2006.05.19 - KROQ - Interview with Axl

Thanks to Gordon Comstock at mygnrforum.



Transcript:
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Interviewer: We promised you a major announcement, and I think this one qualifies on all accounts. Ladies and gentlemen, we welcome on the phone, to the show for the first time, Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses. Axl, good morning. Welcome to KROQ, my friend.

Axl: Good morning!

Interviewer: It is terrific to talk to you. It’s the dream of every young disc jockey growing up in America to one day get the chance to talk to Axl Rose.

Axl: Ha!

Interviewer: So thanks for coming on. Inland Invasion, September 23rd at the Hyundai Pavilion, at the Glen Helen Hyundai Pavilion, is Guns N’ Roses’ first Los Angeles show in something like 15 years. How does that feel? That’s unbelievable.

Axl: That’s insane.

Interviewer: Now you played, what, did you have four shows in New York this past week, kind of as a warmup-

Axl: Oh yeah. Four shows, and then we just did an impromptu acoustic set birthday party for Rosario Dawson, and we decided to just go off, and we played for over an hour; and it was insane.

Interviewer: I’m sorry, did you say that you did Rosario Dawson’s birthday party?!

(Laughter)

Axl: Yes, we did.

Interviewer: That rules!

Axl: That totally rocked. This guy just goes, “Hey, do you have an interest in doing, like, four or five songs for Rosario Dawson’s, and I was like, “Yeah.”

Interviewer: (Laughs) You know, I don’t know if anyone’s told you, Axl, but the band is popular. You don’t really have to play birthday parties and bar mitzvahs anymore.

(Laughter)

Axl: Yeah, I know. It’s like, Tommy’s talking about bar mitzvahs now. I don’t know if Rosario’s having a bar mitzvah or not.

(Laughter)

Interviewer: Yeah.

Female interviewer: And her birthday-

Axl: You know, you don’t really get offered that kind of thing, and it turned out to be – in my opinion, it was the smartest thing I’ve done in, like, at least ten years.

Interviewer: Wow. At her birthday party I heard a rumor that you got in a fight with Tommy Hilfiger?

Axl: Yeah. He, like, called me out. It was insane. It was, like, the most surreal thing, I think, that’s ever happened to me in my life.

Interviewer: How did it start? What made him angry?

Axl: Because I moved his girlfriend’s drink so that it wouldn’t spill.

Interviewer: Well, at his defense, I mean, that’ll make anyone crazy. Oh wait, hold on a second. That doesn’t make any sense at all (laughs). So what did he say to you, Axl?

Axl: Well, he first, like, smacked me in the arm to put it back. I said, “I don’t want it to spill,” and he said, “It’s not gonna spill,” and I said, “Well, I don’t wanna sit on it,” and he said, “You’re not gonna ‘blanking’ sit on it.” Then he just kept smacking me. I tried to ignore him and I told him to leave me alone. Then he grabbed my arm and I told him, you know, to let go of my “blanking” arm, and he said he doesn’t have to let go of my “blanking”-

(Laughter)

Interviewer: (Laughing) What the hell was going on! Tommy Hilfiger is now-

Axl: I haven’t experienced more hatred and twisted – whatever – from a cop!

(Laughter)

Axl: I was jazzed. They go, “Hey, this is your booth and Tommy Hilfiger’s there,” and I’m like, “Okay, I don’t know him from Adam. But hey, cool.”

Interviewer: Right?

Other interviewer: Right.

Axl: I mean, I’ve never – I don’t know that I’ve met anybody more twisted in the last...

Interviewer: And that’s saying something, by the way.

Other interviewer: Yeah.

Axl: Kid Rock was there.

Interviewer: Uh-huh.

Axl: And Kid Rock is telling me, he goes, “Dude, I was sitting there, man, and it was so Detroit. I couldn’t believe it.”

(Laughter)

Interviewer: You know, Tommy Hilfiger does-

Axl: He goes, “I moved the drink because I thought that would help.”

(Laughter)

Interviewer: Tommy Hilfiger does have Thug Life tattooed across his stomach. A lot of people don’t know that.

Other interviewer: I didn’t realize that, huh.

Axl: His own security beat his ass and threw him out of the door.

(Laughter)

Interviewer: Now that’s funny. Hey, if you’re just joining us here on KROQ this morning, you’re really gonna think we’re pranking you here. But that is Axl Rose who we’re talking to on the phone, and we’ve just made the announcement that Guns N’ Roses is going to be headlining KROQ’s Inland Invasion 2006, September 23rd at the Hyundai Pavilion at the Glen Helen. Axl, how does it feel to be on stage doing shows again? It has been a very long time. Are you enjoying it?

Axl: Yeah, actually, absolutely. I mean, we did this New York thing; we didn’t know how it was gonna go. We thought about shows at different places, we scheduled these four shows here, and it’s been so much fun. We’ve been so involved with the people - with the club scenes, and the radio scenes, and the fashion scene and stuff, and bringing all these different people to the shows. And they’ve been so supportive to make everything happen, because they want it to succeed.

Interviewer: Right.

Axl: And that’s been really, really exciting. It’s been really, really fun. That’s also why we ended up doing this birthday party, because a lot of these same people were gonna be guests at this thing; it was like a payback to them. And then it was really fun for us. I mean, our new guitar player started playing Van Halen’s... I don’t know what the title of the song is, but I think [sings] “you are headed for a whole lot of trouble...”

