail Civil War. And I remember when I went to go see Guns and Roses play the opening up for the Rolling Stones at the LA Coliseum and I remember Axel

saying stuff on stage like, you know, this might be the last show of Guns and Roses if somebody doesn't stop playing with Mr. Brownstone or something like that. And then shortly things started to fall apart and I believe that it was during the whole recording of

Civil War. They made it deal with Stephen. I've heard both sides of this story, but they made a deal with Stephen, you know, every time you do drugs, you have to pay us two grand. There was like a penalty. I was like a drug cookie jar of like, like a swear jar, but when you do drugs. $2,000. They had, that Stephen would have to pay $2,000 every time he used drugs, which is weird because everybody was pretty much. Yeah. I don't know about the drug use, but I know that there was a lot of booze. We all were. and at one time they brought Stephen in to, I think it was still with Alan Niven.

It might have been Doug Goldstein. I'm not sure at that time. And they made Stephen sign a contract. But from what Stephen says is the contract said, you know, I'll give up everything. Like all the rights for $2,000. Yeah, for $2,000. You know, that's what Stephen says.

I never, you know, the thing is when you're friends with guys, you don't ask them like, so what's the deal with Stephen? What's the deal with it? Sure. It wasn't until recently until I found out, you know, Gilby Clark, who later joins Guns and Roses, was truly one of my very, very best friends. And, you know, we never sit down and say,

so tell us about the process of you joining Guns and Roses. They're just like, oh, Dutrient Guns and Roses. That's great, you know? Yeah, totally. Well, regardless of like the details of what happened, yeah, I think there's speculation around both sides. It's like that there was like maybe some tricky contracting and maybe not. But like regardless, the band or Axel wanted him out.

It seems like mostly when people are pushed out, it's through Axel. But I wanted to use this opportunity real quick to talk about Stephen as a drummer. Because I think we didn't do it earlier. And I think it comes into like really sharp focus here when Matt Sorom replaces him. The whole thing with Stephen was like he, all of them, right, they kind of learned to play together. And Stevens thing was like they didn't want some showy, flashy, like, drummer. So they took pieces of his kit away until he just had the most simple drum set up so that it

would have that very, like, solid rock drumming swing. And that, I think, really anchored the sound of Guns and Roses. But Matt Soram is a very different kind of drummer, right? Yeah, I mean, Matt played with a cult for a short time. Even though I love Matt and Matt's a great drummer. Everything to me felt really different with Guns and Roses. It was, you know, Guns and Roses always had this street feel. And even though, you know, you wouldn't think that would come across on a recording live, it was big different.

Because Stephen was this like happy kind of like Muppet type of guy, you know, and he was always bouncing around. And he looked like he was so happy to be there. As I've said before, the beauty of Guns and Roses is you got all of these superheroes that all have these different powers. and they come together to be super friends. I don't know if that's the right description, but it kind of is. You know, everybody was all different. Although Matt was in the band for a long time,

and for so many of the tours and for the recording, it just felt a little bit different. It was still Guns and Roses, but it wasn't, you know, all of these guys that started with nothing that worked their way up to something. It was like, okay, that essence of Guns and Roses is now gone and replaced with

a very talented, very polished Matt Soremm. He was a very technically proficient drummer. Great drummer, great drummer. More of a metal drummer, would you say? Or like a glam metal drummer? I feel like he had a different vibe. No. I mean, he played with a cult for a little bit.

Sure, shout out the cult. Izzy apparently said that Stephen's sense of swing was the push and pull that gave the songs their feel. When that was gone, it was just unbelievable and weird. Nothing worked. I would have preferred to continue with Steve, but we'd had two years off and we couldn't wait any longer. It was different.

To me, the Matsoorum difference was much different than the Gilby-Izzie difference, even though I think Izzy was also outstanding. But when Izzy left, they put Gilby in, and Gilby was kind of like an Izzy as far as playing goes. You know, Gilby is also a great, great rhythm guitarist. more spiritually similar. So at this time, they also added Dizzy Reed, for the record, a Gemini. And this whole time, they're recording Use Your Illusion.

I want to ask you about a thing that's, you know, kind of predates Use Your Illusion. Let me say one thing about Dizzy Reed first. Dizzy Reed joining Guns and Roses didn't seem weird because Dizzy, I mean, selfishly, I call it the cat house scene because that's where we all hung out was my club, The Cat House. But Dizzy was one of the Cat House guys. So if maybe, you know, the band The Mimes might play something on stage, Axel might get up and do a song with him or if there was a jam at the cat house and there was a keyboardist it might be Dizzy with Axel. So to say that it's like kind of seemed like a lot of times Dizzy was in Guns and Roses anyway because he'd get up and do jams with him and they'd bring him up as a special member.

So him going into Guns and Rose and becoming a full-fledged member, it was like, oh, I, you know, I guess hanging and jamming with him all the time. Now you remember, it didn't seem like, you know, and he wasn't, he wasn't replacing anybody either. Yeah, it was like a very organic, just like extension of what he was already doing. That makes total sense. Right. Okay, so, little goss time. We've talked before. Mottley Crew and Guns Roses, great friends, party pals, had the best time.

But then in 1990, Vince Neal goes on MTV and challenges Axel to a public fight. Axel, if you're watching this, I want to challenge you to a fight. What do you know about this? Do you remember this? What do I know about it? I will tell you right now what I know about it. Ricky, I want to hear all of it. There is not a person on the face of this earth that knows what happened better than I do.

Because here is what happened. We were at the cat house. We were standing at the DJ booth and it was me and Izzy. I was going out with a mud wrestler who was best friends with another mud wrestler. that's named Cherise. Of course. And Brandy and Cherise came up to talk to me in the DJ booth

and, you know, I was Brandy's boyfriend and Cherise was Vince's girlfriend and Izzy went up and grabbed Cherise's boob. Izzy, don't do that. Cherise freaked out on Izzy. Brandy looked at me like,

well, do something. And I'm like, I don't want to quote that. turn bros before hose because that's so tasteless. But I chose Izzy, but I chose Izzy. You know, so I didn't do anything. And so they were very pissed off. And Cherise, who, by the way, I am friends with now, but Cherise was visibly pissed off, had every right to be upset,

went back, told her boyfriend Vince Neal, hey, you know, Izzy was at the cat house and Izzy grabbed my boobs. And then they're at the video music awards. The most momentous story of the week concerns Guns and Roses frontman Axel Rose and Motley Cruisinger Vince Neal who wants Rose to drop everything and duke it out with him in a boxing match. And backstage, Vince Neal punched Izzy in the face. Wow. Kind of co-cocked him in the face.

Izzy's not a fighter. Okay. Is he just as cool, is he just cool? Just a beautiful man with gorgeous style. I miss Izzy's not. I think the world of Izzy Stradlin. I really, really do. And a whole big crazy thing went out.

And then Axel sticking up for his boy, Izzy, wanted to get Vince. And that's where everything started. And Axel told me this personally. He said, dude, I want to just see if there's like an island and we can rent an island and go have a fight to the death. I mean, it was, this is not here. hearsay. This is not what some stupid journalist is going to make up. This was me. I know what happened. And Axel was seriously wanted to go after Vince Neal. And Vince Neal seriously wanted to go after Axel to the point of they both made video interviews on MTV saying,

anytime he wants it anywhere, Atlantic City, I don't care. And they just kept on going back and forth and back and forth for quite some time. Okay, I should say for the record, that these allegations about Izzy were disputed by the label and management in the LA Times at the time. So anyway, it sounds like it definitely was authentic and organic, but I must say what PR geniuses they also are? Because like, what's better than public banned beef? Everyone loves it. It was weird because I was also friends with Nikki Six at the time.

Sure. And I was always like a member of the Guns and Roses camp, so to speak, even though I wasn't. But it became very awkward. You know, when there was a poison Guns and Roses feud, it was a lot easier for me, you know, because, oh, well, this is Guns and Roses Club. But it was a Guns and Roses Mottley feud. It was a little bit weird. But Vince never said anything to me about Axel and, you know, whatever. It never happened and it just eventually fizzled out.

But it sure made good fodder in rock and roll. Great MTV Fodder. Another last band that Guns and Roses would beef with, but we'll get there. Speaking of, January 1991, the band had already been making Use Your Illusion for some time at this point, but they didn't finish it and they started the tour anyways, which I think is kind of an interesting and cool move. This is one of the longest tours I've ever heard of in my life. It's like a full two years long. They played 194 shows and it had nine legs. I want to ask you about, because this tour is pretty notorious for cementing the myth of Axel as being an extremely volatile and difficult live performer because so many things happened, right?

A lot of like coming two hours late, not showing up, riots happening around the shows, fights. What was the like sentiment around that amongst the fans? Like, did you ever get the sense that, like, fans ever started to, like, sort of turn against the band for this kind of stuff? Or do you think it fueled the, like, love of them even more because to them, that's rock and roll? I think a lot of fans, I mean, if you were in St. Louis and you were waiting two hours to get Axel to come out and say, you know, fuck you, St. Louis, throw down the mic and then the show's over because of a fight that happened, I believe, from a photographer is what started the whole thing. The break has resulted in at least 60 injuries to police and fans. 16 arrests and reportedly over a million dollars of damage to the brand new amphitheater. Yeah, fans were upset, and I can understand why.

