2021.01.30 - Reelz Channel - Axl Rose: Guns N' Roses Frontman (Doug Goldstein, Tom Zutaut, John Reese, Vicky Hamilton)
Page 1 of 1
2021.01.30 - Reelz Channel - Axl Rose: Guns N' Roses Frontman (Doug Goldstein, Tom Zutaut, John Reese, Vicky Hamilton)
by Blackstar Sun Jan 31, 2021 11:22 am
EDIT: I had to remove the video, because we received a copyright notice.
The copyright notice was from RIAA in relation to the GN'R sound recordings contained in this TV program. I suppose Reelz Channel and the production company didn't have the band's permission to use this content.
*
Transcription of selected parts:
__________________________
Voice-over: Axl Rose is one of the most unpredictable rock stars of all time. Famous for hits like Paradise City. A juvenile delinquent from rural Indiana. As lead singer of Guns N' Roses, he became an iconic rock god, selling over 100 million records. But with success came self-destruction. […] Told by those who knew him best.
Monica Gregory (Axl’s childhood friend): We had some of the greatest times and some of the toughest times. We got robbed one night.
John Reese (GN’R tour manager 1989-1993): A lot of me says I didn't want to do this interview, but I wanted to talk about, you know, real and not any bullshit. He's a completely misunderstood human being.
Vicky Hamilton: I actually loved Axl a lot.
Voice-over: This is the story of one of the greatest frontmen in music history: Axl Rose. January 1st, 2001, the House of Blues, Las Vegas. At 38 years of age, Axl Rose is about to make his first public appearance as part of Guns N' Roses in seven years. But Axl is now the only remaining original member of the band.
Doug Goldstein: It was the first time that Axl had been out with his band, the new band with no Slash, no Duff. It's his first time he's performed in years.
Voice-over: He's performing tracks from a long-awaited new album, Chinese Democracy, that he's been working on for seven years and still hasn't finished.
Tom Zutaut: The New York Times reported it as the most expensive record ever recorded. One of the reasons it took so long for Axl to complete it… he was on his own.
Voice-over: And on stage, the show lacks the energy of Axl's past performances. […] Even his performance of Welcome to the Jungle didn't impress the critics. […] And there's only one person to blame.
Tom Zutaut: He has this sort of tick inside him that he wants to destroy everything and completely wreck everyone's lives and then at the last second by the hair of his chinny chin chin pull it back together. And I've seen him do that repeatedly.
Voice-over: Only this time he seems unable to pull it back together.
Tom Zutaut: For him, you know, imagine the humiliation of not being able to sell out the House of Blues with his new version of Guns N' Roses.
Voice-over: So why did a man who had achieved such extraordinary success managed to sabotage everything he'd created and end up so isolated and alone? The roots of Axl's notoriously unpredictable life lie in his complex upbringing in this single storey house in the suburbs of Lafayette, Indiana. Monica Gregory spent her teenage years with Axl.
Monica Gregory: We had some of the best times ever. He lived in Lafayette with his parents. You don't make it big here. It's just a hometown. It's a hometown town.
Voice-over: William Bruce Rose Jr., the boy who would become Axl Rose, was born February 6, 1962. His mother Sharon was a 16-year-old high school student, and his father William was known as a local troublemaker. But when Axl was just two years old, his father disappeared. Not long after, Sharon married local minister Stephen Bailey, and her young son became known as William, or Bill Bailey. […] Axl’s little brother Stuart was Sharon and Stephen's son together. But Axl and his younger sister Amy also believed that Stephen was their biological father. It was a difficult relationship from the start.
Monica Gregory: I met his parents several times. His mom, Sharon, was a lovely lady. And Steve, his stepdad, he was pretty tough. “My house, my rules, that's how it's going to be”.
Voice-over: Axl's stepfather wasn't just strict, he was violent.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: He’d beat Axl on a regular basis. He would beat on Stuart, Axl's brother. He would do things, treat Amy, the sister, poorly.
[…]
Monica Gregory: In Junior High he was quiet and fairly shy. He knew he was different. He knew he had something to do. You know what I mean?
[…]
Voice-over: But Axl found solace in music, particularly during his regular visits to church. […] Elton John remained a huge inspiration throughout Axl's life. But his first step on the road to stardom happened at Jefferson High School when Axl was 13 years old. […] Izzy was looking for a lead singer for his band. […] But school wasn't the only place where Axl was struggling to fit in. At home, relations with his parents were going from bad to worse. Then Axl made a discovery that would change his life forever.
[…]
Monica Gregory: He found out that Steve wasn't his real dad around the age of 17. Oh, it broke his heart because he didn't know. Nobody had told him. You think that you know where your life has come from, and you've put up with a lot of hard times, and then you find out that, “Wait, something is completely different than I thought that my life was”.
[…]
Monica Gregory: And then, AXL, that was the name of the first band. It was just cool. How cool is the name Axl Rose?
[…]
Voice-over: Axl decided to move in with his maternal grandmother. It's a time that Monica Gregory, one of Axl's teenage friends, remembers well.
Monica Gregory: This is Grandma Anne's house. This was like the funnest place ever. There was a lot of Axl's developmental music here. He would sit and play the piano after she got it for him. She accepted him on his own terms. He loved his grandma and she was one of his best friends.
Voice-over: But having left home, Axl started to drift. […] Axl escaped Lafayette for the bright lights of LA. Monica went with him.
Monica Gregory: And we got on a plane and went to LA. He knew that he wanted to be a musician, but this is still a little early on in the process, kind of checking it out. […] You know, we were just exploring, exploring Hollywood, exploring the scene. I mean, we did spend a few nights, I don't know, in alleys and stuff. I remember one night we were walking down Hollywood Boulevard. We found a pizza place that had a piano, and we'd go in there and he'd play the piano and they'd give us a piece of pizza every now and then.
Voice-over: Eventually, Axl gets a job at Tower Video on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. […] After a few months, Axl and Monica reunite with school friend Izzy Stradlin, who has also moved to LA from Indiana. It's not long before they form another band named Hollywood Rose.
Vicky Hamilton: I was a booking agent at a place called Silverlining Entertainment. And Axl called me on the phone and said, “Can we bring you a demo?” A couple hours later, he and Izzy showed up with the ghetto blaster in hand. And I was like blown away. I booked them sight unseen. We bonded because we're both from Indiana, so that's kind of where our conversation started. He was very charming, and sweet, and very likable.
