APPETITE FOR DISCUSSION
Welcome to Appetite for Discussion -- a Guns N' Roses fan forum!

Please feel free to look around the forum as a guest, I hope you will find something of interest. If you want to join the discussions or contribute in other ways then you need to become a member. We especially welcome anyone who wants to share documents for our archive or would be interested in translating or transcribing articles and interviews.

Registering is free and easy.

Cheers!
SoulMonster
APPETITE FOR DISCUSSION
Welcome to Appetite for Discussion -- a Guns N' Roses fan forum!

Please feel free to look around the forum as a guest, I hope you will find something of interest. If you want to join the discussions or contribute in other ways then you need to become a member. We especially welcome anyone who wants to share documents for our archive or would be interested in translating or transcribing articles and interviews.

Registering is free and easy.

Cheers!
SoulMonster

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Page 1 of 2 1, 2  Next

Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:00 pm

CHAPTER INDEX

- JANUARY 20-23, 1991: ROCK IN RIO
- SONG: DOUBLE TALKIN' JIVE
- SONG: DEAD HORSE
- SONG: BAD APPLES
- SONG: PRETTY TIED UP
- SONG: ESTRANGED
- SONG: YOU COULD BE MINE
- SLASH CONTRIBUTES TO THE LES PAUL TRIBUTE ALBUM
- FEBRUARY 1991: AXL SEEKS THERAPY
- JANUARY-JULY 1991: AXL RECORDS HIS VOCALS
- JANUARY-MARCH(?) 1991: CLEARMOUNTAIN TRIES TO MIX THE ALBUMS; ZUTAUT RETURNS
- AXL'S PERFECTIONISM AND INSECURITY
- FEBRUARY 1991: ERIN AND AXL DIVORCE
- FEBRUARY 1991: THE GEFFEN CONTRACT IS RENEGOTIATED
- MARCH 1991: BILL PRICE TAKES OVER MIXING DUTIES
- MARCH-AUGUST 1991: THE INFAMOUS MEDIA CONTRACT
- AXL AND SEBASTIAN BACH
- APRIL 2, 1991: SLASH IS FEATURED ON LENNY KRAVITZ' 'MAMA SAID'
- 1990-1992: AXL'S FEUD WITH MICK WALL
- APRIL 1991: ALAN NIVEN IS FIRED AND DOUG GOLDSTEIN TAKES OVER/BIG FD ENTERTAINMENT
- APRIL-JULY 1991: MASTERING AND ADDITIONAL RECORDING
- APRIL-MAY 1991: PREPARING FOR TOURING
- MAY 1991: AXL AND STEPHANIE SEYMOUR
- APRIL/MAY 1991: SAM KINISON CHOKES SLASH, DUFF COMES TO THE RESCUE
- MAY 11-16, 1991: WARM-UP GIGS FOR THE 'USE YOUR ILLUSION' TOUR
- SONG: RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO HELL
- SONG: DUST N' BONES
- SONG: LIVE AND LET DIE
- SONG: YOU AIN'T THE FIRST
- SONG: BAD OBSESSION
- SONG: 14 YEARS
- 1990-1992: AXL'S HOMES AND HOBBIES
- GETTING BACK INTO THE RING
- CHOOSING SKID ROW AS OPENER
- MAY 24-25, 1991: MUDFIGHTS IN EAST TROY
- MAY 28-29, 1991: PROBLEMS IN INDIANA
- SONG: NOVEMBER RAIN
- IZZY TRAVELS SEPARATELY
- JUNE 1-5, 1991: THE TOUR CONTINUES
- SONG: COMA
- JUNE 7-13, 1991: THE TOUR CONTINUES
- JUNE 17, 1991: TROUBLE IN UNIONDALE
- AXL'S FRIENDS AND LOYALTY
- JUNE 19-30, 1991: THE TOUR CONTINUES
- A RIOT WAITING TO HAPPEN?
- JUNE 21, 1991: THE SINGLE AND VIDEO FOR 'YOU COULD BE MINE'
- 1991-1992: SLASH'S MUSICAL COLLABORATIONS
- JULY 2, 1991: THE ST. LOUIS RIOT
- BAND MEMBERS COMMENT ON THE ST. LOUIS RIOT
- AFTER THE ST. LOUIS RIOT: LAWSUITS AND CANCELLATIONS
- SHANNON HOON AND BLIND MELON
- CHARITABLE WORK
- POLITICS, HUMAN RIGHTS & ENVIRONMENTALISM


Last edited by Soulmonster on Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:58 am; edited 30 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:02 pm

JANUARY 20-23, 1991
ROCK IN RIO

In early January 1991, Guns N' Roses would play to gigantic show at Rock in Rio in Brazil. Axl would later mention that Globo, a Brazilian TV network, had been instrumental in getting the band to Brazil:

I think it was a Globo that wanted us to to come there and talked with our management and stuff about us going there, you know, and we were really glad to do it. We were excited to do it.



THE FIRST SHOWS FOR DIZZY AND MATT

This was the first time the band had performed together on stage since Farm Aid in April 1990 and the debut for Dizzy and Matt [MTV, January 1991]. Dizzy had never really been out of the country before and experienced having his suitcase lost:

Well, here's the thing, I'd never really been out of the country before. I'd been to Tijuana, you know, Nogales. So yeah, suddenly I was in Brazil so far, you know. They airlines lost my suitcase, so this is my first big gig, my first gig of any kind, you know, I did not, you know, I didn't get to ride on a bus and not nothing like this, on that level yet. It was pretty big. I had to go clothes shopping and I remember I went to a flea market with Izzy. And it was like this light shine down and he goes, "Look, what about those pants right there, man? Those look like they would fit you." And they are these like brown fringed leather sort of pants. I mean, it was in Brazil at a flea market, it could have been, I don't know, rat leather or something. I don't know. But they fit me, man. It was amazing. It was a miracle. So I had those and then I just kind of, you know, went to like the Brazilian mall and did some shopping and found some cool stuff. But, yes, so that's how it all started off, you know, with losing my suitcase. But I overcame and I ate lots of Brazilian pizza, which, back then, you put ketchup and mustard on it, which I thought was cool. And drank a lot of beer.


Talking about the enormous concert:

We’re going on stage in front of 140,000 people, first time [Matt]’s up to play with us. And, for that matter, Dizzy, the piano player, who was actually kind of shitting bricks cuz the biggest crowd he had ever played to was, like, 400.

[Introducing Matt from stage before his drum solo]: I’d like to introduce you to somebody new in the band. Someone who came along and if it hadn’t worked out we wouldn’t be here tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Matt Sorum. Rate it, bear his ass, right now. Take it away home.

But yeah, it was my first show with Axl singing – because he doesn’t like to rehearse. So, you know, I met him basically at the show and said, “Hi, how are you doing?” and we came on and played the show. And yeah, I was nervous, to be honest with you (laughs).

The first big shock for me, personally, was at Rock in Rio, where we played in front of 150,000 people. But the other guys helped me, they explained to me what it would be like.
Pop & Rock, June 1993; translated from Greek


Matt would later talk about his approach to playing songs off Appetite for Destruction:

When it came to learning the Appetite stuff for the live show, I tried to be very respectful of Steven parts and play them how they were written. Obviously, we've been accused of being different drummers but that's natural. I can't play like Steven and Steven can't play like me and that's ok, but when I came into the band they needed that guy that could kind of hold the fort together.




Duff, Slash, Matt, Axl, Izzy and Dizzy
1991



Not only was it Matt's and Dizzy's first live show with the band, they had never played with Axl before at all:

For me it was kind of wild because, you know, it was the first time I ever heard him sing with the band, with me playing, you know? So a couple of times when he did some screams and stuff, you know, kind of throwing me for a second. Maybe, you, know, messed up my fill or something [laughs].

Matt and Dizzy had never played with us as a complete band, because Axl doesn't come to rehearsals. They'd never seen Axl sing with us. […] So, anyway, we tell Matt, three minutes before he goes onstage in front of 140,000 people, that he's gotta do a drum solo. And he pulled it off! He rocked! Dizzy, shit, the biggest crowd he ever played for was about 400, opening up for L.A. Guns at the Country Club. Let's just say Dizzy had a few cocktails before we went on, but he pulled it off too. Right before we went onstage, the whole band - and this hadn't happened for a long time - got together in one room. You could just feel the electricity. No matter how many people were out there, or our families, or the press and photographers, bla bla bla, what it came down to was , we were just the same guys that we were five years ago, and you could feel that in the nervous laughter. It was f?!king amazing.


And Matt would be asked to do a drum solo:

The first solo I did was at Rock In Rio in front of 145,000 people and I didn’t even know about it until on the way to the gig. Axl said he needed to take a break in the middle of the show for his voice and I should do a solo. I’d just joined the band, it was my first show, I’m not going to say no! So I was like, ‘Okay, f**k! I’m going to do a solo.’ Now I’d probably be like, ‘F**k, I don’t know man, let me work on that a bit!’ [...] I figured when it came time to solo I was playing a massive stadium so what was I going to do, was I going to play fancy or just pummel them? If you watch it on YouTube it probably looks silly but the sound of it coming through a massive sound system was awesome. I was hitting them with double bass drums. [...] It wasn’t about showing how many chops I’ve got. It was about being on a massive stage and making everything bigger than life. That’s why I’d stand up and put my arms in the air. It worked. Would I do that now in a smaller place? No.


This was also warm-up shows for their upcoming tour:

We’ve been rehearsing at a little rehearsal place and just getting warmed up for... being geared up and psyched up to tour. Rio should get us in groove. I mean, you know, usually you don’t play those gigs til the end of the tour. We’re doing it backwards, that’s how we do everything.


As the band prepared for the high-profile shows, they would let Matt in on how they operated:

And for [Matt] to come into this band... Cuz we don’t have a setlist, you know. We just kinda call of songs - if that, you know. Or we just kind of like, someone starts off the next song and... We kinda told Matt that, like, 5 minutes before we went on. “This is not a setlist by the way, Matt. It’s a call list. And, by the way, you’re doing a drum solo (?)." So he can take the pressure (laughs).



MARACANA STADIUM, 280,000 PEOPLE

The two Rock in Rio gigs took place at Maracana Stadium in front of 280,000 Brazilian fans [Special TV, 1991].



Axl and Slash
Rock in Rio, 1991



It was like a blur, it was like, no, I can’t believe this. You know, I mean, I would be, like, completely lying and ridiculous if I said I wasn’t nervous for that. Actually it’s weird, after doing it I looked back at it and, like, we did that little show in LA and, like, 500 people were there that I knew, at least, you know. And that was, like, a lot scarier than doing Rock in Rio, because Rock in Rio is just... you just get kind of numb, cuz there’s so many people. You’re just kind of numb. It’s like doing novocaine over your whole body, you just play.


Talking about his drum solo:

My first show with them was at a huge stadium - 175,000 people. I had played big gigs with The Cult in the late '80s but this was something else. I remember Axl had his guy call me at the hotel right before the gig, "Matt, Axl would like you to do a drum solo tonight." So I thought, "Okay, I'm going to do a drum solo in front of 175,000 people! I'm in Brazil, they love drums. If I get into more of a rhythmic, group participation sort of thing, it'll be effective."

So Axl introduced me as the new guy - "The Assassin," he called me - and all of a sudden about fifty spotlights hit me. I launched into every drum solo lick I ever knew. Fifteen minutes later, I was still going - the sound, the PA, the people made it seem so surreal. I thought about when I saw John Bonham at the Forum and all the great drummers and drum solos I'd seen back in the day.

I remember kicking quarter notes on the bass drum, standing up and clapping my hands - and there were 175,000 people's arms up in the air clapping with me. They kept clapping, so I soloed to that. Then I kicked the band into "You Can Be Mine," which had that big drum intro. We did two nights, and the second night I soloed even longer. I remember looking over to the side of the stage and Axl was standing there, ready to come back on, and I was thinking, Hey man, you can wait. I soloed every night after that.


The Rock in Rio concerts were heavily focused on new material, and over the two shows the band would debut the following songs: Bad Apples, Pretty Tied Up, Double Talkin' Jive, Dead Horse, You Could Be Mine, and Estranged.



Axl
Rock in Rio, 1991



After the shows, Axl and Slash were satisfied:

It was the first gig with everybody involved in a long time. Especially, you know, with two new people, right? It’s the first show that we’ve done that it was fucking – no matter how many technical problems we had and this and that – we fucking had a fucking blast, you know? And I could turn around... It was like, turn around and there’s those people that I know so well, you know? It was great.

It was the funniest show that I’ve ever played. It was the funniest show. And the reason I wanted to talk with you so much was to thank Rio. […] I want to thank Rio for being so responsive, so into it. It was great. It’s amazing. I had a blast. We did two hours and it was a blast. It was the best show, funniest show I’ve ever played. I really like it, I really like it down here. It’s like, I hope to come back here in a year and play again. You know, play more shows and play in Sao Paolo. […] This was the biggest crowd that we’ve ever played to and one of the most responsive. Donington was like, they knew all the words but, I mean, a lot of people down here don’t know English and they could still sing all the songs and everything. Like, Sweet Child; they sing every chorus with me. It’s so much fun.


From Axl's comments it seems his love for Brazil was born during Rock in Rio and the band would come back to this country again and again in the years to come.


MICK WALL, JUDAS PRIEST, AND DAVE MUSTAINE

But the shows did not go down without public spats with other bands. Mick Wall, writing for Kerrang! Magazine, would claim the band had set limits to Judas Priest's performance:

Upon their arrival at the Maracana, Axl Rose announced that neither he nor Guns N’ Roses would take the stage  that night if a) Judas Priest used any of their pyrotechnics; b) played more than one encore, c) didn’t cut their set by at least 20 minutes and d) used the motorcycle. […] Eventually, after much to-ing and fro-ing of messengers between the opposing dressing rooms, it was agreed to allow Priest to play their two encores and Rob was told he could keep the motorcycle. But Priest were still forced to drop five numbers from their set... and the use of their pyrotechnics was definitely ruled out. […] But if Guns N’ Roses thought that putting a vice on the performance of Judas Priest would make their own entrance more plausible, the results had exactly the opposite affect, Priest turning in a show that left the Maracana audience stunned and howling for more. […] Rob Halford, in particular, was brilliant, the best I’ve seen him in years, and the band were - as advertised - pure steel. […] 'If anything, being treated like that only made us more determined to put on a really hard show,” said a still- pouring-with-sweat Halford afterwards. “You know, I think it sorts out the professionals — the men from the boys. I mean, we’ve dealt with all this before. [...] And I think that, more than anything, when people try and pull a stunt like that on you it always backfires on them. It’s like, what are you trying to prove here anyway? Do you think that by taking away those things you’re gonna restrict the band’s ability to get a crowd reaction, or affect our performance as musicians? […] There’s no way! We’ve been around too many years to let something like that affect us. Out of all the people at this Rock In Rio festival, Priest have got the longest history. We’ve made more albums, we’ve done more festivals, we’ve done more tours. […] So it’s easier for us to handle but I still can’t understand that kind of attitude problem. It just doesn’t make sense.'


Axl would vehemently deny this:

We went onstage early because Judas Priest had pulled off on their own accord, and then said that we asked them to leave the stage early, trying to make us look bad. We had told Judas that they could play as long as they wanted, they could have whatever they wanted. The only thing they couldn't have, which the fire marshal wouldn't allow, was their pyro. Then Rob Halford is in magazines saying that I wouldn't allow him to have his Harley. I heard about that during the day. One of the guys who worked with us was in my room with a walkie-talkie, so I grabbed it and said, "Tell Robbie he can have anything he wants." There was no way I wasn't going to allow Judas Priest to do whatever they wanted, because I didn't want bad vibes. Judas Priest was one of the major influences on my singing because Rob Halford is one of the technically best in the world at what he does. And for me to tell them that they couldn't have their Harley is stupid! This guy was saying that I wouldn't allow it, which was a lie!


Another writer for Kerrang!, Stephan Chirazi, would confirm that Axl never refused Judas Priest to ride the motorbike:

About three weeks later I get a call, 'Is this Steffan? It's Axl'. To which I immediately said 'Fuck off Lars' because I thought Lars Ulrich was calling winding me up. So then he calls me back, 'This is Axl and I wanna tell you a few things!' For twenty minutes he was going on about what an arsehole I am and 'How dare I ?', 'This is outrageous, I would never do that.' He then says to me, 'Why didn't you just ask me? I would've told you there and then it was a bunch of bullshit.' I said, 'Do you know how hard it is to talk to you?' And I explained to him about the contracts, how no one was getting close to him, how their whole camp was separated from everyone and just how utterly in a bubble he was. He completely chilled out after that, he really calmed down and actually apologised saying he had no idea. […] We spent another half an hour talking and I think he might've been a bit unaware. Apparently he had not in any way said that Judas Priest couldn't do any of that stuff and Rob Halford did ride his bike that night


There also was an issue with Megadeth's Dave Mustaine:

When we played at Rock In Rio II, Dave Mustaine of Megadeth had been trying to get me to hang out with him the whole show. He had all kinds of people coming up to me and asking me to talk to him and so on. But due to my past experiences with Dave Mustaine, every time I've talked to him, no matter how good the conversation or how good I thought things were, a couple of days later he would try and pull a fast move, backstabbing, just to get himself some coverage. It's just somebody I didn't want to hang out with. It was handled nicely. The only person I spent time with in any of the bands was Billy Idol. We came back to L.A. and Dave's on the radio saying that they won't be playing any dates with Guns N' Roses. That there were deaths at the show. Guns N' Roses shouldn't have played on the night that they played and all this other stuff. What Dave didn't realize is that Guns N' Roses was one of the reasons there was a Rock In Rio II. The people who ran the television station down there and were major financers wanted to see Guns N' Roses. The owner of the television station wanted to see Guns N' Roses.



SERVING DINNER TO THE ROCK IN RIO CREW

After the show, Axl invited stage crew, waiters and guards to join him for a dinner with food originally intended to the entire band:

Despite his wild onstage persona, Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses surprised all the staff with his kindness. The singer had asked for noodles for himself and the band, to be served after their Wednesday show. However, the band members left while the singer stayed in the dressing room. Faced with a large amount of food, he invited the waiters, cleaners, and security guards to eat with him at 3:30 in the morning.
The Good Men Project website, August 20, 2022

In 1991, the lead singer of Guns N' Roses ordered 28 plates of fettuccine. But when the show was over, all the musicians and crew left without touching the food. Axl Rose went ahead and told [Amin] Khader [backstage production manager at Rock In Rio] to provide a meal for those working backstage. "I called my crew, cleaners, security guards, and set up a huge table. I thought: 'Look at this humble guy. Then Roberto Medina [the founder of the festival] passes by. It looked like a big party, with lots of wine on the table. I told him: 'Axl invited us." Then Roberto had pasta with everyone until dawn. I thought it was a great attitude," says Khader.
Uol.com (Brazilian website), September 13, 2017

Here is another version of the story, reported by Luiz Felipe Carneiro (from the Alta Fidelidade channel) in his book "Rock In Rio - The History of the World's Greatest Music Festival": "After the show the band left, except Axl. He wasn't forgotten there again; he just stayed in the dressing room to take a shower, because didn't want to leave the Maracanã before he was cleaned up. Amin Khader (note: backstage organizer) asked the singer if he would like for the abundant pasta that he had ordered before the show to be sent to the hotel so that he could have dinner with the band's production team. "How many people do you have on your team?" asked Axl. "About 15" replied Amin. "Then you can call all of them to have dinner with me here backstage," said the singer. Not believing what he had just heard, Amin set up a huge table in the dining room, with pasta and the best red wine available at that moment. Steamers, chambermaids, caterers, waiters, security guards, and carpet cleaners - no one was left out of the dining table. At a certain moment, Roberto Medina showed up at the dining room door and, without understanding a thing, gave a disapproving look to Amin, who quickly got up and invited his boss to an unusual meeting: "Roberto Medina, would you like to sit at the table with us and have dinner with Axl Rose?" When the businessman saw who was sitting at the head of the table, he almost fell over backwards.
Whiplash, September 13, 2017



IN HINDSIGHT

Duff answering what was his most memorable and special moment of his career:

Probably the "Rock In Rio" festival. We were in Rio de Janeiro, a somewhat exotic city. We had no idea how many people knew us and we found ourselves playing in front of 100,000 people. It was incredible. We said, "Oh my God, we’re huge.” And our first contract with Geffen; that’s something you never forget.


In their biographies, both Duff and Slash would point to the Rock In Rio shows as especially memorable:

It was incredible; we played two nights in a row to 180,000 fans in Maracanã Stadium. [...] It was something else; I'm not sure that I've ever seen a more insane Guns N' Roses crowd - and that is saying something. When we kicked into the bridge of "Paradise City," people swan-dived from the upper tier of the stadium - seemingly to their death.
Slash's autobiography, p 325

Maracaña Stadium: 175,000 people and a river of sewage streaming right through the place. An actual river. Of shit. People chanting, "Guns N' Roses, Guns N' Roses!" The audience cried and sang along to every word as we launched into our set. 'Fucking hell, there are a lot of people up here onstage.'
Duff's autobiograpy, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 176


Slash would later refer to this as one of the best shows they did:

I couldn't pick out the best gig. Rock in Rio and Madison Square Garden (for the first time) were among the best gigs we did. The audiences were amazing! And the band feeds off the audience reactions.


And for Matt came the addition that this was his first show with the band:

My first gig was Rock in Rio, which is the biggest gig in South America, which is about ... 170,000 [people], something like that. That was my initial welcoming to the band gig, which was two nights, sold-out. And I remember when we got there, and we got off the plane, it was a mind-blowing experience. [...] For me, I was just like, "whoa." I got off the plane and it was like being in the Beatles or something. It was the closest thing I could relate to being in the Beatles, because we were being chased by kids and, there was hundreds of kids outside the hotel. It definitely changed my life, everything just changed drastically. ...


In 2009, Duff would write a lengthy piece on this show and Brazil in general:

As our flight took us somewhere above Central America, the pilot came on to tell us the United States had just attacked Iraq in something that the Pentagon dubbed "Operation: Desert Storm." It was January 17, 1991.

Before the Internet was common knowledge, and before there was a computer in virtually every home (as there is now), playing rock shows in faraway places like Brazil was an exotic endeavor, to say the least. Flying all the way down there to headline two nights at the Rock in Rio Festival was pretty surreal. We just had no idea if Guns N' Roses had fans in this part of the world or not.

My first trip to many foreign lands came as a result of the growing popularity of my band. For most of the places we first traveled to, however, we had a good idea of our fan base because of the well-tracked record-sales data from each region (yes, artists used to sell records!). In pretty much all of South America, though--back then and to this day--records, CD's, T-shirts, and whatever else, are all pirated. As a result, and with no MySpace "hits" or Twitter follower counts, we just had no idea how many fans were going to show up to see us.

I hate to fly. I have always been claustrophobic. A plane is a metal tube with no way out. I used to self-medicate my condition with whatever was available. And after a long trip like this, the constant to-and-fro and drag and frum, I am exhausted. The plane lands, and thousands of really emotional fans are waiting. I am overwhelmed. They are overjoyed. I feel like a fucking Martian after traveling for so long and feeding my body with mind-numbing intoxicants. I've got to get to my hotel so that I can get my head around this whole thing.

Funny as it sounds now, Billy Idol was a touchstone for me. Not that he ever knew this, and it wasn't like we were real close, but I knew him enough and I knew that he was also playing at the RIR. Sometimes even in my own band, I would feel completely alone and alienated. The fact that Billy was down there gave me a sense of solidness somehow. I have never talked about this, and now it seems a little funny and goofy.

[...]

Back to my point of not knowing if we had fans in Brazil up to that point: Apparently we did . . . and lots of them. The Maracana Stadium in Rio is the biggest stadium in the world, and we were playing two nights there.

[...]

Those first gigs started what has become a long-running love affair with my chosen place in my chosen profession, and South America as a whole. On that first trip, I came to realize what absolute passion and honesty the average rock fan down there has about music and life on a grander scheme.


And in 2016, Duff would again look back at bring in Brazil for his first time:

I remember the first time we went there, there was no Internet or anything in 1990 or whenever it was. [...] '91. And going down there and really kind of sort of having an idea, but we've never been down there before. And showing up... getting into the airport. And remember the Gulf War started, we were flying and the pilot came on, "The Gulf War has started," like "What?" And we landed and and it was thousands of kids at the airport. I hadn't seen it. Japan a little bit but Rio was a whole different thing. And that was our welcome, like thousands of people. And then thousands of people outside of the hotel. And then we played two sold out nights at the Maracana Stadium and that was....


Last edited by Soulmonster on Wed Jan 24, 2024 6:12 pm; edited 12 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:02 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: DOUBLE TALKIN' JIVE
Album:
Use Your Illusion I, 1991, track no. 9.


Written by:
Izzy Stradlin.

Musicians:
Drums / Percussion: Matt
Bass: Duff
Vocals / Lead and Rhythm Guitars: Izzy
Classical Guitar Solo: Slash
Acoustic Rhythm Guitar: Duff, Slash
Background Vocals: Axl

Live performances:
This song was premièred live at the Maracana Stadium, Brazil, January 20, 1991. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {DOUBLESONGS} times.
Lyrics:

Found a head and an arm in da garbage can
Don't know why I'm here
Livin' on the run for oh so long
I gotta go collect

Double talkin' jive
Get the money motherfucker
'Cause I got no more patience
Double talkin'
I got (lies)
No more patience man
     
Back in town an'a all new friends
They sayin' how ya been?
Fucked up and outta place
That's how I felt back then
       
Double talkin' jive
Get the money motherfucker
'Cause I got no more patience
Double talkin'
I got (lies)
No more patience man
You dig what I'm sayin'?!