If I was in the audience and I waited two hours to see Guns and Roses, and then they came out and Axel got in a fight with somebody for having a camera and telling the security guard to take the camera away. I mean, what he was upset about was okay. I understand. I mean, if people say like, oh, my God, that prima donna, you know, how dare he gets so pissed off for somebody taking a picture. Venues are very strict on certain photographers being there.

You can only shoot two songs. And Axel Rose had Robert John as their only photographer, so he shot everything for the band for a long time. And there was somebody that was videotaping the show. And Axel told the security guards to tell this guy to stop videotaping the show. Back then, you videotaped the show. It ended up on a bootleg video. People were selling it.

It was, you know, it was whatever. Yeah, I think I agree with you. And I think, like, you know, a through line that's coming to me through all this research, because I find Axel to be a deeply fascinating artist, it seems like he's largely motivated by a perfectionism that tends to express itself in ways that are maybe misunderstood and also maybe like misguided. You know, like showing up two hours late, like canceling shows, like stuff like that. But it seems to all be rooted from this like deep, deep, deep. desire to like perfectly execute his vision of this art. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to, the one thing I'm not going to do is I'm not going to

pretend like I'm an expert in what is going through his mind or why he did certain things. Sure. When he's on, there is no better frontman. There's no better person that goes on the stage, gives it their all. He doesn't ever go through the motions. So when things aren't right, you know, if you want certain things done and those certain things aren't done, perhaps he didn't handle it the way I would have.

But, you know. Okay, I want to talk about 1991 before we just dive into Use Your Illusion and Hear a Song to, like, get us situated. But 1991 was a truly insane year. I mean, it's, you know, been called the year that punk broke.

It's the year Nirvana's Nevermind came out. That's right, for those you playing at home, broke as in like the subculture became mainstream. Yeah, because in 1992, I was in a band that opened up for Offspring. See? And that's, and Offspring was one of the biggest bands.

Okay. If there's one thing I know, it's 1991, the listeners at home know, the year that Nirvana's Nevermind came out because I orient my whole musical understanding around that album coming out because of Mage. So anyways, Nevermind comes out, and so does Pearl Jam's 10. And in between that is when Use Your Illusion comes out. But it's also the same year Metallica's Black album comes out. So there's like a large shift in mainstream metal then.

It was a big year. Big year for music. However, the charts were like really dominated by pop music. Mariah Carey, Vanilla Ice, which I think you could argue is pop music. Garth Brooks, who was at the top of the charts for most of the 90s. But Metallica and G&R each had a few weeks at number one with Use Your Illusion. So let's jump into Use Your Illusion 1 and 2 for those counting at home. it is two double albums.

All of Use Your Illusion 1 and 2 were all recorded at the same time. It wasn't like they recorded Use Your Illusion 1, and then they recorded Usier Illusion 2. They recorded all that stuff. Yeah, no, it was meant to be a cohesive project that was released at the same time. Let's play a song from Use Your Illusion 1 to kick us off. What song do you want to hear?

I would like to play the song Coma from Use Your Illusion 1. I think this song is absolutely amazing, Absolutely unique because it's a song that A is 10 minutes long. It doesn't necessarily have a verse or chorus. It sometimes reminds me it's in a coma. Sometimes a little cheap trick feel out of almost all the Guns and Roses songs. I really like this song, Koma. Well, let's hear it.

Strap in Babes 10 minutes. This is Koma. That was Koma. I like the little backstory of this song is that it was like Slashes Baby sort of and he allegedly, in his own words, wrote it in a heroin delirium,

which kind of checks out, right, with the song. The bass drum sounds like a heartbeat. Yeah, apparently the song was supposed to be called GERTH. That's funny. Yeah, I like Coma better. Yeah, me too. I liked that Axel also said that he basically like wrote this entire

song just like off the top of his head and sort of like a fever. I like when you hear about the making of a song and it fits in exactly with like the feel and vibe of the song. And I feel like those two elements of the writing of the song make total sense to me. Well, we always think of appetite for destruction being, you know, the greatest Guns and Roses album. But when you go back and you revisit, use your illusion one and two. Use your illusion one or two are some of the greatest rock and roll ever because it shows the band being huge, being big, having a big sound, messing around with different things

and distancing themselves from having this great debut, hardcore rock punk feel to being a, you know, dare I say, a Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, something like that with so many flavors, so many directions.

Those albums are so good. I mean, I recently bought them both on vinyl again. And I can put those records. on and every song that comes on, I'm like, oh, yeah, I love this song. Oh, yeah, this song's great. I'm like, oh, you know, and they all bring me back to a certain point, you know, it's just a great, great record. No, I totally agree. These are iconic releases. I mean, the amount of iconic songs on here is the live and let die cover is fucking incredible. You know, like when I put that on, I'm just like,

Wow, this is like really mind-blowingly good in terms of a cover. They really transform the song to like their own. Like I don't even think about Paul McCartney in Wings when I think about that song. I only think about Guns and Roses. It's epic and it is live and let die and it's Guns and Roses doing their take of the song and making it their own. Totally. On User Illusion 1, a lot of the songs are from super early guns and

Rose's like demo recordings. Back Off Bitch was one of them. Bad Obsession. November rain, which we're going to hear before we move on. Those might be my favorite Guns and Roses song. Don't cry. Axel Rose apparently said that that was the first song that Guns and Roses ever wrote altogether. I want to play this song and then I want to, I want you to tell your stories about the backup singer that pops up on this song that it's kind of unexpected. This is Don't Cry. That was Don't Cry. Ricky, who is the special backup singer on this song? The background vocals on Don't Cry are Shannon Hoon. This is an interesting story. So Shannon Hoon came from Indiana as did Axel did. Axel came out here first and I had an office on Hollywood and Highland called Rachman Entertainment. And we handled

all the selling of the cat house shirts and booking of the cat house. And, and help with my appearances for MTV or whatever. I just wanted to be a business guy. And Axel's like, hey, my friend from Indiana is coming into town. Will you give him a job? And I'm like, okay. So Shannon comes in and Shannon became my receptionist and started handling things. And Shannon would come in the office and he would share his exploits of meeting girls and getting in fights.

and he was just an incredible, lovable, fun, crazy kid. He was just this kid. I mean, the Beverly Center is this high-end mall in Beverly Hills that wasn't too far from the office. And one day Shannon comes in with this little dog. He's like, yeah, I was at the Beverly Center and this little dog was, you know, in these things that they were selling. I just picked him up and ran out of the mall. I'm like, you stole that dog from the Beverly Center. Bedstackstop.

He stole the dog. Center, pets, which we've all visited. If you live in L.A., you've been to that. I don't even know if it's still there, but... Of course, it's not. But the dog isn't, because Shannon took it. So he would do stuff like that, and then he would come in here and he's like, yeah, and I'm working on my band.

My band's going to be called Brown Cow. I was like, Shannon, that's a really stupid name, Brown Cow. And then he comes in, he goes, nope, we're changing it again. We're going to be called Blind Melon. I'm like, dude, that's worse than Brown Cow. Well, you were wrong. that really stuck for people. It's not the first time.

But they would have been really huge if they were a brown cow. And then I would open up Cat House, Arizona for one night. And Shannon I'd hire as the van driver to shuttle people from the hotel to the club. And people are like, man, this kid is driving the van and he's so drunk. And he's like trying to get air off the speed bumps. And he pretty much got us thrown off of a plane. And he was just this troublemaker. you know, when they were kind of ready to play and do a showcase, I let them play the Cat House,

but I think like doors opened at nine, and I put them on it like 10 to 9. And then they got a record deal of Capitol. And sure enough, Blind Melon became this huge band. And just before they got all famous, you know, Axel, and I've said this so many times, Axel was very good taking care of his friends. He always looked after his friends. And, you know, thank God for me, I was one of those friends because I don't know if I would have had the MTV job and I sure wouldn't be selling as many cat house shirts as I did because of Axel. So he, you know, really helps Shannon and brings this unknown kid to sing background in the video and on the song. And, you know, the rest of his history, Blind Melon became huge. And I think it's like this song, I did check. It's on both versions.

it really like that harmony of Shannon Hoon singing like an octave higher than Axel, which is pretty impressive considering how high Axel sings, makes it, like, it just really elevates the vocals and it's just a sad, soulful song. And I want to say something that I learned in this research and I think people will find interesting about this song. Because I think when you listen to this song, you think it's, you know, from the perspective of Axel comforting a woman. But it's actually the opposite. He was actually writing about a girl apparently that Izzy dated before him and then he dated her and he really had a thing for her and it wasn't going to work out, right? And she was leaving. And she told him, like, don't cry. And so I think that really like shifts the understanding of the song for

me. And it really like, you know, you always think it's like a man letting a woman down gently. But this, you know, he was writing this song kind of for himself to sue themselves. It makes it feel a little more beautiful to me. And the other thing is sometimes, you know, the first. formula for many, many years was a band would release the hard song and then the ballad, then the hard song, and then the ballad. And sometimes those ballads seemed like they were just put out there to have that ballad. And it didn't seem like it had the real truth or feeling of what the band initially started as. But Don't Cry is a beautiful, beautiful song. And to know that it's one of the earliest guns that, like, when they were in the studio and

they were writing Welcome to the Jungle, they also had already had, don't cry in their back pocket, which is really interesting because you wouldn't think that would be one of the earliest Guns and Rosa songs, but it was. I don't think Guns and Roses materially changes in their approach to music until Chinese democracy, which will get there, and there's a bunch of reasons why that is. But like, the bulk of the catalog of Guns and Roses, which is not a huge catalog, is all rooted in exactly the same. sensibilities, including this album. So don't cry, and I want to talk about because I know you like the other two, Don't Cry is the first of three ballads that make up a sort of triptych. One is on Use Your Illusion 2, and two of them on Use Your Illusion 1, and they're based in a

short story by Del James. Is that right? Yeah, Del James is a longtime friend of the band, still works with the band. He's like Axel's right-hand man. And I'm almost positive the day I met Axel was the day I met Del. And Del is just great. He used to be like a mop guy at an adult theater. But he was also an incredible writer and wrote a book called Language of Fear that I had. And his writing talent is absolutely incredible.

