Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota

by Chuck Klosterman

  The early moments (minutes?) of “November Rain” are in a concert hall, but the sequence is obviously not from an actual Guns N’ Roses tour. They are performing with a symphony, and Rose is at the piano doing his best Elton John impersonation. This setting is supposed to make concrete the Homeric nature of this endeavor, but it was a bad decision; critics who had already begun criticizing GNR for being a bloated ’80s dinosaur ripped this video to shreds. There is one especially silly silhouette of Duff McKagan holding his arms in the air in a Jesus Christ pose. “November Rain” is probably the most unpunk video ever made.

  Things improve when we are transported to a country church, just in time for the Wedding of the Roses. Stephanie is the hottest bride in rock history, and Slash is the shaggy best man. To be honest, very little happens in this video, especially when you consider it lasts for over nine minutes. One scene seems to suggest a bachelor party, but Seymour is in attendance. Several shots are so common that they could almost be real footage from an actual celebrity wedding (and since Rose and Seymour broke up before they got hitched, this video effectively acts as their faux wedding album). For casual fans, the most memorable scene is probably the extended guitar solo, when Slash stomps outside after the exchange of the rings.

  The turning point in “November Rain” is when the wedding reception is interrupted by the kind of downpour that only happens in movies. Everyone runs for cover, and some idiot inexplicably dives into the wedding cake. The music become somber, and suddenly Seymour is dead. The wedding has become a funeral, and it closes with Axl crying at the foot of her grave.

  Thus, we are left with the central question of the Use Your Illusion video trilogy: “How did Stephanie die?” The intensity of speculation wasn’t quite on par with “Who shot J. R.?,” but people like me were interested. The conventional wisdom was that Axl would be this story’s version of Kristin Shepard. There is a brief shot in “November Rain” were Axl is walking the streets alone, and he passes a sign that reads GUNS. The double entendre is rather obvious, but the narrative hint is more important: Perhaps Rose shot his wife (and got away with it). Back in “Don’t Cry,” Seymour has a scene with a gun in her hand, so maybe she killed herself accidentally during a struggle with Axl. Or did she simply commit suicide? These were the questions that we expected to be explained by the video for “Estranged.” All the weirdness in “Don’t Cry” and all the melodrama of “November Rain” would suddenly make sense, like the nifty deus ex machina conclusion to The Purloined Letter.

  This, of course, never happened. We ended up feeling more like Joseph K in Franz Kafka’s The Trial (or maybe it was more like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix). The only thing we learned was that you should never cast your girlfriend in a long-term video project.

  Back when this little concept was cooked up, Rose clearly assumed he and Stephanie Seymour were going to be together forever. When their relationship spontaneously combusted soon after “November Rain,” the concept was essentially trashed beyond recognition, even though the band would never admit it. This was not like a soap opera, where they could just find a new girl and have a narrator say, “The role of Axl’s rock bitch is now being portrayed by Nastasha Henstridge.” The charm to this story was that everyone knew Rose and Seymour were a real couple, and she wasn’t so much a character as she was a metaphor, although I don’t know what for (maybe that’s what the original plan for “Estranged” would have pointed out).

  Instead, we were delivered a consciously weird, horrifically expensive video that tries to write around the fact that Seymour was out of the picture. Her absence became the proverbial “elephant in the corner,” particularly when Rose (and director Morahan) needed to make unavoidable references back to the first two vids.

  “Estranged” begins with the dictionary definition of the track’s title, which is too small (and too long) to read on a TV screen. The song itself is pretty good, but the opening seconds are very overwrought; Axl’s battered pleas are placed against a police raid of Rose’s palatial estate while the singer sleeps in a cubbyhole. At first, we all thought this was going to lead to the arrest of Rose for his wife’s murder (and maybe it was, in the original script). Instead, we cut to performance footage from a massive L.A. concert venue. Rose wears a Charles Manson T-shirt, which nicely coincided with his most recent controversy (in the fall of 1993, GNR released the covers album The Spaghetti Incident?, which included Rose’s unlisted version of the Manson-penned folk song “Look At Your Game, Girl”).