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

One event got everyone talking  during the recording of Illusions I and II was the day there was a huge commotion in the alley. It turned out that the cops found a dismembered arm and a head in the Dumpster behind the studio. All I know is that we didn't do it, but Izzy turned the event into a lyric on 'Double Talkin' Jive.' And I got to do a great Spanish flamenco thing on that track, which was a gas to do. That song has a really cool electric solo, too, that morphs into an acoustic flamenco groove.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York, pp, 316

I don't know where that idea came from [to add classicalguitar at the end]. It popped into my head, and I picked up a really nice Spanish guitar, which I kept. It came out of nowhere, so I splice dit on the end. It's played with a pick. Duff's playing acoustic, strumming behind that, too. Then I put the lead on top.
Guitar For The Practising Musician, April 1992

I always thought Izzy's Double Talkin' Jive had a cool vibe. And I got to play that little Spanish flamenco part on it. It had just been so difficult to get into that groove. Finally, Axl, Duff, myself and Izzy had that acoustic session and basically sewed it up.
Music Radar, 2011

Izzy had gone back to Indiana, and when the police found the body parts, he flew back out and sang the opening line and the final vocal.



12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon May 29, 2023 6:30 am; edited 9 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:03 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: DEAD HORSE
Album:
Use Your Illusion I, 1991, track no. 15.


Written by:
Axl Rose.

Musicians:
Drums: Matt
Bass: Duff
Lead and Rhythm Guitars: Slash
Rhythm Guitar: Izzy
Vocals, Acoustic Guitar: Axl
Nutcracker: Mike Clink

Live performances:
'Dead Horse' was performed live for the first time at Maracana Stadium, Brazil, January 20, 1991. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {DEADHORSESONGS} times.
Lyrics:

Sick of this life
Not that you'd care
I'm not the only one with
whom these feelings I share
Nobody understands, quite why we're here
We're searchin' for answers
That never appear
But maybe if I looked real hard I'd
I'd see your tryin' too
To understand this life,
That we're all goin' through
       
(Then when she said she was gonna like
wreck my car...I didn't know what to do)

Sometimes I feel like I'm beatin' a dead horse
An I don't know why you'd be bringin' me down
I'd like to think that our love's
worth a tad more
It may sound funny but you'd think by now
I'd be smilin'
I guess some things never change
Never change

I met an old cowboy
I saw the look in his eyes
Somethin' tells me he's been here before
'Cause experience makes you wise
I was only a small child
When the thought first came to me
That I'm a son of a gun and the gun of a son
That brought back the devil in me

Sometimes I feel like I'm beatin' a dead horse
An I don't know why you'd be bringin' me down
I'd like to think that our love's
worth a tad more
It may sound funny but you'd think by now
I'd be smilin'
I guess some things never change
Never change

I ain't quite what you'd call an old soul
Still wet behind the ears
I been around this track a couple o' times
But now the dust is startin' to clear
Oh yeah!!!

Sometimes I feel like I'm beatin' a dead horse
An I don't know why you'd be bringin' me down
I'd like to think that our love's
worth a tad more
It may sound funny but you'd think by now
I'd be smilin'
Ooh yeah, I'd be smilin'
No way I'd be smilin'
Ooh smilin'

Sick of this life
Not that you'd care
I'm not the only one
With whom these feelings I share


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

[...] 'Dead Horse', a tune which Axl had done the guitar and lyrics for years earlier before we'd ever met.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York. p. 299



12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Mar 21, 2022 9:29 am; edited 4 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:04 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: BAD APPLES
Album:
Use Your Illusion I, 1991, track no. 14.


Written by:
Slash, Axl Rose, Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin.

Musicians:
Drums: Matt
Bass: Duff
Lead and Rhythm Guitars: Slash
Rhythm Guitar: Izzy
Piano / Clavinet: Dizzy
Vocals: Axl
Background Vocals: Izzy, Duff, Matt, Dizzy

Live performances:
'Bad Apples' was performed live for the first time at Maracana Stadium, Brazil, January 23, 1991. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {BASONGS} times.
Lyrics:

Diamonds and fast cars
Money to burn
I got my head in the clouds
I got these thoughts to churn
Got my feet in the sand
I got a house on the hill
I got a headache like a mother
Twice the price of my thrills

An it's a cold day, it's a continental drift
I said this traffic is hell
Can you give me a lift
An I'll try to paint a story
Got your pictures to tell
Yeah you got to make a living
With what you bring yourself to sell

I got some genuine
Imitation
Bad Apples
Free sample
For your peace o' mind
Only $9.95
I got my camera back from customs
Got my law fees up to date
Hell they musta seen me comin'
Ain't this life so fuckin' great

When the shit hit the fan
It was all I could stand
Yeah, well I'm a frequent flyer
My body's breathing while it can
But what I don't understand is that
My world ain't gettin' no brighter
If I could touch the sky
Well I would float on by
While everybody's talkin'
Hell I'm just another guy
If it were up to me
I'd say just leave me be
Why let one bad apple
Spoil the whole damn bunch

Gold and caviar
Now why'nt you pour my apathy
I'd have all my bases covered
If I could teach my hands to see
But now we're down in the deep end
Where they'd love to watch you drown
I said your laundry could use washing
We'll hang it up all over town
I said Hollywood's like a dryer
An we're down on Sunset Strip
An you'll be suckin' down the Clorox
'Til your life's all nice and crisp

When the shit hit the fan
It was all I could stand
Yeah, well I'm a frequent flyer
My body's breathing while it can
But what I don't understand is that
My world ain't gettin' no brighter
If I could touch the sky
Well I would float on by
While everybody's talkin'
Hell I'm just another guy
If it were up to me
I'd say just leave me be
Why let one bad apple
Spoil the whole damn bunch

When the shit hit the fan
It was all I could stand
Yeah, well I'm a frequent flyer
My body's breathing while it can
But what I don't understand is that
My world ain't gettin' no brighter
If I could touch the sky
Well I would float on by
While everybody's talkin'
Hell I'm just another guy
If it were up to me
I'd say just leave me be
Why let one bad apple
Spoil the whole damn bunch
Boy!!


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

It's just a clean guitar [for the beginning]. I think I used a Jazz Chorus for an amp. I use that a lot. I hardly ever use a Marshall for playing really brittle, clean parts. On this particular song, for the beginning, I might have used a Strat, or I have this little Music Man guitar that Keith Richards had. I used that because it sounds great for clean stuff. This song was written complete, too.
Guitar, April 1992



12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Mar 21, 2022 1:19 pm; edited 10 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:04 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: PRETTY TIED UP
Album:
Use Your Illusion II, 1991, track no. 8.


Written by:
Izzy Stradlin.

Musicians:
Drums: Matt
Bass: Duff
Lead and Rhythm Guitars: Slash
Rhythm Guitar / Coral Sitar: Izzy
Piano: Dizzy
Vocals: Axl

Live performances:
'Pretty Tied Up' was played live for the first time on Maracana Stadium, Brazil, January 20, 1991. It was played a lot in '91 and at least two times in '92. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {PRETTYTIEDUPSONGS} times.
Lyrics:

I know this chick she lives down on Melrose
She ain't satisfied without some pain
Friday night is goin' up inside her...again
Well crack the whip
'Cause that bitch is just insane
I'm serious

She's pretty tied up hangin' upside down
She's pretty tied up an you can ride her
She's pretty tied up hangin' upside down
I can't tell you she's the right one
Oh no, oh no, oh no

Once there was this rock n' roll band
Rollin' on the streets
Time went by and it became a joke
We just needed more and more fulfilling-
Uh-huh Time went by and it all went up in smoke
But check it out

She's pretty tied up hangin' upside down
She's pretty tied up an you can ride her
She's pretty tied up hangin' upside down
Ohh I can't tell you she's the right one
Oh no, oh no, oh no

Once you made that money it costs more now
It might cost a lot more than you'd think
I just found a million dollars
That someone forgot
It's days like this that push me o'er the brinks
Cool and stressing
(Pronounced:Kool ranch dres'ing)

She's pretty tied up hangin' upside down
She's pretty tied up an you can ride her
She's pretty tied up hangin' upside down
And I can't tell you she's the right one
Oh she's the right one...(etc.)

(But I can tell you a thing or two
'Bout somethin' else
If you really wanna know-Know what I'm sayin')


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

My Mexican friend Tony took me to meet this woman named Margot at her house. She gave us some tequila or something and she goes in the bedroom and we walk in and there's this big fat naked guy with an onion in his mouth. He's wearing women's underwear and high heels and he's tied up with duct tape against the wall. Me and Tony were like, What the fuck is going on here? Cracking up laughing. She was this dominatrix chick. We sat around her living room for the rest of the afternoon, listening to records, and she'd go in the bedroom and do her thing. At the end of the day she turned him loose and he paid her all this money. She took us out to eat. There was this whole scene of dominatrix chicks who worked in the S&M clubs. They'd beat on guys and after work, they'd take a musician out to dinner, let you stay at their place sometimes.
Musician, 1992

We kept rehearsing, and once we'd gotten a few songs all together, we went over to Izzy's place on Valley Vista and Sepulveda in the Valley to do some writing and see where his head was (...) Axl showed up that day, and regardless we started working on a song that became 'Pretty Tied Up.' I remember that Izzy had taken a cymbal and a broomstick and some strings and had made a sitar out of it. Needless to say...Izzy was pretty fucking high.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York, p258

We did get some work done [while in Chicago in the summer of 1990]. We finished 'Civil War' and wrote 'Get In The Ring' and 'Pretty Tied Up,' to name a few.
Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 151

I don't know [what my favorite GN'R song to play is], there's a load of songs I like. For many a year "My Michelle" was the song I loved to play the most, but towards the end of the Illusions tour my favorite was "Pretty Tied Up".
Popular 1, July 2000

Izzy Stradlin was for sure, one of the best rock and roll story tellers ever. I loved playing this song live even way before this record came out; crowds seemed to identify with the groove of "PTU."

[Introducing Pretty Tied Up] We've been accused of being misogynistic. But see, the song was based on an event where the guy was tied to the fucking ceiling. Not the girl, the guy. That just didn't look so good for us to sing about at the time (laughs) ... But writers... they know everything, right? (laughs)

You know, the line 'I just found a million dollars that someone forgot'... Well, basically, Izzy had been on an about three-week coke binge and somehow felt he was an accountant. So he may or may not have found an accounting error, but I just thought it sounded pretty fucking cool, that's all - odds are against him, I'll tell you that.

Pretty Tied Up was a song [Izzy] had a cassette of. And it was just this thing, and Slash and I, and Steve, I think, got that cassette. And we just kind of flipped it upside down. You know?



12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Wed Mar 13, 2024 10:34 am; edited 10 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:05 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: ESTRANGED
Album:
Use Your Illusion II, 1991, track no. 11.


Written by:
Axl Rose.

Musicians:
Drums: Matt
Bass: Duff
Lead and Rhythm Guitars: Slash
Rhythm and Lead Guitars: Izzy
Vocals, Piano: Axl

Live performances:
'Estranged' was played live for the first time at Maracana Stadium, Brazil, on January 20, 1991. It had not been played since 1993 when it was added to the setlist of Rock in Rio IV on October 2, 2011, and has since then become a staple in the setlists. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {ESTRANGEDSONGS} times.
Lyrics:

When you're talkin to yourself
And nobody's home
You can fool yourself
You came in this world alone
(Alone)

So nobody ever told you baby
How it was gonna be
So what'll happen to you baby
Guess we'll have to wait and see
One, two

Old at heart but I'm only 28
And I'm much too young
To let love break my heart
Young at heart but it's getting much too late
To find ourselves so far apart

I don't know how you're s'posed to find me lately
And what more could you ask from me
How could you say that I never needed you
When you took everything
Said you took everything from me

Young at heart an it gets so hard to wait
When no one I know can seem to help me now
Old at heart but I musn't hesitate
If I'm to find my own way out
Still talkin' to myself and nobody's home
(Alone)

So nobody ever told us baby
How it was gonna be
So what'll happen to us baby
Guess we'll have to wait and see

When I find out all the reasons
Maybe I'll find another way
Find another day
With all the changing seasons of my life
Maybe I'll get it right next time

An now that you've been broken down
Got your head out of the clouds
You're back down on the ground
And you don't talk so loud
An you don't walk so proud
Any more, and what for

Well I jumped into the river
Too many times to make it home
I'm out here on my own, an drifting all alone
If it doesn't show give it time
To read between the lines

'Cause I see the storm getting closer
And the waves they get so high
Seems everything we've ever known's here
Why must it drift away and die

I'll never find anyone to replace you
Guess I'll have to make it thru, this time
Oh this time
Without you

I knew the storm was getting closer
And all my friends said I was high
But everything we've ever known's here
I never wanted it to die


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

Talking about writing the song:

I wrote the song basically about who I am and how I feel, and the breakup of my marriage with Erin and how I didn’t want it to die. But I also apply it to a lot of other situations, or friendships, or family things, where you knew it had to end.

I actually had a dream of the piano in this song. There’s another person I know that plays piano, and they’re really good and they make jokes out of it, and they sit there and crack jokes, and play all over the piano like a double time, double speed, and make jokes. And I was wondering why they never took that seriously and somehow I started having a dream about this song I could write for this person to play; and I woke up, and I went, “Well, I may go try and start playing that.” And I went and started playing it, and realized I was on to something, and I felt the emotions it was bringing out of me. I started actually writing the words to it as I started the playing of it.

I heard the piano. I heard it over and over, and over and over again. And Axl would sing it, so the first day that the band rehearsed it, it was the first thing that came to my mind. So when we did the takes, it was all first take. So I think it was whatever the piano inspired. It just came out naturally.

But when we started to record the song, I brought it in, to the band, and no one really quite had a concept of what it was or what we were gonna do with this thing, and it was a very long piece with a lot of changes. So it was really exciting to start working on it and finding all the parts, and the band trying to figure out what to do with the parts. It was – everybody was very inspired.

It took a long time, and maybe we were a little bit afraid of the song.

It took us a long time to actually make a song out of it, because piano - the way Axl brings something or plays something on the piano, then how Slash and myself at the time kind of decipher it into guitar language. You know, it’s two different languages. So with piano you go soft and hard within a second, and with guitars you’ve got to be more subtle and –

I feel like it was a significant answer to what the piano was doing. I really do. And even when we were getting the recording together and all that kind of stuff, it was like I had a definite idea. There was no notes, no changing notes. That was the original idea and it was the best one.

He just took the song very seriously, and the song means a lot to me, and certain things he did with the guitar he had to work on to do, you know, and really put himself in the right space to find the right guitar parts.

Estranged started getting developed when I had a relationship with my ex-wife Erin. And, you know, it just got really dark and, basically, writing the song was one of the only things that kept me together. And I really tried to put into words how I felt in the situation and how much I wanted things to work, you know. And, really, the song helped me to get in touch with my real feelings besides all the arguments and whatever was going on. Like when you get in an argument with somebody and you’re screaming, and yelling, and whatever, and then you go sit by yourself and you go, “That’s not what I wanted to say.” […] And so it was my way to express to myself how I felt.

It's one of Axl's babies, where he sat down and he had something he really wanted to express, and he wrote it on piano. And so there came the time when the band had to figure out where the bass is gonna come in, where the guitar is gonna come in. This and that. And so, I did all the guitar arrangements on it and wrote the guitar melodies, which are pretty important to the song now, I would say. 'Cause you recognize 'em, you know. That's that. That's why I have credit on it.

'Estranged'  was a song that Axl had been working out on piano for a long time - he'd been playing the same parts over and over in Chicago and afterward; it was clear that it was working itself out in his head. I had started writing guitar parts for it back in Chicago, so it came together in no time once we focused on it.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York, p. 298

There were a few songs that were very involved guitar-wise on those albums. 'Estranged' was a big, long song. I used a Les Paul Gold Top on it; I recorded all of the melodies on the rhythm pickup with the tone turned all the way down. 'November Rain' was tough, too, as was another Axl song called 'Breakdown.' Those were all piano driven and they needed accompaniment; the guitar and bass parts had to be thought out and done precisely. Those songs were all pretty fucking cool, I have to say, but they took some work.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York, p. 316

It was hard to arrange [November Rain] and Estranged, because they were so open-ended and we had to cut November Rain. But those were Axl's epic piano pieces and they were both breakthrough guitar solos for me. Real melody solos, y'know? I had some good sounds and they were melodically very spontaneous.

That song [=Estranged] is one of my favorite to play live. [...] Axl brought in Estranged on piano. I wasn't quick enough to read what he was doing on the keyboard to translate that to bass, or Slash to guitar. So we just learned it the hard way. You know, one time he stopped, he came down to Mates, we're playing, he's like, "Are you even playing...?" He looked at me, he's like, "Are you even playing the right notes?" I'm like, "I'm just trying to figure this thing out," man, because it's a big epic. But once I understood the song and when Slash understood that song, Estranged, particularly... And Slash did some stuff on guitar that was uncharted territory for him. With making the dolphin sounds. [...] That's just roll on[?]. [...] It's a Marshall and his Les Paul or whatever he's using, and a pick. [...] But getting that breath and space with the bass and drums too, you know, really important. The pick up, the pulling it back down and pushing. Really important. We worked really hard. You know, I can't really explain how hard that band works and works now, cause it's all about just being the best you can be. Even back then when everybody else thought we were just just drinking and doing drugs. We were doing that, but that was at night. That's when we were done. And, there was two different sides of that band for sure.


Matt would mention that November Rain and Estranged had been connected at first:

And we recorded that piece of music, November Rain, and then Estranged was originally part of November Rain, it was segwayed into Estranged and it was this huge 20 some minute epic thing. And we cut it in half and made it separate. But it was part of what he called The Trilogy, which Don't Cry was included in that. So it all sort of was a story that went interspersed.


Thanking Slash for the "killer guitar solos":

Afterwards, when it was done and recorded, I was like, “Ax, okay, I got to get credit on this for the guitar stuff” (laughs), because it was like a big part that went on top of what he’d already wrote. I was pretty proud of it, because it’s hard to write to somebody else’s music.

I really was sincere about thanking him for doing that, and the work that he did on this song is really special and really special to me; and I was very appreciative of him doing that.

I thanked Slash because, after it was done - it was hell to do, I hated him. I totally grew to hate the song even though I knew I liked it, and then when it was done, I felt so good inside, because it pulled all the stuff out of me.

You know what, but it’s not even one of those things that deserves a special thanks, really, because I think it has more to do with the kind of relationship in the band that we have. So that it just happened to be the right piece of music at the right time that I had the right guitar thing for, so I don’t think it needs all that much credit - you know, all things considered. It was more just like a relationship, the spontaneity of the relationship and just – I had it because that’s why we play together.

When I first heard the song, the first thing that I thought was cool about Slash’s guitar playing [was that] it was just so – it’s real unusual and it’s something new. It’s so hard to, like, reinvent rock ‘n’ roll guitar and stuff, and when I heard it I was like, how the hell you get the guitar to feedback for a 12 minute song or however long it is (laughs). I thought it was unbelievable. And then, when I read the liner notes, and Ax put the “thanks” to him and stuff, I thought that was cool.


Talking about the song:

On [...] 'Estranged' I take the tone knob and turn it all the way down on that particular pickup.

'November Rain' is about not wanting to be in a state of unrequited love, 'Estranged' is about acknowledging it, and being there, and having to figure out what the fuck to do. It's like being catapulted into the Universe and having no choice about it and having to figure out what the fuck you are going to do, because the things you wanted and worked for just cannot happen and there's nothing you can fucking do about it.

When we did this stuff, I was, “Hmm, this is really different” for Guns N’ Roses, in the same way I feel about November Rain. These two songs really are similar, in the fact that they’re a really emotional release on Axl’s part.

The songs that he’s written are great. They’re classic tunes to me. He’s just – you know, his style is very strange. It’s very different, which makes it that much cooler but also that much difficult to, like, learn, to figure out.

The first time I heard the song itself was at rehearsal, when Slash leaked out that guitar riff. I was like, “Wow!” like blown away. I mean, I knew right then and there that this is classic tune.

If you still have emotions and feelings, not wanting something to die, caring about another person and not wanting them to destroy themselves - I mean, the song can be applied to Steven Adler; the song can be applied to a lot of people, members of my family; it can be applied to the relationship I had with Erin, to the relationship with Stephanie... And there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it and trying to figure that out. So to me, at the present time, sitting here right now, this and Coma are the two heaviest songs I’ve ever written.



Playing the song live:

It’s quite a challenge to play it live. It took me a while to learn it, but it’s a great song live, I think. Unless you’re in Utah; they don’t get it there for some reason – just kidding.

We didn’t do it a lot live. We did it earlier on, when Izzy was in the band (?). And then all of a sudden we stopped doing it for a while.

It’s an intense song to do, because it’s a battle through things, and it’s a battle that it’s not necessarily over yet. It’s still in a period of, like, “will he transcend this or not?”

Playing it live isn’t that much fun. I mean, it really isn’t. It’s a really good song to listen to and everything, but for, like, a musician to play – I mean, I stop and start a lot in it, just for the part that I play in it, and I really don’t play that much, just a couple of power chords. There’s parts that really get you going and stuff, you get into it, you go to the front of the stage or something, and then you gotta stop and I gotta take a rest for about two minutes (laughs).

I don’t play piano that often - or hadn’t for the last couple of years, only on stage. I’m starting to now that we’re done touring. I don’t even know how to play the song anymore. Dizzy plays it.

I didn’t play on it in the studio - you know, it’s pretty much Axl’s tune - but I was there when it was being recorded. I do play it live, though.

The middle change, kind of the piano solo area that when we’re on stage I say, “Ladies and gentlemen, Dizzy Read,” that was really intense, but just kept growing and flowing.

When I had to learn it, I was, like, really mind-blown. I tried to chart it out – I never do that – and I actually had the song taped to the front of my piano - the chords, right? You know, because I was really insecure about playing it, because it’s all of a sudden –

A lot of the guys had problems with some of the chords and stuff (laughs).

It’s always scary, because even though we all know the song and stuff, it’s like, if one person fucks up, we throw everybody off.

And he needs to go through this little routine, like, “Please, get me through Estranged without making a mistake,” right? (laughs).

It’s just one of those songs that I just never really got, and we’re playing it, and both me and Duff are just doing the worst job. It’s like, I’m trying to watch Duff’s hands, Duff is watching my hands, and neither one of us were playing it right.

I’d be like, “Nobody noticed it.” Wrong. Slash in the dressing room: “What happened?”

And he’s just, like, screamed at us, “Get it together, man!” (laughs), and you guys were all going, “Wow!” (laughs) It was really that bad, huh? But we got it together pretty quick. But it was just one of those things. We just sounded shit (laughs).

Yeah, Gilby’s looked at me and I’ve looked at Gilby a few times like, “Okay, what’s up next?”


There's something really wild, for me, in performing 'Estranged' 'cause all of a sudden I realized I don't want to be sitting at the piano playing this song to keep the energy of the song moving live. I need to be moving around and there's something about being able to be up there moving around during it that's actually a present, a gift or something. Being able to dance and rejoice in a song. That came from situations and emotions that were killing me.

The songs that are more subtle are the ones where I really have to buckle down and make sure I've got it, especially if the guitar part's the main voice of the song. On songs like "Estranged" and "November Rain," I have to stop for a second and slow myself down, make sure that I hit the notes correctly so that they don't go out of tune, or the vibrato's not too hectic.

You know what, [a highlight of the show] has become 'Estranged', because for years everybody would just badger me, on the Internet, they would badger me [laughs]. They would just badger me on twitter, Facebook, "Play Estranged!", "Play Estranged!", "Play Estranged!", "Play Estranged!". I just don't like blocking people [?]. They would just badger me. So finally we got to play it.

It’s kind of a beast for me, and for everybody, but it’s such a great song. At the end of the song, you look out and people seem really appreciative to hear that again, so that’s been very cool. When we first started playing that way back when, before even “Use Your Illusion” albums were out, it was almost kind of the opposite; people were scratching their head going, “What the hell?” But so many years later, they seem really into it and seem to really appreciate that we’re doing that song. It’s a lot of fun to play now.




12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Wed Mar 13, 2024 1:16 pm; edited 13 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:05 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: YOU COULD BE MINE
Album:
Use Your Illusion II, 1991, track no. 12.


Written by:
Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin.

Musicians:
Drums: Matt
Bass: Duff
Lead and Rhythm Guitars: Slash
Rhythm Guitar: Izzy
Vocals: Axl
Background Vocals: Duff, Izzy

Live performances:
'You Could Be Mine' was played for the first time at Maracana Stadium, Brazil, on January 20, 1991. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {YCBMSONGS} times.
Lyrics:

I'm a cold heartbreaker
Fit ta burn and I'll rip your heart in two
An I'll leave you lyin' on the bed
I'll be out the door before ya wake
It's nuthin' new ta you
'Cause I think *we've seen that movie too

'Cause you could be mine
But you're way out of line
With your bitch slap rappin'
And your cocaine tongue
You get nuthin' done
I said you could be mine

Now holidays come and then they go
It's nothin' new today
Collect another memory
When I come home late at night
Don't ask me where I've been
Just count your stars I'm home again

'Cause you could be mine
But you're way out of line
With your bitch slap rappin'
And your cocaine tongue
You get nuthin' done
I said you could be mine

You've gone sketchin' too many times
Why don't ya give it a rest
Why
Must you find
Another reason to cry

While you're breakin' down my back n'
I been rackin' out my brain
It don't matter how we make it
'Cause it always ends the same
You can push it for more mileage
But your flaps r' wearin' thin
And I could sleep on it 'til mornin'
But this nightmare never ends
Don't forget to call my lawyers
With ridiculous demands
An you can take the pity so far
But it's more than I can stand
'Cause this couchtrip's gettin' older
Tell me how long has it been
'Cause 5 years is forever
An you haven't grown up yet

You could be mine
But you're way out of line
With your bitch slap rappin'
And your cocaine tongue
You get nuthin' done
I said you could be mine
You should be
You could be mine

Yeah!