Voice-over: Hollywood Rose eventually fuses with another band named LA Guns to form Guns N' Roses. This is when the classic lineup emerges.
Monica Gregory: It was the band that was going to make him a mega-star. It's like it was magic. The first time I saw them live was like heaven on earth for me. I was so proud. I was, like, bubbling out of my seat. I was so excited.
Voice-over: The most critical relationship for Axl is the one with Slash.
John Reese: Slash and Axl were the ying and the yang of the band. Them together was what created the magic. They were the center point, the light, and everything else kind of flowed together as a team.
Voice-over: In 1985, most of the members of Guns N' Roses start living in what is essentially their rehearsal room, a tiny studio apartment off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: I went to visit them one time, and the band lived in an absolute squalor. Dust and dirt piled up everywhere.
[…]
Voice-over: Despite living in squalor, the band write and rehearse as much as they can. It was Vicky Hamilton's job to try and give them some professional discipline.
Vicky Hamilton: I was kind of a combination of big sister, mom, manager. I did it all.
Voice-over: So when the band gets into some trouble with the police, it's Vicky who helps them out.
Vicky Hamilton: They got into some trouble, and the police were looking for him at the rehearsal hall and Slash called me and said, “Can Axl sleep on your couch?” But then the police kept circling the rehearsal hall, so Slash and Izzy moved in.
Voice-over: This was the apartment that Guns N' Roses lived in with Vicky before they were famous.
Vicky Hamilton: Axl always used to sleep on this couch. That was, like, his bed. The others slept in sleeping bags on the floor. Very rock and roll. Well, there were a lot of pizza boxes here and usually no papers. They would write on whatever they could find, you know. And the TV was up against this wall. This is where Axl watched “Faces of Death”, and Sex Pistols videos, and things. This is the bathroom that he sang acapella in the shower. It has really good acoustics in here, so it's a singer's dream, pretty much. I think that is the actual tub. This is the one and only bedroom in this apartment. And I had a bed against this wall. We used to, like, barricade the door so no one could get in here at night.
Voice-over: But the tiny living quarters put the band's relationship under strain as Axl became increasingly difficult.
Vicky Hamilton: Axl's personality, it was sort of a two-parter. Like, there's a very sweet little boy personality that emerges a lot of the time. And then when he's on edge, there's, like, sort of the demon dog from hell personality. Axl's eyes change colors even when he goes into that mode. So, it's like, you knew if his eyes were lighter that it was time to move along (laughs).
Tom Zutaut: Hell hath no fury like a mad Axl Rose, when he goes into that mode, I mean, red mist, red aura, whatever you want to call it.
Vicky Hamilton: One day, Steven was helping me clean up the apartment because there were beer bottles and Jack Daniels and cigarette butts everywhere. And Axl's like, “Stop it!”. And then he got up and threw the heavy coffee table at Steven. And there was, like, a brawl here in the living room floor. And I was screaming my head off going, you know, “Are you gonna kill your drummer?”
Voice-over: Axl's erratic behavior may have been difficult to live with, but combined with the volatile nature of the rest of the band, musically Guns N' Roses was exactly what LA was looking for.
Vicky Hamilton: At that time and point in Hollywood, all the bands had gotten really girly. Like, every record company had two or three sort of glam rock bands. So when Guns N' Roses hit Hollywood, it had a dangerous feel about it.
Voice-over: February 28th, 1986. The Troubadour, West Hollywood. Guns N' Roses takes the stage for an industry showcase. The representative for Geffen Records is Tom Zutaut.
Tom Zutaut: You know, nothing has changed [inside the Troubadour]. The stage looks as dirty as it did 35, 40 years ago. That night, I had to crawl through a lot of people to get there, but I went backstage, and I actually introduced me to everybody. I said, “Come to my office tomorrow whenever you wake up, right? I'll give you a record deal”. And they were like, “But you haven't even seen us play”. I said, “I saw your singer on a stage, so I know pretty much what I need to know”. They hit the stage and it was literally the loudest guitar riff I'd ever heard. It was amazing, because I watched the crowd and people were, like, taking tissues out of their pockets and stuffing it in their ears and...
Vicky Hamilton: It was a wall of sound. There was no singer like him on the scene at that point in time. He was brilliant. It just felt different. You know, dangerous.
Tom Zutaut: I saw this other A&R person take two cigarettes out of her cigarette pack and stuff them in her ears. They had the crowd from the first chorus of the first song. It was just so magnetic and powerful. And then Wednesday, they showed up at my office and basically the band said, “Give us $75,000 by Friday and we have a deal”.
Voice-over: But even at this early point in their career, when the band is about to change their lives forever, Axl puts it in jeopardy.
Tom Zutaut: The band signed with me that Friday night at about 11 p.m. when Axl finally showed up for a 5 p.m. meeting.
Voice-over: It's a pattern he would repeat for much of his career.
Vicky Hamilton: But the next day they went down to the bank and, like, took all this money in cash. And I found the cash underneath the couch. Yeah, $75,000, which got spent on mostly tattoos and clothes (laughs).
Voice-over: The band may be on its way to stardom, but in Axl Rose it has the equivalent of a bomb on board.
John Reese: There's an intensity to Axl on everything. He's an intense human being.
[…]
Voice-over: August 1986, Los Angeles. Having signed to one of the biggest record labels in the world, Geffen, Guns N' Roses is recording their first album, Appetite for Destruction.
Tom Zutaut: It's really hard to capture lightning in a bottle. It seems like it would be so easy, but it's actually really difficult.
[…]
Voice-over: But Axl Rose is determined that this will be one of the greatest records ever made.
Tom Zutaut: I've never seen anyone who was so obsessed with every single emotion of every word being 100% accurate to what he was trying to deliver.
Monica Gregory: Axl has always been a perfectionist. He always knew that he knew how to do it right and he wanted it done perfectly, if possible.
Voice-over: During the making of Rocket Queen, this drive for perfection leads Axl to make a decision that could rip the band apart, even if it is in the name of music.
Tom Zutaut: We were in New York mixing. Axl felt like something was missing from the song. And then Steven Adler's girlfriend Adriana at the time was in the studio, but Steven hadn't made it there yet. […] You know, we mic'd the two of them up and they went at it and we recorded it. […] I didn't realize that she was a serious girlfriend of Steven's. So, I mean, only dawned on me later, you know, “Oh, that wasn't good”. And it might be part of the reason that that Steven and Axl are still somewhat estranged.
Voice-over: As the months of recording go on, Axl's behavior grows even more extreme. And he starts to become physically destructive. […] Even Axl is aware that his volatile personality could jeopardize the future of the band.