  There are a few clever notions in “Estranged” (Slash wears a T. Rex shirt, publicly crediting the original top-hat top cat), but it’s mostly forced and uneven. Rose again plays the multiple personality card, and water permeates everything (even some of the camera shots have the wavy, distorted look of liquid). Sunset Strip becomes a river filled with computerized dolphins. Slash floats down the Strip like a phantom, performing his guitar solo in front of the Rainbow and the Roxy. No one even notices him; he is now a stranger in his homeland. Guns N’ Roses has become so internationally famous that they’re no longer welcome in their jungle.

  In perhaps the most blatant abuse of stardom ever attempted in a rock video, the turning point of “Estranged” takes place on a rented ocean liner. Axl leaps off the mammoth ship and thrashes in the rough sea. Gilby Clarke tries to rescue him in a rowboat (apparently, Clarke was only added to the GNR lineup to rescue Rose from sea-faring disasters). Clarke fails. Axl is going to die … until he is saved by dolphins.

  I find it necessary to admit that long before this video was ever conceived I had a substantial prejudice against dolphins. They are my least favorite member of the animal kingdom. Everyone seems to think dolphins are cute and “intelligent,” but they’re best described as ugly and impractical. I don’t want to come across as insensitive, but show me a person whose intelligence equates to that of a dolphin and I will show you a fucking retard. In my opinion, they are the most overrated mammals on the planet. Thus, I hated the conclusion of this video with a passion that I usually reserve for highway patrolmen, inner-city panhandlers, and the WNBA. It was both senseless and annoying, and—quite frankly—pretty unoriginal. The only part that was interesting is the fact that Slash makes his guitar sound a little like the squeaks of a dolphin, a connection no one noticed when we first played Use Your Illusion II. Apparently, Rose had the vision for this video years before it was ever made.

  “Estranged” concludes with Axl’s Converse shoe coming to rest on the ocean floor and Rose sitting with a dolphin, grinning into the camera like Norman Bates at the end of Psycho. I never understood how this was supposed to be insightful (or cool, or funny, or even interesting). It basically reminded me that Axl Rose only seemed brilliant as long as none of us knew what he was trying to do. As soon as we got the idea, it was just another stupid video.

  November 15, 1992

  I get drunk and go to a hockey game.

  As I write this, I am taking shots of some really horrific Durango tequila. It comes in a plastic bottle, and it costs $7.59 a liter. I am cutting it with Mountain Dew, and I am drinking each shot over my kitchen sink, just in case I vomit. And I realize that I will have to write the rest of this chapter tomorrow, when I’m not fucked up.

  I hate the fact that heavy metal is a big part of the reason why I behave like this. And I especially hate the fact that when I’m not drunk, I’ll never be able to explain why this is so bad.

  Am I blaming Trixter for my stupidity? Am I pointing an accusing finger at Mark Slaughter? Nay (or—more accurately—no). But I am totally wasted, and I’m alone in my apartment, and I’m stupid. And I love it. And hard rock is part of the reason why I love it. And even though I feel great right now, I know I should hate it. And when I try to expand on these thoughts tomorrow, I will not remember why. At best, I will be slightly impressed by how accurately I type when I’m drunk.

  (the next day)

  Well, it turns out I’m actually a horrible typist when I’m drunk (I just went back
and fixed my mistakes in the previous three paragraphs; my main problem seems to be the word “and,” which I kept spelling “nad,” which I suppose isn’t that big of a problem in the scope of the universe). However, I am a bit impressed by my drunken logic, if not necessarily by my drunken work ethic.

  There’s no doubt in my mind that I have a serious drinking problem. And while I would never blame heavy metal for this, it certainly makes it more fun.