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

Talking about writing the song:

[Recounting the first preproduction session to Appetite for Destruction]: We booked ourselves time at S.I.R. studios with Mike [Clink] at the board, the band felt free to be ourselves; at our very first preproduction session, we started writing what would later become 'You Could Be Mine.' (...) We weren't in there to write new material, but we were so comfortable that it just came to us.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York. p. 166-167

'You Could Be Mine' was another track that wasn't new: it was written during the Appetite sessions and I always felt that it should have been on that album, because it is more reminiscent of that time than anything else on the Use Your Illusion albums.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York. p. 166-167

And this next video starts out with a pretty cool drum beat, but I actually didn’t come up with the idea. Duff did. I just want to tell the public that now.
MTV, May 1993

[Before You Could Be Mine] This is a song Izzy wrote about his girlfriend, Angela.

You Could Be Mine stands out because it represents my entry into Guns N' Roses. I remember I had this punk rock rolling beat at the top, and by accident I put that fill on. I threw it in because I was a huge fan of Terry Bozzio and he did that fill but about 10 million times faster.
Rhythm Magazine, July 2009

That song, and Perfect Crime, we started writing when we were doing pre-production for Appetite. You Could Be Mine was one of Izzy's riffs, and as always with Izzy, he woulc play something and it would catch me ear, and I'd play along, but in my own sort of style. [...] That song didn't change at all [when they recoded it for UYI] apart from the fact that I used a tremolo bar.
Total Guitar Magazine, July 2011


Talking about the song:

We don’t do drugs - but we do drink a lot. A lot of the drug rumors about us started because we have a song called 'Cocaine Talking' on the album. But that song’s not about us or our experiences with the drug. If you listen to the lyrics, it’s about how all these nice young girls in L.A. can’t do anything before they do their coke. The song’s definitely not a pro-cocaine song. It’s about how the shit really fucks up your head.

The beginning of 'You Could Be Mine' has got feedback on it which sounds like more than one guitar, but it's just one guitar.
Guitar For The Practising Musician, April 1992

[Being asked what 'With your bitch slap rappin' and your cocaine tongue' means]: It doesn’t mean anything. And if it means something, I don’t remember it.
Popular 1, September 1993; translated from Spanish

My personal favorite Guns N' Roses song, that would be You Could Be Mine.


Talking playing the song live:

The first time I had to play 'You Could Be Mine' [live] my mind went "What have I done, I've gotta sing this now!"
TMS with Eddie Trunk, November 2011

[Talking about his favourite songs to play live]: The [title] track to Chinese Democracy is one of my favorites, also "You Could Be Mine".
LA Weekly Blog, December 2011

I really always get a kick out of playing You Could Be Mine. It is just a bass heavy, great riff song, it's really fun to play.

My favourite song to play is You Could Be Mine, that’s so fun to play as a drummer. It’s a lot of fun. That one’s like shifting in a car. You’re peeling out then hit a low gear, then you’re cruising. You have to shift the gears. It’s balls out.
Music Radar, June 2016

You Could Be Mine [is my favorite to play]. I like the more funky and grimy stuff like Brownstone, Rocket Queen and Jungle but You Could be Mine is the most fun to play.

The most fun song I play every night is You Could Be Mine. I love Matt's parts, I love them. It sounds like you're changing gears in a car, it's amazing, you know.

My favourite song to play is You Could Be Mine, that’s so fun to play as a drummer. It’s a lot of fun. That one’s like shifting in a car. You’re peeling out then hit a low gear, then you’re cruising. You have to shift the gears. It’s balls out.


12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Tue May 23, 2023 5:47 pm; edited 13 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:06 pm

SLASH CONTRIBUTES TO THE LES PAUL TRIBUTE ALBUM

Some time, likely in the end of 1990, Slash collaborated with legendary guitarist Les Paul:

Les Paul called me up to play on this tribute record where he’s producing tracks by Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and all these cats. So I took another song called “Burnout,” which should have been a Guns tune, and got Iggy Pop to sing it and Kenny Aronoff to play drums. Duff’s going to play bass, and Lenny sang backup on it.

When we were at the studio, Les Paul said to me, “You’re pretty good when you learn how to play.” Thanks, God. You know, that was pretty fucking intense. I just sort of, like, crept away.

I played on his tribute album, which is on hold right now. I knew the project was disorganized, but I decided to do it anyway. I put the band together with Iggy, and [drummer] Kenny Aronoff. Fernando Saunders played fretless bass on it, but it didn't sound right, so I took it off and put Duff on it. And Lenny Kravitz does background vocals. […] We did a song that was supposed to be a Guns N' Roses' song, but Steven could never play. It's a slow blues shuffle called "Burnout." It's really different now, though, 'cause Iggy's singing. […] [Jamming with Les Paul] was the most humbling experience in my life. He and his rhythm player are amazing. They play chords like...I mean, how they get from one of these chords to the other just blew my mind. And Les is a great guy. Funny, eccentric, and very, very smart. Once, before this tribute thing ever happened, he called me up out of the blue. I picked up the phone and was like, "Whoa, Les Paul!" We talked for an hour.

[…]  I did a song on a Les Paul tribute record that’s coming out. I wrote this tune and Stephen could never play it; it was a very ‘black’ groove thing and he could just never get it right, and so I shelved the song.


The record was on hold in 1991 and wouldn't be released until 2005. On the record a song called Vocalise by Slash was included, but this was a new instrumental based off a "classical piece" [Modern Guitars Magazine, October 6, 2008].



Les Paul & Friends: A Tribute to a Legend
2005



With the song based off Burnout never ending up on the Les Paul record, Slash bought the song back from Warner Brothers:

A few years back, when I wrote the music, it was supposed to be for a Les Paul tribute. And what happened was, they got all these guitar players together to do this record, so I did that particular song for my track with Iggy Pop, and Lenny Kravitz, and Duff from Guns N’ Roses, and Kenny Aronoff. It was called Burnout back then, and it was killer, it was [bleep] great. So I gave it to Warner Brothers and they sat on it for, like, years. And Les was really sick and nothing was happening with the record, and I thought maybe that they were trying to, like, wait for something to happen so that they would put out the record later. You know, because it happened to, like, Chet Atkins, myself, Jeff Beck, Joe Satriani and Les Paul himself – all these different guitar players on it. Anyway, so after nearly a couple of years, I was like, you know, something’s fishy is this whole project. So I bought the material back and when Snakepit started I just kept remembering how cool a group that was, because this band is so good. We rerecorded the music, and then me and Rod sat down and just wrote all new lyrics, because I wasn’t gonna use Iggy’s.
Dave's Old Interview Tapes, July 26, 2017; from telephone conversation with Slash in 2000


The song supposedly ended up as Ain't Life Grand, which was released on the second Slash's Snakepit album in 2000 [Indianapolis Star, August 25, 2000].

Slash got to jam more with Les Paul:

I got to jam with Les Paul. I did a song on a tribute record for him, and jammed with him. And that was like, a totally humbling experience. It sort of reminded me as to how long I've been playing. Not that long. [laughs].

It was a real humbling experience. Between him and his rhythm guitarist, my whole existence as a player was belittled. He's such an awesome technical guitarist; he plays in a style way beyond my years, to the point where I hardly even know where he's coming from.

[Les Paul]'s great! I jammed' with him over at Fat Tuesdays. That must have been one of the most humbling experiences in my life. I was like, "Christ! Get me off the stage!" […] [The song we recorded] was my own tune, "Bum Out," so I just played it my way. That was cool. I got Duff to play bass on it because the original bass player didn't sound right.

I had Les Paul wipe the stage with me the first time I jammed with him. I never wanted to be off a stage so badly. And Les will (mess) with you, because in his own mind, as well as the public’s mind, he is the king. He looked over at me like “Well, you’ll learn how to play one day, kid.” But I did jam with him recently, and I’ve gotten better — we managed to play four songs together without any altercations or any serious faux pas, and that was nice. It gives you a little more confidence.

The first gig I had with Les Paul, was six years ago. I got up and jammed with him at Fat Tuesday's. He basically wiped the stage up with me; I never wanted to be off stage so badly... But it was an experience, a lesson definitely well-learned. I've played with him three times since and it got better and better. I know now you've got to pay attention, don't get ahead of yourself and play in the situation, you know?

Les Paul literally wiped the stage clean with me the first time I played with him. I swear to God. I went down to Fat Tuesdays one night, and I thought, 'I'll play some blues with him,' or whatever. It was like, 'Get up here kid, c'mon!' And he just kicked my fuckin' ass. I played with him four or five times at Fat Tuesdays after that, and I got better at it. I'm not a schooled musician, and Les Paul is one of those guys that wrote the book. He also plays traditional music, American traditional music, which is not your basic Stones shit, and it's not your basic American rhythm and blues. It's like Mary Ford shit, ya know? I don't even know... his rhythm guitar player blew my mind. I respect the shit out of that. And, just to be able to go up there and impromptu try and play along with those guys, I got better at doing it.



2009: EPILOGUE AND AN EULOGY

After Les Paul passed away in August 2009, Slash would talk about him:

Les Paul was a shining example of how full one's life can be. He accomplished so much, & was so vibrant & full of positive energy. I'm honored & humbled to have known & played with him over the years, he was an exceptionally brilliant man, musician, inventor, mentor & friend.

I've known him since 1991. The first time I met him I jammed with him at the club where he had a residency, Fat Tuesdays, in New York. Meeting and jamming with an icon like that was pretty overwhelming. He promptly just wiped the stage floor up with me [laughs], you know? It was one of those humbling experiences. But he sort of took me under his wing after that and we became friends. I would always gauge my progress as a guitar player by how well I did jamming with Les on any given day. [Laughs] He was like the barometer for my evolution as a guitar player.

It's an honor for me to have Les Paul models with my name on it. He's going to be missed. He was such a great guy, really warm, funny, very to the point, didn't mess around, didn't mince words, but had a really great heart and tons of energy. He was one of those people that set out to do something and accomplished things. He didn't sit around and wait for things to happen; he just went for it. He lived to be 94, always stayed true to his school as a musician, and kept inventing the whole time. He was a landmark influence on all us young musicians [laughs]. One of the reasons Jeff Beck, one of my favorites, is such a bitchin' guitar player is because he was so heavily influenced by Les Paul. I'm just paying tribute to the guy.

I just had a gig with him at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a few months ago, a tribute to Les Paul, where a dozen guitar players all got together and jammed and then Les played at the end of the show. It was really one of those special events where some phenomenal guitar players got together and each one of them did their own little show, [laughs] including myself... it was another humbling experience... and when all that was done, Les got up there. And this is only a few months ago, so at 94 years old he gets up there and makes jokes into the microphone and has his whole band with him and fuckin' plays phenomenally. For the last 60 years he's had this major influence on guitar playing and the recording industry. So there he is, this little guy, so fuckin' full of life and vibrant and doesn't seem 94 years old, jamming out to this huge audience. It was really a special moment... it's hard for me to verbally explain it. Les was the kind of guy that anytime you were in his presence, he was always very upbeat, always cracking jokes, always making comments about the women present...

Very polite but very perverted at the same time, you know? [Laughs] The fact that he took a liking to me and took me under his wing was a huge honor. We always talked on the phone and that kind of stuff. It was special. It's important for kids to know who Les was because when I first started playing, I thought Les Paul was the name of a guitar. I didn't know it was a real person until I learned from guys like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Obviously from that point on I researched and then finally got to meet him. Kids nowadays don't even really know that kind of history but it's important to have an understanding of that delay pedal that you're using and where the original concept came from [laughs]. Whenever you hear guitar harmonies recorded, like Brian May used to record harmonies on all of Queen's records, that was all Les Paul stuff. He invented the technique where you could layer guitars. Before that people just had to play live and that was it.

I would have loved to have seen him again but at the same time he was such a great example of a life fully lived that everybody should just celebrate the fact that a human being could have such a great life and accomplish so much. You can never complain about being bored when you think about a guy like Les Paul, you know?


Bumblefoot would also comment on Les Paul's passing:

This is a personal loss for his family, and I'm thinking of them.

I met his son a good handful of times at different events with Gibson. One thing that I’m so pissed about is that there are a lot of times when people said to me, ‘Man you’ve gotta come down and see Les Paul, he plays in the city every week and you could probably get up and jam with the guy. And I was like, ‘definitely wanna do that one of these days, definitely wanna do that one of these days.’ And now I can’t. But god, that guy, talk about the Thomas Edison of music. From multitrack recording to effects to the Les Paul. But all other things aside, we all remember him as the guitarist and the inventor and the innovator, but he was a member of a family and a person, and I think of it more as a personal loss for them, and I just wish his family the best.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:52 am; edited 22 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:07 pm

FEBRUARY 1991
AXL SEEKS THERAPY

My growth was stopped at two years old. And when they talk about Axl Rose being a screaming two-year-old, they're right. There's a screaming two-year-old who's real pissed off and hides and won't show himself that often, even to me. Because I couldn't protect him. And the world didn't protect him.

_______________________________________________________________________

As described previously, Axl suffered from occasional depressions and in early 1991 the depressions, which made him remember his past, resulting in Axl seeking therapy [Life Magazine, December 1992]. The therapy would start in February 1991 [Rolling Stone, April 2, 1992; Interview Magazine, May 1992] before their massive tour in support of the 'Use Your Illusion' albums.

l reached a point where l was basically dead and still breathing. I didn't have enough energy to leave my bedroom and crawl to the kitchen to get something to eat. I had to find out why I was dead, and why I felt like l was dead. I had a lot of issues that I didn't really know about in my life and didn't understand how they affected me.


According to Axl, the therapy sessions lasted five hours a day, five days a week [Los Angeles Times, July 1991].

I know people are confused by a lot of what I do, but I am too sometimes. That's why I went into therapy. I wanted to understand why Axl had been this volatile, crazy, whatever, for years. […] I was told that my mental circuity was all twisted...in terms of how I would deal with stress because of what happened to me back in Indiana. Basically I would overload with the stress of a situation...by smashing whatever was around me… […] I used to think I was actually dealing with my problems, and now I know that's not dealing with it at all. I'm trying now to (channel) my energy in more positive ways...but it doesn't always work.


Axl would also keep going to therapy during the touring of 1991 which was tarnished by Axl's behavior which led to multiple stops, late starts, and rants:

I was like, I’d come off stage, and either get on the phone or have the person fly out personally into four or five hours right after stage. You know, where someone goes, like, once a week to work out their problems for half hour or an hour, I was doing four-five hours a day; like, every day.


When asked if he takes his therapist with him on tour:

Sometimes, when I feel I'm going to be needing to do some work. If we weren't on tour, I would've concentrated harder on getting this work finished and then gone out, but that was impossible. The albums needed to be worked.


In 1992 he would also mention that his therapist, or one of them at least, was a homeopath [for more information on Axl and alternative medicine, see later chapter]:

I came with a nice big package of defects. So I do past-life regression therapy work with a homeopathic doctor.


In the November 1992 issue of RIP Axl would go in more detail about the therapy:

I'm continuously learning that when I get depressed there may be a reason for it that I'm not aware of. It could be something that happened a long time ago, and I've carried a base thought ever since. That base thought hasn't been exposed since it happened, and it's never been healed. I've buried it so deep that I don't even know it's there. I can talk about life and love and happiness, but beneath that there's some ugly thought. Or hatred. Or fear. Or hurt. Something I'm still acting on. By going back slowly…[…] There's all kinds of methods, but it's basically figuring out how you feel and what really bothers you, getting more focused. Then, with my therapist, I work on releasing my unconscious mind. Unless your true self is in pain, why would you want to be detached from it? Yet most people are detached. Who knows how to go back and heal their own pain? Having help and being able to accept it is a lot stronger and sometimes easier. Sometimes it's harder though. I mean, who wants to need help? I found someone I trust and can work with. The methods aren't necessarily important; what's important is the getting there and the healing. A therapist could talk about it better than I could; and if I do, it may throw certain people off. It probably sounds very weird, but the important thing is that it's working. I have certain emotional, mental and physical problems that I don't want to have to live with any longer than I have to, so I'm obsessed with getting over them. The only way a person can tell if they need help is if underneath however happy you think you are, you know that you're miserable. I've been miserable for a long f?!king time, and now I'm not so miserable. […]  I could get really depressed and OD next week, but I don't think so, and I'm hoping not to.



THE EFFECT OF THE THERAPY

In 1992 Axl was still working on himself and the results of the therapy:

I didn't realize that I felt certain ways toward women, toward men, toward people in general, and toward myself. The only way to get through that was to go back through it and find it and re-experience it and attempt to heal it. I'm still working on that but I'm a lot further along than I was.


Los Angeles Times would report that "those around Rose say he is calmer since beginning the therapy, but they don't think they've seen the end of the outbursts [Los Angeles Times, July 1991]. And Rolling Stone would report that "those around Rose say his therapy has helped him make a great deal of progress. At the very least it has helped him deal with the depression that so often made him feel suicidal in the past" [Rolling Stone, September 1991]. In September 1991, Izzy would imply Axl was doing better:

[Axl] understands responsibility a lot more. Before, he used to be one of those guys who, if he even thought someone was looking at him weird, would just haul of and smack 'em. And sometimes, y'know, the people he went for weren't even looking at him.


In interviews published in 1992, Axl would again claim that the therapy had worked:

I'd already grown past a lot of the things by the time I started working on my therapy in February. It takes a lot of work to slowly dig that out. And I've been doing this while I'm on the road. Some of this stuff is coming out at four in the afternoon, when you don't expect it.

I've found a lot more peace in the last year than I've ever known and I feel a bit more creative than ever. I'm not writing a whole lot but I write a little bit and I play a bit on the piano and it comes easier than it used to. […] I've done a lot of emotional therapy and getting in touch with my real self, rather than the self that I've created to deal with life. Even though I was fighting to be myself, I wasn't really in touch with who I was. I guess I allowed it, but what are you going to do? You're a baby and things happen. You get affected.

Now I feel I know why I've gotten myself into negative situations and why I've been negative in situations and how I've kept that ball rolling whether I wanted to or not. I can see a lot of that in my life and in the albums. I was pretty much trying to express the anger and frustration and I was blaming certain things on the women involved. That's not to say that when I was writing a song like "Locomotive" that the person I was inspired by wasn't doing something completely fucked up. You know, I can even have some love for my real father now, which I never had before, but that's not to say he wasn't an asshole. I can understand Izzy leaving the band and be fine with that, but that's not to say he didn't go about it like an asshole. Someone could understand why I stormed offstage but I have to take responsibility for that. I could have been bein' a fuckin' baby. […] I'm trying to learn how to take more responsibility for my actions. I just wish I didn't have so many actions that were fucked up that I had to take responsibility for.


And that the therapy produced explanations but not excuses for his behavior:

One thing I want to say is, these aren't excuses. I'm not trying to get out of something. The bottom line is, each person is responsible for what they say and what they do. And I'm responsible for everything I've said and everything I've done, whether I want to be or not. So these aren't excuses. They're just facts, and they're things I'm dealing with.


For an interview in Star Tribune in August 1992 when Metallica was co-touring with Guns N' Roses, both James Hetfield and Duff was asked identical questions separately. One of the questions was about Axl:

Axl's not really that bad of a demon as he's made out to be. I can't really look at it objectively because he’s my good friend. When it comes down to it, he's really a sweetheart. If you were to sit down and talk with him, you'd see what I'm saying. You’d go: 'He's just a normal dude. What's everybody writing about him?’ […] In England, it’s the worst with all the tabloids. He reads it. He’s already got enough problems of his own, let alone people saying he's got AIDS or something. He’s very sensitive and that kind of stuff gets him down. I tell him it’s some [jerk] making up something and he says, 'Yeah, but my girlfriend’s going to read this,' or something like that. He's a normal dude who just grew up a little differently than the status quo. […] He’s got that anger. He doesn’t hold back his feelings onstage, which is very cool.

I tried to communicate with Axl. He likes to talk and thinks he's got his thing together. He’s got a lot of yes men, which doesn't help him mentally, I think, but speaking with him is really difficult. He tries to project himself as a real humanist and trying to make everything best for everyone, make this a better world and try and make life fun for everyone. […] I don’t really like hearing [information] secondhand from people. ‘Oh, his psychic said this,’ or, ‘Guess what he did today?' I hate the whole gossip thing. To sit down and talk face to face is the best way to do things, and I don't really have the desire to do that.


About the same time, Gilby was asked about Axl:

Axl is a very eccentric person, very talented. And if he wasn’t eccentric and talented we wouldn’t be where we are right now.


In early 1993 Matt would say that therapy and Axl's relationship to Stephanie Seymore had made him healthier:

I think I can speak for Axl on how he’s feeling about everything. I think he’s a totally changed person. […] Now he’s into playing, and everything’s pretty cool. […] [But Axl still has bad days] because a lot of stuff goes on with him... just basically being Axl Rose. […] I don’t know if I’d want to be him, to be honest with you. You’d have to think about that yourself: ‘Would I want to be Axl Rose?’ Yeah, millions of people would, but then you’d have to be in his shoes for a little while to see what it’s actually like. [...] I think he really enjoys being in a big band and all that, being a big rock star or whatever, but there’s times when he doesn’t, and that’s the times when he just doesn’t want to... do anything. […] It’s real interesting. After being in the band for almost three years now, I can understand the guy. For a while there I just couldn’t, and neither could millions of people.


Duff would also concur that the therapy was working and that Axl was at a better place:

Axl is just a happier person these days. We all go through our stuff. He just vents it sometimes the wrong way. The only thing I can say is that people vent it in different ways - some people beat their wives or some wives beat their husbands. I personally don't deal with things the way he does, but I'm not him.


Yet, the everybody had to tip-toe around him and his friend Josh Richman, would mention how they'd hide reviews to avoid him getting angry:

If there was a bad review, [manager] Doug Goldstein and I would be in the hotel stealing all the newspapers, because if Axl read it, who knows if he would get on the plane to the next city.



AXL'S DEPRESSIONS

Another issue that likely was discussed in Axl's therapy sessions, were his depressions:

[…] l was miserable and suicidal and I realized I had to do this work [=therapy] or I would check out. […] It's helped give me a drive. I have a definite survival drive, and the pressure gave me a drive to get on top of it. It was either sink or swim. Sometimes l would want to sink, and then while I was sinking I'd go, "Wait a minute, this isn't what I want to do," and I would calm down while I was sinking and then start rising back to the surface again.

I used to jump ship every three days. And I wasn't crying wolf. It would usually come down to I was leaving but there was no place to go. What am I gonna do, go to Paris, do poetry? Look at art museums and hope that not going after what I set out to do didn't eat me alive? Go pump gas? I was leaving to pump gas a few times, and ready for it. Then, I don't know, something in me would go, 'You can deal with this now'. It just took time to be able to deal with it. And that's when I would get hassled for not doing photo shoots and interviews, because at that time I needed to be able to deal with just being able to stay here. And that took a lot of time. A lot of my anger came from people not understanding that I needed that time. I would turn myself inside out to certain people, and they still wouldn't get it. They're no longer with us, because I just didn't feel safe, ever. […] For over two years, I lived in a black room. Blackout curtains, black floors, black walls. It's what I always thought I wanted, and sometimes it was really cool and sometimes it was a nightmare. And for two years, I worked on trying to put my head together, and find answers, because I couldn't find a reason to stay alive. I know a lot of cool people, but I wasn't thinking about them missing me, or me missing them - I was just like 'Hope they'll be all right, and I want out of here'. I just wanted to leave. […] I don't so much want to leave anymore. I'm finally starting to settle into my life. Ever since that point, it's been rough, but I knew I'd walked into my life. And the touring is the combat zone of it.


The Christmas in 1991 turned out to be "probably the nicest" in Axl's 29 year long life, with the two previous Christmases in 1989 and 1990 marred by depressions [RIP, September 1992].


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:53 am; edited 8 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:08 pm

JANUARY-JULY 1991
AXL RECORDS HIS VOCALS

In January 1991, Rolling Stone would report that what was still remaining to be done on the follow-up to 'Appetite' was "the completion of Axl’s vocals and the mixing chores" [Rolling Stone, January 1991; Special TV, 1991]. At this period in time, Axl was going through a bad period with Erin Everly (they would divorce in February 1991) and was in a bad state, as described by his friend Shelley Shaw who, together with Shannon Hoon, helped support Axl:

In 1990, it was the holidays - I think that’s when [Axl] had been through a really quick divorce with Erin. He was sad and living at the studio - he was in a really bad way. I remember Shannon looked after him and stayed there with him. But he was like, “I’ve got to go home to Indiana to see my family on Christmas Eve.” Somehow, he got a hold of me - I still hadn’t talked to [Shannon] - "I’ve got to go, and I heard you might come in. This is what’s going on.” I kind of took over, and then when I left, he came back. We were like ‘ships in the night’ - it was really weird. When I got there, [Axl] was sleeping a lot and going out to eat - there was no recording going on. He was just living there and he had a lot to say. It was more like Axl always needed somebody - he loved to sit and friggin’ filibuster. They were doing the sessions for ‘Use Your Illusion,’ and I remember Axl was like, “My voice just isn’t there for these high bits - I’ve got to get somebody in there to help.” So he brought in Shannon to see if he could do some things. I still hadn’t met him. It was like this myth - this little ‘charge’ that had been sent from the cornfields to have Axl look after.


Axl had also been struggling to write lyrics:

I would get these phone calls from the studio, Axl's sitting in his car, going, "You wouldn't fucking believe what he's written now," you know, either Locomotive or Coma, he's like, "How am I supposed to fucking write lyrics to this?"


At this point the band had recorded 35 songs:

Thirty-five of the most self-indulgent Guns n’ Roses songs…It’s a lot of material to work with — like four albums’ worth. For most bands, it would take four to six years to come up with this much stuff.


For Axl's recording of vocals, which took place at The Record Plant, it would be reported that he took his "Life Cycle, StairMaster, drawing table, smoking jacket, bed, Seals & Crofts CDs" into the studio and lived there for a month [Colorado Springs Gazette, March 7, 1991].

I did the basic tracks, then he [Slash] did his tracks, like a month or two by himself. Then came Axl’s vocal parts. I went back to Indiana…


Alice Cooper would mention coming in to lay down vocals for The Garden:

I’m used to doing things in an hour. I know Axl likes to take his time, but if you can’t get a vocal like that in an hour, there’s something wrong. So I told him upfront, ‘I have a tee-off time tomorrow at seven. We’re doing this in about an hour.’ I did it in two takes. I don’t know how long it took him to do all of his takes, but it ended up sounding really, really good.