[…]
Vicky Hamilton: It was very clear to me that there was something going on.
Voice-over: Axl's turbulent mind is threatening to destroy not just the band, but also himself. At the age of around 24, Axl OD'd on pills. […] Eventually, Axl agrees to see a psychiatrist to try and get a diagnosis for his mood swings. He's diagnosed with manic depressive disorder, now known as bipolar disorder.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: He took lithium for a while, which was a common medication for manic depressives. I think he tried it for a while. I think that at a certain point, he thought it made him too flat, and so he stopped taking it. If you flatten him out with lithium or some other antidepressant, you don't have this - genius insanity. Genius insanity. Was that right? I think that made a lot of his creative output brilliant. There was just a raw expression of energy in a primal way.
Voice-over: But not long before Guns N' Roses debut album is released, Axl meets a woman who will change his life. Erin Everly, the 19-year-old daughter of Everly Brothers legend Don Everly.
John Reese: Erin was probably one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen in my life. She was hot as hell, and they had an insane love affair.
Monica Gregory: She was a doll. She loved him dearly. They were very happy together at the time that I met Erin. Axl's got a definite romantic side that I've seen with the girls that he was dating. He's got a heart of gold in there.
[…]
Voice-over: It's Axl's love for Erin that inspires one of Guns N' Roses greatest hits.
Tom Zutaut: Sweet Child of Mine, I mean, is completely written about her. It was sort of like the purity of pure love.
Voice-over: Slash, on the other hand, hates it. […] Although Axl and Slash didn't always agree, their chemistry had now become the driving force behind the creativity of the band.
John Reese: Slash did the day-to-day business. And if there were major things, we'd run them by Axl. And Axl was the visionary. They had the perfect partnership. All the greatest bands of all time, it's a lead singer and a lead guitarist that come together and create this magic.
Voice-over: Musical differences aside, after seven months in the studio, Guns N' Roses finally released their first album, Appetite for Destruction.
Tom Zutaut: Appetite for Destruction was released with a big thud, like nothing happened.
Voice-over: It limply debuts on the Billboard 200 at number 182. With sales of the record struggling, the band needs a break. February 2nd, 1988. MTV special, The Ritz, New York City. This is their first live performance on American television. It has the potential to make or break them and it almost doesn't happen.
Doug Goldstein: The 1988 MTV special was, in my humble opinion, the biggest by far - the biggest, biggest, biggest break that we had got. I get this request, Axl wants to see me, and I come into the dressing room, so what's going on? He said, “I don't know where my bandana is”. “Okay, so I'll go find you one”. I brought one back, it wasn't what he wanted. So now I have to find one that actually is what he wants. […] I absolutely thought if I don't find Axl Rose's bandana in this huge moment in the band's life, he may just decide not to go on (laughs).
[…]
Voice-over: The band come out and play “It's So Easy” and the performance is a huge success. […] Nearly a year after its release, Appetite for Destruction reaches number one on the Billboard 200 chart. It remains the biggest selling debut album of all time, and it threw Axl Rose into the mainstream. Axl's destructive behavior will shake the band to its very core. […] But this is just the start of things to come. By 1989, Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses debut album had made them one of the biggest bands in the world, but their talented and charismatic frontman Axl Rose is now infamous for his erratic and destructive behavior. On October 18th, 1989, the band is realizing a lifelong ambition to play with the iconic Rolling Stones at the LA Coliseum.
[…]
John Reese: At that time I was the tour manager. It was a chance to shine, you know, to do something unbelievable.
Voice-over: But when the band arrives at the venue for the sound check, their frontman is nowhere to be found.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: He felt like he wasn't ready to deliver. If he didn't have the energy to give to the audience, he didn't want to fake it.
Doug Goldstein: He was a huge Rolling Stones fan anyway, and now we're playing on a massive stage at the LA Coliseum. And so the whole magnitude of it was a little much for him. So he said, “Doug, I just, I can't see the stage. I just can't”.
Voice-over: To get Axl on stage, tour manager Doug Goldstein resorts to extreme measures.
Doug Goldstein: I sent police because Axl wasn't going to make it to the stage in time. So we put him in a car, got him down there as soon as possible.
Tom Zutaut: I mean, only in LA could… you know, you call the police and cajole them into going and dragging Axl out of his house and getting him there to perform.
Doug Goldstein: As soon as we opened the show, Axl ran to the front of the stage, not knowing that there was a cutout on the stage, and he went right into the pit. That's just one of the things that happens when you don't soundcheck and see the nuances of what's there.
[…]
Voice-over: After a few songs, Axl makes a shocking announcement.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: Mr. Brownstone was written by Izzy as sort of an ode to dancing with the devil, the devil being heroin. I think he was personally embarrassed that members of his band were absolutely incoherent on drugs, drink, and every other substance you can think of.
[…]
John Reese: It was very tense and it was tense backstage afterwards.
Voice-over: Axl’s impulsiveness is also evident in his personal life. On April 28th, 1990, he marries Erin at the Cupid Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. […] Throwing himself into both his marriage and Guns N' Roses' second albums, Use Your Illusion I and II, the pressure soon begins to show.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: Axl was always pushing the envelope and wanting to move forward. And when Axl writes a song, he painstakingly works through every word in a lyric to make sure it's right.
Voice-over: Axl's personal ambitions for the albums and his need for perfection means he often works all night. […] And tensions within the band are escalating with their increasingly hedonistic behavior. […] In particular, drummer Steven Adler's major drug addiction is becoming untenable.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: Steven was showing up, nodding out, and he wasn't able to perform his parts.
Voice-over: In July 1990, Steven Adler is officially fired from the band.
Doug Goldstein: When you get fired from Guns N' Roses for doing too many drugs, you know it's time to maybe curb your drug usage.
Voice-over: Adding to the tensions within the band, Axl's relationship with his new wife Erin is also under strain.
Doug Goldstein: It was an incredibly volatile relationship. So I'd get the phone calls, right? “Dougie, it’s Erin, get over here”, you know, he'd throw all the furniture through the window. “Okay”.
John Reese: It was just crazy. I just got a phone call, go up, the piano just got pushed out the window, you know. I'm just saying, “Axl, what's going on?” “Hey, man, we gotta get a new window. Might need a new piano, too”.
Tom Zutaut: You know, the love with Erin is the rose and the gun is the brutality of pushing a piano with brute force out your balcony and into the swimming pool five floors below.