  Even though I almost never think about it, I should probably hate glam rock for what it does to my body. It’s clearly helping me drink myself to death. When I’m all alone, and I’ve had my eighth or ninth drink, and there are no old buddies or estranged girlfriends to call on the telephone, I inevitably find myself going into my closet and digging through my high school cassettes. This is when I get into the vintage shit: Bon Jovi’s New Jersey, ’90s Tesla, Animalize, Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ (who really weren’t a metal band at all, but “Fly Me Courageous” fits my personal parameters), live Ozzy, a dubbed copy of Faster Pussycat’s Whipped, and a bunch of metal-based rap like 2 Live Crew and Tone Loc and Anthrax’s “I’m the Man.”

  This stuff sounds great when I’m getting drunk. I rock out in my apartment. I play air guitar and work on my Paul Stanley shuffle, and I chug bottles of Rolling Rock during guitar solos. Some nights, this is all that I do. I get home from work after a bad day, skip supper (so I can get drunk faster), and start throwing heavy metal tapes into my stereo. I get so fucked up that I can’t even masturbate. When I wake up the next morning, there will be empty bottles all over my living room and a bunch of W.A.S.P. tapes piled on my couch. I will have horrific digestive problems, and I will not be able to eat anything except Cocoa Puffs.

  Judging from the two hundred words I wrote last night, it appears that I despise this kind of behavior when I’m drunk (or at least I try to make myself think that I do). The strange thing is that I’m totally fine with it now. Isn’t this the opposite of how drunks are supposed to act? I always thought alcoholics were people who constantly bemoaned and lamented their binge drinking whenever they were sober, only to break down and deny they have a problem when they start to maniacally pound shots. I’ve always been the opposite. When I’m straight, it always seems like being drunk would be a logical alternative to anything else I’m doing, even though I’m certain that it’s certainly going to destroy me (or at least destroy my life).

  In fact, I think I’m going to make myself a drink right now.

  (forty-five seconds later)

  The synergy between booze and hair metal is as exquisite as that of the brandy and ginger ale currently glimmering in front of me. Heavy metal is a drinker’s medium and a drunkard’s realm. Bruce Kulick’s whining guitar sounds more palatable when your skull has been dulled by booze, kind of like the way Novocain helps distance the sound of a dentist’s drill. Hard rock also speeds up the inebriation process—those dopey singalong choruses are the musical equivalent of a dozen frat boys standing on the bar and chanting “Go! Go! Go! Go!”

  “When you were in Mötley Crüe, you were expected to be drunk all the time,” says Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. “People would come backstage after a show, and if there wasn’t a beer in your hand, they’d be disappointed.” Public metalheads face a similar scenario. When you start associating yourself with the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, there is a social obligation to start drinking at 4:20 P.M.

  When I was a sophomore at the University of North Dakota, I wrote a sports column for the college newspaper, but it really wasn’t about sports, even though I constantly referred to Mookie Blaylock (and I mean the man, not the band). My column was really about everything else—particularly what I espoused to be the best way to live. In a general sense, this meant being drunk all the time. In a specific sense, it meant me being drunk all the time, especially if I was in public. When I started this gimmick (and that’s exactly what it was to begin with), I didn’t drink that much more than most male college students. But then I stumbled (figuratively and literally) into an incredibly effective persona.

  It was a Friday, which was the same day my little sports column was always published. In this particular column, I discussed (and mildly criticized) a member of UND’s basketball team for getting a DUI. If I recall, the hook to the column was that I was a fucked-up alcoholic and that it would be hypocritical of me to pass judgment on an athlete for practicing the same behavior, which was precisely what I was doing anyway, and that was somehow the joke. Or something.

  ANYWAY, early that same afternoon, my friend Chad Hansen called and told me to meander over to his place so we could have a beer before he went to visit his girlfriend. This girlfriend lived five hours away in western North Dakota, and since Chad had no car he had to catch a ride from some other dude driving in the same general direction (who, if I recall correctly, was a guy named Chad Love, who I still think had a remarkably cool name for a white guy). Sadly, Chad Hansen lived in a fraternity house. Fraternities were no place for a hard-rockin’, nonconformist, edgy young journalist like myself; frats were filled with rich kids who wore sweaters around their hips and listened to Steve Miller and chanted “Go! Go! Go! Go!” But I liked Chad and I liked free beer, so I went over. I always went over.