With so much material recorded and ready to be released, the band was discussing how to do it:

There’s a ton of material we want to get out, and the problem is, how does one release all of it? You don’t make some kid go out and buy a record for seventy dollars if it’s your second record. We’re trying to think of a way to distribute the material where each of the four discs of material can be separated, so you can buy the whole thing or you can buy just one. But since it’s not released yet, nothing is etched in stone. It might change, and I don’t want to mislead anybody. I know the thing that it’s not going to be is one big boxed set, where you have to buy the entire thing or nothing. I can tell you that much.


Slash would describe the albums as they were taking shape:

The album spans our whole career. It's such a self-indulgent record, it might come out and everybody will go. 'What the f*** is this?', but we don't care, because it's ours. It's a killer album. It's very heavy and it's not mainstream. […] We're doing this one with the attitude that we'll just get it done, but everybody else has such high expectations and... the f*** with trying to live up to them!


And according to Kerrang! in January 1991, Axl would arrive later than the rest of his band mates for Rock in Rio II in Brazil, because of "hurriedly putting the finishing touches to his vocals on the new ‘Use Your Illusion' opus" [Kerrang! January 1991].

This would be confirmed by Slash:

Axl went in and did vocals, then in the middle of the sessions we went out on the road. From that point, Illusion was thrown all over the place; we recorded the album in like ten different studios or something.


At some point in the mixing process they also realized they needed more vocals done:

At one point, we realised we didn't have all the vocals finished, so I started mixing the songs that were finished in the studio opposite, while Axl was still singing the other ones.


Looking back:

We spent at least a month-and-a-half recording those songs, then Axl came in and said. 'I want to release all of it. two albums' worth'. He had to sing vocals on all those songs. so that took another nine months.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:53 am; edited 16 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:09 pm

JANUARY-MARCH(?) 1991
BOB CLEARMOUNTAIN TRIES TO MIX THE ALBUMS; ZUTAUT IS ASKED TO HELP GET THE SOUND RIGHT

The mixing of the album, which took place at Skip Saylor Recording in Hollywood [New York Times, December 8, 1991] "early in the year" [Circus Magazine, December 31, 1991], was also a laborious process [Entertainment Weekly, August 1991].

The band first tried the respected sound engineer Bob Clearmountain, but the band was not happy with his mixes and Clearmountain was not happy with the process [Entertainment Weekly, August 1991]. Clearmountain was quoted as saying that Axl "seemed to have a lot on his mind at the time,” and that getting the singer to join the rest of the band in the studio — Clearmountain preferred his clients to be heavily involved — was "an absolute nightmare" [Entertainment Weekly, August 1991]. According to Entertainment Weekly, this was due to Slash and Rose going through one of their "periodic personality clashes" at the time and Clearmountain would say that Slash deliberately stayed away from the studio so as not to "distract" the singer, and instead worked with him over the phone. Clearmountain would also claim that he didn't "hear from [Axl] for a week, and then he’d show up." Clearmountain recalls, "I’d ask if he listened to the last couple of mixes I did, and he’d say, ‘Oh yeah, man, it’s happening.’ And that’d be about it. He basically wasn’t paying attention" [Entertainment Weekly, August 1991]. Furthermore, according to Clearmountain, Axl would threaten to "quit the band three times a week" [Entertainment Weekly, August 1991].

It would later be revealed that Slash had a big problem with how Clearmountain mixed his guitars:

In the early days of mixing Use Your Illusion, I definitely did not see eye-to eye with Bob Clearmountain. We just had different ideas about what the guitar was supposed to sound like. And this was Bob Clearmountain! It was nothing about Bob. He was a nice enough guy, but we had different ideas about mixing guitar music.


Alan Niven looking back at Clearmountain:

Basically Axl moves into the studio with him, and God knows what that was like for Bob. Mr control freak breathing down the back of your neck. Bob Clearmountain was one of my heroes, but the mixes had no life and vitality.



TOM ZUTAUT IS BROUGHT IN AGAIN

For a period the band had refused to talk to Tom Zutaut [Entertainment Weekly, August 1991]. Zutaut, on the other hand, would say that his absence from the studio -- which was not the way he usually did things .. was because the band had earned it:

[...] because the band was doing things their way … They had grown up and earned the right to do things that way.


Later it would be clear that at least one of the reasons Zutaut was estranged from the band was the allegations that he had previously hit on Erin Everly while she was Axl's wife or girlfriend [Classic Rock, March 2008].

But in 1991 the band really needed Zutaut to help getting the sound of Use Your Illusion right and Axl was willing to bring Zutaut back into the fold despite the allegations of having made a pass on Everly [Classic Rock, March 2008]. When Zutaut stated that the rumour was false, Axl had said, according to Zutaut, that he wasn't sure he believed him, but that it didn't matter so much anymore [Classic Rock, March 2008].


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:53 am; edited 12 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:11 pm

AXL'S PERFECTIONISM AND INSECURITY

Axl seemed to have operated differently than the rest of his band mates in regards to music. He was very particular about the music they created, often to the point of obsessing over minor details:

There isn't really anything we want to change [with Appetite for Destruction]. There's two words in that whole record that I didn't quite say the way I wanted to, and I forgot which ones they were, didn't have time to go back to find them and redo them. And they are not out of key, so no one else knows it. I am the only one who personally knows it.

Sometimes six lines take two years. It’s just got to say exactly what I mean. Sometimes I write some great words, and then hear this fabulous music in my head, and I think, ‘Wow! This is really happening! This is better than Led Zeppelin!' And then I go home and put on a record and I realise, shit, it was Led Zeppelin.

I'm too much of a perfectionist, I know that. [...] I'm a perfectionist so much, that I don't get a lot of things done. It's like, I used to run cross country and when you're working at everything, it wings a lot easier when everything's going right, of course, because everyone's doing what they're supposed to do. When it's going a lot smoother, then you can give a lot more and you can maybe break a record or something. That's what people want to see, and that's what I like to give 'em. I like to be able to go out there and give my ultimate rather than just get by by the skin of my teeth. Everyone may have loved it, but I know it sucked compared to what I should have done. Like, I can go out and not be able to hit the notes in the end of 'Rocket Queen' and I can make up a melody on the spot, right there on the stage, and people think they're getting something special cause they're hearing it in a different way, but I know the fact is that I couldn't hit the fucking notes cause I haven't slept for two days, because of insomnia. I don't think that's fair to the people in my own mind.

[...]

My main motivation for all of this, and it could never be anything but, is the music, the songs. I look at it like I'm a painter or something, and that's my motivation, just to be able to get the material out the way I want it. I'm not driven for financial things, those are a bit more than secondary. It's like, I can get as excited about making money as the next person in that I'm gonna be able to buy this and that, but if the song doesn't come out the way I really wanted it to then I'm more disappointed, and the money doesn't really mean anything to me then. I now that's hard for a lot of people to believe, but that's something that we've kinda stuck by the whole time, as much as possible. You have to make compromises here and there, because... Since this is our first record, we had to make compromises to get a certain level of sales so that we could get a certain level of power to do exactly what we wanted next time around.


Slash would agree:

Axl works on his piano songs for ages. He’ll play a part and sing along, and we don’t know where it’s going to go and six months later, ‘I’ve got an arrangement!’


Alice Cooper would recount working with Axl on the vocals for 'The Garden':

I was in LA, staying at the Sunset Marquis. I was watching an old movie when Axl called me. It was about two in the morning and he says, 'Hey, listen, can you do the vocal on this song 'The Garden'? I went down there and I listened to it and said, 'Yeah, I'll do it.' So we do it but when Axl sings, you can't stay with him.

I'm sitting there and I'm trying to do a duet with him and I said, 'Listen guys, this is my range. I end right here.' He was two octaves ahead of me and I'm going, 'Okay, okay. You do the real high parts and I'll stay down here.' When you're in the studio, a one-on-one with him, it's really amazing. When he's on the other mike, you're like, 'Jeez this guy can really sing.' Axl was a definite perfectionist . Almost to the point where you wanted to say, 'At some point, Axl, it's gonna be good enough.' With 'The Garden,' it was an easy bit for me to do. I did my bit maybe three times but when Axl was doing his vocals, he treated it very intricately. Rock and roll isn't supposed to be perfect. I'm afraid of it sounding too perfect. I mean, Bob Ezrin recorded Pink Floyd's The Wall three times. They probably did it like six times before they put it out. You never know if a person is not happy with it or if they're afraid of the material. The Beatles must listen back to Sgt. Pepper and go, 'Oh, man, why didn't we do this?' As an artist, you gotta know when the painting is done.


Alan Niven would make some interesting observations on Axl:

Axl has a capacity to really focus and analyze circumstances and situations, which is part of what makes him a gifted lyric writer. However, a major element of the frustration of being involved with him was that while everyone else was basically being gregarious and dealing with a normal life, Axl was shutting himself away in his room and thinking about one thing and one thing only for days or weeks on end. It was as though he was picking something up and looking at it from this angle, then that angle, then another over and over again. That minute focus of Axl's is both a curse and a gift.


Axl's perfectionism or attention to detail also affected Axl's touring in the first years:

Being the perfectionist that I am everything must be in order, or I'm a wreck! So nine times out of ten, I'm completely disorganized! When we first went on tour, things were just a mess and it took awhile to get into the swing of things. I pretty much got everything down smoothly, and as soon as I can figure out hotels, and the way they don't know how to run their own phone systems... 'OK, no calls to this room please,' and five minutes later the phone is ringing! As soon as I can get that worked out, I'll be fine, and until then, I buy a lot of phones! [...] I just wish that I could function more smoothly on tour, so that I wouldn't end up upsetting so many people. They never know what's gonna happen. It's like, 'What's Axl gonna do next?'


Gina Siler, and old girlfriend who knew Axl back in Lafayette, would talk about Axl's perfectionism:

He is extremely intelligent. That was one of the things that attracted me to him. He is just a nit-picky perfectionist and when things don’t go smoothly and to his liking he just loses it. He blows up. I’ve seen him do it on many occasions, smashing things and breaking things and yelling and screaming - holes through walls. Seen him do it one too many times.


His perfectionism may also be related to his stage nerves and anxieties regarding their live shows:

I'm very stressed about the shows, which are the most important thing to me. Nothing ever really works right for this band.


This was very different to Slash's approach that was usually to finish his in a few takes [source]. Naturally, such different philosophies in regards to music would cause friction, and this would be more pronounced as Axl started spending longer and longer time on his work.

Axl was also strongly opposed to making any compromises; to Axl, the art came before anything:

I believe in art first [...] Sometimes people talk about money being the success, that's second. That's being lucky and people being generous to you by buying your album. Your being accepted. That's success on its own terms. But success to me is like you do a painting, it might not have been what you wanted, because when you think of a painting in your mind sometimes what comes out on the paint is a shadow of what you thought of, but still, it is something you are proud of, and if you can get that and you're really proud of it no matter what anybody says, whether someone offers you a dollar or ten thousand dollars for that painting, if you're proud of it, that's to me what counts. And that's what we strive for.

I'm not going to not believe that we can't [make it with Appetite for Destruction], but anything's possible, you know, and if it doesn't happen then we're going to figure out another album without compromising our music because once we compromise our music there's no reason to be in this band. Get the fuck out. Go home. You know. If I wanted to fucking compromise I could have cut my hair and I could be, you know, a car salesman somewhere, or I could be climbing the corporate ladder or something. I'm not in this to compromise. Not at all.[...] I just don't like compromises just for the sake of being successful. That bothers me. To pay the rent. I'd rather starve than paying the rent by bending over and taking it in the ass, and that's how I consider it.


In 2008, Duff would discuss the long process of releasing Chinese Democracy:

I mean, I'm glad if it's finally coming out. I'm glad for Axl, that probably that pressure is off him. I'm glad he's able to let the music go. He is a perfectionist, man. There's people that are just perfectionists and they can't let a single note, anybody hear a single note unless it's, you know, perfect. You know, some musicians will play everybody their demo in the band, and then they go with all the mistakes and they don't care, because they know that everybody else has got the vision to hear it. Axl is, you know, a different… he's a different breed.


In 2009, after the long-awaited release of Chinese Democracy, Axl would be asked if perfectionism was partly to blame for how long time it had taken, and discuss the term and argue that generally it was used against him be people opposed to him:

In regard to so-called perfectionism, I feel that has a lot to do with your goals or requirements with whatever one's doing or creating. Different levels may be required for different objectives. If you're making brakes for a vehicle, what's required? It's all relative, right? You try to make the best calls you can at any given moment and go from there. Generally, when this term is used by others in regard to me or how I work, it's said in a negative way or as an excuse for their shortcomings -- and again by my detractors. Whether they are open about such or not, some people love putting others in a negative light; helps them feel better about themselves. Too many ears and too many stupid comments have proven that.


In 2104 and 2015, Frank would talk about Axl's perfectionism and how he still in 2015 wanted everything to be "perfect" and how that put a lots of pressure on himself:

[...] there is pressure on the band to perform well, obviously to play the songs right and that stuff. But you know, Axl carries so much weight of the whole thing. The band doesn't really feel that weight, we are there to support Axl, Axl is the one who really feels the weight, I mean, he's under a lot of pressure, you know, to perform and, you know, and the whole business side of Guns and stuff like that. I mean, we can't compare to what he's feeling or what he has to go through to perform and go out on tour and stuff like that. So it's kind of weird in the sense where, yeah, all eyes are on him. So it kind of, you know, takes a little pressure off the band in that sense. But as far as performing and making sure that, you know, we go up there and play a great show and making sure that he's comfortable and he can hear, you know, himself and the band, that he's pumped. that he's having a good time, like that's our main focus as a band is to make sure that he's comfortable and happy up there, you know. So I think the band really concentrates on a good performance and then everything else takes care of itself and with of course Axl being the main focus of the band.

Axl is a perfectionist so [Chinese Democracy] came out when it was ready to come out.

I guess the only thing I can say is that he wasn't ready, he just wasn't ready to put it out, he didn't feel like it was completely done. You know, I'm always joking, it came out everybody had to wait till I showed up [?]. I always make that joke but, you know, obviously, he was, you know... it's his baby, this is baby and he wanted it, he wants it to be perfect. Still today, still even today he wants everything to come off just right. And that's a lot of pressure to put on oneself and he deals with it in his own way. He is probably one of the greatest living rock stars in the history of music - and they're becoming rare. I mean, think of a rock star in the last fifteen years that's popped up. You can't think of anybody. Everybody's still… Nine Inch Nails is still headlining festivals, and Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains. It's, like, there's nobody out there. And Axl puts that pressure on himself. That's a lot of pressure. He just wants it to be right. That's the only thing I can say: he wants everything to be just right. That's who he is. That's what every artist is. They're perfectionists in their own right. Very rarely… For every one great song you hear, they've written sixty songs that probably are great, but they don't feel are great. That's the way they think. He has a lot of pressure on him.


In 2017, Tommy would again talk about Axl being a perfectionist when comparing him to Paul Westerberg:

[comparing Axl to Paul Westerberg] They’re more similar than dissimilar. They’re both very much focused on how they see it in their head and how it needs to be, so you have to roll with that a bit. They’re both strangely perfectionists, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just part of genius involved with both of them.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:54 am; edited 16 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:12 pm

FEBRUARY 1991
ERIN AND AXL DIVORCE

In early 1991 the marriage between Erin and Axl was over [The Indianapolis News, February 1991]. In court papers quoted by Rolling Stone, Axl said that their relationship had been marked by "severe property damage, mutual acts of violence and humiliation and similar such activities" [The Indianapolis News, February 1991].

I am an artist and performer, and I sincerely believed Erin was my greatest inspiration. […] [Everly left for] weeks on end without notice. She made It quite clear by her actions and statements that she had no intention of complying with her promise to raise a family and be involved In a well-adjusted marital situation.


Josh Richman, a friend of Axl, would describe the marriage and its end:

Axl and Erin really wanted to be together. This was a guy who desperately wanted a family, having come from a busted family. The annulment happened right away.


Rumors would later abound about Axl's and Erin's relationship, including one involving spray-painting on the couple's garage [Entertainment Weekly, August 1991]. This rumor would be denounced by both Axl and Erin [TMZ, September 2012; Express, September 2012].

While Axl's relationship with Erin was unsteady, he was gradually reconnecting with his stepfather, and one item them bonded over was car stereos [Car Audio Electronics, August 1990].


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:54 am; edited 35 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:12 pm

FEBRUARY 1991
THE GEFFEN CONTRACT IS RENEGOTIATED

The management of the bands you mentioned went and asked for a re-negotiation in light of their sales and were rebuffed. Informed of this I obviously realised that if one asked one would not get. Oliver’s wretched bowl would not be refilled with crumbs from the label table so I did what I obviously had to do which was to tell David Geffen that if he did not improve their remuneration then the album he desperately wanted to sell prior to his sale of DGC would remain an illusion and that I would take the band out on the road, headlining for the first time, where they would make pots of money and have a great time. David wasn’t thrilled, but he came to the table. That was the difference.

_____________________________________

In February 1991, Alan Niven renegotiated the contract Guns N' Roses had with Geffen:

It was an early '91. In February '91.


At the time the band had a new artist's contract, and although Niven thought the terms were decent for such a contract, he thought they deserved more at the time:

[...] the band were only about a third of the way through the contracted obligations that they had to get from Geffen, but obviously they were signed to a new artist contract. And it was a very decent contract, but by definition it's a new artist contract. And for example their royalty rate for records sold, as I remember, was, I believe, 12%. And from my perspective- [...] 12 is decent. For that time period a new artist getting a 12 point royalty rate was decent. [...] But from my perspective, I thought it was unfair that having sold a lot of records for David [Geffen] that they should be still confined to a new artist royalty rate. They had proven that they were going to sell a lot of records in the future and that ought to be acknowledged and honoured. I didn't see why Don Henley should have a vastly superior royalty rate than Guns N' Roses. As much as I completely admire Don Henley for his artistry and the brilliance of his records, especially the latter ones. GN'R is selling more records than him.


But Geffen was not typically open for renegotiating contracts:

I had some good friends in the Geffen milieu and one of them pulled me aside one day and said, "I've got a little piece of information that you might be interested in," and I said, "Oh, really, what's that?" and he said, "Tim Collins has been into David [Geffen] and Eddie [Rosenblatt] and asked for the Aerosmith royalty rate to be increased and to renegotiate," and I said, "Oh, how did he do?" and they laughed and they said David's basically told him to get lost. And I said, "Well, that doesn't surprise me," knowing David as I do. And and they said, "You know, there's something else you should be aware of too", because they knew where my head was at on this issue, they said that Howard Kaufman, who is managing Whitesnake had also come and asked to have the Whitesnake contract renegotiated, and David had demurred in that instance, too. Bear in mind both these acts had sold 5,000,000 units domestically, which is a tremendous amount of records to sell.


So Niven decided to not ask Geffen for a renegotiation, but tell him and threaten to not release Use Your Illusion before the tour if he didn't have his way:

The only possible way I had of improving the royalty rate that Guns would get, and which they richly deserved, was to find a way to tell him. And in that way, I was having a birthday party at the beginning of February and it was a private dinner in a restaurant that I liked on Melrose. And amongst the guests were Eddie Rosenblatt and his wife. And I sat next to Eddie and I counted the number of glasses of Chardonnay that he drank. When I felt he'd had enough, I leaned on him closely and whispered in his ear and and basically said, "Look, don't shoot me, I'm only a messenger, but you need to go back to David and tell him that if he wants the Use Your Illusions delivered, he's got to renegotiate. And let me tell you, if he doesn't renegotiate I'm gonna put the tour on sale and we will go out on tour and the band will have a fantastic time and they will make pots of money for themselves and David will be sitting there without without a record." And I was also aware that David was trying to sell Geffen at that time and was looking for the best offer he could get. And I could see in his perspective he really wanted to get the Guns record before the sale, make the profit off that and then sell the company. Thereafter he wanted to get that Guns record out. And Eddie and I figured out that sales on Use Your Illusion globally within the first months would be in the $100 million range.


It took 10 days before Niven got a reply from Geffen:

But I unfortunately obliged Eddie [Rosenblatt] to go back to David [Geffen] and say he wasn't gonna get his record unless he renegotiated. And I didn't hear anything for 10 days. [...] So Rosenblatt went and told Geffen and the basically had to renegotiate or we weren't going to finish the record and we were going to go on tour. And I did put the first dates up on sale. Which showed Geffen that we were gonna sell a lot of tickets very quickly.


The meeting happened at a restaurant on Melrose:

But in any case, that went back to David and I, you know, eventually I got a phone call and he invited me to a lunch. And unfortunately it was in my favorite restaurant, you know, so. He got there before I did. And I sat at the table with him, and then he started to scream and yell at me with such vehemence, I swear to God my hair was horizontal behind me. That he wouldn't be dictated to. He wouldn't be told what to do. And there was actually at the very next table, a well known TV actress, Jane Seymour, and out of the corner of my eye I could see this poor woman shrinking and shrinking and shrinking as David's tirade got more and more vehement and loud. [phone ringing] But of course, as I'm sitting there and he's yelling at me, what's going through my brain? The one thing that's going through my brain is that if David is yelling at me in this circumstance, then I've got him. Anyway, he didn't eat his food. He stormed off and just left me sitting there.


Then Niven was invited to Geffen's office:

And I went back to the office and then two or three days later I get a phone call, and David's manner was always imperious, didn't matter what you were dealing with, if David called and he said I want you in my office right now, he expected it. And it was a little tiresome, but David is David. So you afforded him certain understanding. And it was a very fast phone call, it was just, "Be in my office now." OK. So I get in the car and I drive up to Geffen and walk in and I walked into his office and he has the entire A&R department in the room, he has the entire business management, executive, in the room and he has accountants in the room. And they're all standing in the bay window together and there's one little seat on the other side of the room, designated obviously for myself, and [he] showed me to it. And then to unnerve me even more it was a big drinks tray in the other window and David goes over to it and starts playing butler. "Alan, what would you like to drink? What can I get for you?" And I'm sitting there going, "What the fuck is going on here?" And he turns around to me and basically it was a total ambush. He turns around to me, and he goes, "You want to renegotiate. What do you want in the contract?" I am not there with the band's lawyer to represent them. Quite frankly I haven't spent that much time thinking about what I want in the contract, but in that particular moment I had a clear vision. And I looked at him. I said, "Well, David, I want the best contract he's ever written for an artist." And he stood there and he said, can't happen, won't happen. And I said, "Really, David, why is that?" And here I am, sitting on my own in my little chair with all these people standing, staring at me. And I said, "Why's that, David?" And he said, "Because Henley's got it and he's got a favored artist's clause, and he has the best Geffen contract and always will." And I sat there for a moment. I said, "Well, David, it's really no problem. We'll have the same as Don and every time you account to us I will go to the bank and get a perfectly minted crisp $1 bill and send it to Don." [...] And Geffen just stood there and stared at me for a while and I was wondering if he was going to reach for his baseball bat. And then he just suddenly said, "Meeting's over," and shoed everybody out of the room and he said, "You stay." And all the other people left and he looked at me and he said, "Get the lawyer to get in touch. We're renegotiating this. You've got your renegotiation." And I walked out and as was going out I went past Rosenblatt's office and Rosenblatt said, "Hey, kiddo, come in here a minute." I walked in there and I looked at him and he said, "You know, in all my years in the record industry, I've never seen a scene like that before." I looked at him and I said, "Eddie, nor have I!"


The band appreciated the negotiation and improved terms:

The band deserved the renegotiations. Axl has implied that it was greed on my part, how absolutely inane and insane of him. My responsibility was to maximize their earning capacity. I did my job. [...]  Everybody was really pleased and happy to know that there was going to be a renegotiation. Who wouldn't be? We're going to get paid more. [...] [Axl] was really happy there was a renegotiation going on.



GOLDSTEIN CLAIMS TO HAVE NEGOATED AN EVEN BETTER DEAL

In 2018, Doug Goldstein would claim he had, at some point, successfully negotiated an even better deal:

[...] financially, improving their label deal from a 15% royalty because Niven, whatever, I mean, it's irrelevant. He did some things that were a little unscrupulous, but I had to renegotiate with David Geffen. It actually turned ugly, I won't go into it, but suffice to say, after a number of months - Eddie Rosenblatt is a wonderful, sweet man, president, and David Berman, who's one of my favorite people on the planet, head of business affairs - they allowed me the opportunity to improve that deal to 34 points, more than doubling the royalty. At the time it was the highest royalty in the history of music, they were four points higher than Michael Jackson. Metallica has a better deal now because they use this.... In California they have something called the seven-year statute for any written contract, even marriage, after seven years it becomes null and void. So they contested the seven-year statute and ended up getting a 50/50 deal. But at the time, you know, they got that deal. And oddly enough, the only person who recognized it and thanked me was Izzy Stradlin, who was out of the band. He'd get these massive royalty checks and call me and go, "Dude, thanks, I can buy motorcycles now."


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 9:55 am; edited 20 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:13 pm

MARCH 1991
BILL PRICE TAKES OVER MIXING DUTIES

With Clearmountain being dismissed, Slash suggested Bill Price to mix the albums [VOX, October 1991] and Price came in "at the 11th hour" and did the job [New York Times, December 8, 1991]. It would be reported that Price had replaced Clearwater in March 1991 [Kerrang! March 30, 1991], indicating that Clearwater had worked on the record before this.

Matt would comment upon the mixing issues:

Then we ran into problems with the mixing. The guy that was doing the mixing didn't do a good job, so we had to call in Bill Price who re-mixed almost all the material.


Price would discuss how he got involved:

Then they started work on their huge Use Your Illusion project with the same producer/engineer, Mike Clink, that had done Appetite for Destruction. This involved about 40 songs, and it was going over budget, overtime, pretty much over everything, really, and Geffen wanted it finished. They got Bob Clearmountain to mix it in one studio whilst Axl was still doing vocals in another studio and Slash doing guitars in a third. Which was, quite obviously, a recipe for chaos. I think Bob mixed about 20 songs, but he had absolutely no contact with the band, because they were recording other stuff in other studios. And basically what happened, if Axl liked the mix, Slash didn’t, and if Slash liked the mix, Axl didn’t. So Bob never really had the chance to work with the band. Geffen was pressuring to get the album finished, so Tom Zutaut persuaded me to come out to L.A. and mix it. Not even actually to mix it, but to audition for mixing it.