Voice-over: But when Erin discovers she's pregnant in September 1990, everything changes. […] Then, in the third month of her pregnancy, disaster strikes. […] The next day, Axl's arrest is caught on camera. […] He's released on $5,000 bail, and the case is eventually dismissed six weeks later. But the incident only aggravates Axl's volatile state. His relationship with Erin can't handle it. […] In January, 1991, their marriage is officially annulled.
Tom Zutaut: When Axl split with Erin, I mean, it was pretty sad. It was the love of his life. And then it was sort of like, what's gonna happen now?
Voice-over: His marriage may have been over, but the two Use Your Illusion albums are about to be released to critical acclaim and accompanied by a massive tour. It will be one of the longest in rock and roll history.
John Reese: It was all bigger than life, the biggest sound. They were the biggest band in the world, so they wanted those big things.
Voice-over: Despite phenomenal success, Axl is playing by his own rules. […] John Reese was Guns N' Roses tour manager.
John Reese: He just ran on his own clock. Thinking back now, it was stressful as hell dealing with that, and that kind of, like, insanity of “He's gonna be on an hour and a half late, we're risking a riot and it's $10,000? Let's go”.
Voice-over: July 2nd, 1991, Riverport Amphitheater, St. Louis.
Tom Zutaut: The band went out, they started playing. Axl got pissed off at somebody in the crowd.
[…]
John Reese: It was a motorcycle guy that was taking pictures when there was a clear policy of not taking pictures. That's his right to not have his picture taken if he doesn't want to.
Tom Zutaut: And he walked off the stage and the place just erupted instantly into violence.
John Reese: And what people don't know is that he was willing to go back and he was ready to go back. I was with him in the dressing room and we were going to go back on the stage, but the riot had already started.
Tom Zutaut: They ripped the seats out, were throwing them around. I mean, that crowd was so violent. I've never seen anything like it.
[…]
Voice-over: For one band member, riots and late appearances are taking their toll.
Tom Zutaut: I was actually at Axl's house when Izzy pulled up for, like, the last conversation. And it had been brewing, and basically the rest of the band were really upset that they were paying out half a million dollars in penalties because Axl was getting to stage late. Axl goes, “It's the cost of doing business, take it or leave it”. And Izzy said, “I'm leaving it”.
[…]
Voice-over: But Izzy's frustration with Axl is only the tip of the iceberg. The Guns N' Roses frontman is in danger of driving everyone else away, too. 1991: Guns N' Roses' second albums, Use Your Illusion 1 and 2, are riding high in the charts. Axl Rose is now one of the most famous and controversial frontmen in the world. And he's dating model Stephanie Seymour.
John Reese: Axl and Stephanie, I believe, met on the Don't Cry video. […] He was 29, 30 years old and had more money than God, had, you know, more fame than you can - worldwide fame, dating the most beautiful woman on the planet.
[…]
Voice-over: Stephanie also comes with a young son.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: You know, he was a great kid. And my kid and Stephanie's kid, Dylan, you know, they played on the plane together, they played at the gigs.
Doug Goldstein: And he just loved that kid. Loved that kid. And he just wanted to be his dad.
Voice-over: Axl's dreams of fatherhood are coming true, but he's also about to fulfill another lifelong ambition. April 20th, 1992, Wembley Stadium, London, England. Guns N' Roses is performing in the Freddie Mercury tribute concert for AIDS awareness, when Axl is joined on stage by his childhood hero.
Doug Goldstein: Elton John has to be the one guy for Axl Rose that was the greatest songwriter, the greatest musician, who he really looked up to. It meant the world to Axl to have that support from his childhood hero.
Voice-over: Axl seems to have everything he could possibly want, but once again, it starts to unravel. August 8, 1992, Olympic Stadium, Montreal, Canada. Guns N' Roses are on tour with Metallica when their lead singer, James Hetfield, is badly burned by a misplaced pyrotechnic. […] The organizers ask Guns N’ Roses to get on stage quickly, so the concert can continue. But Axl makes the 53,000 strong audience wait for over two hours.
Doug Goldstein: I have to call him and say, “James just blew up and they need you to get here as soon as you can”. And he said, “I’m right in the middle… I’ll do the best I can, but I’m right in the middle of my four-hour prep”. I said, “I got it, but I need you to get here”.
Voice-over: When they finally get on stage, the band gives a lackluster performance.
Doug Goldstein: He starts singing and he calls me over. I always stood stage left so that he could communicate with me. And he walks over and he goes, [whispering] “I can't talk, let alone sing”. And I can hear it. “What should I do?” And so he tried to continue to sing for another two songs and it was apparent to all of us that he was physically incapable of singing. So he walked off the stage and a riot ensued.
Voice-over: More than 2,000 angry fans fight with police, resulting in nearly a half a million dollars of damage. […] The riot would cement Axl and the band's association with controversy. Everything that Axl is working for could fall apart, but he seems unconcerned.
Doug Goldstein: He's never gonna defend himself, he just won’t. He doesn't explain his art, and he's not into trying to clarify other people's opinion of who he is. Axl was a mess on that tour, particularly after it started getting really ugly with Stephanie Seymour. He was very suicidal, very depressed.
John Reese: He wanted to marry Stephanie and he wanted to live happily ever after with her. And I just think that they're combative personalities together. Sometimes lemon and vinegar doesn't mix.
Voice-over: December 1992, Malibu. Stephanie and Axl are hosting a party at home.
Mick Wall: It's Christmas. […] [Axl is] convinced that she's been conducting affairs behind his back.
Tom Zutaut: Supposedly she was writing in her diary about some other man and he had read it and just the whole relationship imploded.
[…]
Voice-over: Axl reveals the inner torment that could have been driving his destructive patterns.
Tom Zutaut: One night, Axl basically called me to come down to the studio, and I went down to the studio and he was sort of sitting on the floor with a big box of chili cheese fat burgers. He looked at me very solemn and he said, “Tom,” he said, “I want you to get me that cover of Rolling Stone. I'm gonna out my dad.” […] Here's a guy who's the biggest rock star in the world and he wants to take his one opportunity to be on the cover of Rolling Stone to out abuse. It was just absolutely horrific. He goes, “If I can spare one kid's life from having to live this kind of shit, then it'll be worth it.”
[…]
Doug Goldstein: And I think it was really cathartic for him to be able to get that out there and say, “You know what? I'm not the only person that's gone through an experience like this.”
Voice-over: After facing up to his childhood and its possible role in his erratic and destructive behavior, Axl continues on a quest to heal himself.