It's just dark, horror, grotesque, but very, very good. And Dale's just a phenomenal writer and a great storyteller and everything. And he's also, you know, always been there for Axel and still is to this day. I think that their creative relationship has a great deal to do with Guns and Roses. And you can see it real clearly in this, Don't Cry, November Rain and Estranged, the three songs that sort of make up, not an even homage, an interpretation of this short story. I see that you have November Rain earmarked. Should we play it and then talk about your star turn in the music video?

Well, yes, but if I was going to pick a song to listen to, of those I would have picked estranged. We're going to listen to both. We haven't gotten to use your illusion to yet, babe. It's a beautiful world. Okay. This is my show. I don't care if people want to turn this off now.

Sorry, bye. Me and Ricky will still be here talking about guns and roses. They don't want to turn it off. Okay, this is November rain. That was November rain, a goddamn gorgeous, beautiful, fucking epic song, dirge, joy. All of it. It's all in there, girth. Gourthy.

Goddamn gorgeous girthy song. Sometimes it doesn't feel right when a band tries to do a song that's like an epic song, especially when they're a Hollywood street band. But it is. It's a beautiful song as big and rich as some of Queens classics. It's an absolutely incredible song. You know, sometimes you hear songs that are written because they want them to be hits. And sometimes there are songs that become hits that were just, that we all went along for the ride.

Because it wasn't going after what might be commercial. It was a song that's written that's just incredible. Oh, yeah. If you want a song to be a hit, babe, you don't make it nine minutes long. That's usually not the formula. This is actually, I think, the longest song in history to enter the top 10 of the Billboard 100, because it literally just doesn't happen when a song's that long. Because you can't edit that song down because it's like it's this journey that just goes,

goes, goes, goes, goes, goes, goes, and all this year, when you need somebody, it's all this stuff going on at the same time. And then how do you edit it out to make it shorter? You just can't. Thank God they didn't. Yes. In my mind, this song is inextricably tied to that music video. The music video is burned in my brain.

I watched it a thousand times as a young, you know, 10 or 11-year-old glued to the MTV. For those of you that don't remember, this music video, I mean, so much iconic stuff. We have Stephanie Seymour in like the sickest, like, medley wedding dress looking so hot. we have slash taking to this cliff side. I don't know what cliff, where it was, how the cliff had any relation to the church and the wedding. But he takes to the cliff side alone and just blazes shirtless into this guitar solo. It rains and everybody has a full panic attack meltdown.

And the guy like dives into the wedding cake, which I feel like is like maybe the most L.A. reaction to rain. Rain, no, I must dive into the wedding cake. And Ricky, you're in this video. You're one of the wedding guests. Yes, but I am not the guy that dives into the cake. It's sad that my big claim to fame is something that wasn't even me. Everybody seems to think I was the guy that dove through the wedding cake, but I wasn't.

I was the guy that did this. and that's it. Okay, this is an audio-only podcast, but I believe Ricky was holding up a champagne flute. Yeah. Yeah. I wish we could find the guy that dove into the wedding cake and get him on the horn.

If you're out there, babe, send us an email, bandsplain at Spotify.com. It was George Clooney. Little known fact. It was George Clooney. It was not George Clooney. Okay, so November rain and coma, nine and ten-minute-long songs.

There's also other, like, new and cool stuff I think they do with Use Your Illusion 1 and 2, which is other band members take lead vocals, which hadn't happened before. Dustin Bones, you ain't the first and double talk and jive. Izzy takes lead to vocals. I love Dustin Bones. I think that song is really cool. It's like so bluesy. 14 years and so fine.

Izzy sings 14 years and so fine is Duff McKagan, I think. That's a good song. I really like So Fine. Yeah, it's great. great song. And Duff is a great singer. Like he's a great sort of like punkish, awesome singer. Duff is great. And we'll talk about it a little bit later in Chinese democracy, which of course Duff wasn't on. But it seems like there are parts that were made to sound like Duff.

But we'll talk about that later. But, you know, it is a band that that I believe is as strong as all of their parts. And just like, you know, Van Halen with Michael Anthony, when the backgrounds weren't there, it didn't sound the same. And with Duffin. Duff's background vocals, I think, are also a very big part. But so fine is just a good, good song. Totally. I know that we are in the age of streaming, and I don't know how many, like, young people listen to this show.

But, like, it can't be overstated what a fucking huge deal it was to release two double albums on the same day. That had never been done before. And it's actually, I think, only happened once since that the albums debuted at number one and two on the Billboard charts which happened with Guns and Roses. It also happened

in 2004 with hip-hop artist Nelly with this album's sweat and suit. But this is a big deal. I mean it's not like streaming. You can't make Donda like Kanye Weston fit two hours of music into it because who cares because you're not pressing an actual physical copy. Physical copies have limitations.

So A, it costs a shit ton of money. B, they're expecting their fans to pony up the money. which they did, you know, like that's a lot of money. Do you remember how much these long box CDs cost? They expected their fans to go into Tower Records and drop like, God, it must have been 50 bucks for both, at least, right? Business-wise, it sounds like a stupid idea.

Sure. It just does. It seems like you would put it, and then when it starts to die down, then you come out with the next one. But they released them both at the same times. And sometimes I think, you know, when you get an album out, a single disc album, you listen to that album in, over, end, over end, over end.

But when all of a sudden you've got four albums to listen to eight sides, some songs could get lost in the mix. Because all of a sudden, instead of hearing your favorite 12 songs, all of a sudden you've got 40 songs. I don't remember how many songs John used your Lusion 1 and 2. But you're listening to all these songs, and it's hard to figure out which is your favorite of the new songs because you've just got so many songs.

Totally. I think largely this decision was probably related to having so many, because of the length of the songs being longer, like they needed more space to fit in as... It's not that it's like... It's not as many songs as a normal four appetites for destruction, for example. It's less songs because the songs are longer.

But there's also two-minute songs on it too. Totally. I, for the record, did use up four slots on my Get-12 CDs for One-Penie, B-M-G postcard mail-in to acquire these CDs. Funny that you would say that, kids probably don't know anything about that. There was a thing called, they had called Columbia House.

That's right. And what Columbia House was, you'd get them in like a TV guide, which was the thing that people would get that would list all the TV shows. TV shows were, see, back in the day, you didn't get to pick a TV show and watch it when you wanted you had to wait until every Tuesday, night or Saturday. But they had the Columbia House and you could buy like, you know, 12 CDs for only a penny. And then you just have to buy one CD every six months. that one CD every six month was like $40. No, it was one CD every month, Ricky. You had to buy one CD every month.

Unless you pulled the wool over their eyes like I did every time as a young grifter, a young hustler. I would tape my penny, send it off under false names, and then just never pay. Shannon, who did that and sent him to our offices? So every so often we get all these CDs, oh, here's Zizi Top. Oh, here's Pink Floyd. here's this. I'm like, how are you paying for this? Dude, I just send it out and I keep on getting new ones and all the time. And that's what's killed the music. It wasn't streaming. It was Columbia House. It was me grifting Columbia House. The Statue of Limitations up, Columbia House. You cannot come from me. Before we move on and just play a couple of songs from Use Your Illusion to, which again, I really do think these are to be taken as a piece, which is why they were recorded at the same time. So we're talking about them all at once. This is an important detail. I think. it's going to come up when we move on from here. Izzy Stradlin contributed more songs to these albums than any other band member. So a great deal of the writing on Use Your Illusion 1 and 2 was done by Izzy.

You know, we've said this before earlier, and I think it's being underscored here. The sound of Guns and Roses had as much to do with Izzy Stradlin as it did with Slash or Axel, or Duffer, matter. I don't think people think of it that way as much as they should, you know. Izzy was Keith Richards. The Stones is you've got, you've got Mick and Keith, you've had Axel and Izzy and Slash, though. So that's different. Let's see. People don't think of Axel and Slash.

They don't really think about Izzy except for me who thinks about Izzy. Because Izzy's been out of the band for so long. But I, you know, I can tell when Slash is not in the band. I mean, when Slash got back in Guns and Roses, I saw Guns and Roses without Slash and Duff. And I've, of course, seen them with Slash is. fashioned up. It is a huge difference. Axel talks about this album and how, I know you don't like to speculate about what he's thinking, but it's literally my job to speculate about what these people were thinking. So here I go.

