DISGRACELAND - Guns N’ Roses Pt. 1: Brawling with Bowie, Juvenile Delinquency, Dealing Dope and Death at Donington

Episode Date: March 10, 2020

Few hard rock bands lived the life portrayed in their songs as authentically as Guns N’ Roses. Singer Axl Rose was driven by deep-seated demons that drove the creation of his band’s legendary debut album, Appetite For Destruction, as well as his legendary bad behavior. His band was hardly any different. Nearly dysfunctional from drug use and excess, their record label feared they would all die before their first album was even released. This episode was originally published on March 10, 2020. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tana Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunts. I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.

And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace, Land is a production of Double Elvis. Stories about guns and roses are insane. They brawled with cops, dealt drugs, robbed unsubbed unsubbed. suspecting friends, fans, and one-night stands. Singer Axel Rose once slept with drummer Stephen Adler's girlfriend

and recorded her orgasm for an overdub in one of their songs. Their music and the attitude that propelled it was so authentic and so compelling that it instigated riots on multiple occasions. Guns and Roses was the real deal, violent, aggressive, of the street and for the street, a product of 1980s Los Angeles, as bipolar as G&R as notoriously short-tempered and moody frontman, hard and hedonistic all at once. And they made great music.

That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Castro McQueen's Last Call, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to roll with it by Steve Winwood. And why would I play you that specific slice of divorce rock cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on August 20th, 1988.

And that was the day Guns and Roses took the stage at Castle Donington, kicking off one of the deadliest days in rock and roll. On this, the first of a special two-part episode to commence season five, Castro McQueen's last call, Divorce Rock Cheese, Two Dead at Donnington and Guns and Roses. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. David Bowie simply did not care who her boyfriend was. He had to have her.

She was too much. Too much for the eyes. His mysteriously colored eyes. Too much for the camera, too much for the crew on the video set, and clearly too much for her infamous lover, who was off somewhere else at the moment. Most likely pissed off about something. Except for the fishnets, she was wearing all leather.

Leather bra, thong, knee-high boots, bondage, ball gag, handcuffs, total S&M, total vamp, chips, dips, chains, whips, you know, your basic heavy metal origin type of thing. And she was drawing all of the attention on set, even from her boyfriend's bandmates, who despite the fact that they were accompanied by their own smokeshow girlfriends, couldn't avoid seeking peaks at the video vamp whenever she walked by or took to her blog, under the lights. It was a hyper-sex-charged situation. Stephen Adler, drummer in the band, did his best to mask his lust, but there was almost no use of trying. However, this was the singers and best friends girl, but holy shit, she was something else. She was rock and roll royalty,

born to one half of the greatest harmony singing duo of all time, Don Everley of the Everly brothers. Aaron Everly, dark hair, big eyes, losing sex appeal, was in 1989, half of Rock's current royal couple, having hooked up with Axel Rose, singer of what was fast becoming the biggest band on the planet, the notorious Guns and Roses. But David Bowie, Mr. Wellhung and Snow White Tan, could care less. He had to have her, give her the royal wham-bam thank you ma'am treatment. And Bowie at the time was enjoying yet another career reinvention, this time as part of the of the fantastic and indefinedable rock group Tin Machine and making waves on stage and on MTV, and he was a chorus already by this point, legend. He was also a sort of uncle slash cool stepdad

to Guns and Rose's lead guitarist whose mom was a costume designer back in the 70s, and that's how she linked up with Bowie, designing his clothes during his manic Coke-fueled thin-white Duke days. Their working relationship eventually turned sexual, and Bowie took a shine to his costume, designer's young son, Saul Hudson, who would go on to become the one and only Slash. And as fate would have it, by the time the 80s was coming to a close, Slash was in a bigger band than Bowie at the time, which was how David Bowie found himself on set for the Guns and Riz's video shoot, checking in on Slash and seeing what he and his band were all about. And that was the motivation anyway. The leather eye candy ruling the day with her dime spot sexuality was the bonus. Sweet