Describing how the audition took place and how he got the job:

Geffen pays my flight and my hotel, and I do a mix of something and wait and see if anybody likes it or not, to find out whether I’m hired. So I did my “audition” on “Right Next Door to Hell.” I think it opens the first CD of Use Your Illusion. It’s a very straightforward, up-front rocker, so I did a loud, in-your-face, heavily compressed mix of the backing track and then added Axl’s vocal on top, post the compressors, so that you could hear what he was singing. Everybody loved it, so they hired me. I then embarked on a very long period in Los Angeles working my way through this huge amount of material. I had fantastic help from Mike Clink, who’d produced the original backing tracks, and day-to-day support from Jim Mitchell, his engineer, who was very helpful. I had alternate visits from Slash, Axl and various other members of the band and sent everybody else DATs for approval. I happily worked my way through 20 or 30 songs.


According to Inger Lorre from The Nymphs, Price had been involved in producing their record at the time and Axl basically stole Price from them:

I don’t care what you say about the band and me, but one thing that’s got to make it into the article is how I feel about Axl Rose. That little fuck stole our producer after Tom played him our tape. We didn ’t even get copies of our own rough takes. I think Axl is a pig-faced, sexist, homophobic, racist piece of shit, and I'd love to kick his ass. I’ll give him my address, the little wimp.


Zutaut would give his version of what happened:

With Guns N’ Roses, we gave a copy of the Nymphs’ rough tracks to Guns manager Alan Niven, because Lorre wanted the opening slot on their tour. But problems developed between Lorre and Axl Rose through Lorre’s boyfriend at the time, Josh Richman, and that idea had to be scuttled. When Guns started to mix Use Your Illusions, they remembered that Bill Price had been their original choice to produce Appetite for Destruction, and so they called on him to mix for them. I objected to this, but I was overruled by the company’s president and CEO. After all, Guns N’ Roses is the label’s biggest act.


And on Lorre and Axl:

Axl and Inger have never met, actually. You know, if they did, I think they’d be soul mates. But I wouldn’t want to be there if the sparks start to fly.


Slash would recount the mixing issues without mentioning Clearwater at all:

We couldn't work with Thompson-Barbiero, who were the two guys who mixed Appetite. At first, we chose not to work with them, and then by making that decision, they took on another gig, and we didn't have anybody to mix it. Then we asked them to do it and they couldn't, because they were working on Tesla. Being that we don't know that much about mixing and because we were so close to the music, we got to a point where we didn't even know what it was supposed to sound like anymore. Bill Price is somebody that we originally wanted to produce the album, in the early days, because he'd done the Pistols and the Pretenders. We really liked the sonics on those records. So we got in touch with him and he came out, and he brought a whole new life to the album. He has a great overall idea of what separation's all about, as far as instruments go, especially because there were so many things going on in some songs. He was great to work with, and he has great ears, so it was a real relief, 'cause I thought the album was destroyed. The hiring of Bill Price is one of the reasons this album took so long to get out.


Getting Bill Price in to do the mixing would cost a lot of money and time, according to Kerrang! in July 1991, and would postpone the expected release date to August 19 [Kerrang! July 20, 1991].

Price, on the other hand, would describe how he had to wait for songs to be fully recorded and how in the end he had to get the entire band in the studio to help out with the final mixing:

What happened was, having got my way through about 20 songs, I was then in the position of waiting for the next song to be finished. For example, on “November Rain,” which was a bit of a baby of Axl’s, I had Mike Clink’s original 24-track master, which had just drums and maybe a bit of bass on it. I had a 24-track slave that had a load of vocal ideas on it and a 24-track slave that had a lot of guitar ideas on it and a Sony 48-track slave that had a hell of a lot of vocal and keyboard work that Axl had been doing in his studio. I had another 48-track slave that Slash had been recording on in his studio. I tried a telephonic method of working out which tracks should be used and couldn’t get anybody to agree on what of this huge amount was going to be used. I decided that the only way would be to run them all together. We were in Skip Saylor’s studio in Los Angeles, which had, if I remember rightly, an 82- or 84-channel SSL. It was a pretty big desk. So we hired a bunch of tape machines in, and, of course, they didn’t run in sync, but the Los Angeles hire companies have got some very good technical engineers, and some hairy bloke in shorts arrived with a homemade interface and managed to plug all the machines together and get them to run in sync. Then I could play every track that everybody had recorded on.

Then I decided that the only way to find out which tracks to use would be to get the entire band in the studio at the same time, which seemed like quite a normal thing to me. When I mentioned this to the band’s management, they were totally horrified. The thought of Guns N’ Roses all being in the same room at the same time was too much for them to bear. [Laughs.] They warned me against it, but I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. So they all arrived, and we got down to a mix. They were very gentlemanly. Axl walked in and said, “Good afternoon, Slash. I know it’s your guitar, and obviously you have the main say in it, but I do love that lick there. Do you think we could have it a bit louder?” Total gentlemen. We finally got the mix done.

It was a very long process. That mix was on the board for a good week, ten days. DATs were going backwards and forth, and harmony lines were being changed and different guitar licks were being put in. You name it. That’s about the most complicated mix, both musically, technically and people-wise, I’ve ever done in my life. But what impressed the band when they walked in was that to get all of these machines synched – Saylor Recording had a separate machine room, which was just full of tape machines, and obviously there weren’t enough tielines to get them all onto the desk – there was this elephant trunk of cable coming through the door and wending its way to the desk. Everybody just went, “Oh, my God. What’s that?” It looked like something out of a science fiction movie where the machines take over.


Later, Niven would praise Price:

And really, as far as the recording of Guns N' Roses is concerned, one has to raise one's hat to two people, in particular. Mike Clink, first and foremost, who I think was a fucking amazing trooper, and Bill Price. Here's something else we didn't talk about was the original mixes on Use Your Illusion, but Bill Price came in and saved the day there and my hats off to him as well.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:55 am; edited 18 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:14 pm

MARCH-AUGUST 1991
THE INFAMOUS MEDIA CONTRACT

In late 1990 Slash would vent his frustrations with the press:

I don't think anybody will understand. [...] Everybody likes to make assumptions, people like to make up all these stories and I can't figure out the mentality behind it. They're always picking on our personal lives. It's never accurate. So it's made up like they're talking about somebody else altogether. The only thing you can go on is what's actually printed correctly in the press, quotes that are actually accurate, which isn't too often, anyway. […]

[…] you have to deal with [the lies]. You keep avoiding it, and avoiding it, trying to ignore the fact it's going on, and it sort of sticks with you and it just builds up. It finally hits you and you can have a breakdown over this shit eventually if you let it build up for too long. If you don't make some sort of rebuttal to what's being said about you, you end up having to live with it, which is not the right thing to do.


And later the same year he would look more philosophically at it:

This is one of those bands that, even before it got signed when it was a club band, was just bait for hype. And it’s like that now, only on a bigger scale. So at this point, we’re pretty numb to it.


But they weren't so numb that they didn't make an attempt to curb the bad press, because in March 1991 the band's relation with the media had become so strained it was claimed that anyone who wanted to interview them had to sign a contract. According to Los Angeles Times, this "two-page document gives Guns N' Roses copyright ownership and approval rights over any "article, story, transcript or recording connected with the interview," control over any advertising or promotion involving the story and indemnifies the band from any damages or liabilities in connection with the story" [Los Angeles Times, March 1991]. Even photographers had to sign "a similar three-page contract" "with similar clauses, including band ownership of all pictures taken by any photographers" [Los Angeles Times, March 1991].

Alan Niven would defend the decision:

We're fed up with being misused and abused by all the scurrilous (scum) who pass themselves off as journalists and photographers. I can't begin to tell you how many writers and photographers have misrepresented themselves, made up quotes or made money selling substandard photos of the band. It's amazing, but people can peddle any kind of (junk) if Axl's picture is on it. The press always says, 'Trust us,' but whenever we do, we get screwed. We started (using these contracts) with the European press, who are notoriously untrustworthy and incompetent, and we've found it keeps incompetence and inaccuracy to a minimum. We're not trying to deprive people of their opinions. But we do want a formal document that will prevent the abuses we've endured in the past.


So would Duff:

The critics are looking for us to fall on our a__. The group went from being critics' whipping boys to being "the press' darling, then the press turns around on you.


Some magazines, including Guitar World and Venice, signed the contract while others, including Rolling Stone, Playboy, Spin and Penthouse, refused [Los Angeles Times, March 1991].

The musical editor of Rolling Stone magazine, Jim Henke, was incredulous:

I can't believe anyone would go along with anything like this. We're always having people asking to be on the cover, but we've never had anyone try to dictate the editorial content of a story. I have to wonder whether the band is going to still go through with this even after their album comes out.


The band's publicist, Bryn Breidenthal, had the following comment:

My immediate reaction was that this might provoke a lot of hostility. But the band is just reacting to all the inaccurate information that's been disseminated about them. In my 25 years of doing publicity I've never dealt with a press contract before, but when you deal with this band, you deal with a lot of firsts.



ONLY MEANT TO STOP SOME MAGAZINES?

[The contract] was for people we didn't want to talk to. It's been blown all out of proportion, because there's plenty of stuff the band wants to talk about openly.


This would be confirmed by Axl in May 1991 when he referred to it as a "test contract" aimed at specific magazines:

And that was a test contract basically because of certain situations we’ve had with the English press that we tested in Rio. And the most outrage that we really got was from the magazines that we were having problems with to begin with, you know. And because we weren’t going to talk to them anyway, then they saw that and went running with it. But no, we’re not trying to control everything. We just want what we said or anything we say to be in the proper context, to be something that we really said. […] So we’re just trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. You know, if we don’t have a real big problem and if we get along with people we don’t even ask about contracts. You know, it’s like, if we know everything’s gonna be okay and it’s gonna be honest, then it’s fine. The contracts are kind of... I laugh, you know, when they make such a big deal, because it’s really kind of like a deterrent for people that want to cause problems. They see that and they know they won’t be able to get in to cause that problem.


The "English press" that Axl is here referring to, is likely the interviews by Mick Wall in Kerrang! Axl's antipathy for Wall would also result in him being named in the rant in 'Get In The Ring' [see later chapter].

Axl would further embellish on the detrimental nature of inaccurate and out-of-context quoting:

And we’ve had certain things that may not hit the world on a big scale, but dealing with smaller magazines and stuff, where they’ve run all kinds of interviews we never did and where they said I said things. Like, I may have said something hostile towards a member of another band, but they’ve turned it around and said I said all kinds of things I didn’t say. And it’s like, the things I said were even meaner (chuckles), but I knew what limb I was going out on it, and then somebody cuts down the tree and then hits me. And it’s like, it’s not really fair, because I do take the time to try to answer the questions and talk about things as honestly as I can; and then I have someone distort that, you know? And if a magazine has a... maybe they have a subscription rate of 50,000 or 70,000 but, you know, this was a 40,000 people show tonight. 40,000 people were here, you know, and that hits that many people with a different impression of us and that kind of hurts.


Neither MTV or the Chicago Tribune had to sign the agreement [Chicago Tribune, May 1991]. In the end, as indicated by Matt and Axl, Rolling Stone did not have to sign the contract, either. As Kim Neely, a senior writer at Rolling Stone would say: The thing about that contract has really been blown out of proportion." Neely would say she didn’t have to sign any contract because “there are certain magazines that have never done them wrong in the past, and Rolling Stone is one of those magazines. We submitted two names to them, and they said either would be okay.... I’m a big fan" [New York Magazine, August 1991].


BOB GUCCIONE JR. PRINTS THE CONTRACT IN SPIN

In June, Spin Magazine, with chief editor Bob Guccione Jr., would print a highly critical article about the contract which including the contract for all their readers to see [Spin Magazine, June 1991]. The same month, Geffen would release a press statement saying that the band didn't require the contracts to be signed before doing interviews and that the reason why the band had done fewer interviews was simply that the band was occupied working on the new record. [Geffen Press Release, June 1991].

Lauren Spencer, Spin's senior editor of music, would comment:

They were actually asking all writers to go ahead and sign the contract if they wanted to get an interview with Guns N’ Roses. Basically, that was the story we got. What they said was, ‘You want an interview? Look over this contract. Let us know.’ The bottom line is that the band isn’t doing interviews anyway. It was just kind of offensive that they would in the first place be introducing the contract. Whether it was a joke, I don’t know .
The Courier Journal, June 1991



CHANGING THE CONTRACTS

In June [although published in August], Slash would talk about the contracts and mention they had been changed:

So there was a situation where we put out a contract, where anybody who wanted to interview the band had to sign this agreement saying that we would get to see the actual interview and approve it, because we’d been screwed around for so long and taken it. And now the band’s got to this point, it only makes things worse, because now there’s some really meaty stuff to make up!

So a lot of the rock ’n' roll publicity machine and the critics were handed this contract, and if they didn’t abide by the stipulations on it, then it was gonna cost them 100 grand. Which was pretty harsh, but my feelings about it were that if these guys weren’t gonna be blatantly honest and do what it said, then they were out to screw us in the first place. In other words, why worry about it? I mean, if I give you a piece of paper right now that says, ‘Don’t try this on me, or do this and that’, and you won't sign it, how am I supposed to trust you?

[…]

But since then we’ve restipulated the contract. It’s more of a thing for who we want to deal with and who we don’t wanna deal with. Because at this point, if it’s gonna go public, the only people what we care about are the people that listen to the band, and I don’t want them given bullshit. […] We still get to approve the articles, but now the band’s got the choice of wanting to deal with the situation. There’s no money involved any more...

Basically what it comes down to is, screw the contract and all that, it comes down to it being fair to the kids, to our fans. If you're gonna write about us, write the truth. The kids, they know the truth...


Tony Gerard, writing for Kerrang!, would say the following regarding the contracts:

To be honest, I’ m still not sure I follow the band’s reasoning on this, and I’m dead against any kind of control over a piece of journalism save by the writer and the editor, but at least the contract issue has been wisely retooled to the point where it does significantly less damage.

Still, it’s a disturbing facet of this band that one wishes had never seen the light of day. Is it just paranoia on the part of the band, or a authentic strike against that shameful cluster of journalists who slander for the sake of a juicy story? Only by sitting in on every interview GN’R has ever done and then reading the resultant feature would one be able to discern the truth.


In August a spokesperson for Guns N' Roses would say the contracts were not in use any more [New York Magazine, August 1991]. When asked, Slash would claim they had modified the contract when they realized they did want to talk to some journalists [The Age/Independent on Sunday, August 1991].

In mid-1992, when asked about the press contract, Duff would first say he didn't want to talk about it, but when pressed he would say that they still used a watered down form:

Well that’s yeah....yeah. And there still is a form. It’s not as harsh as the old one was. It was so harsh because we had over the years accumulated all this crap on us that wasn’t true. And we got fed up. It was like.. .OK, if you want an interview you got to sign this, and we get to go over everything that’s gonna be printed. And if you don’t print exactly the way you show it, then you get faced with a libel suit. […] [The suit] is totally against our.. .you know....were just five, six guys out playin’ and we don’t want to do that. But then again, you don’t wanna look back when you’re fifty years old and look at these interviews sayin’ garbage. […] There’s a different contract now. I don’t wanna talk about this because it’s got nothing to do with rock and roll.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Sun Aug 13, 2023 1:39 pm; edited 13 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:15 pm

1990S
AXL AND SEBASTIAN BACH

In early 1990s, Sebastian Bach, frontman and singer of Skid Row, was in some parts of the media considered a rival to Axl and they would try to set up a conflict between the two popular frontmen. It didn't turn out that way, though, as Axl and Sebastian would form a friendship and spend much time together.

It’s like, when we started, when we first met, the media was really – the rock press and everything wanted us to hate each other. You know, they really wanted us to hate each other. So I decided, “I’m just gonna go meet this guy and see what happens,” and we just hit it off like that. And, boy, that really pissed them off, you know? You know?


Their first meeting came in early March, 1990:

Dude, the first time I ever met you, we [=Skid Row] were opening for Aerosmith at the L.A. Forum [=March 1990], and the first knock on the door was David Lee Roth. He goes "Heeey, man.....


Axl would insist on telling the story differently:

You and I were telling him that he was one of our biggest influences, our biggest inspirations. First thing is like, we meet and he [=Bach]...... has........ two joints and two beers and hands me one of each....... [...] and then we started singing "Train Kept A Rollin'" because now I'm gonna get to go sing it with Aerosmith, and so the whole room kind of freaks out and starts staring at us, you know, and then later were telling David Lee Roth he's like one of our biggest influences, and to his defense he later apologized but he comes up, puts his arms around both of us and goes "You guys aint nothing but pretenders to the throne" and he's, Baz, is like (higher voice) "Dude! Why are you being such a dick?"


Bach continuing the story as he remembered it:

Just my side of the David Lee Roth thing, he.... um, I remember him taking us out there and I was in the middle of Axl and David and I remember vividly Brett Michaels came and to the table and goes "Hey man, can I sit down with you guys?" and we go "NO!" So anyway Dave is really being cool and he's being funny. He orders a drink and he's like this "Medic!" like he's being total Dave, but the more whiskey he drinks the meaner he gets, and I just sense this vibe and than, uh and than, the way I remember it, he takes one shot of Jack, looks over at you and me and he goes "Well, it looks like I got a couple pretenders to my throne right here.", and you looked at me like "What did he just say?" Cause I......[...] But than the next week I got this letter... [...] hand written from David Lee Roth saying "Hey man..." he goes "You two guys remind me of why I first got into music and stuff..."


In 2012, Bach would tell the story again:

Rick Rubin puts me and Axl Rose and David Lee Roth into his car, and we drive to the Rainbow on Sunset. So Dave's drinking Jack Daniels and with every shot he's getting a little more, you know, jacked. All of a sudden Dave turns around and he goes, “Boom! Looks like I got a couple of pretenders to my throne right here, said I, said I!” And Axl looks at me, and he goes, “What did he just fucking say?!” And Axl goes to Dave, “I'm not a pretender to your throne. I'm not pretending to no throne, I don't pretend to be nothing. I'm not on your throne.” The next day, I got a letter from David Lee Roth, a fax, a handwritten letter saying, “Sebastian, what you heard last night was my pride in rock ‘n’ roll and Jack Daniels, and I love rock ‘n’ roll, and this is my life, and when I hear you sing it reminds me of, like, when I first got into rock.” And I called Axl, and I go, “Dude, David Lee Roth just sent me a letter!” And Axl goes, “He sent me one, too.” And Dave wrote us both very heartfelt, cool letters, you know, saying that we're not pretending to his throne or whatever. But I kind of was pretending to Dave's throne (laughs). This is Sebastian Bach and this has been one of my best stories ever. Boom!
George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, March 2012


Looking back in 2011:

I met Axl in 1989, when I was opening up for Aerosmith at the L.A. Farm. He came and sang a song with Steven Tyler, and he didn’t know the words, so I taught him the words right before he went on. We’ve been friends ever since.
Radio Metal, September 1, 2011

Axl came down to do the song 'Train Kept A Rollin'' with Steven Tyler and he didn't know the words, and he came to my dressing room and he goes, 'Do you know the words to this?' and I go, 'Yes, I do!' So I sat down there with him. That was a crazy night.
QMI Agency/Blabbermouth, October 7, 2011


And on partying with David Lee Roth:

There was a knock on the door bang, bang, bang and he sticks his head in and goes, 'Sebastian?' And I go, 'Oh, my God! It's David Lee Roth.' And he sits next to me and I go 'Hey Dave, you want to roll up a joint?' And he goes 'Sebastian, you do the honours.' But then that night he took me and Axl to The Rainbow and Rick Rubin drove the car. And can I remember sitting next to Axl in the back seat of Rick Rubin's car throwing up going down Sunset Boulevard, and him holding my hair. I was puking out the door.
QMI Agency/Blabbermouth, October 7, 2011




Bach and Axl
Unknown date



At some point, in 1990 or 1991, Axl would make efforts to stop Bach's excessive partying:

Well, I remember when we were doing Slave To the Grind record [Note: released in June 1991], I was literally out of my mind you know, partying a little too much in Hollywood and you know Axl called up Doc and Scott and said you gotta get your boy out of Hollywood and Scott's like why and Axl goes "Cause he's gonna die". [...] And I don't forget that, I never forget that.


Axl commenting on the above:

[...] sometimes you all have to watch out for one another  and don't let it get to far over the edge. [...] He had to get out of Hollywood, I had to get out of New York. I'd come here [=to New York] and after about a few couple of weeks we'd be like "W w w we need to get out of here, w w w were gonna die". You know because you're the one who's now the bartender at the hotel.


Axl and Bach would also discuss collaborating together:

Actually, Sebastian Bach and I are talking about doing a version of Amazing Grace together. Well, I think it's a whole new idea that him and I are gonna do this together, ‘cause everybody wanted us to be enemies, kind of, a bit in, you know, press things, “Who's better or this and that”. And it's kind of like, we just hit it off .


In July 1990, they would call in to the Howard Stern show [The Howard Stern Show, July 1990].

Okay, we can talk about that on this station. I’m sitting up in the Shoreham Towers... [...] But we’re hanging out and we’re kind of blowing smoke out of our own eyeballs. And we’re having, like - we’re solving the whole world’s problems...And it was like, we’re getting a sun tan, we haven’t slept in days...  And then we get a quiet point in the mayhem, and then Axl looks around and goes, “Let’s call Howard!”


As is often the case, Axl would remember it slightly differently:

No! That was you, because it was your buddy! [...] Because you wanted to call him and talk about the guy with the smoke coming out of the eyeballs.

And then Erin was there, Maria was there, and... that was a legendary interview. I couldn’t believe we did that (?).


In August 1990 were together in Axl's condo when a neighbor complained and it got raided by the police [People Magazine, August 1990].

You know [Sebastian and I are] hoping to work together some, and it just... […] I’d told you last time that we wanted to do a version of Amazing Grace but we haven’t got to it yet


When Guns N' Roses finally started touring the 'Use Your Illusion' records in May 1991, they chose Skid Row with Sebastian Bach as one of the supporting acts.

At some point in the 90s, Axl and Bach would drift apart and they would first reconnect in 2006. See later chapter for more information on this.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:56 am; edited 15 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:15 pm

APRIL 2, 1991
SLASH IS FEATURED ON LENNY KRAVITZ' MAMA SAID

In April 1991, Slash would be featured on the songs Always on the Run and Fields of Joy from Lenny Kravitz' album Mama Said.

Kravitz and Slash had both attended Fairfax High School in Hollywood:

We didn’t really know each other [at school] though. I used to see him in the hallways, you know, where we’d be most of the time (laughs).




Mama Said by Lenny Kravitz
April 2, 1991



[…]my girlfriend and I were just head over heels in love with [Kravitz'] album. When I met him I told him, 'You're so great, we fuck to your record all the time!' He was probably a little shocked [laughs] but he's a really good guy. I put a solo on one dills new songs, which is the most out of tune first-take dry guitar solo—but he really digs it. He's really raw, one of the most soulful people.

We didn't know each other then. I was in what you call Continuation School, which was for kids who smoked in class, that whole thing. But we recognised each other, jammed one night... He's a real cool character.


Kravitz would describe Slash's interest:

Slash approached me as an individual after one of my shows and we talked. He was, like, I really want to play on your record, and I was like, I'll take your number and call you, and he was like. Call me, don't bullshit me. We went to high school together actually, but we really didn't know each other, we just passed each other. […] It was a solo which, before I met him, I wanted Jimmy Page to play. And I couldn't get him, so I thought Slash'd be the next best cat. He played his ass off on it. Unbelievable. It's the best I've ever heard him play.
Sounds, May 19, 1990


Although Kravitz had some reservations dealing with Slash due to the lyrics of One In A Million:

[…] those lyrics are bullshit. […] F**k it, [Slash is] an individual. I have no problem with him or his politics. He on the other hand has to deal with Axl. I don't have to. I don't have anything against Axl, I don't know him. I don't particularly like what those lyrics say, but I don't know where Axl's coming from, what he's been through, and I can't judge him. Offhand, it sounds really stupid and racist but, y'know, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. I've got my f**ked up stuff too. I'm not sinless, I'm a human being. I don't really judge people.
Sounds, May 19, 1990


Slash would describe hanging out with Kravitz:

I went down to the studio where [Kravitz] was in L.A., and we hung out that night. He smoked pot, and I drank vodka, and we did a solo on one of his songs called “Fields of Joy.” I just finished recording another song for his new record, a song I’d originally written for Guns that never happened as a Guns song. We had a great time hanging out in New Jersey. The guy is so fucking down-to-earth. It’s a pleasure to work with somebody like that, where there’s no bullshit.

I fell in love with his first album. We met at some awards thing and got to be friends. I went to the studio and put a solo on "Fields Of Joy" and played the riff on "Always On The Run" [both on Mama Said]. That was a great time too.

[…]  I wrote a riff. Well, I went down to go play on a song called Fields Of Joy. […] Well, that’s me playing guitar in there, honey, so... And so then, when I was doing that, I played him a riff that was initially supposed to be a Guns N’ Roses song as usual – and he heard it and he was really into it, and Guns wasn’t into it because it was too funky, so... (laughs). So he just went fucking nuts over it. […] He goes, “That’s just...” What did he call it? “That’s psychotic.” That’s his word for it.

[Being asked which one of his collaborations was the biggest blast to do]: Probably the Lenny Kravitz one, because that was just such a spontaneous fuckin' thing. It was a song, a riff that I originally wrote. That 'Mama Said' song was a riff that I was playing hanging around with Lenny, talking about how we went to high school together. I played him that, and he called me up three months later: 'Let's go to Hoboken and do that track.' 'You serious?' So we went and did that together, and that was fun. We did it in this funky place on a Sunday in Hoboken, off license, no booze, nothing. Went out there and smoked a hell of a lot of cigarettes.