It is based in deep research. So he did an interview around this, you know, because it did take time to make this and to come out. Again, we said it already. They started the tour of this album six months before it came out. So Axel said, people want something and they want it as soon as they can get it. Needy people. And I'm the same way, but I want it to be right. I don't want it to be half-assed. Since we put out appetite for destruction, I've watched a lot of bands put out two to four albums and who cares. They went out, they did a big tour, they were big rock stars for that period of time. That's what everyone's used to now. The record companies push that, but I want no part of that.

We weren't just throwing something together to be rock stars. We wanted to put something together that meant everything to us. It's pretty cool. I believe that 100%. Even though people, you know, have their own feelings about Chinese democracy, I don't think anything was just pieced together just to get it out. No, totally. I think a lot of bands at the time and at every time probably were competing with each other, right? Without a doubt.

But Guns and Roses was not competing with Motley Crue. Guns and Roses was competing with Rolling Stones. Would you agree? I would agree 100%. There was a time when every band would sell 3 million records. And I believe that Motley Crue might have been competing with poison. Sure. But when it comes down to,

It's a time when Guns and Roses was on a whole different. It wasn't $5 million. It was $30 million. It was something that was different. And then they were not selling, you know, two nights at the form. I mean, I guess you could almost say that guns and roses were competing with Metallica. Yeah. But I don't know if anybody really looked at it like that.

There was a lot of pushback critically around Use Your Illusion, which has been walked back where people were like, this is stupid, like the bloated ballads, like excess. and like, you know, people said similar things around the black album. We're like, what is this? This isn't metal. You know, and I think it's funny thinking that, like, at the time, the critics couldn't have the vision to understand it. But in time, looking back, these are heralded as some of the best albums of all time. I agree.

Absolutely. I mean, how many times have we looked back at a band who ended up becoming a huge band that was panned by the critics? And then the band ended up being huge. and that album was, of course, genuinely loved by everybody. And you're right about Use Your Illusion. When Use Your Illusion 1 and 2 came out, I think, first of all, it was so much for us to digest. But I think that it wasn't like, I'll go back and listen.

If you tell me, you know, you got to listen to Guns and Roses. You would think that everybody's going to go to appetite. But I'm not. I'm going to use Your Illusion 1 or 2. Because now I look back at those and at the body of art and work. It's just incredible. But when it was released, some people would think it was overindulgent or whatever it was. But it was Guns and Roses big, like, as you say, competing against Rolling Stones.

It wasn't Guns and Roses trying to be the best of the L.A. bands. Totally. I want to read a little bit of the critics that did get it. Simon Reynolds from Melody Maker, who Simon Reynolds is a British journalist who wrote about Guns Roses a lot. He says, there's two schools of thought about Guns and Roses. For some, they're the most dangerous band in the world. For others, their brand of danger is as safe and saleable as can be. But Rock progresses through rebelling against the old worn-out forms of rebellion.

Hence, the post-punk anti-rockist dialectic that led to Metal Box, to New Pop, to Morrissey, to 1988, and all that. Guns and Roses are the nearest Americas ever got to sex pistols. Guns and Roses aren't really a metal band, at least not in the Led Zeppelin, ACDC, Cock Rock, or Sabbath Metallica, Doomsday Modes. their hard rock rooted in Johnny Thunders and Steve Jones, and their motor runs not on pent-up testosterone, but rage, paranoia, disgust, and desperation. Like the pistols, guns and roses expand no sonic frontiers. They're traditionalists, punk and the broadest, stones, 1966,

Stooges, 1970, Pistols, 1977, cents. I think that's true. I think that's pretty good. I'm surprised it came from a critic. It was actually really good, and I think it's true. Kim Neely said in Rolling Stone, it's likely that no matter how many positive changes guns and roses make in their music or in their lives, they will never escape their early image as rabble-rousing, heroin shooting, cocaine snorting, whiskey-chugging fiends

who spend all of their time brawling and begging for trouble, primarily because nobody wants them to. And I think that's really what informed the criticism around, use your illusion. It's like critics specifically had decided who they were and they didn't want to. them to be any different. And, like, that probably prevails to this day, you know, which is why I love doing this show and talking about stuff and kind of revisiting, because it's like, Axel Rose was an artistic genius. And there's no denying that, you know? And the band together was a thing of magic. And I think what's eclipsed that is, like, their mythology and not this mythology, the mythology of what I just read, you know, like, they're crazy, they're wild, they're the most dangerous

band in the world, which all might have been true. But they were also true artists. That's it. That's my TED Talk. That's good. Is he writing all these songs, really contributing. Again, you knew him. I didn't.

I'm only judging from interviews and stuff. Didn't seem to have a ton of ego around stuff. Like, he doesn't go on record a lot to take credit. Like, didn't back then. I don't think he has sense. In 1991, November, which is, you know, a couple months after these, albums come out and we're still on tour, he quits the band. And he was sober. I think that's a really important distinction to make. That was an important part of Izzy quitting the band. And there were other

aspects, you know, from what I understand, Izzy was not happy with a lot of the changes that were being done without him being consulted. Yeah. And after what happened in St. Louis with the big riot, there was one time when they played a show in Germany that looked like it was going to be another riot and Izzy was just kind of fed up with it and fed up with the way that things were turning in. Issey's kind of a very mellow, soft-spoken, I don't want any drama. Yeah, totally. I can't imagine being in that band and being sober. Well, now nobody could be in that band drinking. I mean, that band is that, I mean, I don't know anybody in the entire world that has changed more than slash and Duff

and become two totally different people but it's all for the better. Totally. You know, it really is. They are totally different human beings. Yes, we stay in recovery here at Banspline, Pritchellian, says. So Izzy leaves the band and he's just, you know, he's like,

okay, I'm tired of this, bye. They had three weeks to replace him because they are literally in the middle of, you know, nine legs of tour. I like this tidbit that Dave Navarro from Jane's Addiction was considered, but according to Slash, he could not get it together. And I just want you to picture what that could possibly mean

that you couldn't get it together enough to be in this band. I remember seeing James Addiction play one time with Duff in the band. Well, it ended up happening. And obviously, Dave Navarro, I'm pretty sure, is also part of the sobriety club. Anyways, I like this little, this quote from Izzy, where he says that the making of use your illusion is going to foreshadow what happens with the band

because it took a long time, yes, because of perfectionism. Also because Axel Rose did not want to come and do his vocals or who knows, I don't know why he didn't come. They finished all the music and there was a full year before the vocals were finished. I mean, you could also say that was perfectionism. And Izzy said, you know, I just went to Indiana and painted the house and just like got bored. He was like, time goes slow when you're sober. Izzy's replaced by Gilby Clark, your bestie.

Gilby was the guy that like as everybody was getting record deals and making it big the only two people that didn't were me and Gilby but Gilby was one that was talented so Gilby at one time like he was he was at Madam Wong's doing sound like helping pull equipment for Frank Black and stuff like that but Gilby was always like whenever I would do a jam band Gilby would get up everybody knew Gilby Gilby Gilby was just a great, great guy. And the thing with Guns and Roses happened, and when he came in, he didn't know that he got the job until he saw it on MTV News. They were talking to Slash, and they said that Gilby Clark is the new guitarist of Guns and Roses. And Gilby had no idea that he had even gotten the gig. He saw it on MTV News.

I miss those days. I miss the days of the omnipower of MTV. Well, so Gilby Clark gets the gig playing in Guns and Roses, right? And they're about to go out on tour. Gilby didn't have a lot of money. He was one of us. He was one of the guys from the cat house scene. Still with the same woman, Danielle Clark.

You know, they were kind of struggling. They had a little apartment in Hollywood. We'd get broken into it. It was just things were good. He was working at Madame Wong's doing sound. And then he gets his gig. And all of a sudden, it's the break like, oh, it was, It's only a matter of time before, you know, before Gilby got a big band because we always wondered,

when's Gilby going to get his break? Everybody else has got record deals. Everybody else is on there. Why think Gilby going to get his break? And then Gilby gets that big break, and all of a sudden, Gilby's going to be in Guns and Roses, and Guns and Roses are getting ready to go out on tour. And then I get this call, and somebody says, hey, do you want to do a celebrity motorcross race? and I say, well, I ride motorcycles daily, but I don't have any dirt experience.

They go, it's okay, you can do it. Well, do you have any friends that would also like to do it? I go, well, let me check with my riding buddy, Gilby Clark. So we go to practice for our big race and Gilby Clark breaks his arm, okay? Before the tour? Right as the tour was starting. Okay, Gilby Clark breaks his arm. Needless to say, everyone's mad at me.

Sure. Daniela Clark, furious. Guns and Roses aren't happy. They're ready to get out on the road with their new guitarist, and their new guitarist breaks their arm. In a sense, was kind of my fault. So they didn't throw them out, which is nice. And actually, what they did is they played some shows and brought Izzy back in the band.

So Izzy came back and played with Guns and Oz for a little bit. but can you imagine what Gilby must have felt like is I'm finally getting my break I'm going to play in the biggest rock and roll band I'm not going to have to live in this apartment anymore I'm going to have money I break my arm and they replaced me with the original guitarist so that was not good

and everybody was mad at me from getting Gilby in this thing but obviously things turned out better because once Gilby was healed as he left and they put Gilby back in the band welcome to the band babe Let's hear one more song off Use Your Illusion 1 and 2, and I know you really want to hear Estranged.