John Reese: Axl worked on his mental health. He had a number of experts working with him, and he knew he wanted to keep his shit together.
Tom Zutaut: You know, I actually went with Axl in his car for like four days and did some of the sessions. There's a little bit of chanting, humming, sitting in a mud bath for half a day, massage, I mean, you know, and spiritual sort of guidance of a higher power.
[…]
Voice-over: But despite Axl surrounding himself with gurus and therapists, his need for control continues to destroy everything and everyone around him. Axl Rose is one of the most successful rock stars of all time. But his journey to the top has been littered with heartache and destruction. Axl now seeks to control every other aspect of his life, and that includes taking ownership of the band. July 5th, 1993, Estadi Olympic, Barcelona, Spain. Guns N’ Roses is touring their second album, Use Your Illusion. Just before they're set to perform in front of a 40,000 strong audience, Axl makes a demand.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: Duff and Slash, who were inebriated the entire Use Your Illusion tour. Axl calls me to his room in Barcelona, Spain, and says, “If they don't sign, Slash and Duff, the name Guns N' Roses back to me, I'm not going on stage, and somebody's going to die because there's going to be a riot.”
Tom Zutaut: I mean, it got done.
Voice-over: Axl now has total control over Guns N' Roses, and just over two years later, Axl would take his power over the band to the extreme. He announced that he was leaving the band and starting up his own, taking the name with him.
Doug Goldstein: Part of the legal strategy on Axl's part was, “If I dissolve the partnership by removing myself and then starting it again as a fresh entity” - because he had the ownership of the name, he was entitled to do such. So it gave him a little bit more creative control, which is exactly what he was trying to do. I would say probably 100% of it had to do with control. […] But it obviously pushed Slash further away. And it was the causation, I think, in the long run for Slash just saying, “I'm out”.
Voice-over: Slash and Axl had always been the yin and yang of the band, but now their relationship is nearly at the breaking point.
Tom Zutaut: Axl wanted to change the musical direction of the band. I think that when Axl rejected Slash's songs, you know, I think that Axl hurt Slash's feelings. There was still a little bit of animosity over the drug use. So I think that all those things sort of built up.
Voice-over: Axl starts to try and control everything, even his past relationships. He sues ex-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour over an engagement ring. She then countersues him for abuse and other transgressions.
Tom Zutaut: It's really hard when you're going into the courts. I mean, she was claiming violence and that he was physically violent with her.
[…]
Voice-over: After Erin is asked to testify against Axl in Stephanie's trial, she files her own case against her ex-husband. She sues him for assault and sexual battery.
Tom Zutaut: And the both of them were, you know, claiming domestic violence against him.
[…]
Voice-over: Axl eventually settles both cases out of court. But the public exposure of his private life feels like a loss of control.
Doug Goldstein: The court cases with Stephanie were really difficult for Axl because he just wanted to be exonerated. A lot of depression, but less depression than frustration, I think.
Voice-over: By the time the Use Your Illusion tour ends, Axl stops and takes stock.
John Reese: At the end of the Use Your Illusion run, which was probably one of the most successful tours in history at that time and the longest tour a band had ever done in history, I mean, there was just complete exhaustion. We had a 150-person family that had dealt with four or five riots, that had dealt with drug overdoses, that had dealt with potential deaths.
Voice-over: To make up for his seemingly bad behavior, Axl regularly rewards those who stick by him.
John Reese: He's the most generous person and he wanted to take care of his people that, you know, it ended with him giving all his crew a bunch of money. That's how it ended, and saying “thank you” and “thank you for giving two and a half years of your lives to our band”. And then he threw a big Halloween party for everybody that year, which was awesome, and everybody came to his house and, you know, he created this amazing fantasy land at his house.
[…]
Voice-over: The party is a distraction from the disintegration of the band. Slash, who was once always by Axl's side, has been playing with other artists. But when he chooses to play with Michael Jackson, it's a step too far for Axl.
Doug Goldstein: Slash came to my room to tell me he was going to perform with Michael Jackson.
Tom Zutaut: Axl fully believed that Michael Jackson was a child molester.
Doug Goldstein: I said, “Your singer, your business partner, literally just exposed to everybody in the world that he was molested by his father”. When Slash decided to play with Michael Jackson, to me that was the beginning of the end.
Voice-over: Shortly after, Slash quits the band.
[…]
John Reese: The train had derailed at that point.
Tom Zutaut: I mean, Slash was basically the music director, musical director of the whole band. And so when he's gone, who's going to direct the music?
Voice-over: Alone and in charge of Guns N' Roses, Axl finally has what he wants, but the dark reality of his actions start to dawn.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: I used to get these phone calls at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, crying and “Dougie, he's gonna kill himself and I don't know what to do”. […] Yeah, sometimes he'd be laying there with a gun in his mouth. And this is the man that he's my best friend and I love him. And I know that if I don't think quick and say the right thing, I don't know that I'm going to be able to pull it off.
[…]
Voice-over: With Axl in such a dark place, Duff McKagan, the bassist and the last standing original member of Guns N' Roses, also throws in the towel. […] After the breakup of the original band, a deafening silence descends.
Tom Zutaut: You know, it can be pretty daunting to sort of look at your life and then reflect back on, you know, you're playing stadiums, you had, like, the biggest rock and roll band in the world. But what is Guns N' Roses?
Voice-over: Axl is lost and alone.
Tom Zutaut: You know, he likes to destroy something till it's almost completely irretrievably lost and damaged forever.
Voice-over: But help comes in an unexpected form. It's 1997 and Axl Rose's life is spinning out of control. All of the original band members have left Guns N' Roses and behind closed doors, the increasingly reclusive artist is getting more and more erratic.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: Everybody left and he's standing there naked and alone.
Voice-over: Axl is trying to record a new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, but it'll take him a total of 14 years to complete.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: All is gonna be on his shoulders. There's no longer a band to support him anymore and say, “Oh, Slash is playing great” or... Now it's all on Axl Rose. And I think that was really the holdup more than anything else.
Voice-over: Axl employs a new set of musicians, including a guitarist named Buckethead.
Tom Zutaut: So I worked on Chinese Democracy for about a year and Buckethead was the guitar player, and, you know, he insisted on building a chicken coop to be inspired to play better recordings.
Doug Goldstein: Axl called me and said, “I got him, he's gonna play with us. He wants me to build, have built a chicken coop in the studio for him to play his leads in”. I said - I'd been through so much, I was like, “Yeah, okay, I'll build a chicken coop” (laughs). I mean it's pretty bad when your new normal becomes a chicken coop.