child at whoever she was, it didn't matter. And it all happened so fast. One minute, Bowie was ogling Aaron. Next, her short-tempered boyfriend, Axel, was chasing him off the set and down Las Siena Boulevard, screaming, I'm going to kill you, Tin Man. Supposedly a punch was thrown and landed, but nobody really knows what happened, except for Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton. A few days after the dust-up, Mick and Eric cornered Axel backstage at a show, demanding to hear about the heavily rumored fight with their old mate David Bowie. Axel quickly told them the story and none of it seemed far-fetched. To Jagger and Clapton, Bowie had been moving in on their women for years,

and the two went on back and forth to each other about the time Bowie did this, the time Bowie did that. Axel wasn't even sure he was in the conversation anymore as he just stood there, listening to two of his childhood heroes go on in a spirited and highly comical conversation about the dude who was hitting on his girlfriend days earlier. A dude he still wanted to pummel into oblivion, a dude who also just happened to be none other than David fucking Bowie. Axel couldn't help but think,

what in hell had he done to end up with this insane life? Lafayette, Indiana, his hometown, was a long way off in the rearview mirror. Axel had to squint to see it with his mind's eye. But the trauma and the shame of those days were always burbling just beneath the surface. Surveying his daily routine, his habits, his interactions, any and all events that would provide an opportunity to explode. His emotions ran the show. Volatile artist doesn't even begin to explain the complexity and behavior of Axel Rose.

There were constant physical altercations with fans, friends, cops, neighbors, thin white dukes, and according to Aaron Everley, with her as well. Axel Rose from a young age had been scraping, clawing, fighting his way away from something, something welling up inside, something horrific and indescribable. It was a feeling he couldn't shake and a feeling that would drive him to create one of the most explosive albums of all time. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.

I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air. so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know,

but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Axel Rose felt at home on St. Mark's Place in Manhattan's East Village.

He could feel the inspiration that drove his heroes, the Ramones and the New York Dolls, to create some of the most dangerous music he'd ever heard. Music that to this day, February 2, 1988, still spoke to the angry young man in him. Squalor, crime and grime, punk rockers, skinheads, and hippies hanging on for dear life. Homeless people, drag queens, junkies, and tourists. St. Marks was a low-key bohemian bazaar of countercultures, clashing up against one another in the form of hard-defined books,

harder-to-find records, and imported porn. Studded belts, Dr. Martin's boots, leather for days, and other edgy, irreverent fashion items unavailable to the rest of the rest of the rest of, of America, like that Charlie Don't Surf t-shirt hanging in the window of trash in vaudeville, the one with Manson's 1969 mugshot big and intense and blazoned across the front. Axel thought it was killer. So he popped into the store and had the dude with the peroxide hair and Iggy Pop tattoo behind the counter grab it for him.

Axel wouldn't wear it on stage that night though. No, he had his thin Lizzy shirt teed up for that. The show, later that evening at the Ritz, a couple blocks north of St. Marks was being broadcast live on MTV, and Axel's band Guns and Roses was wired tight for maximum rock and roll. America took notice. When it aired, the show was watched by a relatively small audience of American teenagers, up way past their bedtimes. But the show was recorded on dusty VHS tapes and passed around high school corridors repeatedly over the coming months, until the ferocity of Guns Roses was recognized and salivated over on mass by high school kids everywhere.

Axel Rose came to life on screen as a real-life version of the Breakfast Club's Johnny Bender. He was the high school burnout who we all knew growing up, the one who doubled down on shop electives and wore ripped jeans out of necessity, not out of a sense of fashion. The guy who sported self-imposed cigarette burns on his muscular forearms and was rumored to have a bud man tattoo on his ass. This was the same dude who sat in the same guy. back at the classroom and simultaneously frightened and attracted the cheerleaders, those same cheerleaders who wouldn't give you the time of day. You saw this dude standing alone, quiet, at the edge of

the keg party up off of the train tracks. You left him alone because you heard the story about the time he busted the bottle of Mickelope across the jock with the big mouth's face, but inside you burned to know more about it. What made him tick? What made him so pissed? And what made him so fucking cool. Just like that kid, Axel was filled with contempt and untapped confidence. On stage, at the Ritz, he could feel his anger. It was something that had been building up inside since birth. It was coming out one way or another, likely through violent rage or petty crime or both. But rock and roll saves, otherwise Axel Rose would likely have been in jail on that night. Instead of blowing the minds of all in attendance as well as everyone watching at home on television and later

on Memorex. On stage, Axel looked a little older than the millions of high school burnouts who had soon come to worship him in his band. He was essentially the same angry young man he was growing up back in Lafayette, Indiana. But at the Ritz, it was clear that his time had come. And he'd arrived with a murderous row of bandmates.