Is this correct? Yes. I love Estranged. The video was different. We'll talk about that. Okay. The song is absolutely incredible. It's got so many changes.

Could be one of the better Guns and Rose song. I probably, when people say my favorite Guns and Rose songs, I probably mention this song. All right. This is. estranged. That was estranged. The reason that I like this song really doesn't have, I mean, Axel's great in it, but it's really about that guitar, that do-de-do-do. It is. It's so iconic.

It's just such a hook, and it just, it sticks in you, and it's a great, great sound. It's a fantastic song, and we do need to discuss, however, the literally insane music video. I think originally the music videos for Don't Cry in November Rain and a Strange because they're a triptych were supposed to be one cohesive story. However, I'm only asking a fact, Ricky. Axel and Stephanie Seymour broke up before the third video. So we went in a bit of a different direction with this music video. I don't know, Stephanie Seymour, aircraft carrier. Dolphins, let's party with the day.

dolphins in the ocean slash is ripping a guitar right on top of the ocean. He's standing upon it. This was one of the most expensive music videos to date of all time to make. It costs $5 million. And the ending is the best part ever because it's axles literally sitting with a dolphin on a couch. And I love it. And I wish I had a poster of that. I only bring this up, well, A, because it's hilarious, but B, because this helps start to get the reputation. of Guns and Roses of being a band of excess, past just partying, but into like money. You know, things start to cost so much. The Use Your Illusion Tour was wild expensive, and I don't even think they recouped until

near the very end. $5 million music video. November rain cost almost $2 million or $1.5 million. Things start to get really expensive. First of all, I will say this. I think the world of Axel Rose. We know you do, really. You don't have to preface it.

Hold on. I know, but I have to say this. I owe everything to Axel Rose, I believe. I also believe that one of the reasons that I haven't spoke with him in well over a decade is because I was on TV commenting about this video. Oh, no. And I think all I said was, I just don't get it. I just don't get it.

And I never heard from him since. I don't know if that was the reason or if it was something else because I've never said anything bad about the band because I think they're the greatest rock and roll band of all time. But I didn't get the video. I just didn't understand it. It seemed a bit of excessive. I mean, at least in November rain, I thought that scene with Axel, like,

looking up and crying and the water's coming down. It's like, that's a movie. Totally. But the aircraft carriers and the dolphins, I didn't get it. There's a vision and not everyone gets it. And you know what? If I had $5 million to make episodes of bands playing, they'd also probably involve dolphins.

And they would be 16 hours long. no one would listen anymore. It's good we're on a shoestring producer dolphin. Sorry, that was really funny, Dylan. I want to talk about a bit of the rest of the tour because a lot of interesting stuff happens on this tour, and I want to ask you about them. The first thing I want to talk about is in April of 1992,

Guns and Roses plays this massive Freddie Mercury tribute concert for AIDS Awareness. And it's interesting because, there was some pushback, right? Like an activist group called Act Up, demanded that they be dropped from the bill because of one in a million. However, the other members of Queen

were just like, people seem so blind. Don't they realize, this is Brian May saying this, people seem so blind, don't they realize that the mere fact that guns and roses are here is the biggest statement that you could get? What more can be said, right? It's like, I don't think if Axel hates the gaze, he's going to show up and play a massive tribute,

for AIDS awareness. I know for fact he doesn't, okay? Yeah, of course, of course. I'm just saying, but he's not even the kind. If he's not going to show up for his show because he didn't like the photographer, he's definitely not going to do a PR move by playing a show.

It's just clearly not his vibe, you know? So I think Brian made a great point there. That was a very cool event, and a lot of people played, and they did an amazing job. And he played with Elton John. Yes, he also played with Elton John. They did November rain.

I think the MTV movie, VMAs. So another thing I want to ask you about, and this is something I do hope you know about, and I feel like you will because you were close with them. So one of the legs of the tour, I think it was the second American leg of the tour. Axel had actually wanted Nirvana to open for them. But Kurt Cobain said no. That's not what I'm curious. I'm curious about what do you know about Axel and maybe even the other members taste in contemporary music? Because like we kind of said earlier, 1991 and two are years when music really starts to shift towards grunge.

What relationship did Axel and the rest of the band members have with that kind of music? I remember when Nirvana Bleach came out, and we solicited a hell out of that thing. Yeah? Oh, my God. That's a great record. I agree. I'm not questioning that. I don't say grunge, just like I don't say hair metal.

You know, I say rock and roll. And I know that the guys in Guns and Roses. loved Nirvana. But something happened, and I don't know if it was stemming from Nirvana turning down the tour, but I believe it was at UCLA, and it was the MTV Video Music Awards. Oh, yes, iconic. Something happened with Kurt and Axel, and Axel pretty much went up to Kurt and said, you know, what's your fucking problem?

I'm going to fucking kick your ass. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And I know that Kurt or it might have been Chris said something on stage about like, oh, Axel or something like that. And Axel had confronted Kurt a couple times like, I want to kick your ass and sing that backstage, you know, jumping up and Axel's like, and Kurt was like, dude, I don't want to have anything to do with it. I don't want to have anything to do with it. That was pretty much it. But I know that Axel did confront Kurt a couple times.

Yeah. You know, it makes sense to me. A, these bands come from like both similar, you know, swamps of sensibility and then wildly different. It does not make sense to me. I remember when Axel said, dude, listen to this album. This album is so great. And he was playing all these songs and he'd play it backstage in the dressing room. And that artist was Lenny Kravitz.

You know, so as far as listening to music, they were just into good music. No, totally. I think what I'm more mean is like guns and roses were still operating within the world of the late 80s, which was still, you know, a time where like it was a bit more flashy and cool to have like, you know, I don't know. It was just a bigger scene. It was more like massive arena rock bands. Like that was still cool. Nirvana came in a very anti-capitalist, more like low-key, not really embracing any. of that. And that's what I mean. I don't mean musically. I mean sensibility wise. I think their aesthetics clashed and even maybe their value systems clashed. And I think maybe

Axel, because he probably didn't think of things that way, again, I'm purely speculating. I don't know what Axel Rose's mind and thoughts and heart were. But, you know, he probably was just like, this band is cool. I love them. They're sick. And in Kurt's mind, you know, again, pure speculation, a band

like Guns and Roses represented to them this late 80s excess and capitalism in a way that they were just not into. And I think that's where the clash kind of, you know, comes into play. And that's where it makes sense for me, you know? The next big thing of the tour is the part that was like, I think, four or five months long where they paired up with Metallica. Slash and Lars announced the tour on your show, bang in with MTV. I have the video.

The Guns Metallica tour. It starts off right. in Washington, D.C. And we're going to be there. I'm going to be there with MTV and you'll be watching it or you in Washington. Everybody will probably be there.

And I assume that you guys will be there. Oh. Really? Do you remember that at all? Not at all. Not at all. They announced it on my show with me. Yeah, bang in with MTV,

which I don't remember that show. Well, I must have been so memorable that I don't even remember it. But I do remember the tour because I know I went to the very first show and it was a tour that everybody said it'll never last, it'll never last. Metallica and Guns and Roses.

I mean, I've still got the laminar on my wall over there. It was just, it was not, people just thought it wouldn't work. It wouldn't happen. But I went to the very first one at RFK. But there were problems all along the tour. Yeah, they did not get along these two bands. That was a time that occasionally Axel would show up late. And even the time that James was burnt really badly on stage.

Yes, that was on that. tour. It was. It was on that tour and James got burnt from a pyro like really bad on his arm. It was gnarly. And that could have been a time that Guns and Roses could have stepped up and saved the day, but they went on late. And that caused, you know, mass hysteria. Yeah. Let's just leave it at the fact that these bands did not become friends. This was actually also the tour that they wanted Nirvana to come onto. Faith No More came instead, which makes a bit more sense. And also I. And. And? And who else? I don't know. Body count. Oh, yes, body count. I didn't know that. So sick. So sick. Body count needs its own bands plan because no one has really been like that band since. Can you imagine Mike Patton, Ice Tea, James Hatfield, an Axel and Slash just sitting around? They probably didn't. They probably never hung out.

I don't think Mike Patton would have hung out with them. I think I know that ICE would have hung out with Slash and Duff and everybody. But I don't think Mike Patton would have. The more genial members of each band probably had their own hangouts and the rest of them were off like doing their own thing. James Haville and Axel never interacted with anybody. But Lars did. Lars did all the time. So did Duff.

Yeah, Lars Duff. So the Usier Illusion Tour ends in 1993, fucking 194 shows in 27 countries. I don't say that to say anything besides like how massive this band was, like that they were able to wore that much and people came out for two full years, you know? They would play venues like the form or wherever and then play like, you know, some unheard of, like, they weren't residencies, but they'd sell out like two weeks, you know? So they would be playing certain venues that were huge. Let's talk about the spaghetti incident.

I really love this succession of releases because it's like at every turn they do something unexpected. You don't think you're going to come off of like a massive epic, four-disc, whatever, and be like, punk covers type. And raw. And it was like you come off from something that sounds, it was actually pretty brilliant because you come off something with songs like coma and estranged in November rain. And then the next thing you're doing is songs from the damned and the misfits and UK subs. It was cool. It was just done in a little studio.