Well, you know, there's been times, a good example of that was, you know the, the Lenny Kravitz song, Always On The Run? That was something I wrote with Lenny back then. And that was a riff that wasn't going to see the light of day in Guns N' Roses at that time and I had no idea where that riff was going to go. And then I was doing a session for another song on that record called Fields of Joy, for Lenny. And while I was in the studio at some point just noodling around, I was playing that riff and you heard me playing and you say, "Hey, what is that?" You know, I said, "Oh, it's just this thing." And he goes, "OK, I'm going to make a song." And so we went in the studio again later on and went in and recorded that song. So that was a like a case of a riff that you got that you don't know what's going to happen with it, but you think it's cool. And, you know, so interesting things do happen with bits and pieces that you come up with that might not find a home in a place that you most might expect it to.


Slash would also claim that everyone else had hated the Always On The Run riff:

A long time ago there was that Lenny Kravitz song called 'Always On The Run'. The reason I wrote that with Lenny was that was a riff that had no home elsewhere. He heard it and was, like, 'Oh.' Everybody else was hating on it, and he was like, 'Oh, that's really cool.' He was an outlet.




Kravitz and Slash outside studio
after recording 'Always on the Run'



Looking back:

I went to high school with Slash. I've known Axl, Slash and Duff from the beginning. We all came up together, and we worked together. I wrote 'Always on the Run' with Slash and he played on 'Fields of Joy,' both on my Mama Said album. [...] I think Slash presented [the riff to Always On The Run] to the group and it was too funky or maybe two quirky for them. But he and I put it together and that riff ended up being a really great blend of rock & roll and funk.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Sat Mar 16, 2024 6:53 am; edited 21 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:16 pm

1990-1992
AXL'S FEUD WITH MICK WALL

In the beginning of 1991, Mick Wall, famed journalist and author, was surprised to see that Slash wouldn't talk to him [Kerrang! January 1991]. Wall would later blame this on the infamous media contracts that the band issued [see later section]. But, as it turned out, these contracts were only meant to stop some magazines/interviewers, and after the release of the 'Use Your Illusion' albums with the song 'Get In The Ring' where Wall was singled out as someone who had "wanted to start shit by printin' lies instead of the things [the band] said" it was clear that the good relationship Wall had enjoyed with the band in the late 80s was now over.

After the release of the 'Use Your Illusion's, Wall thought the animosity towards him was due to a series of stories he had written in Kerrang! and with the recent publication in Britain of an unauthorized book containing Wall’s interviews with the band [Entertainment Weekly, September 1991].

Wall's colleague in Kerrang!, writer Paul Elliott, on the other hand, would speculate it was due to articles Wall had written about the band's Rock In Rio performances in early 1991 [Kerrang! September 12, 1992]. The articles Wall wrote about the band's performance at Rock in Rio is likely the ones referenced in an article Lonn M. Friend wrote for RIP Magazine (released in March 1992) where it is claimed Wall didn't even watch the band's perfomances at Rock In Rio:

One night Axl called me at home because he was upset about something he'd read in Kerrang! According to Axl, the journalist completely missed the boat in reviewing the band's performance at Rock In Rio. "We were on the second night," Axl told me. "Why didn't he see that?" Later investigation revealed that the writer missed the show entirely, because certain personnel around GN'R wouldn't give him a decent place to watch the concert from. Our conversation rambled on about the press, and I was forced to ask Axl why it really mattered. Why should a sentence in a British metal rag matter to the lead singer of the biggest rock band in the world? 'I just care,' he answered with conviction. 'I don't know why; I just do'.


In 1992, Rock World would publish an article by Wall where he would discuss the feud and claim that the conflict was actually due to Wall writing things Axl had said about Vince Neil when Axl was pissed off at Neil for attacking Izzy [see previous chapter], and, according to Wall, which Axl would dispute he had said [Rock World, October 1992; Classic Rock, November 1998]. Moreover, when Axl had asked for a copy of the tapes so he could verify that he had actually said the things Wall had claimed he had, Wall refused, and this, according to Wall, was the actual reason Axl was angry with him [Rock World, October 1992; Classic Rock, November 1998]. In 2000, Wall would say the reason was the book he had written and an article from 1990 where Axl claimed he had been misquoted [Classic Rock, December 25, 2000].

In the Rock World article, and repeated in a Classic Rock article in 1998, Wall would further claim that Axl and three bodyguards met with Wall and threatened to kill him if he published a planned book of the band [Rock World, October 1992; Classic Rock, November 1998]. After receiving these threats, Wall would claim it only made his more adamant to publish a book about the band which was published around the time the Illusions came out, resulting in people believing the Get In The Ring rant was about the book, and not the earlier conflict [Classic Rock, November 1998].

In September 1992, Izzy would be asked about the animosity:

I honestly don't know what that was about or what was said. Axl was mad at Kerrang!, right? There were so many things that pissed him off...


This feud between Axl and Wall, or Guns N' Roses and Kerrang! led to the band not doing any major interviews with the magazine until the beginning of 1994. In January 1994, Kerrang! would summarize the feud and announce that the fight between Guns N' Roses and Kerrang! was over:

Guns N' Roses versus Kerrang! - one of the longest running rucks in rock n' roll. But no more. The feud was immortalized in the track 'Get in the Ring', from GN'R's mega-Platinum 'Use Your Illusion II' album. In that song, Guns singer Axl Rose rages at former K! writer Mick Wall, who had accused the band of arrogantly blanking him and everyone else at the 191 Rock in Rio festival.

From there, the feud got out of hand, Axl slammed Kerrang! from the stage at Wembley Stadium on successive UK visits in 1991 and '92, and despite the fact that Mick Wall has not worked for Kerrang! for two years, the rift seemed irreparable. Considering that Kerrang! had been the first UK magazine to put Guns N' Roses on its cover way back in 1987, it was all pretty frustrating.

Bu come 1994, the bitchin' is over.


Slash would comment and confirm that now that Wall wasn't writing for Kerrang! anymore, they were willing to talk to Kerrang! again:

The whole thing with Kerrang! had to do with certain individuals who were there. […] As soon as the band started to become popular, there were all these people taking unnecessary potshots at us, so we thought, 'F**k it!'. But now that everything's changed at Kerrang!, everything's fine. That's the reason I'm talking to you now.



2007: WALL RELEASES "W. AXL ROSE: THE UNAUHTHORISED BIOGRAPHY"

In 2007, Wall would release a biography on Axl. In 2008, Del James would comment on Wall's books:

Of course I [read any of the rock & roll biographies] and it's amazing how much rancid bullshit not only gets printed but also unfortunately becomes accepted by some of the public as fact. It's fucked up. The hatchet job these people do on Axl is criminal. Mick Wall hasn't had any contact with Axl Rose in over fifteen years and that ended shitty yet he has the audacity to write a biography about him? I was there the day many many years ago when Axl went up to Mick and asked him whether he was writing, a book and Mick swore up and down he was not. Goddamn coward. He wears being disrespected in "Get In The Ring" as like some sort badge of credibility. Hey Mick, the guy called you an asshole.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:57 am; edited 18 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:17 pm

APRIL 1991
ALAN NIVEN IS FIRED AND DOUG GOLDSTEIN TAKES OVER/BIG FD ENTERTAINMENT

NIVEN OUT

In July 1991, Los Angeles Times would report that the band had severed ties with their manager Alan Niven. Doug Goldstein, who started out as tour manager and then became co-manager together with Niven as part of the Stravinski Brothers, became the new band manager [Los Angeles Times, July 1991].

[Axl called]. ‘I can’t work with you any more,’ he says. ‘Okay, Ax, I’ll be back in a couple of days. Let’s have dinner and talk about it’. ‘Okay,’ he says. And that’s the last time we ever speak. Did I see it coming? No. Was I surprised? No. It would have been classy to have had dinner and agreed to go our separate ways, acknowledged with honour what we achieved together, but Axl is Axl. Thank God he gave himself to rock’n’roll and he’s not a despot running a country. Iz once famously described him as the Ayatolla. And as such it is my understanding that he said it was ‘him or me’ if the band wanted to do the Illusions tour. And I can’t sing like he can, that’s for sure.

I was in the Meadowlands, in New Jersey, in 1991. I got a phone call in the production office. It was Axl. He very quietly said, “I can’t work with you anymore.” I said, “Sorry to hear that. I’ll be back in Los Angeles in two days, let’s go out and have dinner together and talk about it.” That was the last time I ever spoke to him. To this day, we’ve never spoken a word to each other.


Arlett Vereecke, the band's publicist, would describe the awkwardness of talking to Niven after he had been fired:

[...] you know, it was a little bit weird when he got fired. He showed up here, I said, "Oh shit." [...] Why here? Cuz Slash [?] called me on a Sunday. I'll never forget. And Sylvie Simmons was here again, she was in town and we're staying here and she said, "Hey, have you talked to Alan Niven?" I said, "Why are you asking me that? Is it..." "Oh, I just wondered if you talked to him." I said, "OK, OK, OK, stop this shit. What's going on?" Because he's on his way here to pick up Sylvie for lunch. She said, "Oh no, no, nothing." I said, "Oh my God, you fired him, didn't you?" She said, "Oh no no, I didn't say anything." I said, "Oh shit, he's on his way, [?], why did you tell me that now? What am I supposed to say, 'How are you today'?" I mean, so I just run in the office in the back house. I have an office in my back house. And then I said to Sylvie, "Don't call me when you see a telephone, I'm not here." But of course she didn't want to be alone with him either and said, "Oh Alan is here!" "Oh shit."


The break with Niven had occurred before the touring for the Use Your Illusion albums started [RIP, September 1991].

According to an insider interviewed by Los Angeles Times, and in accordance with what Niven said above, the problem was with Axl who wanted Niven out:

I think that Axl and Alan had been drifting apart for a long time as individuals, even as far back as 'Appetite for Destruction. In the end, I don't think Axl saw Alan as someone who was still fully on his side. He has a more comfortable relationship with Doug, whom he perceives as a friend as well as manager. Axl knew this was going to be a long tour, and he wanted to have everything in place before it started.


Izzy was not happy about this decision [Kerrang! September 21, 1991] and would, after he had left Guns N' Roses, confirm it was Axl's idea but also that Axl had threatened to quit the band if the rest of the band didn't go along with the firing of Niven:

Axl fired him. […] We weren't given any choice! It happened like that. Four members of the band were against and Axl said "All right, take him as a singer then because if he stays, I leave!" What can you do? What can you say?

I felt really bad about it, because I'm still friends with Alan. I felt I had to choose between him and the band. He was kinda like the sixth member of the group for a while. And he really helped put us where we are now. I still think he's a great manager. But Axl and he finally had too much of a clash of personalities. Alan has his way of doing things which is more like a military strategy. Axl wants to do stuff his way, at his pace, in his time.

This is very important and I must say that Alan Niven has always looked after me admirably since 1985. I was really irritated when he was fired by Guns N’ Roses, and that definitely precipitated my decision to leave the band. Plus, Niven knows rock music like the back of his hand, and that matters a lot...


Alan Niven would support Izzy:

My understanding of the situation was that Axl stated to the band he would not go on tour if I remained as manager. Didn’t give the others much of a choice there, did he?… By this point, Axl was kind of taking over. Let’s look at the first thing he did once I left: He had everyone else in the band sign the name over to him. It was a control move between Axl and Doug Goldstein. They both knew I would never stand for anything like that. Axl never even brought it up when I was the manager because he knew what I would tell him to do with it.


And Niven would later talk more about the conflict with Axl:

Axl wanted total control, while my commitment was to Guns N' Roses. My assessment was that the dynamic of the five original individuals involved was what created the character and overall personality that ultimately proved so successful. Axl was a part of that - a very important part - but I had too much of a problem with this 'It's my ball and if you don't play the game by my rules then I'm taking it home, dude' attitude of his.

But there was always something. Nothing was ever good enough. I do remember, in what may have been one of my last conversations with Axl, trying to explain why people were afraid of him, and why this queered most of his relationships and why he wasn’t getting the responses he wanted. Maybe it was too much for him to hear that he could come off as a ‘prickly bastard’ when he wasn’t intending to be one. I don’t know. You ask him. He’s probably got it written down in a notebook somewhere.

Axl always had a problem that I worked with other bands, one of which [Great White] predated my commitment to Guns by years; and that I made it clear that I represented the interests of all five signatories of the contract, not just and exclusively his. But I was managing a band, not just a single person. For example, Axl wanted me to cancel the Aerosmith tour in 88; the rest of the band wanted to go. So we went, and waited to see if he would turn up. He did – and then refused to speak to me for a month. He came around eventually. You spent a lot of time waiting for Axl to come around.


Curiously, he would also suggest the firing came because he had decided to manage Izzy's Juju Hounds:

Against my better judgement I agreed to work with [Stradlin’s solo project] the Ju Ju Hounds. I knew it would drive Axl bat-shit and create problems for us both. But I felt a commitment to Iz that I couldn’t deny.


But Izzy left Guns N' Roses and started the Juju Hounds long after Niven was fired from Guns N' Roses so this particular statement doesn't make sense.

In 2011, Niven would suggest the reason was that Axl considered Niven an obstacle to a planned take-over of the band:

Axl called me in March of 91 and stated he could not work with me anymore. I had put the first headline dates up, Wembley had been sold out. Merchandising and sub-publishing contracts had been re-negotiated. The re-negotiation with Geffen was underway. So with all that done he obviously felt I was now disposable and I would not stand in his way when he took control of the name and trade mark. I suggested we meet in LA to have dinner and discuss matters. I was on the East Coast at the time he called. He said ‘OK’ and that was the last time we spoke.

All the prep work for “Illusions” and its tour, all the renegotiations, everything had been done. So I was then dispensable. Simple really. … I effectively sold my rights to all pipeline and future earnings for a fraction of their worth back in 1991. Such was my emotional condition at the time that all I desired was to be rid of all future dealings with Axl and Goldstein. I did not get contrary or better advice from those whose responsibility it was to make such effort – like my attorney at the time, my accountant at the time. I am probably more disappointed in them in the longterm than members of Guns N’ Roses. Overall though, it was my own decision and thus my own responsibility, and I made it for reasons of emotional and spiritual health. I have not been paid any further monies by GNR since 1991.


According to an anonymous "co-worker" from the time Niven was ousted, it was only natural Axl would want to remove a manager who openly disliked him:

It was very clear that Alan didn't like Axl. I mean how would you feel if you knew - positively without a shadow of a doubt - that your manager really didn't like you?


Allegedly, one of the issues Axl had with Niven was that he had booked the tour before the Use Your Illusion albums were released, likely due to what Axl would describe as "excessive greed" [VOX, October 1991]. Axl would certainly indicate he was angry with the "premature" tour from stage during the tour:

I know you guys don’t wanna hear a lot of bullshit raps, so I’ll explain real quickly what we’re doing with these shows here. Due to the pressure from my – how should I say it – ex-manager, who wanted to make sure we toured and didn’t give a fuck to watch about when the record was done. So we’re out here before the record is done. But it’s a good thing. And we want to make sure that we are not ripping you people off and when we come out you get the most (?) [...]

Due to an over-excited manager we’re out on tour. But that excited manager is now fired, so... I don’t mind so much being out on tour, but I would’ve liked to get my record done. And since we’ve all waited such a fucking long time, we figure we’ll play it on the tour whether you’ve heard it or not, cuz (?) you know, and like, “I don’t know, I don’t know if people don’t know those songs, they might not like them, you better not play those, it might not work.” Fuck that shit. Anyway, it’s recorded, it’s been put together and it’ll be out in a little while. [...]

We’ve been pairing the old and the new [songs], since we are out on this tour since we had an over-excited ex-manager, or rather greedy ex-manager. I love that word, “ex”. Ex-wife, ex-manager... [...]


Axl would revisit this in an interview from 2011:

I only went on tour because of three reasons: My manager had booked a tour without authorization and he just booked the tour and then I'm going to be sued for it, he was also telling me that if Slash dies of heroin or whatever, it's my fault, and Slash pushing me.


Slash would confirm that Niven booked the tour before the records were completed:

[…] we decided to start touring before the album was even mixed. Which wasn't our fault. It was more the fault of our old manager, because he booked these gigs and we hadn't finished the record yet.


There were also rumors about disagreements over the music to be included on the records, with Niven disagreeing with the inclusion of "12 minute songs" on the albums [Melody Maker, August 1991].

Later, Robert John would claim the issue was about a lack of trust:

Actually, Axl didn’t hate him. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Alan. It was more that he didn’t trust him. With Axl, it was always a question of trust, or it wouldn’t work.
Stephen Davies, Watch You Bleed: The Saga Of Guns N' Roses, 2008


Interestingly, in 2015 Goldstein would argue that the band members couldn't trust Niven because he acted like a musician more than a business man:

[...] back then I wasn't doing drugs drinking or anything else and Slash used to praise me for the fact that I didn't. Alan and I used to have this ongoing battle where I'd say, "Look, Slash keeps telling me he doesn't want you to party with the band. He trusts me because I don't," and Alan would say, "You know what, Douglas, you have to be one of them," and I go, "No, you don't, they don't want one of them, they want a manager that they can fucking trust."


Niven did not sue the band for firing him:

[Axl] does sometimes try to exercise a sense of honor. With the separation, my desire was to get a one-time payment because I didn't want to get involved with him and with Goldstein - I just wanted out. And Axl honored that.


But settled for $3.5 million:

I was emotionally ground and feeling down at that point. My attitude was just give me the check so I don’t have to deal with any of you again. It sounds like a lot, but $3.5 million was much less than I was already due in sales of records, certainly way less. I had an awful lot more money due to me compared to that amount. And by the time you get through with the IRS and with my silent partners, it was not a lot of money, though I never got into it for the money. I guess I just came up with a number to sell my rights back to the band so I wouldn’t have to chase anyone for commissions. The $3.5 million, I literally just pulled that number out of the air, and it was agreed. We didn’t bother by doing due diligence and doing a forensic accounting. Let’s just say I had more than that in the pipeline, plus there was no sunset clause in our contract, so Guns N’ Roses was getting a bargain, and I was getting a clean break. I didn’t want to chase money and be fighting with people. I didn’t really care.

[David] Geffen would scare a lot of people. The only time I ever asked him for anything was after Axl had fired me. I asked him to make sure that the band would be able to be sufficiently solvent to pay me off out of my rights and get me out of this situation. I told David the one thing I don't want in my life anymore is Guns N' Roses. Alright. So I sold my perpetual commission rights back to the band for way less than was already in pipeline earning. So again, I'm not in it for the money, Axl! In fact, I got out of it because I didn't want to be fighting with you over what I was due to be paid for the rest of my life, right? I was in it for the spirit of Guns N' Roses. I was in it for the personalities in Guns N' Roses. I was in it for the fact that I could look at Guns N' Roses and go, "You know what, this makes sense to me because it represents somebody espousing the value of every single spirit in the world, especially and including the urchins from under the street themselves, even they are of the value." And that's what I really loved about the collective conscious spirit of that band was they stood for the worth of every single spirit.


Later it can seem like Niven regretted this decision or would at least ponder what could have been:

I paid millions to get Axl out of my life. And here’s how: I had a 17 per cent commission in perpetuity. That means that anything released, mastered or negotiated during the term of my contract was commissionable forever. My original contract was renewed in 89 for a further three or so years. It would expire in 93. At the time it was renewed I was offered a raise to 20 per cent. I turned it down. Axl fired me in 91. That means that the sales of Appetite…, …Lies and Use Your Illusions were all commissionable – forever.

To get Axl out of my life I sold those rights back to the band for $3.5 million. I did not want to deal with him again. Now that’s a decent chunk of change, but Geffen had only paid royalties on about five million albums total at that time. Imagine how much I had still coming. [Appetite… alone has sold 30 million copies.] The settlement I took is not anywhere close to what I was due and had earned. And after you pay the taxman his third, and your partners [‘the Stravinski Brothers’ credited on Appetite… were Niven and two silent partners], it’s not quite the same golden egg. But that’s how burnt out and disillusioned I was.

As regards his remark about me getting a payday from Geffen from renegotiations, let’s get some more facts straight. I have a right to defend myself against this guy – there are people who believe what he says, and I may want to work with them some day. Firstly, both the managers of Aerosmith and Whitesnake tried to get renegotiations on existing contracts around this time and failed. I think I’m the only person to leverage a re-negotiation out of David Geffen on an existing contract. Once the negotiation was begun it was the responsibility of the band’s attorney to complete it. Their royalty rates were increased by 30 per cent. There were other refinements – better advances etc – but since when I was fired I sold my rights back to the band I didn’t benefit from any of it. I also got the first major headline tour in place. And then I was fired. Nice.


Niven would also conclude that he had been fired so Axl could easier take control of the band:

What I find interesting is that after I was fired, by his own admission Axl took the band name as part of the Geffen renegotiation.

I believe he got rid of me to do that, among other things. I think that he always intended to take total control. And he knew I would not stand for such a move. I could be wrong, but I rather think there you have it.


After Izzy quit the band, Izzy still worked with Niven to Axl's frustration:

I'm angry with [Izzy] because he left in a very shitty way, and he tries to act like everything's cool. He put his trust in people that I consider my enemies. People like Alan Niven, who I think is his manager now. I don't need Alan Niven knowing jack shit about Guns n' Roses. Everybody has a lot of good and bad, and with Alan, I just got sick of his fucking combo platter. It's like "If you're involved with these people, we can't talk to you."


In 2007, Matt would be confronted with a story about Niven previously having tried to rape the singer of the Finnish band Havana Black, whom he had managed at the time:

You never know. [...] Alan's a real character. He was always trying to steal my drugs. I told him no, you won't get away with taking my dope. 'Gimme all your cocaine!' 'Fuck you!' I told him.


In 2011, Niven would talk about how the dismissal had affected him:

It put me in a real black pit at one point. It did all of us. Look at what happened. They never made another meaningful record. Izzy was gone three months after I was. It just devolved from that point, because from then on, the shift was between a young up-and-coming band to something that is more recognisable today, which is basically, it’s Axl’s band, and you can be sidemen for as long as I pay you.

Most people go through life saying: ‘I wonder what it’s like to get to the apex of your occupation?’ A lot of people spend their lives worrying about anonymity. But when you get to the apex, you find out it’s a fucking illusion, it doesn’t exist. And when your anonymity is compromised, you find out its value. The toll came later and when it did come it hit hard. I went through the severest depression you can go into.


And on whether he had a good time:

That’s an interesting question. [...] It was an incredible privilege to get to the top of your profession, the top of the mountain. But I found out the mountain is actually a myth, an illusion. I mean, being No. 1 in Billboard, what is that going to do for you spiritually or emotionally? [...] I was delighted to be as active as I was, but activity of this kind brings considerable levels of stress. I know moments back in the day, I was very, very stressed. You care for the people you work with. It’s not cut and dry like a typical (business) relationship. It’s more emotional than that. You care about what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.


In 2015, Goldstein would look back at Niven being fired and claim that Axl had tried to fire him many times before, but that Goldstein and Slash had fought this decision. He would also claim Niven had been stealing drugs from Slash, and this echoing Matt's comment from above, and also hit on Slash's girlfriend at the time, Renee:

Axl would call me and say, "Fuck him," either that or we'd be on the road and he would come to Slash and I and say, "Fuck that guy, I ain't working with him," and I would say, "You know what, fuck you, he's my partner." And Slash would go, "Yeah, fuck you. He's doing good things for us." But at the time he was terminated in '91 he hadn't spoken to Axl in nine months because I was handling basically all the GN'R stuff and Alan was busy producing, writing with Great White. So it was working fine for us. I mean, you know, Alan was still making his GN'R money and I was doing my thing with GN'R. So I get this call from Axl, his annulment to Erin Everly finally goes through. So he's excited, he's like, "Wow!" he goes, "Finally, the annulment went through, I'm really happy." I said, "Okay. Congratulations, that's great, buddy." I said, you know, he should go have a nice dinner, "And I know that this has been like a lot of shit for you to go through so, you know, enjoy your day and let me know if I can do anything for you." He goes, "Can I talk to Alan?" I'm thinking, "Wow. It's been a long time, but this is a great opportunity for Alan to get back in." So I put him on hold, I walk into Alan's back office, I go, "Alan, Axl's on the phone," he goes, "So what?" I go, "So here's your chance. Okay, this is what's up, his annulment went through and this is the perfect opportunity for you to get back in by saying, 'Hey, I'm happy for you'." He goes, "Douglas, let me handle it." So I stand there and he picks up the phone and Axl tells him what's going on and he goes, "Wow, how fucking sad for you, yet again you failed at something." I think, "What the fuck are you doing? The fuck are you doing!?" So he goes, "You know, in this crazy world of rock and roll at the end of the day when I lay my head down next to Gunilla, I know that we're together forever and yet again, you've managed to fuck something up." *Click*. He hangs up the phone. I was like, I can't even fucking believe it. So my phone rings, of course, Axl goes, "Did you hear that shit?" I go, "Yeah," he goes, "Look Doug," he had a little convertible 325 BMW at the time, he goes, "I'm getting in my car and driving till it runs out of gas and wherever that is I'll be pumping gas at that fucking gas station," he goes, "I suggest you get on the phone with Slash and find out what he wants to do." So I call Slash and I say what I always do, "How are we gonna save Alan again?" And he goes, "You know what, Doug, I'm fucking done with this," I go, "Why?" he goes, "I can't do this anymore," he goes, "Alan was up at my house, ecstasy, cocaine drinking blah blah, and he tried to to hit on my fiancee Renee, find out what he fucking wants and just pay him off." So I go into Alan, I go, "Alan," and I don't even know what to say and I go, "I'll fight this if you want," and he goes, "You know what, Doug," he goes, "I'm so tired of this fucking egotistical asshole. I'm fucking done. He's a fucking cunt" blah blah, and I swear, Mitch, because I swear to God, up to that point I was gonna walk with Alan. And then I'm listening to him berate, denigrate, whatever, Axl and I'm thinking to myself, "You know what, I have in my time with Guns N' Roses, I've never heard Axl talk that way about Alan who's making millions of dollars." So my mind was made up at that point. "You know what, fuck it, I'll stay with Axl." And so I did.

