by Mick Wall
‘It was so amazing they decided to go rock’n’roll rather than go classical or whatever. And they blended all these different styles – amazing! And “Benny and the Jets”, with the ambience and the sound and the way it’s recorded, made me want the stage. That’s the song that made me want the stage, cos it made me think about a concert and being on a stage and the way it would sound in a room … Plus, it just reminded me of the glam scene that was going on then around America and the clubs that I would read about in the old Creem magazine … Elton John’s singing is amazing and that piano solo can’t be touched. It’s an amazing record. Then when I got the piano book and was trying to learn the song, I discovered the guy’s playing ten fingers of the weirdest chords in the world, you know? It’s like, what made him think to hit this combination of five notes that makes the initial bomp-bomp-bomp? It’s not just, like, a major note, it’s all these weird combinations. He just pulls stuff off that nobody else does.’
Along with Billy Joel, he said, Elton John was the major influence on his own songwriting style. ‘I’ve played piano in a style influenced by Elton John and Billy Joel. But it’s minimalistic [sic]. I know what I can and what I can’t do, so I aim it real carefully. But it’s basically influenced off Elton John’s attack – and his singing. If you want to learn how to sing all different styles, try singing like Elton John – anything from the blues on. It amazes me that radio in America doesn’t give Elton John the space that they give Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and the Stones. You know, you don’t have the Elton John Hour, yet you can have 400,000 people going to Central Park to see Elton John, and you’re gonna have sold-out tours all over the country. I don’t understand it … I haven’t met a group of people that after you’ve played everything all night and you put on an Elton John record, that don’t go, “Cool …” and kick back, and like it that the album’s on. Any of the first seven or eight albums, you put one of those on and everyone just relaxes … It makes you feel good cos of the vibrations in the styles of the songs, the styles of writing. And the way they take you so many different places on, like, one album.’
Axl’s third and last choice of track that most influenced him from his childhood was the most surprising: ‘I’m Not in Love’, a Number 1 single in 1974, in both Britain and America, for 10cc. ‘For me,’ he said, ‘that song goes back and forth along with “Layla” by Derek and the Dominoes and Metallica’s “Fade to Black”. As weird a cross as it may seem, those three songs are my favourite songs of all time. But we were talking about when I was young. “Layla” I didn’t get into till I was a bit older.’
The fascination for 10cc had begun, he said, at a drugstore he used to stop in on his way to piano lessons as a teenager. ‘It was very nice and conservative but had this liquor section that you weren’t allowed into unless you were twenty-one – they had magazines like Playboy and stuff like that. So I would go there early and I’d hang out for hours in this drugstore. Like, steal a look at these magazines. I was really into Oui magazine. The photography was amazing. And I’m just discovering girls and stuff like that and I’m, like, going with the girls in my school and stuff, in my class. But they’re boring. But in these magazines, like, these are women and they’re great, you know? All right!
‘Well, “I’m Not in Love” was always on in this place. And the production is so amazing. It’s this guy who is in love, but yeah, doesn’t want to be in love, or whatever. Doesn’t want to deal with it. He’s contradicting himself all the way through the record. Plus, it’s, like, the coolest attitude. It’s, like …’ He began to sing softly: ‘I keep your picture … on the wall … It hides a nasty stain … that’s lying there …’ He stopped, came back down again. ‘That’s so, like, nonchalant, so cool. But the production and the song has always stuck. Whenever I’m having a heavy emotional situation, or meeting someone, it’s like, I’ll get in the car and I’ll just turn on the ignition and that song will always be on the radio! I mean, that song messes with my life, man.’
We settled back again, listening to the tape Axl had been playing in the background while we talked. The volume was low, I couldn’t make out who it was, but I recognised the buzz. ‘Cheap Trick,’ Axl said. ‘In Colour, featuring Rick “The Dick” Nielsen. What a fucking asshole! I love Cheap Trick, too. It’s kinda funny now, cos I listen to it and just laugh at him.’
Why? What had happened?