Tom Zutaut: But he was also using porn as inspiration, so he had a monitor in there and he was running hardcore porn 24/7 when he was recording. Axl came to the studio one night and he went in the coop to talk to Bucket, and he looked up and he saw this hardcore, really horrific porn. And Axl looks at him and he goes, “We’re gonna have to erase all that,” because, he goes, “I believe that this record is an extension of my soul and people will feel that the guitar parts on this record were inspired by pornography, and I can’t allow that to happen.” So he instructed us to erase every single thing that Buckethead had recorded since he got into the chicken coop. Bucket was so pissed off and he left, and it took me a month to find him. […] That's why the record took so long. I mean, the New York Times reported it on the front page of their Sunday business section as the most expensive record ever recorded.
Voice-over: Other than time spent in the studio, Axl keeps out of the limelight and home in Malibu. Especially now he has a reliable companion, Elizabeth Beta Lebeis, a divorced mother from Brazil with three grown-up children. […] Axl met Beta when she was working as Stephanie Seymour's housekeeper and her son Dylan's nanny. Now she looks after Axl, taking on roles from everything from housekeeper to his manager.
Tom Zutaut: She sort of became, like, sort of a mother figure, you know, and someone who protected him in ways that his own mom never protected him.
Voice-over: Beta's presence in his life seems to finally give Axl the stability he's always been looking for. […] Through Beta Axl also acquires a surrogate family. […] Axl attributed his new calmer self to his custodians. At Rock in Rio 3, he called Beta onto the stage. […]
John Reese: She gave everything to him and I think there's a different Axl Rose middle and end of his story without Beta.
Voice-over: After nearly 15 years and 13 million dollars, Chinese democracy is finally released. But instead of touring, he hides away with Beta and her family and a life he can control. […] Having destroyed almost everything, Axl finally realizes there's only one way to put it all back together. […] Axl has spent so much making Chinese democracy that he now needs to make the money back. […] There's one solution, but it would involve a big change of heart. […] Axl can no longer be fully in control. A reunion is on their terms, not just his. […] Finally, Axl agrees to do what they ask. January 5th, 2016. After nearly two decades, Guns N' Roses announces the majority of the original members are reuniting.
Tom Zutaut: The band were completely splintered and frayed, and at the last second, he pulled them back together and sold out stadiums. Axl likes to destroy something till it's almost completely irretrievably lost and damaged forever, and then at the last second, he scoops up the pieces and puts it back together.
Voice-over: April 1st, 2016. Guns N' Roses plays at the Troubadour, the same club they had broken onto the scene at back in 1985. […] The Not In This Lifetime Tour would turn out to be one of the most successful tours ever. In three years, they grossed just under $600 million from over five million tickets.
John Reese: And he figured a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And he figured a way to reconnect with Slash, which is his - you know, Slash and Duff, his two most important professional relationships. And they're out there kicking ass. […] The fact that he could front Guns N’ Roses and do it in his chair. When he started, his voice is magic. He's magic.
Tom Zutaut: It seems in these new runs of the Not In This Lifetime Tour that he's actually enjoying himself. He actually seems to be kidding around with the crowd.
John Reese: God bless the guy. You know, the fact that he's gone through all this bullshit and all of this stuff. And here he is today, headlining stadiums all over the world.
Voice-over: But there is one more twist to come.
Female journalist: And then, as if things couldn't get any more ridiculous, AC/DC's singer at this point, Brian Johnson, has gone deaf. And so these old Aussie rockers decide to replace Brian with Axl Rose, who's unable to leap around and perform because he's got a broken foot. So they replace Brian Johnson with Axl Rose sitting down.
[…]
Voice-over: Today, Axl is still writing, recording and performing. His love for music hasn't diminished. […] Axl Rose has spent a lifetime navigating the path of a talented and troubled man. Constantly veering between control and sabotage, collaboration and isolation, genius and insanity. Brilliant creativity and devastating destruction. […] But for Axl, there does seem to be something of a happy ending.
Doug Goldstein: I believe the combination for Axl of having Slash and Duff back in his life and having Beta and Fernando, who have lived with him for years. He has a family.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: I think that Axl Rose is the last of the great rock stars, like the real, charismatic front man, wild animal magnetism guy. When he's focused, I mean, there is no one better.
Doug Goldstein: He's the greatest singer in the history of music, particularly given what he's had to overcome on an emotional level. And I'm proud of him and he's my brother and I love him.
John Reese: I think Axl's biggest legacy is he did it his way. You know, he's like Frank Sinatra's lyrics. Whatever he did, he did it his way. And God bless him for that.
The copyright notice was from RIAA in relation to the GN'R sound recordings contained in this TV program. I suppose Reelz Channel and the production company didn't have the band's permission to use this content.
*
Transcription of selected parts:
__________________________
Voice-over: Axl Rose is one of the most unpredictable rock stars of all time. Famous for hits like Paradise City. A juvenile delinquent from rural Indiana. As lead singer of Guns N' Roses, he became an iconic rock god, selling over 100 million records. But with success came self-destruction. […] Told by those who knew him best.
Monica Gregory (Axl’s childhood friend): We had some of the greatest times and some of the toughest times. We got robbed one night.
John Reese (GN’R tour manager 1989-1993): A lot of me says I didn't want to do this interview, but I wanted to talk about, you know, real and not any bullshit. He's a completely misunderstood human being.
Vicky Hamilton: I actually loved Axl a lot.
Voice-over: This is the story of one of the greatest frontmen in music history: Axl Rose. January 1st, 2001, the House of Blues, Las Vegas. At 38 years of age, Axl Rose is about to make his first public appearance as part of Guns N' Roses in seven years. But Axl is now the only remaining original member of the band.
Doug Goldstein: It was the first time that Axl had been out with his band, the new band with no Slash, no Duff. It's his first time he's performed in years.
Voice-over: He's performing tracks from a long-awaited new album, Chinese Democracy, that he's been working on for seven years and still hasn't finished.
Tom Zutaut: The New York Times reported it as the most expensive record ever recorded. One of the reasons it took so long for Axl to complete it… he was on his own.
Voice-over: And on stage, the show lacks the energy of Axl's past performances. […] Even his performance of Welcome to the Jungle didn't impress the critics. […] And there's only one person to blame.