Slash, the bronzed mad hatter Adonis, Izzy Stratlin with his Ronnie Wood via Johnny Thunder's Cool, Duff McCagan, 11 feet tall and oozing punk rock sex and excitement. And last, the wide-eyed ball of heavy metal puppy dog charisma, Stephen Adler. A band that you could immediately tell never had a fuck to give. And their live show was flawless. Even with the flaws, it was flawless. Songs like the Didley Ask Mr. Brownstone, the jet-fueled night train,

and the showstopper, Rocket Queen. Veer from Brilliant to Train wreck and back again, and the time it takes to suck a Marlboro Red, from First Flame down to toxic filter. G&R was from the street and for the street, and their lyrics represented a band living a hand-to-mouthed life of rock-and-roll debauchery and all too willing to let themselves die in the pursuit of it. You couldn't tell if they were creatively brave, risking it all in the service of making totally authentic rock and roll,

or if they were just too stupid to know any better. And through it all, the band was impossibly cool. every shot, every pose, every note, even the out of tune ones from Slash, every vocal, even the ones from Axel that run out of breath, all combined to somehow make them seem even cooler. And if you tried, you couldn't have created a more representative version of a rock and roll band than the one Axel Rose took to the stage on February 2nd, 1988. You wouldn't know it from watching them, but that band and the fuck-all attitude that propelled it, and more specifically its singer, have been a long time of the show.

the making. The crack from the back of the hand to his mouth came quick. It was unexpected and it stung like a motherfucker. Young Axel could taste his blood bubbling up from his lip. The damage could have been worse, but luckily Axel's dad didn't wear rings. Jewelry was too ostentatious for Pentecostal. So was Barry Manil in his number one hit, Mandy, which was what put Axel on the receiving end of another blow to the grill. Axel made the mistake of absentmindedly singing along to the song's chorus, with its lyrics that his dad somehow considered sexually suggestive. What? Axel seriously did not understand how he was related to this dude, his old man, this abusive, religious nutback. But that was because Axel wasn't actually related to him.

He just didn't know it yet. And then again, young Axel Rose didn't know much beyond Led Zeppelin Riffs, Elton John Melodies, and pent up rage for the man he thought was his father. Soon, young Axel would learn that his father was really his stepfather, and then he would be a that his real father was never to be brought up. It was a discovery that did little to endear Axel to his stepdad, and thus the violence continued. It wasn't reserved for just Axel either. His stepdad threw his fists around to keep Axel's mom in line as well.

Axel saw it all as a little boy and a teenager, the beatings and the mental anguish. And by the time he was 16, rock and roll was his only salvation. That and his new friend Izzy. And they vibed on the stone's ACDC Arrowsmith and the new onslaught of British punk bands invading America. The sex pistols, Generation X, and the clash. And they also bonded over beer, grass and pills.

And of course, the two of them, especially Axel, took every opportunity possible to fuck with the local authorities. Axel had a real hatred for the small-town conservative square-jawed local cops. To him, they were just an extension of the repression and bullshit rules imposed by his stepdad. except out on the street, he could talk back and let loose the inner rage he carried. An arrest for disturbing the peace was worth it. He could never let loose on his stepdad like he could on the cops. Plus, the cops would have to catch him first. So Axel mouted off to Lafayette's finest every chance he got,

and the cops, in turn, found a special kind of satisfaction whenever they could bust his ass and throw him in jail. And the result was a long string of juvenile arrests for petty crimes, public drunkenness, loitering, etc. Fucking with the cops was always fun, but music was becoming the main focus for Axel and for Izzy, and they put a little band together and played when they could. But mostly they studied and listened to the masters

whenever they got the chance. And their latest obsession was the soundtrack album for the film Over the Edge, an adolescent crime drama set in the fictional suburb of Granada, where the town's kids, bored and tired of being neglected by their parents and other authority figures finally rebel, setting about to destroy and terrorize their town through a fiery crime spree. He could relate to the teenage wasteland anti-authority vibe it portrayed.