Interviewer: (Laughs) Right.

Axl: He started playing the song, so I sang the whole song. I mean, we never rehearsed that.

Interviewer: Wow. That’s awesome.

Axl: We pulled the whole song off, and we’re singing James Brown and stuff live. So it’s kind of like – I had this weird thing, like new Guns becomes old Guns. It’s like, it was very similar to experiences when we played, like, CBGB’s and, like, certain television shows years ago with old Guns. Then this kind of new thing happened with us last night that we haven’t experienced yet.

Interviewer: There are rumors out there that Izzy joined you on stage. Is that true?

Axl: Izzy joined us, Kid Rock joined us, Sebastian Bach joined us... Izzy was great, except he was supposed to do the last song, Paradise [City], with us, but he left because he had to get up early.

(Laughter)

Other interviewer: Wow, the times are different than in the 80s, aren’t they?

Axl: We couldn’t really understand it. Like, one more song. Wow, dude.

Interviewer: Dude, he got-

Axl: And, I mean, you know, I had an after-party planned, then I had an after-after-party planned, then I had the after-after-after-party planned.

Interviewer: Right.

Axl: And he had to leave just before the encore.

Interviewer: Dude, he looked at Tommy Hilfiger and he thought, “That guy’s mad, I’m getting out of here.”

Other interviewer: Yeah, no kidding.

Interviewer: Axl, the problem is that we’ve got ten years’ worth of questions bottled up, so we’re gonna have to figure out a way that we can talk to you some other time between now and September 23rd. But I do wanna ask you this one more thing, and that is this: Can you explain, is there any reason that you know of, why fans are as rabid for Guns N’ Roses today as they were in 1990, or 1995, or 2000... It seems like it has not abated one centimeter, and that is so rare with so many bands that take a long break. Why are your fans so loyal?

Axl: I think it’s a strange thing to explain, that I don’t really understand. Except that, like, if you have different people that you thought that there was a potential for them, and then they came up short more than a few times, whatever the excitement was for them wears off; and whatever it is about me, I haven’t really, you know, taken my shot yet, so people still think that there’s a potential for something that they would like to experience for themselves. I think it’s kind of got something to do with, like, hope and a fascination of hoping that there’s something there that they can latch on to – maybe something, you know, through me or whatever helps give them that to have a good time with.

Interviewer: Can you tell us who’s in the band this time around?

Axl: Yeah. It’s Robin, Tommy, Richard, Dizzy, Chris, Brain and Bumblefoot.

Interviewer: Bumblefoot. Alright. Perfect.

Axl: Bumblefoot. We got from Buckethead to Bumblefoot (laughs).

Interviewer: To Bumblefoot (laughs).

(Laughter)

Interviewer: I think you need a funky name to get hired.

(Laughter)

Axl: The other guy had a chicken bucket and a mask. This guy has a guitar that’s, like, a bumblebee that’s a foot with wings.

(Laughter)

Interviewer: That’s spectacular.

Axl: I did get him on a Les Paul for most of the songs. But he still pulls out this other thing.

Interviewer: Axl, you’re notoriously press shy, but you’re a great interview.

Axl: Oh, well, thank you.

Interviewer: Is it true that you don’t like it and you try to stay away from it?

Axl: Well, it just kind of depends on – you know, different people have different agendas. It’s like, the last 12 years it’s just been more like a negative spin kind of thing, so I tried to avoid that.

Interviewer: Right. Well, Axl, I’m gonna tell you something, and I’m speaking for the whole room here, and I mean this sincerely. Our only agenda is to welcome-

Axl: You guys played us first. You know that, right?

Interviewer: Yes, we do.

Other interviewer: We do!

Interviewer: Yeah, absolutely. KROQ has always been proud of that.

Axl: Joseph played Welcome to the Jungle, the demo, before anybody.

Interviewer: Were you listening? Did you hear it on the radio for the first time that day?

Axl: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was like, you know, 21 years ago. Yeah.

Interviewer: That’s gotta be the greatest rush for a working rock band, to hear themselves on the radio.

Axl: I loved that. I loved that KROQ played us first.

Other interviewer: Well, like being said, there’s a lot of excitement. The cd is coming out later this year, right?

Axl: Yes. Absolutely.

Interviewer: Fantastic. And then you’re gonna be September 23rd at Hyundai Pavilion, Glen Helen. It is KROQ’s Inland Invasion with Guns N’ Roses. And when that time rolls around, can we, maybe, ask you to come into and do some more stuff?

Axl: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Interviewer: Fantastic.

Axl: You’ll get to meet the guys-

Interviewer: Loving it.

Axl: And they’re really – they’re just characters.

Interviewer: Especially Bumblefoot.

(Laughter)

Interviewer: What a thrill.

Axl: They’re all very opinionated individuals.

Interviewer: Perfect.

Other interviewer: Axl, thanks for calling, man. Have a great week and we’ll talk to you again soon.

Axl: All right, man. Have a great one.

Other interviewer: Thanks. See ya. Bye-bye. Bye now. Axl Rose, Guns N’ Roses.

We have a problem with posting URLs that contain any of the words used on our dictionary, including Axl. For such URLs I generally use tinyurl.com to make a shorter URL.

Here's the link to the 2006 Axl interview: https://tinyurl.com/ybe5jx2g

Thanks for the tip! I was wondering what's going on, because it looked okay in the preview.