Tom Zutaut: He has this sort of tick inside him that he wants to destroy everything and completely wreck everyone's lives and then at the last second by the hair of his chinny chin chin pull it back together. And I've seen him do that repeatedly.
Voice-over: Only this time he seems unable to pull it back together.
Tom Zutaut: For him, you know, imagine the humiliation of not being able to sell out the House of Blues with his new version of Guns N' Roses.
Voice-over: So why did a man who had achieved such extraordinary success managed to sabotage everything he'd created and end up so isolated and alone? The roots of Axl's notoriously unpredictable life lie in his complex upbringing in this single storey house in the suburbs of Lafayette, Indiana. Monica Gregory spent her teenage years with Axl.
Monica Gregory: We had some of the best times ever. He lived in Lafayette with his parents. You don't make it big here. It's just a hometown. It's a hometown town.
Voice-over: William Bruce Rose Jr., the boy who would become Axl Rose, was born February 6, 1962. His mother Sharon was a 16-year-old high school student, and his father William was known as a local troublemaker. But when Axl was just two years old, his father disappeared. Not long after, Sharon married local minister Stephen Bailey, and her young son became known as William, or Bill Bailey. […] Axl’s little brother Stuart was Sharon and Stephen's son together. But Axl and his younger sister Amy also believed that Stephen was their biological father. It was a difficult relationship from the start.
Monica Gregory: I met his parents several times. His mom, Sharon, was a lovely lady. And Steve, his stepdad, he was pretty tough. “My house, my rules, that's how it's going to be”.
Voice-over: Axl's stepfather wasn't just strict, he was violent.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: He’d beat Axl on a regular basis. He would beat on Stuart, Axl's brother. He would do things, treat Amy, the sister, poorly.
[…]
Monica Gregory: In Junior High he was quiet and fairly shy. He knew he was different. He knew he had something to do. You know what I mean?
[…]
Voice-over: But Axl found solace in music, particularly during his regular visits to church. […] Elton John remained a huge inspiration throughout Axl's life. But his first step on the road to stardom happened at Jefferson High School when Axl was 13 years old. […] Izzy was looking for a lead singer for his band. […] But school wasn't the only place where Axl was struggling to fit in. At home, relations with his parents were going from bad to worse. Then Axl made a discovery that would change his life forever.
[…]
Monica Gregory: He found out that Steve wasn't his real dad around the age of 17. Oh, it broke his heart because he didn't know. Nobody had told him. You think that you know where your life has come from, and you've put up with a lot of hard times, and then you find out that, “Wait, something is completely different than I thought that my life was”.
[…]
Monica Gregory: And then, AXL, that was the name of the first band. It was just cool. How cool is the name Axl Rose?
[…]
Voice-over: Axl decided to move in with his maternal grandmother. It's a time that Monica Gregory, one of Axl's teenage friends, remembers well.
Monica Gregory: This is Grandma Anne's house. This was like the funnest place ever. There was a lot of Axl's developmental music here. He would sit and play the piano after she got it for him. She accepted him on his own terms. He loved his grandma and she was one of his best friends.
Voice-over: But having left home, Axl started to drift. […] Axl escaped Lafayette for the bright lights of LA. Monica went with him.
Monica Gregory: And we got on a plane and went to LA. He knew that he wanted to be a musician, but this is still a little early on in the process, kind of checking it out. […] You know, we were just exploring, exploring Hollywood, exploring the scene. I mean, we did spend a few nights, I don't know, in alleys and stuff. I remember one night we were walking down Hollywood Boulevard. We found a pizza place that had a piano, and we'd go in there and he'd play the piano and they'd give us a piece of pizza every now and then.
Voice-over: Eventually, Axl gets a job at Tower Video on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. […] After a few months, Axl and Monica reunite with school friend Izzy Stradlin, who has also moved to LA from Indiana. It's not long before they form another band named Hollywood Rose.
Vicky Hamilton: I was a booking agent at a place called Silverlining Entertainment. And Axl called me on the phone and said, “Can we bring you a demo?” A couple hours later, he and Izzy showed up with the ghetto blaster in hand. And I was like blown away. I booked them sight unseen. We bonded because we're both from Indiana, so that's kind of where our conversation started. He was very charming, and sweet, and very likable.
Voice-over: Hollywood Rose eventually fuses with another band named LA Guns to form Guns N' Roses. This is when the classic lineup emerges.
Monica Gregory: It was the band that was going to make him a mega-star. It's like it was magic. The first time I saw them live was like heaven on earth for me. I was so proud. I was, like, bubbling out of my seat. I was so excited.
Voice-over: The most critical relationship for Axl is the one with Slash.
John Reese: Slash and Axl were the ying and the yang of the band. Them together was what created the magic. They were the center point, the light, and everything else kind of flowed together as a team.
Voice-over: In 1985, most of the members of Guns N' Roses start living in what is essentially their rehearsal room, a tiny studio apartment off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: I went to visit them one time, and the band lived in an absolute squalor. Dust and dirt piled up everywhere.
[…]
Voice-over: Despite living in squalor, the band write and rehearse as much as they can. It was Vicky Hamilton's job to try and give them some professional discipline.
Vicky Hamilton: I was kind of a combination of big sister, mom, manager. I did it all.
Voice-over: So when the band gets into some trouble with the police, it's Vicky who helps them out.
Vicky Hamilton: They got into some trouble, and the police were looking for him at the rehearsal hall and Slash called me and said, “Can Axl sleep on your couch?” But then the police kept circling the rehearsal hall, so Slash and Izzy moved in.
Voice-over: This was the apartment that Guns N' Roses lived in with Vicky before they were famous.
Vicky Hamilton: Axl always used to sleep on this couch. That was, like, his bed. The others slept in sleeping bags on the floor. Very rock and roll. Well, there were a lot of pizza boxes here and usually no papers. They would write on whatever they could find, you know. And the TV was up against this wall. This is where Axl watched “Faces of Death”, and Sex Pistols videos, and things. This is the bathroom that he sang acapella in the shower. It has really good acoustics in here, so it's a singer's dream, pretty much. I think that is the actual tub. This is the one and only bedroom in this apartment. And I had a bed against this wall. We used to, like, barricade the door so no one could get in here at night.
Voice-over: But the tiny living quarters put the band's relationship under strain as Axl became increasingly difficult.
Vicky Hamilton: Axl's personality, it was sort of a two-parter. Like, there's a very sweet little boy personality that emerges a lot of the time. And then when he's on edge, there's, like, sort of the demon dog from hell personality. Axl's eyes change colors even when he goes into that mode. So, it's like, you knew if his eyes were lighter that it was time to move along (laughs).