It was awesome. That's another album that sometimes we forget about it. We go back and I'm like, wow, they did the most amazing version of the Stoja's raw power. I mean, they did the most amazing version of that song. I mean, there's so much good stuff. The fucking, the Johnny Thunder's cover is like fucking incredible. Amazing. I think the coolest thing about this album is that they didn't do straight punk covers.

They really made them Guns N' Rosesy. And I think the end result is it's like kind of glam. It's a glam punk because they can't help but kind of interpret songs that way. And it's really cool to hear things like a band like Fear made more glam. It comes out so cool. I don't hear the glam in the song. fear at all. No? But I do know what you're saying, but it doesn't, it's not to say that they sound weak and... No, that's not what I mean like I am. It just sounds like that raw and it's fun.

You know, especially, you know, is what I mean. Yeah, like the damned and UK subs and everything. But now can I talk about fear? On this podcast, we stand fear. Okay. So I get a phone call and they're like, and they knew that my roots came from bands like fear, black flag, the germs. Oh yeah, I forgot. You're on this song. Is this a song that you sing backing vocals on? Yes. Or on this album. Yes.

So I get a call and they're like, hey, Axel wants to see if you want to do background for I don't care about you from fear. I'm like, are you kidding me? And they're like, yeah, come down. So I'm like, right on. It'll be good. Me and Axel are going to hang out in the studio. How fun is that going to be? So I show up at the studio and Axel wasn't there and nobody in the band was there.

And they put me in a little room and they play the tracks and they just want. me to sing the chorus and I did it and that was it and I don't care about you and you can't tell my voice and isn't it at all but I am and I got to do I don't care about you by fear and it was nice because I didn't have to write down the words because I knew it all. Are we playing it when it goes right into Look at Your Game? Yeah because I want to also talk about Look at Your Game so I think it's a kind of a perfect way to get into that. Yeah. So let's hear I don't care about you. It's listed a slash look at your game, but we'll talk about how that wasn't actually listed in the original versions.

Not slash as in slash. Slash as in line. The punctuation. Okay, here it is. That was, I don't care about you and look at your game girl. Look at Your Game Girl is a Charles Manson song. It is written by Charles Manson. It was written by a short king, just kidding.

a short murder that is not a good person named Charles Manson. I just want to reiterate that he was short. People were mad about this. They did not like that they included a song by Charles Manson. Right. And I believe he gave the proceeds to the victims. Yeah, I think the proceeds went to the victim's children. This song originally wasn't listed on the album.

It was a secret track, right? remember those kids when you just let that's the last track on the album and then silence comes for a while and then you hear a secret track they can't do that anymore another thing that things have been taken away from us but people obviously heard it and then they got mad it seems kind of quaint even though i don't think it's good to like i'm not condoning charles manson or anything obviously it kind of reminds me that that was like a really different time axel also wore charles Manson T-shirts. I feel like a lot of people do that now, but I guess it was still edgy then. This is not done saying, I support someone that orchestrated all these horrific murders.

It's done for shock level. It's done too shock. And the truth is, putting that Charles Manson song, I personally didn't have an issue with it because I found it more historic to me. It's like, wow, this is a song that was sort of a beautiful. song that was written by this just disgusting, despicable human being. There's a lot of songs that are beautiful songs that are written by disgusting, despicable humans. I will say, I think, only to like further my own thing about Axel Rose, which I think a lot of what he tried to do was like lofty in a level that it was often misinterpreted.

And I think his thing with the Charles Manson T-shirt at the very least, like he was trying to make a statement around this is what you think I am. am. And like, it's a joke because I'm not like this person, but you equate me with something as bad. I think he said that in an interview. But no one, people are not going to get that. If that's what he said, he did say that. Okay. I want to talk about something a little lighter, note, funnier, two funnier things. The spaghetti incident, which is stylized in quotation marks with a question mark at the end, does refer to an incident with Stephen Adler in 1989, where apparently he stored his drugs in a refrigerator next to the band's takeout containers, which did contain

spaghetti. And then in the later lawsuit that Stephen Adler had against Guns and Roses, there was a part where his lawyer asked the band to, please tell us about the spaghetti incident. And they thought that was very funny. So they used the spaghetti incident as the title of this album. Pretty funny. The other funny thing is that one of the greatest songs on here, I think, is Duff singing New Roos. by the damned. Apparently they did ask Captain Sensible, the damned guitarist, if he had heard it.

And he said he had not, because he does not listen to music released after 1980. Kind of funny. He released songs after 1980, didn't he? Maybe he doesn't listen to his own music after 1980. I was almost going to say,

he said what? But most people wouldn't get that because Captain Sensible released a song with a song called What? You remember that song? Hey, Captain, say what? Okay, I can. I'm good.

There's two. So this album, I don't know what the point of it was besides, again, because it's fucking sick and it rips, and they were like, you know, we have this and we love punk and let's hear about it. I like that this album was reviewed in Rolling Stone by Jonathan Gold, who, Ricky, if you'll remember, became the greatest Los Angeles food critic of all time. Okay.

Just simply pointing out things. that I like. He makes a parallel about, you know, them trying to reassess or reassert their roots in punk and other, you know, Johnny Thunders and stuff, the same way that you two tried to with rattle and hum to be, you know, when people had started to question their authenticity. And that sounds pretty true, you know? I don't know. I think it was more like, why the fuck not? I think it was just done like, dude, this is going to be fun. Yeah. I think it was done like that. You can imagine a world where they had always wanted to do this, right? Because they loved these bands and they had always loved these punk bands.

So maybe it was always kind of rattling around in the back of their heads. This is a fun record. It's a fucking great record. They don't tour this album. They were probably very tired. They did a video, though. A music video? For which song?

Since I don't have you? And you know who was in the video? Ricky Rachman. Gary Oldman. Oh, really? Is it like a star is in it? Gary Oldman plays the devil, I believe. God, I need to watch that.

Sounds incredible. Yeah. Are apparently sort of in the studio on and off for the next couple of years. Nothing really comes of it except a cover of Sympathy for the Devil. It's quite good and appears in the movie interview with the vampire. Great film. Gilby Clark said in 1994 they stopped trying to work on a new album. And what Axel said was that they threw away that material because we still needed the collaboration of the band as a whole to write the best songs.

Since none of that happened, that's the reason we threw out the material. What do you think led to the fact that they literally couldn't even get it together to write songs together? It was that bad. I don't know. I really, really don't know. I think when there's drama and where things happen and people see, you know, have a different point of view or something, sometimes it's, It's hard to get back together with people. I mean, I've hung out with pretty much everybody in the band,

but I can tell you that I'd never hung out with Axel and Slash. And I never hung out with Def or Axel at the same time. Never. There's a lot of bands like that. Like, we see these people on stage together, and we think that they're all hanging out together, you know? But I don't remember ever hanging out with more than one of them at a time. I mean, Duff and Slash would probably come to the cat out sometimes,

or Axel would be there all the time, but I don't think they ever went together. It kind of makes sense because, like, going back four hours in this podcast, if you remember us talking about them forming, they formed to make a great rock and roll band. They didn't form because they were best friends. You know, I mean, Izzy and Axel were great friends, obviously.

And, like, you know, they, I think you can say slash and Duff formed a great relationship and all this. But the real impetus of them coming together was they wanted to make incredible rock and roll music. And they knew that even, of these parts fit that goal. So it makes sense that like the friendship wasn't really a factor. So anyways, what happens after this, they scrap the, you know, making the record.

Did you know Paul Huge Tobias who they, who Axel brought in his old Hollywood Rose band member to play on that cover? No. Apparently, there was some tension caused by that. Slash maybe didn't like him or didn't want him doing the band. In a through line that's been through this whole episode, you know, Slash was. like how come you get to decide who our new guitar player is? Like, this isn't a democracy. It should be, again, Duff was saying that, like, he'd go to start rehearsal at 10 a.m. And Axel will show up at 4 in the morning. So just like a lot of seams are coming loose.

Gilby Clark, and you might know what this, was not, he had a two-year contract and it just wasn't renewed. So he left the band in 95. But Slash said that once again, Axel fired him without asking anybody. And they were upset about that too because they liked Gilby. Apparently, Gilby Clark later sued the band over the use of his likeness in Guns and Rose's pinball. Yeah, on the pinball machine. The pinball machine. I don't remember if I'm getting this story right or not, but I vaguely remember Gilby telling me that Axel said, hey, have fun.

This was your last show. It was in the Wikipedia, yes. Oh, it was? Oh, okay. Oh, then it's got to be true, right? Before the final show. Rose said, hey, Andrea, last show, buddy. Not my favorite move.

Okay, so in 1996, slash officially quits. So now we're really, the wheels are coming off. They replaced him with the touring guitarist for nine-inch nails, Robin Fink in 97, who also signed a contract of two years. Matt Sorum leaves not long after. April, 1997, he was fired by Axel, apparently, over an argument about the guy from Hollywood Rose that you don't know. that apparently Sorum called the Yoko Ono of Guns and Roses.

And then in August of 97, Duff quits. So now we basically have nobody's left from the original appetite lineup except for Axel. Everyone's gone, including Matt's arm, who wasn't even on the appetite. It's just, I guess, Dizzy Reed is still in the band. I haven't heard of him. Dizzy has actually been in Guns and Roses longer than anybody with the exception of Axel. We need to interview him about how he does that. How did you do that?

I mean, I still remember, well, Disney's just like those like, he was kind of like a Stephen type guy, you know? Right. As far as it's kind of happy, everything's cool. But without the gnarly heroin problem, maybe. Right. Very nice guy. Very nice guy.

So now we start just adding people to the band. The drummer from the vandals, Josh Fries. Well, okay, well, hold on. second. Any show you do will at one point have Josh Freeze in the band. Josh Freeze has been in every single band there is. Josh Freeze. He was in Devo.

He was in Devo. And you got understand, Josh Freeze was the biggest Debo fan in the world. And then he got the gig playing in Devo. But he just started like, if you probably pull up as Wikipedia, I would get there's probably eight or nine bands that

you know very well that he has been a part of. But Josh didn't last in the band. long. He's a great drummer. Yes, he has played for, you know, Sublime with Rome. He toured with Paramore. He toured with the offspring. He's, he's a lifer. He was Travis Barker before there was Travis Barker. Pre-Cardashian. My favorite piece of randoms that have joined, let's not say randoms, but you know what I mean. Randoms compared to the appetite lineup that have joined Gunthern Roses. Mr. Tommy Stenson of the replacements, joined in 1998. Yeah. Playing bass instead of duplicate him.

Did you see this lineup? Yes. How was it? It was okay. The odd thing is that at one point, Izzy got on stage with him. Really? Izzy got up there, and I remember watching Izzy and the other guys in the band, and Izzy was really kind of standing back.

And me watching it, it was almost a little bit uncomfortable. Yeah. You know, I mean, Axel's still the most incredible dynamic front man, but there was something missing. Totally. Yeah, I mean, like, again, as much as we wax poetic about the magic of this band, largely that magic was like systematically sort of dismantled.

It's a long time and a lot of people in and out of this band before we get to the next release. And I think because of that, people were pretty surprised that there even was another Guns and Roses album. We didn't talk about it, But at some point, Axel retained, he owned the rights to everything, the name, everything. So whatever he wanted to do as Guns and Roses, he's allowed to do because legally it's all owned by him. Again, there's speculation both ways about how this ended up happening, but that's not our place to talk about.

It just did. Chinese Democracy is a very interesting album. When the talk was that Guns and Roses is going to release a new album called Chinese Democracy, it was an out of. for so long after it was announced. And the joke was, they'll be democracy and shineable before there'll be a Chinese democracy. That was a joke because it took so long to come out.

So much lore around this is like so interesting to me. Like 11 years to talk about an album before you put it out. You know, that's, and it's not like it wasn't being worked on because like I think as early as 2000, AXL was playing songs for journalists off this album. So it just took forever. Yeah, so he started working on in 1997.

And there's like, I mean, the people that worked on this album, like, I don't know, it's just to me so interesting. But also I do remember when it came out, it was a joke. Like I remember there was many jokes around this album. And I think partially maybe to do with the title, I think was a low-hanging fruit around jokes. Music had vastly changed, you know, by the time this album comes out. What do you want to talk about with this album? This is an album that came out.

And when you're waiting 11 years for an album, there is no album that has ever been recorded that took 11 years that could come out and you could say, oh, it was well worth the wait. Because it doesn't matter. It didn't matter whether it's Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. or anything. And this isn't like, oh, they took a break. And while they're coming out with a new album, it's like, we've been hearing about the album for over a decade. So when it was released, I don't know what everybody is expecting, but I listened to it. There were a couple songs that stood out when I first heard it. And there was a song, you know, I think I heard IRS first, which I really liked, still liked. And then when the album came out, I kind of gave it a listen

and then kind of put it away. So I have recently, started playing Chinese democracy again, it's a good record. It's honestly, it is a good record. It's one of those things that now that we go back and look at it with, you know, not judging it because we're waiting for Use Your Illusion 1 or 2

or Appetite, and so it wasn't those. I kind of think that this record should have came out and been called Axel Rose. I think it would have done much better because this is an Axel Rose album. Shackler's revenge starts off with a little bit of more of like an electronic feel to it.

And that's what he was doing. Like now Guns and Roses are touring. They had a DJ in the band and everything was just was a little bit better. Better was a song that from the very first time I heard it, you know? I love Better. Better's my favorite song on this album. Better is like, I don't know. When I hear Guns and Roses, I see Axel on stage and he has more swagger than anybody.

When he's on stage, he owns that stage. Street of Dreams is another thing with Axel doing all sorts of different stuff. There was a time is big, huge song with a big huge orchestra that isn't a guns and roses hard rock song. It's just a big song that probably cost a lot of money, but then it turns into a big rock and roll song. I never knew how to pronounce the title of the other song. Riyadh and the Bedouins. What is that? Riyadh is a Moroccan architect.

sure, but I believe it's also a city. Bedouins are a people. And I think In is like Guns and Roses, so it's like an and. It kind of reminds me of Led Zeppelin immigrants song, a little bit like the I. Yeah. I don't think it's Guns and Roses or Axel trying to do an immigrant song style. But to me, it just really reminds me that song from Led Zeppelin, which is one of the better Led Zeppelin songs. I think a good name for this album, have been Axel interprets rock music. Because you can see a world where this album took so long because rock changed so much during this period of time.

I mean, new metal happens. And new metal, no one can say it's not an influence on this album. I mean, this album has so much new metal feel and tone. And I think, you know, I can see Axel just sitting there and being like inspired and taking in what's happening and wanting to incorporate it into this album. And so it's taking longer and longer as rock is changing. And he did a good job.

Well, other than that horrible idea of a title of an album is just terrible. I don't see the new metal influences as much as I might see electronica influence. Like what new metal songs and bands are you thinking? Honestly, it's just like the vibe. I feel like the crunchiness of the guitar to me, feels like not as like, it's definitely no longer Rolling Stones guitar. Like to me, that's like very like tail end of grunge where it becomes sort of like bush and stuff like that and going into like even a limp biscuit or whatever.

I do think that guitar tone and that sort of like thick crunchiness is is being reflected here. I definitely agree with you that one of the reasons it took so long, I mean, probably it took so long because maybe the record was done, but it didn't say. sound current. So they wanted it to sound like new stuff. Totally. Who knows? I think that sounds pretty accurate. Of course, I don't know either. Why don't we hear better? That's a good song. Yeah, it's a good song. This is better. That was better. Fucking a slapper. It is. Agree of me. When you go back and listen to this album, it's a good album. And I hope this

doesn't sound like I'm just sitting here kissing Guns and Rose's ass because I really have no reason that I would or would not. Sure. I mean, this is one of the rare Guns and Rose's albums that when it came out, the critics were nicer about it than the people, maybe, because they actually did like it. This album cost

over reportedly $13 million. It was maybe one of the most expensive rock albums ever produced. I don't even think maybe Axel wanted to put it out in 2008, but it seems like it was starting

to leak and Gaffin had pulled its funding and it was just kind of like it had to come out. They released it via an exclusive retail deal with Best Buy, which was pretty dicey to do if you had already spent $13 million on your album. But, you know, it debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and did go platinum. Again, to your point, it's a good album. Is it an album that sounds worse? worth $13 million in 11 years of time? I don't think so.

It is an album that, like, we both agreed. You go back and you put it on and you're like, oh, my God. Like, I forgot that, you know, that IRS is a really cool song, you know? You forget that stuff. Am I right or wrong or is this around the time that Axel Rose got Corn Rose and started wearing hockey jerseys? I don't comment about any of that stuff. I do not know.

You don't remember? There's no comment. I was just curious around the park. Oh, no, no. I remember when he did it. I don't know. I remember it. I remember seeing that.

Yeah. I think it was maybe a little bit after this. I'm just saying a lot had changed. Axles visually had changed. The time had changed. The sound had started to change. Producer Dylan has gathered a couple of fun facts for me before I move on from this record.

Shaquille O'Neill did drop by during a rehearsal session to record a freestyle rap and also to do the worm. And you can hear that in a lot of the songs. Yeah. I think it was a large influence, huge influence on this, was Chikula O'Neal doing the worm. Apparently, he was at the same recording complex because he was going to do a Taco Bell commercial.

Shout out Taco Bell. Anyways, he said I saw Guns N' Roses listed on the bulletin board in the lobby of the studio, so I stuck my head to check it out. They asked me to join them, so I started styling over that track. Would love to hear that wherever it's buried. Oh, we didn't even talk about Buckethead, but Buckethead plays on this album. he did become the guitarist of Guns and Roses for some time.

A very interesting gimmick. Buckethead as a person or just putting him in the band? Because he's by all accounts a pretty incredible guitar player, right? Without a doubt, bucket head, with a KFC bucket on his head. Well, wait until you hear this part, Buckethead, KFC bucket. Again, shout out KFC. We'd love to do some advertisements for you as well. He requested that a special chicken coop be built for him

in the studio. And they did not say no. They said, yes, because he insisted that he had been raised by chickens. Now, Ricky, I want you to put your mind and wrap it around a man insisting that he'd been raised by chickens. And I guess they were mean to him or abused him or something because how dare you insult your parents by putting a KFC. bucket on your head.