‘There was a thing in Rolling Stone where he said he fucking decked Slash! He didn’t deck Slash! Do you think anyone is gonna fucking deck Slash when Doug Goldstein is standing right there between them? It’s not gonna happen.’
It was like we were back to Vince Neil again. Why did everyone want to tell the world they’d punched one of Guns N’ Roses?
‘Because Guns N’ Roses has this reputation for being bad, you know, the new bad boys in town, and so, like, hey, man, it perpetuates down to fucking Rick Nielsen wanting to get back in good with the youth market by claiming he’s badder than Guns N’ Roses, you know? If he had any real balls, he’d apologise to Slash in the press. Not in person, he can come up to me and say he’s sorry all he wants, it doesn’t mean shit till he says it in the press.
‘Now, Bowie’s a different situation, because Bowie hasn’t talked to the press about our bust-up. So Bowie can apologise to me, and then when they see photos of me and him together they’ll go, “Fuck, we tried to start a war and look at these guys, they’re hangin’ out!” Ha! That’s cool, you know? Like Jagger was supposed to have told me off and the next thing you know I’m onstage singing with him – that fucked with a lot of ’em. I mean, it’s either somebody kicked our ass or it’s how some chick is scared I’m gonna come kill her cat. I mean, I could make a joke about it, but …’
I didn’t want to lose the good feeling we’d established so I pushed him for some funny stories about other old rock stars he’d met. Keith Richards?
‘I asked him about Billy Idol ripping the idea off for the Rebel Yell album off him, kinda joking. And he goes’ – adopts the tie-dyed Cockney again – “Stole it off my fucking night-table, he did!” I thought that was great.’
Unprompted this time he went into a story about meeting John Entwistle of The Who. ‘I said I’d always wondered about these rumours about “Baba O’Riley”, you know. Like for the keyboard parts they went and got brainwaves and then programmed them through a computer, you know? So I asked Entwistle, and Entwistle’s annihilated out of his mind, right? He’s in his own little world, and he looks at me and goes, “Brainwaves? What fucking brainwaves? Townshend’s got no fucking brainwaves!”’ He sniggered. ‘Then I asked him about the time he was supposed to have shot up all his gold records, and he said, “I’ll let you in on a secret, mate. Those were all Connie Francis’s gold records. I fucking stole ’em!” I said, “Wow, okay, I’ve had enough of this guy. I can’t deal with him any more!” He was just fucking lit and ready to go …’
It was now near dawn. Nearly time to leave, surely. As a parting shot I told Axl how – this spat with Vince Neil notwithstanding – relaxed he seemed right now, not a bit like his image. ‘I’m happy to kick back tonight and sit around jawing,’ he said, ‘because today everything is under control. Tomorrow – wait and see – it’s fucking over! Something will come up.’
He went on: ‘There’s only one thing left, and that’s this damn album, man. That’s it. I mean, we may do another record but it’s like, Guns N’ Roses doesn’t fully function, nothing ever really happens, to its utmost potential, unless it’s a kamikaze run. Unless it’s like, this is it, man! Like, fuck it, let’s go down in fucking flames with this motherfucker! That’s how we are about the record, everybody’s like, we’re just gonna do this son of a bitch …’
And then what? What was the grand plan after that?
‘The main thing about the next record is this is our dream, to get these songs out there into the public. Then once we get out there we’ll fight for them with the business side and stuff. But at this point that’s not what�
��s important. What’s important is the recording of the songs. If the business comes down really hard on us in a weird way, then we’ll make our choices – do we wanna deal with this, or do we not wanna fucking deal with this?
‘The record will sell a certain amount of copies the minute it comes out anyway, and we could live off that for the rest of our lives and record our records on small independent labels, it doesn’t matter. I mean, that’s not in the plans, but, ultimately, it just doesn’t matter, you know? It’s all down to what we want to deal with. Do we wanna be giving everything that we feel we have inside of ourselves, to do the shows, to our top potential? Yes, we do. But I don’t choreograph things. I don’t know when I’m gonna slam down on my knees or whatever. It’s like, you have to ask yourself, do I wanna give all that, and have someone fucking spitting in my face? Does it mean that much to me? No! I dig the songs. If you don’t want them, fine. I don’t have to give them to you.’