Just like the kids in Granada, Axel felt neglected, ignored, and oppressed, and was compelled to vent his unhappiness through violence. Plus, the movie's soundtrack was the shit, cheap trick, Van Halen, the cars, Jimmy Hendricks, and even that ballot at the end, the one by Valerie Carter that played while the kids were bust off to Juvenile Hall. It was all right up Axel's alley. But Axel wouldn't be shipped off to Juvie. He'd soon be on a bus

headed for a different kind of jungle altogether. Los Angeles, California. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just

a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of

Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joe Perry needed to score. His band, Arrowsmith, was indeed one of the biggest in the world at the time. That didn't change anything. He was supposed to Supposedly sober, clean, off the junk, and that was true, sure, some of the time. But then there were the days where he just needed the familiarity of a comforting buzz. The heroin would take it all away. The pressure, the pain, the reality of dealing with his frenetic high-wire act of a frontman, Stephen Tyler, who had his own addiction dragons to slay.

In procuring the dope, discretion was of utmost importance. He couldn't go to any of the known dealers. Word might get out that he was off the wagon, back on the horse, back in the saddle, but not in a good way. So he decided to try out a new dealer he'd heard of, a guitarist in one of the newer Aerosmith clone bands playing down on the strip. In the mid-1980s, on the side of Los Angeles where a mile and a half stretch of Sunset Boulevard curls through West Hollywood and is known as the strip or sunset strip. A new kind of heavy metal was doing everything it could to put LA on the musical map.

Glam Metal Glam Metal took its musical cues from British glam rock. The sounds of bands like Sweet, Slade, T-Rex, and Moth the Hoople, traded on big crunchy guitar wrists, deep pocket grooves, sex-laden vocals, and hedonistic lyrics. British glam rock was a sophisticated

kind of cool that owed much to David Bowie and Queen, but its American offshoot, glam metal, kept one foot planted in the concrete jungles of Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper. while peacocking through the glit streets of Los Angeles. Fashion threaded the two styles together, but the US version was more masculine, tougher,

and a touch violent. LA glam bands like Motley crew would meld the androgyny of Mark Boland with the apocalyptic look of Mad Max, and the result was something wildly unique and somehow representative of the violence tearing through the streets of Los Angeles at the time. In 1985, violent crime in LA exploded to unprecedented levels due to the

the city's heavy trafficking of crack cocaine. You couldn't avoid the headlines if he tried, but glam metalheads did their best to ignore the harsh reality, enveloping their city by setting up their own bacchanalia on sunset, where every night they drank, drugged, and fucked away their worries to the sounds of the strip's hottest bands at the time. Wasp, rat, poison, and the aforementioned Motley crew. And there was no mistaking what LA's new music scene was all about,

debauchery. And their fans loved it. They showed up every night en masse packing clubs like the Starwood and the Whiskey-A-Gogo to get a glimpse of the hedonism up close and personal. Glam music was an escape from reality, unlike the music being made on the other end of town. Down in south-central Los Angeles, where the effects of the crack epidemic were being felt most severely. Rap music, up until that point, mostly in East Coast export,

was taking on a new identity, one that mirrored the harsh circumstances of Los Angeles' streets, life. It would come to be known as gangster rap. And where LA's glam rock ran from reality, LA's gangster rap ran straight toward it and smacked it in its mouth with the butt of a clock. The beats these LA rappers made were bigger than anything from the East Coast, and the lyrics they spat out were more direct, honest, and profane than anything anyone had heard in music before, anywhere. And Axel Rose loved it, all of it. Mid-80s L.A. music was as fraught with tension, and manic energy as he was.