Like I said, I love Alan but unfortunately he thinks I had designs on his job and it's absolutely the antithesis, Mitch. I tried to no avail. I mean, I tried to keep him around, shit, Slash and I battled that for a couple years. [...] Slash and I would battle Axl. Axl would call us and say, "Fuck him, he's done!" and I'd say, "Fuck you, he's my partner." And that was happening every month.



GOLDSTEIN IN

With Niven being out of the picture, Goldstein would commence sole managerial control of the band.

Marc Canter would explain that Goldstein was very competent in his role as tour manager and that this played into Axl's decision to promote him to manager of the band, but that unfortunately he was a yes man and this caused caused divide between Axl and Duff and Slash:

And Doug Goldstein, who was the Jedi of this all - he was their road manager and he was just on top of everything. If somebody eight miles away had a camera with a telephoto lens, he would snap and he would grab you. I mean, Doug was... if someone threw a bottle on the stage, he'd be the roadie that ran out and grabbed the bottle. He was an ace at what he did. So I guess Axl just figured, if he's an ace there, might as well make him manager. But eventually that helped tear the band apart, because he was yessing Axl, and Slash and Duff sort of got the raw end of that stick and got tricked into signing things they probably shouldn't have signed.


As described above, Alan Niven would suggest Goldstein had operated with Axl to get rid of him (Niven), so Goldstein could take over:

By this point, Axl was kind of taking over. Let’s look at the first thing he did once I left: He had everyone else in the band sign the name over to him. It was a control move between Axl and Doug Goldstein. They both knew I would never stand for anything like that. Axl never even brought it up when I was the manager because he knew what I would tell him to do with it.

You know, it's historically self-evident: I went, Dougie took over. Gosh, I wonder how that happened, you know? Good golly, let's figure that out between us, three of us, if we can, let's put our rocket scientist here, see if we can fathom that one out.


When an interviewer suggested Axl and Goldstein had had a secret alliance, Niven responded:

That sounds very accurate.


Niven would also suggest that Axl had been "poisoned" by Goldstein:

[...] it's no secret that for some reason [Axl] detests me and obviously I think he was poisoned and I obviously have an idea of who that that poisoner was [...]. Well, I mean, it's really simple, isn't it? I don't have to mention names, I mean, mama said if you can't say anything nice about [?], don't say it. But, you know, you have to look at who took over and what their role was at the time.


Commenting upon Goldstein taking over:

Dougie's done a lot of stuff in the last couple of years. He's the guy who now gets to go over to Axl's at six in the morning when his piano's hanging out at the window of his house. All kind of shit like that. Now we get these fuckin' calls - 'You hear what happened?' No, what now? 'Axl just smashed his $50,000 grand piano out the fuckin' picture-window of his new house.' That's nice, Dougie. You just take care of it. Call me when it's all over.


Goldstein would become a controversial manager for the band and early on there were signs that not all band members liked him. On stage in Dayton on January 14, 1992, Axl talked about rumors that Goldstein had been fired and said that some people had been celebrating when they heard the news:

There were even some people that were really happy and they threw their little fucking parties because they thought Dougie would be gone


Interestingly, in 2011, although stating he had had issues with Niven himself, Slash would say he had been opposed to hiring Goldstein and would refer to him as a "creep":

I backed Alan all the way up to a certain point and then he did actually do something that set me off and I said: ‘I can’t fight for you any more’. But that was a volatile situation that was going to explode at some point. Alan wasn’t going to take Axl’s shit and Axl could not stand that, so it was a battle. [...] But I can’t support hiring Doug Goldstein as a manager. I knew that he was a creep from day one.


Talking more about Goldstein's role:

Alan was somebody that I trusted, whereas I knew Doug was somebody that played both sides against the middle. In other words, he’s telling me one thing, telling Axl another and appeasing Axl all the time. And I was aware of it, but at the same time, as long as shit was getting done I was okay. As long as we kept booking tours and I was sort of kept in the mix as far as the mechanics, that’s how we managed to get from 1990 to 1990-whatever. We had the world record for touring.


In July 2011, Slash would be asked what living person he most despise, and mention Goldstein:

Probably Guns N' Roses' last manager when I was in the band.


And in 2017, Arlett Vereecke would be highly critical of Goldstein:

[...] it sucked. [...] Doug Goldstein used to be a bodyguard for the Dave Roth band, and as Dave Roth said, "I wouldn't have him near me as far as I can throw him." And he was absolutely right. And I said to Slash, "You are going to regret that decision," he said, "No, no, no, it's going to be good. It's going to be good, Axl wants it", I said, "You are going to regret that." And to this day he is regretting it and I'm sure Axl is too at this point. [?] But he was useless. He was just, you know, Axl would say something. "Oh, really? Oh, Axl, yes, can I shit for you? How high and how much?" That was his attitude.



BIG FD ENTERTAINMENT

Goldstein would start his own band management company, Big FD Entertainment, presumably when taking over sole management responsibility for Guns N' Roses.

Yes, Big FD, that's right. That was the name of my company because my father used to say it all the time whenever I would be stressed, like, "Come on, Doug, big FD"


The first mention of this company goes back to November 1991 [Rockline, November 27, 1991]. In 1992, Big FD entertainment would be listed as being comprised of Tom Maher, Chris Jones and Goldstein. Some time later, at least before May 1993, John Reese, tour manager during the Use Your Illusion touring, would also become a part of Big FD Entertainment [MTV, May 1993]. Reese had previously owned a security company in Phoenix, Arizona [Loudwire, March 6, 2019].


Last edited by Soulmonster on Fri Jan 12, 2024 7:04 pm; edited 24 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Jackie Mamie likes this post

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:17 pm

APRIL-JULY 1991
MASTERING AND ADDITIONAL RECORDING

In late April/early May, Slash, Duff and Tom Zutaut were reported to have spent time mastering some of the songs that would end up on the records [RIP, September 1991]. In May 1991, Duff and Slash was in New York mastering or mixing parts of the album [Howard Stern Show, March 1991]. Around the same time, Robert John, who was still the band's photographer, was given "half an hour" to shoot the records' back covers, "something he'd been working on for over a month" [RIP, September 1991].

In May 1991, when the band was to embark on the touring for the albums, Axl, Slash and Duff "were putting the finishing touches" on the 36 songs expected to be released, with an expected release date of mid-July [Chicago Tribune, May 1991].

[…]we started touring before the record was finished! It really was as ass-backwards as it gets!

I’m actually gonna be recording some stuff here [in Wisconsin] to finish it up. […] Recording on the road, yeah. […] Finishing up what we went through mastering of, like, 25 of the songs right before we left. And we went through all the approval of lyrics and all that stuff and how it works all coming together and... Yeah, it’s definitely coming out.


As the band started touring, Mike Clink followed them to continue recording:

To continue the story a little longer, they still hadn’t finished the album when their massive 18-month world tour started. So the last half a dozen songs were recorded, overdubbed, vocal’ed and guitar’ed, what have you’ed, in random recording studios dotted about America when they had a day off between gigs. My mixing mode then switched into flying around America with pocketfuls of DATs, playing it to the band backstage. Which was great fun, actually. I enjoyed that. […] Mike Clink was on the road with the band, trying to get them in a recording studio wherever he could and whenever he could, and I was back in L.A. at the desk waiting for DHL to bring my next tape through the door.

It was a very long process. The last half a dozen songs were recorded, overdubbed, vocal’ed and guitar’ed, what have you’ed, in random recording studios dotted about America when they had a day off between gigs because the tour had already started. My mixing mode then switched into flying around America with pocketfuls of DATs, playing it to the band backstage.


Some recording took place while the band played in Alpine Valley in May 24-25:

We finished up a couple of the songs while on the US tour in Wisconsin near Alpine Valley at the old Playboy mansion hotel. The Studio was called Shade Tree, We did a bunch of background vocals and various overdubs there and the records were finally ready to be mixed.
Instagram, September 18, 2023


The long wait for the follow-up to Appetite was hard on fans who were eagerly waiting for new music:

'When’s the album coming out, dude?’ is the expres­sion. I’m at the point now where I don’t mean to be rude, but I just say, ‘When it’s in the stores. When you see it in the store.’


Slash would shed some light on what was remaining:

I think we still have three songs left. […] they’ll be on the record. They’re gonna get done while we’re here in Wisconsin. Just vocals.


These three songs are likely songs that the band decided to include at a late stage, one of them being '14 Years' [VOX, October 1991].

At that point it was planned to release the records on Slash's birthday, July 23 [MTV, May 1991].

In June, Los Angeles Times would report that Axl still needed to put the vocals on "one selection" and that the band had booked studio time on June 7 while in Toronto [Los Angeles Times, July 1991].

In July, Axl would talk to Musician about getting the record out:

Guns N' Roses pretty much calls its own shots with a lot of other people trying to call other shots and trying to tell the world that this is when the record is going to come out and whatever. It's like saying there are delays on the record. There are no delays on our record! There have never been any delays on our record. The record will not come out until we're done with it. But Geffen Records says it's going to come out by May 24th or whatever. We try to meet those things, but we've known from day one that the record wasn't going to come out until we're ready. That's one reason why we worked so hard to sell so many records the first time around - so that we could make sure we got this record done exactly the way we wanted to. Then the press comes out with how we are delaying the record. No! What do you mean delaying the record? It's my record! Delaying it? Do we want another Godfather III? No. We don't want Godfather III with our record. We want it to be right! We don't want it coming out six weeks early and saying, "I wish we would have had the time to get this part right.


Then further delay was caused by the firing of Alan Niven [see previous chapter]. Rumor has it Axl refused to work on the record until Niven was replaced by Doug Goldstein [Rolling Stone, September 1991].

On September 4, Geffen would send a letter saying the albums would be released on September 11 [Geffen Letter to Media, September 1991].


Last edited by Soulmonster on Tue Sep 19, 2023 8:12 am; edited 24 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:18 pm

APRIL-MAY 1991
PREPARING FOR TOURING

In May 1991, the touring for the yet-to-be-released Use Your Illusion albums finally commenced. The tour was booked by their manager at the time, Alan Niven, and as the tour started Axl would criticize Niven for having booked the tour too soon [see earlier chapter]. Axl felt he was not ready to tour, especially with the stress of trying to finish the record at the same time and dealing with issues arising from his ongoing therapy sessions.

In September 1992 Axl would explicitly state that if it wasn't for the records (which were out by then), he wouldn't have been on tour:

If we didn't have an album out right now, I wouldn't be on tour, I wouldn't have chosen to take on that particular responsibility at this time. But I didn't really have a choice, especially if I want to keep my career going. I would've liked to be more together emotionally and mentally before this tour. Part of the job of being in Guns N' Roses is coming onstage and being superhuman. We've supposed to rise above the energy in the crowd, rise above whatever bad may have happened that day, rise above whatever is in your head, while at the same time trying to rise above the damage in your own life.


In 2011, Axl would again say that he shouldn't have toured in '91 but had to do it because the tour was booked, that he feared for Slash's health if they remained in Los Angeles, and that Slash wanted it:

I only went on tour because of three reasons: My manager had booked a tour without authorization and he just booked the tour and then I'm going to be sued for it, he was also telling me that if Slash dies of heroin or whatever, it's my fault, and Slash pushing me. And I should not have agreed to that tour but I didn't know how to get out of it after it was booked [...]


And in 2013, Axl would reiterate:

The Illusions' lineups comments that I've read in media or Slash's book were, in my opinion, predominantly public gamesmanship, strategy and politics on their part. Pretending to be unaware or innocent to the public has been a common deceptive tactic often used in regard to what was happening with the band and our relationship with each other. As I've said before, I shouldn't have been on tour when we started in '91.

That had a lot to do with Alan Niven, our then manager, and Slash. In my opinion Alan wanted money and Slash wanted the touring to get the better of me given my circumstances at the time. My safety and well-being were not their concern.


Alan Niven would vehemently deny these accusations and claim Axl wanted to tour:

[...] despite what Mr. Rose says these days, everybody wanted to go out and tour and headline in the summer of '91.

And believe you me, everybody, you know it had been ages since we got this record done. We've gone through the process of having to get another drummer to finish the album. I mean, everybody was really keen to get active again. When Axl goes into the press and says that "his safety and well-being was not being cared about," I don't know what the hell he's talking about.

Alright and believe you me, there was no forcing the issue in '91. Everybody wanted to go on tour there. Everyone, including Axl. This is revisionist, labyrinthine bullshit out of his spaghetti incident brain.


And draw a blank when asked what Axl's health issue was:

Once again, you would have to sit down and try and divine that out of the labyrinth of Axl's mind. [...] what Axl's talking about, I have no idea. He was healthy, he was working out. What his safety issues were, God alone knows. Or well-being issues were, God alone knows.


Yet, later in the same interview Niven would state that Axl had been in a instable state of mind, thus contradicting his previous comments on Axl being healthy:

There was a very much in everybody's consciousness a lack of confidence that Axl could sustain through a headline tour, that could be kept going and that he'd be able to do it, and so on and so forth. There were doubts in our mind about whether he'd do it or not. Why the hell do you think Slash and Duff signed over their rights to the name so that they could go on tour?


As for pushing for the tour to earn money:

And to say I was in it for the money is patently ridiculous. If I was in it for the money, would I have deferred being paid for the first year of working with GN'R because they needed it more than I did? And I was new parent at the time and could have used it. If I was in it for the money, would Great White have owed me over 1,000,000 bucks when we parted ways? No, I don't do this for the money. If I was in it for the money, would I've been unenthusiastic about working with Bon Jovi, which is something that David Geffen tried to put together after I parted ways with GN'R? I didn't particularly want to work with with Bon Jovi, it would have been lucrative, but he's not an artist.


Niven would also claim Doug Goldstein had been in it for the money:

-and in terms of people wanting money. Obviously it's disingenuous to say that everybody would look forward to the fruits of a headline tour. I mean, you know, of course, everybody wants to do that, but is that the primary goal? No, it's not. It's going out there and doing great shows and seeing audiences in front of you and having that energy. I mean, that's what you live for. That two hours when magic is boiling in an energy of a great show. But I'll tell you one person who kept on about, "Let's get out on tour and let's make money and let's make money," and that was Doug Goldstein. He was up my ass all the time about, "We got to go, Niv," and "We got to get this done, we got to go, I want to be at the back end of this tour with five million in my bag." I remember taking a walk on the beach with Doug one night, down in Redondo Beach, and probably not very cleverly, I was sharing a little sense from my personal fatigue with dealing with everything and Doug was going, "We gotta get this tour done, we gotta get this tour done," you know, "Then we can put all that money in the bank," and I'm looking at him like, "Is that what this means to you?"


Regardless of the reasons, or perhaps because of these reasons, the tour would be marred by late starts, cancelled shows, terminated shows, rants and riots, most of which was due to Axl's unpredictable and volatile behavior [see other chapters].

Despite this, Axl had been preparing for the tour for a long time and reportedly became very health-conscious [sources?]. Being able to give it all at the shows were important to Axl:

And everybody will get in better shape once we, like, get some form of regimentation down and stuff, and realize what we are again and what we’re doing and we’re doing every day. Cuz we wanna take this for the long haul, as long as that can be. It’d be nice if we could go for a year-and-a-half to two years.


For the tour, Axl would bring along his Exercycle (the same he brought into the recording studio when laying down vocals for the 'Use Your Illusion' albums) so he could exercise between gigs [The Vox, October 1991].

Slash had also started exercising before the tour, but apparently that wasn't for him:

I took care of myself for a while and I still am, more or less. Like, I’m no angel or anything, I didn’t turn into that. But before... Before this started happening, I was, like, sitting around drinking beer, watching cartoons at my girlfriend’s house and, like, doing nothing all day until rehearsal. And I realized I’d better get off my ass and, like, so I started exercise for a while. But then we, you know... That’s not my style. I mean, seriously, it’s just not. The only reason I’m wearing this stupid thing is that I have nothing else to wear, do you know what I’m saying? And so now I get my workout, you know, I mean I’m back to normal just from the shows and for some reason I wasn’t ever in good health in the first place (laughs).


Matt would also have to prepare himself for the upcoming touring:

I'm just going to have to get in shape, do some jogging for about a month to build up my endurance. When I rehearse, I'm going to get my hands ready before I go this time. I'm just going to break them in now by playing hard. I don't want to get out on the road and start playing hard and all of a sudden have my hands be in pain. Some drummers say, "You've got to hold the sticks this way," but rock drumming is a whole different thing. You don't sit there and be all technical. Plus, I play with pretty big sticks—Maxxum 419s by Pro-Mark, which are like a long 2B. So I've learned to get my hands in shape from the last tour.

We're going to be bringing a gym out with us this time, and we're going to take a couple of bikes with us. I ride a Harley, and that kind of stuff breaks up the monotony. I'm going to bring a little studio with me—because I play a little bit of keyboards and guitar—instead of having to go out every night looking for something to do.


When asked how he would approach the older material:

I think there's some good drumming on that first album. It's real simple, and there's not a lot I would change, except maybe a few fills. But the basic groove is there. Steven plays differently than I do, he's more of a basher than I am. So I'll be playing it a little bit more my way, I guess.


Rehearsals for the tour took place in a fenced-off compound at an airport in the Los Angeles valley, in an aircraft hangar. "A small area has been divided off as a band hang-out: it's a reproduction of guitarist Slash's house, with candles, incense and scarf-draped lamps" [Q Magazine, July 1991]. As usual, Axl did not take part in the rehearsals:

Part of the reason I don't go to rehearsals is, I like to go all out. If the band's not going out at the same intensity - they're concentrating more on getting the music right - I feel like an idiot, jumping around, taking it so serious.

[…] we’ve never rehearsed with Axl. Since we started out that’s never happened because we’re just too loud. We rehearsed to write songs either at my house or in the real early days he’s come down and sit there in rehearsals while we played the music and he’ll come up with words even though we couldn’t hear him. […] The only thing I can say where we’ve had the odd full rehearsal thing is when we were getting something like ‘Live And Let Die’ together, otherwise we’ve always been four-piece when it comes to doing things regularly and keeping the groove going. That’s the point of our rehearsals, to get fresh ideas and keep things fresh. Not many bands work like that again but to me it still sounds really alive that way and that’s really important to us.


For travelling, the band chartered a plane from MGM Grand with the band logo on its side.



Duff, Slash and Matt in front of tour plane



[...] we had our own plane, MGM Grand plane, with our own stewardesses. We could do whatever we wanted. We could smoke crack on the plane, whatever. It was a 727 with a bar and a whole movie theater and everything.

We took the days of the charter 727 to a whole new level of debauchery. I’d be aisle-surfing with a cigarette in my mouth when the plane took off–we obeyed no aviation rules whatsoever.


Izzy bought himself a tour bus that could take his dog ("Treader" [Conspiracy Incorporated Newsletter, October 1991]) and motorcycle [RIP, September 1991], or girlfriend and dog [Melody Maker, August 10, 1991]. Why Izzy preferred to travel by bus can be discussed. He was definitely starting to distance himself from his bandmates (discussed below), but rumor also had it that his probation prevented him from flying [source?].

Duff talking about when he for the first time felt like a star:

It was when we switched from tour buses to a private plane. It wasn’t a small plane, it was a Boeing 727! At that point I figured that we were a big band. That was in 1991.

There was one glamorous life moment when me and Slash and Axl went down to look at this plane that we leased for the Illusions tour. We went down and they treated us like kings. They sent limos for us to go down and look at the plane. They had a book of stewardesses that we could pick from. That lasted for about 30 minutes. That was the glamorous part, and then it was over.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:58 am; edited 19 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:18 pm

MAY 1991
AXL AND STEPHANIE SEYMOUR

AXL AND STEPHANIE MEETS AT A VIDEO SHOOT

In mid-1991 it was reported that Axl, who had divorced Erin Everly early that year, was now dating the model Stephanie Seymour [Dayton Daily News, May 1991].

Axl had met Seymour while filming music videos for Use Your Illusion singles:

When we were coming up with the treatments for the script, we had to cast the female character. I picked up a magazine, I think it was, like, Cosmopolitan, cuz the girl on the cover had this hippie kind of flower shirt and she just looked really down to earth. Axl picked up another magazine. […] This beautiful woman should be what the imagery behind the story is about. […] And as you all know, Axl and Stephanie are more than a celluloid couple - they’re a real couple. So it’s little coincidences that kind of reaffirm that there’s more to life than the cut-and-dry, the black and white.

Del called me up on the phone about over three years ago now, and he goes, “Dude, I know who should play the part of Elizabeth” – that was the girl’s name in his story.  I was like, “Who?” and he goes, “Stephanie Seymour. You know who she is?” And I was like – I’m on the phone going, “I’m looking at her picture right now.” […] “Yeah, if we can get her, that would be great.” […] So we also had to figure out how to do that, how we’d make something incredible enough and good enough for somebody who wasn’t just gonna be in a “tits ‘n’ ass” video and just stand there and dance, you know? It had to be something that, like, excited her and something that she wanted to do. […] We also wanted it to, like, be something that would help whoever played that character’s part, her career a bit, you know; and help show them to more people and give them – it’s not talking, but a bit of an acting role. […] We wanted the character to be somebody who was really cool and really strong; and somebody that somebody could definitely obsessed over. And we met, and it just happened.

I’d never done a video. I never wanted to do one, you know? […]  I had people ask me to do videos and I’d never been interested, until Guns N’ Roses asked me to do it.




Stephanie and Axl



Axl's friend, Josh Richman, would describe that they started dating immediately:

Axl said to me, "I want to make videos more out-there than Michael Jackson's." When we made the "November Rain" video, we brought all these models in. Axl desperately wanted Stephanie Seymour-period. That night they went to the set, which was being built in an airplane hanger out in the Valley. That was their first date. She left Warren Beatty the next day.


As recounted by Colleen Combs, Axl's personal assistant:

Axl told me, "I've been hit by a Mack truck and the license plate said 'Seymour.'"



EARLY PROBLEMS

But on November 25, 1991 it was reported that Seymour had left Axl. Allegedly, Axl was on a health kick and had wanted Seymour to get healthy with him, but she just wanted to continue being herself [Orlando Sentinel, November 25, 1991]. Axl had become health conscious, including therapy and physical exercise. During the touring starting in 1991 he would bring along his training apparatus [source].

l work out a little bit. Actually, when l get off the phone I'm gonna work out. l work out now and then on a StairMaster, with my chiropractor-trainer. We do a workout on the StairMaster that enables me to breathe and move better on stage. And what I'm doing on stage turns out to be something that helps build me up rather than tear me down by being so exhausting. At first when l was playing it would just wear me out.


Later it was reported that Seymour had found Axl was "too demanding" and that she had "no time to nursemaid [him]" [Star Press, December 6, 1991]. Despite this, just a couple of days later it was reported they had broken up, on the radio show Rockline, when asked "is there any women in your life right now," Axl would reply, "Yeah, yeah. But I wouldn’t say 'women', I’d say 'woman'" [Rockline, November 27, 1991]. And in late December, after Seymour had been spotted $20,000 diamond ring at a GN'R show in New York that month, it was reported they had made up again [Pacific Stars and Stripes, December 20, 1991; Orlando Sentinel, December 21, 1991].

In May 1992, Interview Magazine would feature an interview with Axl where he would discuss his relationship with Stephanie. The magazine would feature pictures of the two kissing and caring for each other:

Steph and I have a really good time talking with each other, and we want to try to see if we can have that, in our lives, for our lives. We don't know, but we're definitely trying to communicate as much as we can. […] Sometimes your friends are your lovers, or have been at one time, or are at some time or are at different times. Maintaining the friendship and taking the responsibility of being a friend and also helping the other person be a friend to you, and expressing your feelings about your friendship...Stephanie and I do that with each other. It's a good thing.


According to Duff, Axl's relationship with Stephanie was doing him good:

Axl’s a changed guy, and I think it’s because of Stephanie and himself.


At some point in 1992 (or possibly 1991), Axl (and likely Stephanie) vacationed in Portefino, Italy [Hit Parader, June 1993].

But since we've started I've only had one real vacation-that was in Portofino. And there within hours, everyone seemed to know I was there. We ended up having room service all the time. It sounds tough, but it's actually kind of cool. I like to be real private: you don't always want everyone around you even when they like you. But at the same time, if they're not there, you wonder what you're doing wrong.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:58 am; edited 20 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:19 pm

APRIL/MAY 1991
SAM KINISON CHOKES SLASH, DUFF COMES TO THE RESCUE

Sam Kinison was a popular LA stand up comedian who hung out in the rock scene of the city. Both Steven and Slash had featured in the music video for Kinison's cover of "Wild Thing" which was released in 1988.

On April 20, 1991, Kinison was doing a show in Las Vegas and Slash was supposed to be there. Slash bailed out due to sickness:.

Well, Sam calls me – he calls me up - I was supposed to do a show in Las Vegas, and I didn’t go because I was sick.


But, seemingly, also because he feared the consequences after having read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and considering Kinison's reputation as a bad car driver:

I was like - I was sick, but I was almost about to go. I was like - you know, cuz I said I would do it. […] And then I thought about “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” and I said, "Nah" […]  “I’m not going.” I could just see – you know, that’s another way to go, like sitting in the car with Sam Kinison going 500 miles in an hour (laughs).


This resulted in Kinison "roasting" Slash from the stage in Las Vegas and belittling Slash's guitar playing [Howard Stern Show, April 30, 1992]. Not long after, Kinison confronted Slash at a hotel room:

And so [Kinison just showed up at my hotel room one night. I didn’t even – you know, a knock on the door and, like, it’s Sam, and I’m like, “Okay.” And so he got on my case about all this stuff, and he called me a dickhead. […] And I got pissed off and I jumped off the bed, and I didn’t expect him to react the way he did. And I turned my back – you know, I turned around for a second – and he just jumped on me. […] He jumped me in from the blue and just landed on my chest.