There's nothing I can say to that. You found me in the rare instance that I'm actually at a loss for words. I've rendered you speechless. So Buckethead said no one was allowed to go in there because you could not destroy the spirit and carmic vibe of the coop.

Or maybe it smelled like chicken shit nobody wanted to go in there anyway. That's another great interpretation of it. Axel visited a psychic during these recording sessions sometime in the 11 years to cleanse himself of any... And before.

Oh, that he was always going to psychics to cleanse himself of the negative energy. He had told me that there was a time that he had seen like a sort of negative orbs that surrounded people. Right, right. So you said that earlier, that's true.

So yes, he tried... He went to Sedona, Arizona. Sharon Maynard, cleanse the vibes. We all do need to vibe cleanse now and again. I do. But, yes, people liked this album. I mean, David Frick gave it four out of five stars. Said it was good. Super shred guitars. See what I was saying? But then also

orchestral fanfares, hip-op electronics, metallic tabernacle choirs. The Guardian gave it three out of five. Robert Criscao said Axel Rose succeeds on his own totally irrelevant terms, which I think he was trying to be nice. He said, since Axel is no longer capable of leading young white males astray, this effort isn't just pleasurable artistically, it's touching on a human level. You don't have to react to that. Ricky's inside how you don't want to. And Anne Powers, you know, spoke well of it. It's a good, it's a great album.

And producer Dylan makes it, does say it. That is a good point. I mean, it's interesting the kind of art you make when you're no longer at the peak of your power over the attention of an audience. which I don't think we can argue that that's not true. It's also interesting the type of materials that you make when you really don't have anybody to run it by. When you've got artistic freedom to pretty much do what you wanted. I mean, I'm sure he didn't go to Buckethead and say, you know,

is this, you know, do you like what I'm going to do with Madagascar? Do you think he went to the chickens, though? Did he play it for the chickens? I don't know. I think the chickens, I can hear the chickens when I hear Madagascar. I can feel the chickens. and I get that fine. You can feel their psychic energy.

Madagascar, I would say, is the least Guns and Roses sounding song. Yeah, I agree with you. What do you think it sounds more like than, like, what do you think it sounds like if it doesn't sound like Guns and Roses? I don't know. I don't know. It just doesn't sound. And that's not necessarily bad. I think if a band keeps on putting out the same material over and over again, it's stagnant.

I don't want to hear a band keep on putting out the same stuff. I like it when my band, my favorite band, Guns and Roses puts out songs that are different from it. I mean, there are not any guns and roses songs that I can hear and say, oh, my God, it sounds just like, you know, jungle. It sounds just like sweet child of mine. I mean, look at November rain estranged. Those songs, and don't cry, sound nothing alike. And those are three ballads, you know, on sort of the same album collections. And, you know, I like it when a band keeps on expanding.

You like the old raw stuff, but to show that they can grow, I really don't want to use the word more mature, but more. mature and bringing in orchestras and bringing in a bigger sound and doing things that are a little different. You want your band to expand and do something different. I think a problem with a lot of the bands from that 80s, 90s era is the reason they didn't keep on getting big is they just kept on putting out the same album over and over and over again with the same, you know, silly lyrics and it just never changed. Totally. I think there's just something, to be said for Guns and Rose as being one of the last

of the behemoth rock bands before Grunge took over and those bands were behemoth in their own way and it was more self-effacing and how interesting it is that they're probably the last band that would be afforded this much money

and freedom this much past their prime. I don't think that that'll ever happen again. That $13 million plus not having the pressure of the relevance of before yielded this thing. And I don't know that that happens anymore. No one's going to give you $13 million, 10 years past the last time you put out a good album. The interesting thing is that when Guns & Roses was playing without Slash or Duff, I went to the tour. Yeah. And then when

Slash and Duff were back in the band, I went to the shows again. The crowds were much, much bigger. It was ridiculous bigger. And there was it. difference. Like, you know, I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to go see guns and roses again because it's pretty much the same formula. You know, of course there are some pieces that are missing, but it's still guns and rose. I know when I go see guns and roses, even though everybody's in their 50s, you know, that Axel slash, Duff, Dizzy, it's going to be strong. I am so excited to see these shows. And everybody that's gone to these shows lately have been telling me that they are great. I have not heard a bad review yet.

You know who else is super excited? You. Well, definitely me. I will be wearing a top hat and you guys can all suck it because I believe that to be the right thing to do. But some of our mega fans that we have gathered to hear from to close out this episode. So let's hear from these G&R mega fans. If you're not a fan, Guns and Roses, I'm not really trying to talk to you. I'm not really trying to hang out with you or be around you.

You don't fucking get anything on this planet. A no bullshit band straight off the streets that you can put your money on and your faith in. And Axel especially was such a tortured soul as well. And you really get that from the lyrics. There is a direct line from Page and Plant to Tyler and Perry to David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen right to Axel and Slash.

They're more akin to that generation, Zepplin, Sabbath, ACDC, than their contemporary hair slash glam acts that they often get lumped into. A lot of people I thought, to about Guns and Roses are like, yeah, they rock, but Axel Rose is a prick man, and that is a surefire way to get my blood boiling. They're like, oh, Paradise City or Sweet Child of Mine, like, I love Guns and Rose's hair metal, but it wasn't fucking hair metal, man.

Like, those guys are not the same. Like, they are not the same. Like, that is the last rock and roll band that ever lived. That first time I listened to Apotite for Destruction, it was just like a fire was lit inside me and it's just never ever been extinguished. The spaghetti incident. People like talking shit on this album. It is one of the hardest punk rock albums I've ever heard.

And in my opinion, some of the best lyrical work ever, ever, especially on songs like Breakdown and Como, oh, it's poetry, it's pure poetry. It's just sad that the world kind of changed, like, all that grunge and alternative bullshit kind of like, man, it really just, like, it shifted everyone. into this new attitude that, oh, anyone can do this, but like, no, you can't fucking do it. Like, I'm sorry, not everyone can be a rock star. Like, your band probably fucking sucks. But you only have to do just a little delving into their history, and I've done a lot of delving,

trust me, to see that they're really such a Cinderella story of a rock band, you know. We're so lucky none of them actually died from choking on their own vomit, because any one of them could easily have done, and then we wouldn't have what we have now. I've seen Guns and Roses twice. Once in 2002 with Buckethead and Tommy Stinson and the fake lineup and once in 2016 on the reunion tour. And both times, Axel Rose absolutely blew away my expectations. They've got to be doing something right

because there continues to be new generations of gunners year after year. And every time I see a teenager in a G&R, I have to smile. And I wish that I was hearing an appetite for destruction for the first time again because nothing has come close to that feeling for me. As a wise man once said, in the Garden of Eden, suck on that. Well, Ricky, I feel really seen. That was actually just me doing a Irish accent.

I don't buy that for a second. You're right. I'm not very good at accents, to be it. Yeah, I mean, all great points that we've made. And I am fucking over the moon to see them live. To me, I still have contact with Slash and Duff. I just heard, you know, Slash just told me to text him before I get to the show, even though they didn't have backstage. I'm going to text him, and I'll see Bobby, see.

Dup. I hope I see Axel. I haven't seen them in many, many years. Can you text slash and tell them to look out for me with my top hat in the pit in Milwaukee? Okay. Look for the girl with the top hat in the pig. Okay, Ricky, thank you so much for joining me. You have been an iconic guest, literally incredible, exceeded everyone of my expectations. As a young headbangers ball fan, you know, this is probably the peak of me at podcasting and it's all downhill from here. But I really want to think. Thank you. Honestly, what a gift it was to talk to you about Guns and Roses. It's fun because we're both fans. It's fun because we're both mentally ill. Because we both should be on medication or might be. But we're talking about something that's fun to talk about, you know.

And it was a good time. Thank you. And I think it was a good time, too. Ricky, we close out this show all the time with one last song and it can be from any album. What's the last song you want to leave are Guns and Roses newly initiated and longtime fans with? I'm going to pick Garden of Eden because I think Garden of Eden is just a fun song. And it's short, which means we'll be done quick. We love a fun and short song here on this podcast.

Just kidding. We absolutely do not love fun and short songs. We love the longest possible things. Okay, come back next week for another episode in our rock block of bandsplanes. This is Garden of Eden. If you liked what you heard today, Subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplaine, only on Spotify. Our wonderful guest today was Ricky Rackman.

Follow him on Twitter at Ricky Rackman. Huge, huge thanks to the Guns and Roses mega fans you heard on this episode, John Hallett, Todd Burnt, Tim Corbin, and Sarah Snaz-Stanard. Bandsplane is a Spotify original show. This episode was produced by Sweet Child O Mine, producer Dylan, a.k.a. Dylan Tupper Rupert, and edited by Nico Paolela, with help from Casey Simonson and Tari Miller. Executive producers for Bansblane are Gina Delvac and me, Yossi Salick. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer

Clavin and graciously recorded by Carlos Delagarza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to Felipe Guillermo, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Meyerson, Jessica Hopper and my slash top hat that I got at the costume shop in Chicago. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bansplain, only on Spotify. Should I turn my recorder off now?