He so often threatened to walk away from Guns N’ Roses, though, it was becoming like the boy who cried wolf. Could he ever really leave all this behind?
‘If I wanted to badly enough, sure. This is all right, in bits and pieces, but whether it’ll take up all the chapters in the book of my life, I don’t know. I would like to record for a long time … I have to make this album. Then it doesn’t matter. This album is the album I’ve always been waiting on. Our second album is the album I’ve been waiting on since before we got signed. We were planning out the second album before we started work on the first one. But as much as it means to me, if it bombs, if that happens, yeah, I’m sure I’ll be bummed business-wise and let down or whatever, but at the same time it doesn’t matter. It’s like, I got it out there. That’s the artistic thing taken care of. Then I could walk away …’
What about the money, could he walk away from that?
‘I’d like to make the cash off the touring, and then I’d like to walk away knowing that I can support my kids, for whatever they want, for the rest of my life, you know? And that I can still donate to charities. I’d like to have that security. I’ve never known any security in my whole life. The financial aspect is just to get that security. If I have that in the bank I can live off the interest and still have money to spend on whatever – including, top of the list, the welfare of my own immediate and future family.’
As for the next album, he said, ‘I just hope the people are into it, you know? I think that the audience will have grown enough, though. It’s been three years – they’ve gone through three years of shit too, so hopefully they’ll be ready to relate to some new things. When you’re writing about real life, not fantasy, you have to take time to live your own life first and allow yourself to go through different phases. Now I think there’s enough different sides of Guns N’ Roses that when the album is finally released no one will know what to think, let alone us! Like, what are they trying’ to say? Sometimes even I don’t fucking know …’
9
THIS CLOSE TO HEAVEN
Tuesday, 17 September 1991. The clock was edging towards midnight in New York as Donald Trump sat in his limousine, accompanied by five young women, apparently models. He liked to travel in style although his business empire had just hit a bump in the road and he’d recently had to sell his 282-foot superyacht, the Trump Princess, to a member of the Saudi royal family, for a reported $110 million. Hearts bled for him. The limo was headed for Tower Records on the corner of East 4th and Broadway. Outside the store, lines had begun to form – but not to gawp at Trump. He, like all of the others who’d gathered, was there to take part in an American phenomenon: the simultaneous release of two studio albums by Guns N’ Roses. The Donald, as usual, was in the business of putting himself where it was at, and where it was at in America right then was buying the new records by Guns N’ Roses. If there was a single symbolic moment that illustrated best how far the band had come and how quickly, it was the shift in circumstances between the emergence of Appetite for Destruction – number 182 with an anchor on the Billboard chart in the week it came out – and Use Your Illusion, volumes I and II, which were not so much albums as a cultural phenomenon, one for the billionaires and future presidential candidates as well as the kids on the street.
On the opposite coast, Slash was dreaming of escape. What should have been a moment of triumph had been darkened by the preceding months. He had booked a safari holiday to Tanzania, leaving on 17 September from LAX. ‘On the way to the airport, I stopped by Tower Records at midnight, stopped by the back door to see people on the stroke of midnight file in to buy the record, just to witness the reality of where the band was at,’ he told the writer Jon Hotten in 2011. ‘Suddenly I was a member of a group that had become the very thing I was a fan of since I was fourteen or fifteen years old … We had become all of that and more. I was watching people buy the record through the two-way mirror that I myself had been arrested from for stealing cassettes years prior, so it was really a magic little moment. Then I took off and went to Africa and got away from it. I went out to the Masai Mara for a couple of weeks, and that’s about as far removed from rock star as you can get.’
When he returned from Africa, Use Your Illusion II had been purchased 770,000 times and stood at Number 1 on the Billboard Chart. Use Your Illusion I had sold 685,000 and occupied the Number 2 position. Guns N’ Roses were the biggest band in the world, standing on a summit that every kid in every band across the globe wanted to climb. ‘Answered prayers cause more tears than those that remain unanswered,’ Truman Capote had once said. Guns N’ Roses were about to find out why.