It was bipolar. On one end, a low-down slap of unforgiving reality, a gut punch to authority. And on the other end, a high-flying endless party distraction via debauchery. He could appreciate the scene up on sunset, but in his heart he knew that there wasn't one band among them who could fuck with what he and his new bandmates

were about to bring to the party. Once Axel Rose arrived in Hollywood from Lafayette, Indiana, the transformation from small-town delinquent, to streetwalking Cheetah was quick. After a few false starts and along with his hometown bud Izzy, Axel formed Guns and Roses. Out on the streets and in the clubs, the band quickly developed a reputation

as the nastiest hard rock and roll band on the Sunset Strip. Let those other L.A. bands call themselves glam. Guns or G&R was going to stand out in the scene by separating themselves from the scene. They weren't glam, they were hard, and they weren't metal, they were rock, hard rock, a simple but novel distinction

to bring to the stage on the strip. An offstage, Axel, Izzy, and their new bandmaid, Slash, Duff, and Stephen lived the life authentically. They drank and drugged harder than Motley Crew. They fucked more strippers than poison. They got into it with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department whenever they could,

and were quick to brawl with posers, yuppie, squares, or whoever else got in their faces. They were the real deal. And their songs were great, totally authentic, and as such, the band's appeal was undeniable. They packed them in at the troubadour, the Starwood, and the whiskey. In 1986, G&R signed at Geffen Records, despite fears from executives, that the band would be dead before their record was even released. The thinking among Geffen employees was that if the drink and drugs didn't get them,

then they'd self-destruct via Axel's wild temper. The band was generally a mess. They were basically homeless. Guns and Roses squatted in the rehearsal space, a one-car-sized storage unit off of Sunset Boulevard behind the Sunset Grill. And they slept among their gear. There was no kitchen and no bathroom, but there was a constant party. When not rehearsing, which they did all the time,

they'd get high and get drunk on night train with the horrors from down on Hollywood Boulevard, and party with members of Faster Pussy Cat, Red Cross and the Loneous Monster, bands who like to mix it up together, but likely never shared space on anyone's mixtape. Soon, young kids from the Valley started showing up to listen to the band rehearse. Stephen and Slash would play nice for a bit and scam them out of their money under the guys of procuring drugs for them. Axel didn't have time for such pretenses. He would just roll them for whatever cash he could get. Young women, Valley girls and prostitutes alike were subjected to a get-naked-or-leave policy.

and the fucking would spill out into the alley and while little suburban valley boys realized their fantasies and got with the professionals from Hollywood and Vine, the guys in the band would empty their pants pockets for their cash and clean out the purses of the less suspecting prostitutes. Word on the strip spread.

There was a party going on, and it was wild. And Joe Perry couldn't believe his eyes. Broad daylight, fucking in the streets. He saw his man, short dude, greasy black hair, aviators, sitting on the hood of a car in the alley restringing his last Paul. To Joe, the kid reminded him of someone, himself, wired to the action surrounding him, but despite it all, in constant touch with his true love, his guitar. Joe approached. The kid looked up. He immediately recognized his guitar god hero. He also took note of the desperation in his

eyes, the Jones. Joe Perry started talking. If there was any doubt before of who he was, he was, it was immediately erased by his thick Boston accent. Joe asked the kid, I'm looking for something. Are you my man? The kid looked up from his guitar and deadpanned. Hey man, I'm just Izzy, but what can I get for you? On July 21st, 1987, Guns and Rose's debut album, Appetite for Destruction, was released. Their star started to slowly rise, but growing fame didn't curtail the band's behavior. It only intensified it. Newfound celebrity and notoriety started to create a sense of isolation for Axel Rose. Wherever he went, he believed most people were trying to keep him down,

just like the authority figures back home. Nowadays, the cops, the record label, the promoters, and increasingly the press were all trying to bleed out of him what it was that made him special in the first place, to get him to tone it down, to conform to their bullshit, to watch him bleed. It made no sense. His sense of self was what was propelling his artistry and thus his band's popularity and, of course, his behavior, but now he was supposed to, what, become someone else? Just because he now had a little fame? It was making him paranoid and causing very dramatic mood swings. The mood swings were always there, but when the band was starting out, they'd derail a rehearsal or a party, maybe a show, but as the band grew, so did the stakes.