  The subsequent plot of this anecdote is obviously not unique to anyone who’s lived a slacker past: Chad #2 is supposed to pick up Chad #1 at 3:00 P.M., but Chad #2 doesn’t arrive until 6:30 P.M., thereby forcing me and Chad #1 to drink an entire case of Busch Light. So now it’s dark and cold and I’m walking back to my dormitory and I haven’t eaten supper and I’m a fucking disaster, and I still somehow convince my friends to carry me to that night’s UND hockey game. But as they haul me into the packed Englestad Sports Arena, a strange metamorphosis occurs: I instantly become legitimate. Everyone in the building sees “that guy from the newspaper” who claims to be a drunk, and it turns out he really is a drunk, and he’s dancing like Axl to the national anthem. I realize that intoxicated people always make the mistake of thinking they’re the coolest person in the house, but this time I was actually right. And this would set a very dangerous precedent.

  For the next two and a half years, I felt as though I had to be drunk (or at least drinking) whenever I was out in public. I came to the conclusion that this was what people wanted from me, and—quite honestly—I’m pretty sure my perception was accurate. I became my own personal publicist and I created my own little public identity, and it quickly became reality. It’s the same thing that happened to Tommy Lee (only he took it a million steps further). Being a predictable public booze hound is really just another example of constructed glamour: A band like Mötley Crüe told me what being a superstar drunk exemplified, and then I persuaded myself to embody it. Drinking became a job.

  Speaking of my beloved Crüe (and about getting drunk), I recently watched VH1’s Behind the Music: Mötley Crüe for about the eighth time. As a historical document, it’s not all that insightful; the only thing I really learned was the reason they put umlauts over the o and u in their logo was because they were drinking Löwenbräu when they came up with the name. I also learned that Razzle Dingley, the drummer of Hanoi Rocks who died in Vince Neil’s ’84 car wreck, may have been from Finland (previous sources had always indicated Hanoi Rocks was a Norwegian metal band). Most importantly, I was reminded that hard-rock guys always refer to cocaine as “Krell” (according to David Lee Roth, “Krell” was the name of an extinct race of aliens from a 1956 movie called Forbidden Planet; Dave never explained the logic behind this slang, but he swears he fought some killer “Krell Wars” with Ozzy Osbourne when Van Halen opened Black Sabbath’s ’78 tour).

  Behind the Music is an especially delicious train wreck for old metal fans. It completely plays into the unhealthy voyeurism that former rock kids like me can’t deny. All the episodes are structured exactly the same: An artist (1) starts with nothing but a dream, (2) rises to multiplatinum success, (3) succumbs to the drugs and booze and sex that come with that success, (4) crashe
s into bankruptcy, and (5) rises from the ashes. In Mötley Crüe’s case, this happened three separate times.

  Part of this comes off as pathetic. Rob Zombie told me he despises Behind the Music and thinks it should be called VH1’s Stupid Idiots Who Lost All Their Money. Zombie feels the reason people like these stories is because of social perversity: We enjoy watching heroes fail. “I can’t understand why people think that’s cool,” Zombie said. “Sometimes I think people want musicians to be stupid so they can laugh at them when they hit rock bottom. They want to be able to tell their friends they saw some loser from Guns N’ Roses explain how he went broke.”

  I don’t doubt that there’s some truth in that. Behind the Music certainly promotes the idea that musicians are stupid people who can’t handle prosperity. However, these melodramatic rise-and-fall stories have a special meaning for people who used to have a very real “relationship” with these spandex-clad angels.

  For example, take the aforementioned Vince Neil auto wreck. The year 1984 probably marked the height of my Mötley Crüe obsession. It was winter, and I was listening to Shout at the Devil every day (and I mean every day). My metal friends and I often discussed the upcoming Crüe record that was scheduled to hit stores later the following summer. We knew the word “pain” was part of the record’s title, and—at least according to Nikki Sixx’s interviews—it was going to be exactly what we wanted, regardless of what that might be (it was going to be “heavier,” “bluesier,” “harder,” and it was going to have a bunch of hit singles while still being “less commercial”).