[Kinison and I] got into a really big fight. […] [Kinison] was sitting on me. […] And I had no way of getting out, because he had my elbows pinned down. […] I was gonna be dead. He was chocking me. […] He got me by the throat and my arm was just underneath his knee. And I was like, “Oh, this is it. I’m going out.” […] I was history. I was sitting, like, going, “I’m going out this way.”


But Duff came to the rescue!

Then Duff woke up in the other room. […] It was real violent, and Duff punched [Kinison] out, the cops were involved, too, and it was a big deal. […] Duff punched him out. […] He gave him a black eye. […]


The story is corroborated by Andrew Dice Clay:

Dice told Howard [Stern] that Duff from Guns N Roses beat up Sam Kinison recently. Howard said he didn't know that and now Sam is going to think that he's goofing on him if he talks about this. Dice went on to tell the story about what Duff told him about beating Sam up. Dice said that duff told him that Sam was choking Slash to death and Duff had to step in and do something about it.

Dice said that Duff was held down by Sam's body guard but he was able to get in a punch to his head. Howard said that he doesn't know if this story is true or not. Dice said this is what he heard. He went on to say that Duff ripped off the dirty rag from Sam's head at one point. Sam was going to have him arrested but they dropped the charges after the cops showed up.

Howard said that he's friends with both Sam and Dice and he's not going to say anything bad about Sam. Dice said he thinks that Sam is a very talented guy and he's not saying anything bad, he's just telling the story. He said it's a shame what happened to the guy.


The Andrew Dice Clay interview happened on May 14, 1991. This means that the fight between Slash, Duff and Kinison happened between April 20 and May 14, 1991. It is natural to think that since Duff and Slash were staying in hotel, the incident must have happened close to May 9 in San Francisco when the band was doing a show there, but apparently, Slash had just booked hotel rooms for him and Duff to "hang out":

There was one occasion when Duff and I went out by ourselves and got a couple of hotels rooms just to hang out. But I ended up in a huge fight with (comedian) Sam Kinison and Duff nearly got arrested for punching him out!
Use Your Illusion Tour Program; source of original quote unknown



EPILOGUE

Slash would say that after the fight, he and Kinison had made up, slowly [The Howard Stern Show, April 30, 1992].

On April 10, 1992, Kinison died in a car accident. This was just weeks before Slash discussed Kinison on two call-ins to the Howard Stern Show, where he also briefly talked to Kinison's widow, Malika Souiri.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:58 am; edited 24 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:19 pm

MAY 9-16, 1991
WARM-UP GIGS FOR THE 'USE YOUR ILLUSION' TOUR

Before kicking off the Use Your Illusion tour, the band started with three warm-up shows. The original plan was that the warm-up shows would constitute a mini-tour and that they would include shows in many cities, including Seattle, Detroit and Dallas [RIP, September 1991]. For various reasons -- Del James would list "pressures and assorted other bullshit" and having to finish the 'Use Your Illusion' albums [RIP, September 1991] -- the warm-up tour was reduced to only three shows, at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco (May 9), at The Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles (May 11) and at The Ritz in New York City (May 16).

For the two West Coast shows (San Francisco and Los Angeles) Axl picked the band Dumpster as the opener (containing Axl's Lafayette friend Mike Staggs), while Slash picked the band Raging Slab as the opener for the New York City show [RIP, September 1991].

For the first warm-up show, at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco (May 9), Axl, Matt and Izzy was flown in on their tour plane, while Duff and Slash came in from New York City where they had been working on mastering the Use Your Illusion albums [RIP, September 1991]. This show was advertised as a "live rehearsal" [Mercury News Music, May 1991]. In fact, the gig was first announced the same day when Slash and Duff called in a radio station early in the morning. The tickets were sold out within an hour [RIP, September 1991]. Axl would refer to the situation in the band at the time as, "the most highly organized unorganized bunch of people in the whole world" [RIP, September 1991].

Izzy had been milling about when kids either lined up to buy tickets or to enter the theatre:

It was insane, man. All those kids that early in the morning. I can't wait till we finally go on.


Apparently, this show was mired by the band trying out things. Duff also tried out a stage-dive, but was stopped by a security guard who, according to Del James, "grabbed his legs as he was in mid-flight, causing him to eat it, face first" [RIP, September 1991]. San Francisco Chronicle critic Joel Selvin gave it a poor review:

They’re a fraud. It was among the worst rock shows I’ve ever seen. Most of it was a mulch of painfully loud sound.


One criticism the band received was Axl having to read the lyrics to the new songs off teleprompters [New York Magazine, June 1991]. Even Del James gave it "a seven out of a possible 10" [RIP Magazine, September 1991].

Despite the bad reviews, the kids had sung along to many of the new songs by the second choruses:

It's real cool when people are singing songs they don't really know. I work on communicating it to them, and they take the time to get into it. I like the intimacy, and I think the crowd likes the intimacy of us showing them our new songs.


The challenge of playing songs the audiences didn't know would affect the shows until the release of the 'Use Your Illusion' albums in September the same year. But the band for most part, as judged by reviews, managed to present a strong mix of old songs that the audiences were familiar with, with new songs of the new albums.

Duff would later state that the band wasn't fazed by audiences not knowing the music:

I mean, there was probably some of that [=audiences just staring at them incredulously], but we didn't sense it. We just were doing our thing, you know? So it was kind of like when we were first a new band, you go out and play your songs at clubs. Nobody doesn't have a record of them. So it was just that, a little larger. And we were playing songs well and all of that. So then when the records came out, then it made more sense for everybody else, but it made sense to us from the beginning.


Sammy Hagar from Hagar's Van Halen, who were also touring this year, commented upon this:

I can't believe those poor guys being out there out there on the road without a record. I understand Axl's having a real hard time. When they play their new songs, there's not much reaction, but what do you expect? It's like they're kind of stuck.


Slash would be clear that cancelling the planned shows had not been an option:

We thought the new album would be out, but it isn't. However, there was no way we were gonna cancel these shows. There are just so many people who'd already bought tickets and we can play some of the new stuff live and give them a taste of what they can expect on the album.


Here Slash is likely talking about the first shows of the real tour and not the shows at the warm-up tour where tickets were not sold in advance.

For the show at The Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles (May 11), Slash and Duff again announced the show on the showday, this time by calling in to KLOS radio channel, although by now rumors had been spreading that the band would play this day [RIP, September 1991].

As in Rio De Janeiro, Matt did a drum solo:

The drum solo is great. I never got to do one when I was with the Cult. Actually, I never did one before Rio. Hopefully they'll keep getting better. It's really cool of the guys for letting me do it.


Shannon Hoon, the lead singer of Blind Melon, would also come on stage to sing 'You Ain't The First' and 'Don't Cry' together with the band [RIP, September 1991].

I was at the Pantages, but I didn’t have time to get nervous at that, because it was real spontaneous.


The Los Angeles show got much better reviews [Los Angeles Times, May 1991; RAW Magazine, May 1991], while L.A. Weekly referring to it as "uneven at best and dreadful dull at worst" [L.A. Weekly, May 17, 1991]. Del James would give it an "eight and a half" out of 10 [Rip Magazine, September 1991].

Before the band's third show, Axl would comment on how they were doing so far:

I'm really happy with the way things are going, professional rehearsals in front of people. It allows me to get into the mode I'm gonna have to be in when we start doing the big shows. Frisco and Bill Graham were really cool, and there was a different kind of hunger there for us. L.A. seemed to scrutinize us a bit more, and I welcomed that. In L.A. we didn't play 'Jungle' or 'Paradise,' because we'd already played for over two hours. I didn't want to push my voice any harder. Also, we didn't want to push past the curfew and be fined eight grand for one song. It felt a little bit like I ripped some people off, but I knew they were happy with what we had done. I thought we went over real well in L.A., but I still look at it as rehearsals. I'm not really worried about what critics have to say about these gigs, but if they like these shows, in six months they'll be real happy.


The opening band, The Raging Slab, would also comment on hiding to see Axl do his vocal check before the show. In the words of Greg Strzempka:

During sound check- Axl would make EVERYBODY leave the venue while he did his "vocal check" - ( and I mean everybody...including the rest of his band! )- Being naturally curious---one time we managed to stow away behind some road cases .....When the great man was assured the coast was clear-he was led onto the stage by a couple of "handlers" and after some yelling at the soundman-and checking the positioning of his telepromters-he proceeded to trot around the room with a cordless mic -JUST a-wailing these phony-baloney blues scats- and then began singing "Live and Let Die" ACCAPELLA-! ---We we're finally discovered because we were laughing so hard we almost pissed ourselves....needless to say Axl's people were VERY upset with us .......Anyhow- having us open was Slash's idea...-and He always made damn sure we felt right at home- and thanks to him -It was the only time we didn't run out of Backstage Booze!
Metal Sludge, September 25, 2001


The quote above could indicate that the Raging Slab opened for all three warm-up shows.

The last of the three warm-up shows, at The Ritz in New York City (May 16), were the best of the three with Del James giving it a "nine and a quarter" and called it "pretty damn close to perfection" [RIP Magazine, September 1991]. Duff also managed to finally successfully stage-dive, and Shannon Hoon again joined the band for 'Don't Cry' [RIP, September 1991].

Axl, though, injured his heel:

You know that expression, "Break a leg"? I think I just did [chuckles].
The Ritz, May 16, 1991

I’ve just had a chronic history of bruising my heel and messing up the ligament, but never... I couldn’t afford it at the time when it happened, when I was, like, in junior high and stuff, to figure out what was wrong. And then, about a week ago, we played the Ritz in New York and I got really excited, I was just jumping off everything. You know, there’s a lot of photos with me like ten feet in the air and stuff. And I came down really hard on my heel when I was jumping - not even on stage – off the stage and landed on my heel on a cement floor with no cushioning in my boots. And it just messed up the ligament and stuff. But the doctors seem to think it’ll be fine. We had, like, all the top doctors from the Brewers and the Packers and New Balance Shoes all working on designing me something so I could run around. Cuz yesterday, without this, it’s definitely limping. But we didn’t want to call off the show, you know.


Because of the injury Axl had to seek out orthopedic surgeon Jeffery Johnson at the Milwaukee County Medical Complex before their later show in East Troy and had to perform with his leg in a cast for subsequent shows [Madison Wisconsin State Journal, May 26, 1991; Chicago Tribune, May 1991]. Photographer George Chin would later reminisce:

After the show, it turned out that [Axl] had twisted his ankle and torn some ligaments. His leg had to be put into a cast, and he was under doctor’s orders not walk on it. With less than two weeks to go before the start of the tour, postponement was not an option. So Axl contacted his favourite American Football team, the New York Jets, and asked their physio to design and make a lightweight ankle brace which would enable him to run around on stage without putting pressure on his ankle. With the casing in place - and even though he was using crutches right up to the day of the first show - the tour went ahead as scheduled.


Slash enjoyed the warm-up shows:

You know, the theater tour was killer, because it gave us a chance to get back and get toe-to-toe, and realize where the band really was. Where as opposed to, like, going out there and jerking off for 40,000 people that are just screaming just for the hell of it. You know, you start to see that you really have to do something, that we really have to actually play and perform, you know, above or at least apart. And that makes you work hard. Otherwise you turn to a lazy old... you know. Which is not happening.


Duff would describe the warm-up shows:

New York was the best. San Francisco was a bit wild – I’m about to read a review on it - because, you know, it was the first time Axl sang with us in... two years, maybe? And L.A. was rocking. And New York was the best.


This is not entirely correct. Obviosly, Axl sang with the band during the Rock in Rio shows in January 1991, and before that he sung with them at Farm Aid in April 1990, and before that at the four shows opening for Rolling Stones in October 1989. What Duff is probably alluding to, is that Axl didn't sing with the band during the recording of 'Use Your Illusion' nor at rehearsals for any of the shows in this period, and as such the band had been playing together a lot in the last two years without Axl.


Last edited by Soulmonster on Wed Mar 13, 2024 1:20 pm; edited 26 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:20 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO HELL
Album:
Use Your Illusion I, 1991, track no. 1.


Information:
Timo Caltia (real name Timo Kaltio) who participated writing this song is a Finnish guitarist, songwriter and guitar-tech expert who once worked with Hanoi Rocks. He had played a chorus riff of the song at his home while Izzy visited there. Caltia was bothered by his irritating neighbour and was trying to make a verse including words "living next door to hell". Later Izzy asked a permission to take the riff for his new song. Royalties from this song helped Caltia to buy himself a new house in London.

Written by:
Izzy Stradlin, Timo Caltia and Axl Rose.

Musicians:
Drums: Matt Sorum
Bass: Duff
Lead and Rhythm Guitars / 6-String Bass: Slash
Rhythm Guitar: Izzy
Vocals: Axl
Background Vocals: Slash, Duff, Izzy

Live performances:
The song was played for the first time at Pantages Theatre, USA, on May 11, 1991. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {RIGHTSONGS} times.
Lyrics:

I'll take a nicotine, caffeine, sugar fix
Jesus don't ya git tired of turnin' tricks
But when your innocence dies
You'll find the blues
Seems all our heroes were born to lose
Just walkin' through time
You believe this heat
Another empty house another dead end street
Gonna rest my bones an sit for a spell
This side of heaven this close to Hell

Right next door to hell
Why don't you write a letter to me yeah
I said I'm right next door to hell
And so many eyes are on me
Right next door to hell
I got nowhere else to be
Right next door to hell
Feels like the walls are closing in on me

My mama never really said much to me
She was much too young and scared ta be
Hell "Freud" might say that's what I need
But all I really ever get is greed
And most my friends they feel the same
Hell we don't even have ourselves to blame
But times are hard and thrills are cheaper
As your arms get shorter
Your pockets get deeper

Right next door to hell
Why don't you write a letter to me yeah
I said I'm right next door to hell
And so many eyes are on me
Right next door to hell
I never thought this is where I'd be
Right next door to hell
Thinkin' time'll stand still for me

Fuck you
Bitch

Not bad kids just stupid ones
Yeah we thought we'd own the world
And gettin' used was havin' fun
I said we're not sad kids just lucid ones yeah
Flowin' through life not collectin' anyone
So much out there
Still so much to see
Time's too much to handle
Time's too much for me
It drives me up the walls
Drives me out of my mind
Can you tell me what this means...huh?


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

Writing the song:

Well, the song wasn’t necessarily written about [the wine bottle incident with his neighbor]. It’s just - the incident with my next door neighbor just inspired the chorus. And that chorus was also... Some of the verses were inspired by imagining myself sitting on Steven Adler’s street, and just imagining that I hadn’t – you know, that we hadn’t made it yet, and we were still on the streets and feeling like there was nothing there; I was kinda trying to relate with Steven. And other parts in the verses are me relating with things in my childhood and with our climb to the top; you know, “Not bad kids just stupid ones/ we thought we'd own the world/ and gettin' used was havin' fun.” The situation with the neighbor was just that she just kinda lost it after I realized this wasn’t a person I wanted to be involved with. And she just couldn’t handle the rejection of living next door, you know, and that was, like, her big claim to fame. And she was drunk and swung a wine bottle, and I took it, and now she just couldn’t deal with that. And so her way to be involved was the same as Steven Adler suing us. It’s like, “Okay, let’s make a law case out of it”. You know, the D.A’s threw it out, but now it’s a civil suit and, I mean, she’s trying to tell people that I’m insinuating that she actually emanated from hell (laughs). That’s her case.
Rockline, November 27, 1991

I'd say "Right Next Door To Hell" is something like the chorus from "Locomotive," but the verses are much deeper, much more serious.
Metallix, December 1992

[One song] has a verse about life in L.A., and the chorus came when I was at home and couldn’t figure one out. All of a sudden Gabby started beating on the walls and had her television cranked on 10 to bother me, and I just wrote this chorus called ‘Right Next Door to Hell.’ It works really well.
People Magazine, November 19, 1990


Introducing the song:

I wrote the chorus of this song - the verses have nothing to do about that part - I wrote the chorus because of my next-door neighbour.
The Ritz, New York, USA, May 16, 1991


12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:50 am; edited 29 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:20 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: DUST N' BONES
Album:
Use Your Illusion I, 1991, track no. 2.


Written by:
Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Slash.

Musicians:
Drums / Percussion: Matt
Bass: Duff
Lead and Rhythm Guitars / Voice Box: Slash
Vocals / Rhythm Guitar: Izzy
Piano / Organ: Dizzy Reed
Background Vocals: Axl, Slash, Duff

Live performances:
The song was played for the first time at Warfield Theatre, USA, on May 9, 1991. It was played at least 39 times in 1991 and once in 1992. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {DUSTSONGS} times.
Lyrics:

He lost his mind today
He left it out back on the highway
On "65"

She loved him yesterday
Yesterday's over
I said okay
That's all right
       
Time moves on
That's the way
We live an hope to see the next day
That's all right

Sometimes these things they are so easy
Sometimes these things they are so cold
Sometimes these things just seem to rip you right in two
Oh no man don't let 'em get ta you

She loved him yesterday
He laid her sister
She said O.K.
And that's all right

Buried her things today
Way back out deep
Behind the driveway
And that's all right

Sometimes these women are so easy
Sometimes these women are so cold
Sometimes these women seem to rip you right in two
Only if you let 'em get to you

Ya get out on your own
And you/take all that you own
And you/forget about your home
And then you're/just fuckin' gone

There's no logic here today
Do as you got to, go your own way
I said that's right
       
Time's short your life's your own
And in the end
We are just
Dust n' bones


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

And Izzy has this, like, very wry sense of humour, man. He’s got this song about...(half-singing the lyrics) : « She lost her mind today, got splattered out on the highway, I say that’s OK... » (laughs) ! It’s called ‘Dust and bones’, I think, and it’s great. The rhythm reminds me of something like ‘Cherokee people’ by Paul Revere and the Raiders, only really weird and rocked out. It’s a weird song. But then it is by Izzy, what can I tell you?
Kerrang, April 21 or 28, 1990

On 'Dust And Bones' and I don't (usually) sing! (laughs) But it's a song that me and Izzy actually wrote the riffs for and so, when that part came up, I sang it and I sing it live too. So I've got that new responsibility. They're trying to put tea out on stage for me! I can't get to the tea, let alone drink it, ya' know!?!
RAW, October 1991

And the tunes [on Use Your Illusion I & II] are cool, you know? I’m even singing on one. [...] On Dust N’ Bones. It’s a part where I’m singing on – and I don’t sing (laughs). But it was a song that me and Izzy actually wrote the lyrics together for, and when that part came up, when I wrote it, I sang it. So I sang it on the record and I sing it live, too. So I have that new responsibility, right? They’re trying to put tea out on stage for me and I’m like, “Screw that” (laughs). I can’t get to the tea, let alone drink it, you know?


12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:49 am; edited 24 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Fri Jun 12, 2020 7:42 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: LIVE AND LET DIE
Album:
Use Your Illusion I, 1991, track no. 3.


Written by:
Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney.

Musicians:
Drums: Matt
Bass: Duff
Lead and Rhythm Guitars / 6-String Bass: Slash
Rhythm Guitar: Izzy
Piano: Dizzy
Synthesizer Programmers: Johann Langlie, Axl
Vocals / Keyboards: Axl
Horns: Matthew McKagan, Rachel West, Robert Clark, Jon Trautwein
Background Vocals: Axl, Shannon Hoon

Live performances:
The song was played for the first time at Warfield Theatre, USA, on May 9, 1991. Since then it has been a fixture on the set-lists. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {LALDSONGS} times.
Lyrics:

When you were young and your heart was an open book
You used to say live and let live
You know you did
You know you did
You know you did
But if this ever changin world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry
       
Say live and let die
Live and let die

What does it matter to ya
When ya got a job to do
Ya got to do it well
You got to give the other fella hell

You used to say live and let live
You know you did
You know you did
You know you did

But if this ever changin world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die
Live and let die


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

I thought about [covering Live and Let Die] once a long time ago but just thought you would never be able to get that the way it sounds, that well. [...] And then I ran at the movie [The James Bond movie ' Live and Let Die'], I was watching it, and this song comes and it's like 'Welcome to the Jungle 2'. [...] And it just felt right so we ended up playing it a little bit, in rehearsal, and it started working, and now we've actually gone and start recording it and finding out that 'Wait, we are good enough to play this song.' We didn't think we were. We didn't think we were good enough to get it done right, but Slash is doing most of the string arrangements on guitar with a harmonizer. To me it's like Tom Waits meets Metallica, it's the way I sing it, so rough and scratchy, like I sound like Tom Waits. It's working out really good, it sounds like us. Everybody who hears it thinks that it sounds like the perfect song for us.
Famous Last Words, MTV, 1990

[…]it was a song that Axl really dug and I really dug and Axl came in and said: 'What do you think about 'Live and Let Die'?' And I said: `Yeah, it's been on my mind for the last year.'
VOX, January 1991

We have pretty varied musical tastes. I mean, collectively, I couldn't name in a week what we listen to Er, '...Heaven's Door' was something that came out of the blue because I liked the song and Axl liked it but we'd never talked about it. One day it came up and we were talking on the phone and I said, 'You wanna do that? Great!'. We did it at The Marquee for the first time, 'Live And Let Die' was the exact same thing. I went to rehearsal after Axl and I had talked about it and tried to see if the band could play it and make it sound good and Axl came in, heard what we were doing and just loved it. That's how it happened. It's cool, you know!?! [laughs]
RAW, October 1991

Yeah, I grew up on [The Beatles and Paul McCartney], you know, and appreciated it. But one of the main reasons we did Live and Let Die... There’s a few reasons. One, because a critic in L.A. was bagging on all the James Bond songs, and how they were all great, but Live and Let Die was a terrible song. And so we kinda decided that maybe he needed to hear that for another five years (chuckles). […] You know, cuz we knew that if we did it, we did it well; and this person would have to hear it. Another reason was that it was something to shoot for, you know, in quality; and also, you know, if we could show that we could do that kind of song, it would, like, show the quality in the rest of our songs. Another thing is like, you know, it was kind of –not much, but a little bit of a hard pill to swallow- that we consider Welcome to the Jungle 2 is Live and Let Die, and it’s somebody else [that] wrote it, not us. […] You know, but that’s kinda like a more mature version of Welcome to the Jungle, to at least Slash and I.
Rockline, November 27, 1991

It's one of those songs, like 'Heaven's Door,' that Axl and I have always loved. It's always been a really heavy song, but we'd never discussed it, and didn't know that we each liked it. We were talking one night about a cover song and that came up, and we're like, "Yeah! Let's do it!" So I went to rehearsal with Izzy and Matt and Duff, just to see whether we could sound good playing it, and it sounded really heavy. It's actually heavier when we play it live than it is on the record, because of the horns and synthesizer. Live it's got more bottom to it.
Guitar, April, 1992

Really the same thing that inspired us to do Heaven’s Door – because everybody used to ask us why we did that. It was a song that I just grew up loving and Axl really dug, but we never talked about it. And somewhere before we went to rehearsals or pre-production to do the Illusion records, we got to talking about different songs and that song came up, so it was mutual. So we went into rehearsal to see if we can make it sound half decent, just to give it credit where credit’s due, and it sounded good. So that was that.
BBC, May 31, 1993

[About Axl's fondness for synths and keyboard during the production of the Illusion albums]: When we did 'Live And Let Die,' it was all synths - those horns are not horns. What Axl did there was really complex; he spent hours dialing all of that shit in, getting the nuances just right, and I have to give him that.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York, pp 318

This is a song that we recorded as a present for Mr. Paul McCartney... And also because this Los Angeles critic was writing about all the James Bond songs [...] which ones were good... and how Paul McCartney's was the worst, pop, pussy type Bond song ever written. And I kind of thought "Well, if that's the case, maybe homeboy needs to hear it for five more fucking years! This is 'Live and Let Die'...
The Forum, in Inglewood, CA, USA, July 30, 1991



12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Oct 02, 2023 7:56 am; edited 22 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Soulmonster Sat May 01, 2021 12:53 pm

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11
SONG: YOU AIN'T THE FIRST
Album:
Use Your Illusion I, 1991, track no. 6.


Written by:
Izzy Stradlin.

Musicians:
Drums: Matt
Bass / Acoustic Guitar: Duff
Acoustic Guitar: Izzy
Slide Dobro: Slash
Vocals: Izzy, Axl, Shannon
Tambourine: Tim Doyle

Live performances:
The song was played for the first time at Pantages Theatre, USA, on May 11, 1991. It was played extensively during the acoustic part of the 1993 shows. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {YATFSONGS} times.
Lyrics:

I tried so hard just to get through to you
But your head's so far from the realness of truth
Was it just a come on in the dark
Wasn't meant to last long
I think you've worn your welcome honey
I'll just see you along as I sing you this song

Time can pass slowly, things always change
Your days been numbered
And I've read your last page
You was just a temporary lover
Honey you ain't the first
Lots of others came before you woman
Said but you been the worst
Sa' you been the worst

So goodbye to you girl
So long, farewell
I can't hear you cryin'
Your jivin's been hell
So look for me walkin'
Down your street at night
I'll be in with another
Deep down inside
DEEP DOWN INSIDE


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

And then Izzy’s got his sense of humour in there, too. Like, "There were lots of other lovers / Honey, you weren't the first...” Then something, something, then, “But you were the worst / Yes, you were the worst...’’ ‘I’m gonna try to get him to sing that one,’ he said. ‘Izzy sings it the best, he sings it the best.
Mick Wall, GUNS N' ROSES: The Most Dangerous Band in the World, Sidgwick & Jackson, U.K. 1991, 1993

On 'You Ain't The First,' I used a dobro and played that regular [as opposed to overhand slide].
Guitar For The Practising Musician, April 1990



12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:49 am; edited 21 times in total
Soulmonster
Soulmonster
Band Lawyer

Admin & Founder
Posts : 15699
Plectra : 76206
Reputation : 831
Join date : 2010-07-06

Back to top Go down

12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM Empty Re: 12. JANUARY-JULY 1991: TOURING MAYHEM

Post by Sponsored content


Sponsored content


Back to top Go down

Page 1 of 2 1, 2  Next

Back to top

- Similar topics

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum