THE ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW - AXL ROSE
August 10, 1989
by Del James

One guitar has been destroyed, a mirror wall shattered, several platinum
albums broken beyond repair and the telephone dropped off a twelfth-story
balcony. Apparently, W. Axl Rose had to get something out of his system.

Just two weeks ago, everything in Rose's posh condo in West Hollywood,
California, was in order. The mirror was intact, reflecting a space in
which almost everything - including the refrigerator - is black. The
platinum albums, along with dozens of plaques and awards, hung neatly on
the wall.

So what happened? On the surface one would think that the
twenty-seven-year-old singer for the hard-rock phenomenon Guns n' Roses has
it made. After all, there's a new BMW, a new condo, a parcel of land in
Wisconsin on which he plans to build his dream house and, of course, the
adoration of millions. One would think that life for Rose is pure rock &
roll bliss. But one would be wrong.

Rose doesn't want to discuss exactly what set him off and made him destroy
his belongings. But it becomes clear as he talks that a lot of it has to
do with suddenly being famous. "When I was growing up, I was never really
popular," he says. "Now everybody wants to be my friend. I like my
privacy, to live alone in my own little world. I live in a security
building, and all my calls are screened. I don't even know my own phone
number". Tucked tightly behind a couch is an Uzi semiautomatic machine
gun; nearby is a 9-mm pistol. "I'm not paranoid," he says, explaining his
fondness for weapons. "This is how I choose to live. This is
comfortable."

He wasn't always so comfortable. The eldest of three children raised in
Lafayette, Indiana, Rose hitchhiked to Los Angeles, hoping to hook up with
guitarist Izzy Stradlin, a long time friend, and form a band. The two
struggled on the L.A. club circuit for years. Eventually, the duo met
guitarist Slash and drummer Steven Adler, Later, Duff McKagen responded
to a classified ad for a bassist, and Guns n' Roses were born.

The band's early gigs were tough going. Only two people showed up for the
group's first "official" L.A. performance. Over the following months, a
series of frenzied, violent shows landed the Gunners on the shit list of
everyone, including club owners, rival bands and the press - everyone but
the fans, who grew in number with each passing gig. After playing together
for about a year and building a strong following, Guns n'Roses were signed
by Geffen Records in March 1986 by A&R man Tom Zutaut.

The band's debut, Appetite for Destruction,, and its quickly released
follow-up record, the extended EP G n'R Lies, have put Guns n' Roses at the
top of the hard-rock heap. The records have sold upward of 12 million
copies combined, as well as simultaneously charting Billboard's Top Five -
a feat no one else has accomplished in the last decade.

Sitting on a black Persian rug, chain-smoking Marlboros and sipping Corona
beers, the singer welcomes any and all questions about the band. His
onstage roar is replaced by a soft-spoken tone, but nonetheless he can be
brutal in his honesty.

A few years ago you were a poor kid in a struggling rock band, and today
you're in one of the most popular groups in the world. How have you
adjusted to your success?

Trying to handle success is a pain in the ass. It's really strange and
takes some getting used to. I've never had my place to live before, never
had to deal with the amount of money we've made and not get ripped off,
never understood doing your taxes and all these things. I was hating it a
few months ago, trying to get organized and trying to get a place to live
and to get a grip on everything. But now things are coming together.
I've wanted to be here my whole life.

Did you ever in your wildest dreams think your first album AFD would do as
well as it did?

Thought about it a lot.

Besides dreaming about it, did you ever believe it had a real chance to
sell 9 million copies?

No, but it was like this: I thought about trying to sell more records than
Boston's first album. I always thought that and never let up. Everything
was directed at trying to achieve the sales without sacrificing the
credibility of our music. We worked real hard to sell this many records.
The album wasn't just a fluke. Maybe Appetite will be the only good album
we make, but it wasn't just a fluke.

Does the business end of rock & roll ever interfere with your creative attitude?

Not for us. This is music, this is art. It's definitely a good business,
but that should be second to the art, not first. I was figuring it out,
and I'm like the president of a company that's worth between $125 million
and a quarter billion dollars. If you add up record sales based on the low
figure and a certain price for T-shirts and royalties and publishing, you
come up with at least $125 million, which I get less than two percent of.

I like being successful. I was always starving. On the other side. When
it came to people with money, it was always "The rich? Fuck them!" But I
left one group and joined another. I escaped from one group where I was
looked down on for being a poor kid that doesn't know shit, and now I'm
like, a rich, successful asshole. I don't like that. I'm still just me,
and with a lot of people's help, the group was able to become a huge
financial success. None of us were the popular kids in school - we were
all outcasts who got together and pooled our talents.

Is there any lesson you've learned that you wish you knew a few years ago?

What I'd tell any kid in high school is "Take business classes." I don't
care what else you're gonna do, if you're gonna do art or anything, take
business classes. You can say, "Well, I don't want to get commercial," but
if you do anything to make any money, you're doing something commercial.
You can be flipping hamburgers at McDonald's, but you're a commercial
burger flipper.

Now the band is getting ready to work on the follow-up to 'Appetite' and
the 'G n' R Lies' EP. What's your frame of mind?

As my friend Dave puts it, I'm jacking off. [laughs] We're trying to
regroup. I'm ready to work. I'm creating, and finally I have an
environment in which I can work. I haven't had that for a long time, since
three years ago, when we all used to live in one room, sitting around
writing songs. Until recently, I haven't had peace of mind. There were
always distractions, but now it's like we can finally work on our songs.

Do you feel heavy pressure to sell as many copies with your next album as
'Appetite'?

We have two records out, both of them in the Top Ten, and everybody wants
another record immediately. They all say, "Let's milk this sucker." It'd
be nice to outsell that album. A lot of groups are trying to outsell it.
For a debut, it was the highest-selling album in the history of rock and
roll. Definitely in America, but I'm not sure that's true worldwide. I
read where Bon Jovi was saying nobody's out done their biggie, Slippery
When Wet. He knew it was their biggie, and he didn't know if New Jersey
would be as big. Of course, you're gonna want to outdo it. What I want to
do is just grow as an artist and feel proud of these new songs.

Although you're only in the preproduction stages of the next album, how do
you feel it will compare with the others?

The next record will definitely be much more emotional. I try to write so
the audience can understand what emotions I was feeling. Also, I think the
songs are worded in a way that a great number of people will be able to
relate to the experiences; it's not so personalized that it's only my
weird, twisted point of view. We hope to make a very long record. It'd be
nice to make one that's seventy-six minutes long, A seventy-six-minute CD,
with varied styles.

The most important songs at this point are the ones with piano, the
ballads, because we haven't really explored that side of the band yet.
They're also the most difficult songs to do - not difficult to play, but to
write and pull out of ourselves. The beautiful music is what really makes
me feel like anartist. The other, heavier stuff also makes me feel like
an artist and can be difficult to write. But it's harder to write about
serious emotions, describing them as best as possible rather than trying to
write a syrupy ballad just to sell records.
Any specific titles for the next album you can talk about?

Well, there's a song called "November Rain" and another one called
""Breakdown". There's also a song tentatively titled "Without You". Last
night, I wrote a whole new intro to that. It just appeared out of nowhere,
like the verses - just little pieces that have come whole.

How do write complete songs from seperate bits and pieces?

They'll just show up. I keep them on file in my brain and then add them
together. Like, I'll be brushing my teeth and all of a sudden a prechorus
will come, and I won't know why. Then a bridge came about a year ago.
Six months ago another part came. Last night a whole intro came. When I
was writing it, I wasn't planning on putting it with this song, but all of
a sudden it just flowed.

The 'G n' R Lies' EP surprised a lot of people because of it's emphasis on
acoustic material. Aren't you afraid that some people may be turned off by
the band straying from the sound that got them on top?

We're not getting away from hard rock. Our basic root is hard rock, a bit
heavier than the Stones, more in a vein like Aerosmith, Draw the Line- type
stuff. We love loud guitars. George Michael was telling me he really
loved our melodies and wondered why we covered so much of it up with loud
guitars, and I said because we love that. I told him he should put some
more loud guitars in his music. He has such beautiful melodies, and it'd
be nice to hear some loud guitars in there. At the same time, I have my
favorite symphony pieces, orchestra pieces if you will.

I've always looked at things in a versatile sense because of Queen, ELO,
Elton John, especially early Elton John and groups like that. With Queen,
I have my favorite: Queen II. Whenever their newest record would come
out and have all these other kinds of music on it, at first I'd only like
this song or that song. But after a period of time listening to it, it
would open my mind up to so many different styles. I really appreciate
them for that. That's something I've always wanted to be able to achieve.
It's important to show people all forms of music, basically try to give
people a broader point of view.

Speaking of versatility, you're known primarily as a singer, but you've
been playing piano quite a bit lately.

I've been playing piano my whole life. I took lessons, but I only really
played my lesson on the day of the lesson. All week long, I'd sit down at
the piano and just make up stuff. To this day, I still can't really play
other people's songs, only my own. I haven't had a piano for years. I
couldn't afford one. I couldn't figure out where I was sleeping at night,
let alone try to have a place for a piano. So I had to put it aside and
have the dream that I'd get into it. Now I really want to bring the piano
out.

So far the song that's inspired the most controversy in the band's short
career has been "One in a Million." How did you come to write that song?

"One in a Million" was written while sitting in the apartment of my friend
West Arkeen, who's like the sixth member of the band. I wrote it at his
house, sitting around bored watching TV. I can't really play guitar too
well, I only play the top two strings, and I would write a little piece at
a time. I started writing about wanting to get out of L.A. , getting away
for a little while. I'd been down to the downtown-L.A. Greyhound bus
station. If you haven't been there, you can't say shit to me about what
goes on and about my point of view. There are a large number of black men
selling stolen jewelry, crack, heroin and pot, and most of the drugs are
bogus. Rip-off artists selling parking spaces to parking lots that there's
no charge for. Trying to misguide every kid that gets off the bus and
doesn't quite know where he's at or where to go, trying to take the person
for whatever they've got. That's how I hit town. The thing with "One in a
Million" is, basically, we're all one in a million, we're all here on this
earth. We're one fish in a sea. Let's quit fucking with each other,
fucking with me.

The lyrics have incited a lot of protest, so let's go over them line by
line. Let's start with one of the verses, "Police and niggers, that's
right/Get outta my way/Don't need to buy none/ Of your gold chains today."

I used words like police and niggers because you're not allowed to use the
word nigger. Why can black people go up to each other and say, "Nigger,"
but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big put-down. I don't
like boundaries of any kind. I don't like being told what I can and what I
can't say. I used the word nigger because it's a word to describe somebody
that is basically a pain in your life, a problem. The word nigger doesn't
necessarily mean black. Doesn't John Lennon have a song "Woman Is the
Nigger of the World"? There's a rap group, N.W.A., Niggers with Attitude.
I mean, they're proud of that word. More power to them. Guns n' Roses
ain't bad. . . . N.W.A. is baad! Mr. Bob Goldthwait said the only reason
we put these lyrics on the record was because it would cause controversy
and we'd sell a million albums. Fuck him! Why'd he put us in his skit?
We don't just do something to get the controversy, the press.

How about the next verse? Immigrants and faggots/They make no sense to me/
They come to our country/And think they'll do as they please/ Like start
some mini-Iran or spread some fuckin' disease." Why that reference to
immigrants?

When I use the word immigrants, what I'm talking about is going to a 7-11
or Village pantries - a lot of people from countries like Iran, Pakistan,
China, Japan et cetera, get jobs in these convenience stores and gas
stations. Then they treat you as if you don't belong here. I've been
chased out of a store with Slash by a six-foot-tall Iranian with a butcher
knife because he didn't like the way we were dressed. Scared me to death.
All I could see in my mind was a picture of my arm on the ground, blood
going everywhere. When I get scared, I get mad. I grabbed the top of one
of these big orange garbage cans and went back at him with this shield,
going, "Come on!" I didn't want to back down from this guy.
Anyway that's why I wrote about immigrants. Maybe I should have been more
specific and said, "Joe Schmoladoo at the 7-11 and faggots make no sense to
me." That's ridiculous! I summed it up simply and said, "Immigrants."

How about the use of the word "faggots"?

I've had some very bad experiences with homosexuals. When I was first
coming to Los Angeles, I was about eighteen or nineteen. On my first
hitch-hiking ride, this guy told me I could crash at his hotel. I went to
sleep and woke up while this guy was trying to rape me. I threw him down
on the floor. He came at me again. I went running for the door. He came
at me. I pinned him between the door and the wall. I had a straight
razor, and I pulled the razor and said, "Don't ever touch me! Don't ever
think about touching me! Don't touch yourself and think about me!
Nothing!" Then I grabbed my stuff and split with no place to go, no sleep,
in the middle of nowhere outside of St. Louis. That's why I have the
attitude I have.

Are you anti-homosexual then?

I'm proheterosexual. I can't get enough of women, and I don't see the same
thing that other men can see in men. I'm not into gay or bisexual
experiences. But that's hypocritical of me, because I'd rather see two
women together than just about anything else. That happens to be my
personal, favorite thing.

How about gay-bashing? Have you ever beaten up somebody simply because of
their sexual preference?

No! I never have. The most I do is, like, on the way to the Troubador in
"Boystown," on Santa Monica Boulevard, I'll yell out the car window, "Why
don't you guys like pussy?" 'Cause I'm confused. I don't understand it.
Anti-homosexual? I'm not against themdoing what they want to do as long
as it's not hurting anybody else and they're not forcing it upon me. I
don't need them in my face or, pardon the pun, up my ass about it.

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