The mood swings, at this stage of Axel's career, were much harder for everyone to deal with. In February 1988, just after their triumphant show at the Ritz in New York City, Guns and Roses embarked on their first headlining tour. It was a big deal, and Axel was a big mess. He was jankier than usual and emotionally volatile. On February 12th, for unspecified reasons, Axel blew off one of the band's first headlining shows in Phoenix, Arizona.

He went missing, and no one knew where he was. The second show in Phoenix the next night was also canceled. Axel's bandmates were incensed. You don't pull a no-show, not in the music business. It's a death sentence, a career killer, and they contemplated kicking Axel out of the band for the offense. And he had a little contrition and less than the way of an excuse. He simply didn't show, and he simply didn't care if they wanted to kick him out of the band.

Go ahead, he told him, who are you going to get to replace me? And he knew his place in the band was secure, but not without one major concession. Axel had to agree with his band, management, and label, to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Straightjacket, metal head brace, strapped down on a steel chair, some sort of post-World War II torture chamber type technique. When people think of Axel Rose being psychologically evaluated by a team of UCLA doctors, This is what they think of, because this is the imagery in the famous Guns and Rose's music video for Welcome to the Jungle. When the song breaks down toward the end, we see the serpentine singer strapped in, clockwork orangeed, opposite a wall of violent TV imagery.

He looks insane or at the very least is being treated as such. It's art imitating life, in a way. For Axel Rose, the real-life evaluation was much scarier. What he saw, the brief glimpse into his... past while being mentally poked and prodded by doctors, it was truly traumatic. And despite Axel's penchant to follow G.G. Allen's lead and the fuck authority, Axel knew the authority figures were finally on to something with the diagnosis, bipolar, whatever that even was. It sure explained a lot. The mood swings, the violence, the intense irritability. At least now, there was some

sort of reason and something to treat, or at the very least, unpack, to rationalize things. And it was agreed by everyone, Axel would seek treatment and he'd be allowed back in the band. But the mood swings didn't just all of a sudden stop. Axel and the rest of the Guns and Rose's camp might have had a loose explanation for what their volatile singer felt inside, but it didn't just make the rage go away. And on August 20th, 1988, Axel Rose was thinking of none of this as he took the stage. Castle Donington, England, Monsters of Rock Festival. On the bill, Headliners Iron Maiden, direct support, kiss.

Below them, solo David Lee Roth and Megadeth. On the undercard, Guns and Roses and Openers, Halloween. Aside from Halloween, the other acts were well-established favorites. But Guns and Roses were fresh meat, the new sensation. Their single, Sweet Child and Mine released a month earlier was everywhere. a monster hit, and as such, G&R were outperforming their positioning on the bottom of the bill. Given their explosion of popularity at the time and the excitement surrounding their unique brand of American hard rock, Guns and Roses could very well have headlined monsters of rock and nobody would have gone home upset.

Axel looked out into the crowd, an ocean of leather, long hair and denim, 110,000 strong. It had been raining for a week, and the festival grounds were much. Muddy, messy, kind of like his band. The sky was dark, moody, just like him. The crowd was pitched with excitement, ready to embrace him, but also ready to bite back. A lot like those Axel loved and feared at the same time. Those closest to him, don't get too close, don't get too close.

Axel could feel it, the whole band could. This was a different type of crowd, a different type of vibe than anything they'd encountered before. And there were homemade Guns and Roses banners rising up from the crowd. The chants started burbling up from the back, thunder in the distance. Random projectiles were being hurled around from impatient fans. A squawk of feedback from Slash's Les Paul as he checked his amp. Two quick hits on the snare from Stephen as he took his seat. The chant grew louder.