The simultaneous release of the Use Your Illusion albums was a moment – perhaps the moment – not just for Guns N’ Roses but for the Los Angeles scene of the 1980s and early 1990s. There was little to compare it to. Of the city’s most famous and significant rock’n’roll bands, Van Halen’s second album, Van Halen II, had been recorded and released within 14 months of their debut, peaked at Number 6 on the Billboard 100 and was followed a year later by Women and Children First. They would not register a Number 1 album until their seventh album, 5150, made it in 1986. Mötley Crüe, almost as influential, saw their second record, 1985’s Shout at the Devil, just about break the Billboard Top 20. Dr Feelgood, their fifth studio album, was their first Number 1 album, in the October of 1989, by which time Appetite for Destruction had already enjoyed a couple of stints at the summit. In a way, the entire LA rock scene seemed to have been building towards something like Use Your Illusion, a peak cultural event that encapsulated all of the hedonistic madness and lust for immortality that fuelled the era; an event that would stick it to all of the sniffy critics and guardians of taste who had dismissed this kind of rock as second-rate, the airport novel of the music world, simply by its sheer scale.
‘The momentum you try and create then creates its own momentum,’ says Alan Niven of the process. ‘If you’re Sisyphus and you’re rolling the rock up the side of the mountain it’s hard freaking work. Then you get the rock to the peak of the mountain and suddenly the damn thing rolls away from you. Your labour turns into lost control.’
Niven had been shrewd enough to realise how difficult following Appetite would be. The record was a phenomenon, an unrepeatable statement of intent. GN’R Lies had been a clever stopgap and had bought them some time, but now Niven had a laundry list of concerns and worries, at the top of which was the physical condition of his charges. The press had taken to calling them ‘the most dangerous band in the world’, a sobriquet that the fans lapped up but that Niven knew was close to becoming a terrible reality. ‘One of the things I’m proud of is that at least none of the band members died on my watch,’ he reflects. ‘That took a lot of effort. The bottom line is, you have to help them fight the battle, but only they can win the war …’
Slash was equally candid: ‘I went from a basic gypsy troubadour-type kid without anything through years of touring with Guns and all those experiences just basically living on the road and never really living anywhere else
, and then just sort of thrown into superstardom and not knowing how to handle that, and not knowing … not having any domestic skills for living at home. Just not knowing which way to turn and not necessarily knowing whether I was happy or not. And then pulling into a major drug depression and having to get it all back together to go in and make the record and being completely disjointed.’
The sense of dislocation was palpable, the dream so real … now Los Angeles was turning a new face towards them. ‘We all bought our houses and we all had our friends, and our friends would be saying, “You’re the glue that holds the band together,”’ said Duff McKagan. ‘And we’re all getting that. You don’t know what to think. It’s never happened to you before. The record finally broke in the States a year after everywhere else. All of a sudden we came back to LA, and everyone in the clubs, they’re all dressed like us. Imagine coming back and you’re a cultural phenomenon. People are dressing like you. Your music is being played on the radio all the time. You walk into a grocery store and you’re on the cover of Rolling Stone, and people see that magazine cover and they see you and they’re freaking out. This is in the grocery store I’ve always gone in …’
By the start of 1990 they were in varying states of physical and spiritual disrepair. Worst hit was Steven, whose sunny SoCal exterior hid anxiety and pain that even the industrial amounts of narcotics he was now taking could not quell. ‘He was suffering the worst and couldn’t pull it back,’ said Duff. ‘We had this unwritten sort of code – pull it back when it’s sensible, when it’s time to record or time to play a show. Pull it back. Check yourself. There had been a few times where we’d check each other. You know, “Hey, dude …” And that’s all you’d have to say. It was a sort of honour amongst thieves. But Steven wasn’t able to pull it back time and time again. Slash and I told him quite a few times, “Dude, it’s us talking to you. If we’re telling you you’re getting too fucked up, you’re getting too fucked up. Look who’s talking to you. We’re worried about you. We’re the guys that everyone else is worried about, and we’re worried about you.” It was really heartbreaking.’