Axel from behind the drum kit, nearly backstage, looked over at Izzy, already on the stage, standing in front of his amp, facing Axel avoiding eye contact, dealing with the tension, the anticipation in his own way. His guitarist slung over him, lighting a cigarette. And to his right, bassist Duff McCagan, all 22 feet of him, standing straight, facing the crowd. His base slung low, nearly it seemed, to his ankles, ready to take the storm head on. Axel looked Stephen in the eye. It was time. Stephen knew what to do. He went at his tombs with a fury. It was a hiccup, a signal to the crowd. Shit was about to go off, but not quite yet. The crowd nearly lost it at the first hint to real music from the stage, and they could see the band everyone but Axel, who was mostly hidden behind

the kit. And they screamed and they chanted. Izzy rolled the volume knob on his less paul to ten, gave his strings a quick swap to test his weapon and turned and nodded to Duff, who began beating his bass with the opening downstroped line for It's So Easy. With this, the crowd began screaming even louder. The drums and both guitars clanged down on the Duff's bass line. Stephen picked up with the rolling snare, building the tension. The intro swelled. The band hammered down into the song's opening riff, and Axel sprinted out from backstage with Mike in hand.

And the crowd lost its collective shit. The crowd saw nothing. They were blind with excitement. From the stage, the audience looked so big and so energized that it seemed like it was all one giant mass of humanity. It surged as one, a big, scary lurch. All of the band members took notice, and this wasn't normal. There was no crowd organization, no seating, barely any effective security holding the crowd in place.

The band hit the chorus, another giant surge. Bottles were now raining down onto the crowd in the stage. Big 32-ounce beer bottles that were purchased, empty, and then pissed into by the crowd to avoid the bathroom lines. The little piss bombs exploded onto the stage. Slash exploded into the solo. The song soon rapped. The band looked at each other with trepidation. Something clearly wasn't right. They eased into their next song, hesitant, instinctively afraid of what might happen, of what this crowd, this giant unhinged, unsecured, manic crowd that was unlike anything any of them had ever seen before might do. Their hesitancy didn't matter. Seconds into the next song, the crowd went apeshit. It lurched forward again in one giant wave, and then a hole in the middle of the middle of the,

the crowd opened up. Within seconds, bodies were sucked into an undertow of humanity. A massive mosh pit began. Most in the audience were powerless to the will of the collective crowd. It moved as one. Fans' feet were lifted up off the ground and their bodies swept up on top of the crowd where they were passed over and over again, until they'd eventually land back on their feet in an entirely different part of the festival grounds. The violent collective movement of the audience was so intense that Izzy stopped playing. The rest of the band quickly followed Sue. Axel tried his best from the front of the stage to chill the crowd out. Bodies began being pulled out of the muddy melee, injured in need of medical attention but alive. Order had seemed had been restored. The band

kicked back into their set with Paradise City, and then shit got real. Ultra violent, relentless, tens of thousands of people worked into a fit, slamming wildly into each other to the sound. of what was now clearly the most dangerous band on the planet. In front of them, off of the center of the stage, the crowd collapsed into itself. 30 to 50 people sank down onto and into the muddy ground, and when they did, a wave of more fans washed over them. Most tripped, some fell, swarms of bodies passed overhead,

trampling others under their feet. The crowd continued to sway uncontrollably as one, and with a single false move it seemed to the band that it could collapse in on itself again at any moment. or perhaps even overtake the stage. And the band was frightened. They tried cooling things down with a new acoustic number, patience, and then gave it one more shot with sweet child of mine.

But it was no use. The crowd was too intense, too terrifying. After the tune, the band bailed. Axel's temper once again got the better of him, and he spad into the mic before leaving the stage. Have a great fucking day and try not to fucking kill yourselves. Little did he know, two of his sons. fans in the crowd were already dead, stomped to death during his band's short set.

Both bodies were so mangled they needed to be identified by the tattoos on their arms. When the band learned of the deaths, they were devastated, shocked, and saddened. When they learned that the press was blaming the band for the deaths, they were pissed. The newspapers and the magazines neglected to report that Guns and Roses had stopped the show multiple times, or that they had cut their short set due to the violence. And the press's categorization of the event of the dead kids at the concert, that it was all somehow the fault of the dangerous rockers from hedonistic Los Angeles, was total bullshit.

The band knew it, and the press, if they were being honest with themselves, knew it too. But the truth doesn't necessarily sell. And so began Axel Rose's long-term war with the media. It seemed to him that the press had no appetite for the truth. truth, only an appetite for his personal destruction. It was a complete disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan. Discraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events.

Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelandPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at DisgracelandPod. Rockerola. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in.

Do that. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the fourth. 14th season of Family Secrets.

He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.