Tom Zutaut: Hell hath no fury like a mad Axl Rose, when he goes into that mode, I mean, red mist, red aura, whatever you want to call it.
Vicky Hamilton: One day, Steven was helping me clean up the apartment because there were beer bottles and Jack Daniels and cigarette butts everywhere. And Axl's like, “Stop it!”. And then he got up and threw the heavy coffee table at Steven. And there was, like, a brawl here in the living room floor. And I was screaming my head off going, you know, “Are you gonna kill your drummer?”
Voice-over: Axl's erratic behavior may have been difficult to live with, but combined with the volatile nature of the rest of the band, musically Guns N' Roses was exactly what LA was looking for.
Vicky Hamilton: At that time and point in Hollywood, all the bands had gotten really girly. Like, every record company had two or three sort of glam rock bands. So when Guns N' Roses hit Hollywood, it had a dangerous feel about it.
Voice-over: February 28th, 1986. The Troubadour, West Hollywood. Guns N' Roses takes the stage for an industry showcase. The representative for Geffen Records is Tom Zutaut.
Tom Zutaut: You know, nothing has changed [inside the Troubadour]. The stage looks as dirty as it did 35, 40 years ago. That night, I had to crawl through a lot of people to get there, but I went backstage, and I actually introduced me to everybody. I said, “Come to my office tomorrow whenever you wake up, right? I'll give you a record deal”. And they were like, “But you haven't even seen us play”. I said, “I saw your singer on a stage, so I know pretty much what I need to know”. They hit the stage and it was literally the loudest guitar riff I'd ever heard. It was amazing, because I watched the crowd and people were, like, taking tissues out of their pockets and stuffing it in their ears and...
Vicky Hamilton: It was a wall of sound. There was no singer like him on the scene at that point in time. He was brilliant. It just felt different. You know, dangerous.
Tom Zutaut: I saw this other A&R person take two cigarettes out of her cigarette pack and stuff them in her ears. They had the crowd from the first chorus of the first song. It was just so magnetic and powerful. And then Wednesday, they showed up at my office and basically the band said, “Give us $75,000 by Friday and we have a deal”.
Voice-over: But even at this early point in their career, when the band is about to change their lives forever, Axl puts it in jeopardy.
Tom Zutaut: The band signed with me that Friday night at about 11 p.m. when Axl finally showed up for a 5 p.m. meeting.
Voice-over: It's a pattern he would repeat for much of his career.
Vicky Hamilton: But the next day they went down to the bank and, like, took all this money in cash. And I found the cash underneath the couch. Yeah, $75,000, which got spent on mostly tattoos and clothes (laughs).
Voice-over: The band may be on its way to stardom, but in Axl Rose it has the equivalent of a bomb on board.
John Reese: There's an intensity to Axl on everything. He's an intense human being.
[…]
Voice-over: August 1986, Los Angeles. Having signed to one of the biggest record labels in the world, Geffen, Guns N' Roses is recording their first album, Appetite for Destruction.
Tom Zutaut: It's really hard to capture lightning in a bottle. It seems like it would be so easy, but it's actually really difficult.
[…]
Voice-over: But Axl Rose is determined that this will be one of the greatest records ever made.
Tom Zutaut: I've never seen anyone who was so obsessed with every single emotion of every word being 100% accurate to what he was trying to deliver.
Monica Gregory: Axl has always been a perfectionist. He always knew that he knew how to do it right and he wanted it done perfectly, if possible.
Voice-over: During the making of Rocket Queen, this drive for perfection leads Axl to make a decision that could rip the band apart, even if it is in the name of music.
Tom Zutaut: We were in New York mixing. Axl felt like something was missing from the song. And then Steven Adler's girlfriend Adriana at the time was in the studio, but Steven hadn't made it there yet. […] You know, we mic'd the two of them up and they went at it and we recorded it. […] I didn't realize that she was a serious girlfriend of Steven's. So, I mean, only dawned on me later, you know, “Oh, that wasn't good”. And it might be part of the reason that that Steven and Axl are still somewhat estranged.
Voice-over: As the months of recording go on, Axl's behavior grows even more extreme. And he starts to become physically destructive. […] Even Axl is aware that his volatile personality could jeopardize the future of the band.
[…]
Vicky Hamilton: It was very clear to me that there was something going on.
Voice-over: Axl's turbulent mind is threatening to destroy not just the band, but also himself. At the age of around 24, Axl OD'd on pills. […] Eventually, Axl agrees to see a psychiatrist to try and get a diagnosis for his mood swings. He's diagnosed with manic depressive disorder, now known as bipolar disorder.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: He took lithium for a while, which was a common medication for manic depressives. I think he tried it for a while. I think that at a certain point, he thought it made him too flat, and so he stopped taking it. If you flatten him out with lithium or some other antidepressant, you don't have this - genius insanity. Genius insanity. Was that right? I think that made a lot of his creative output brilliant. There was just a raw expression of energy in a primal way.
Voice-over: But not long before Guns N' Roses debut album is released, Axl meets a woman who will change his life. Erin Everly, the 19-year-old daughter of Everly Brothers legend Don Everly.
John Reese: Erin was probably one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen in my life. She was hot as hell, and they had an insane love affair.
Monica Gregory: She was a doll. She loved him dearly. They were very happy together at the time that I met Erin. Axl's got a definite romantic side that I've seen with the girls that he was dating. He's got a heart of gold in there.
[…]
Voice-over: It's Axl's love for Erin that inspires one of Guns N' Roses greatest hits.
Tom Zutaut: Sweet Child of Mine, I mean, is completely written about her. It was sort of like the purity of pure love.
Voice-over: Slash, on the other hand, hates it. […] Although Axl and Slash didn't always agree, their chemistry had now become the driving force behind the creativity of the band.
John Reese: Slash did the day-to-day business. And if there were major things, we'd run them by Axl. And Axl was the visionary. They had the perfect partnership. All the greatest bands of all time, it's a lead singer and a lead guitarist that come together and create this magic.
Voice-over: Musical differences aside, after seven months in the studio, Guns N' Roses finally released their first album, Appetite for Destruction.
Tom Zutaut: Appetite for Destruction was released with a big thud, like nothing happened.
Voice-over: It limply debuts on the Billboard 200 at number 182. With sales of the record struggling, the band needs a break. February 2nd, 1988. MTV special, The Ritz, New York City. This is their first live performance on American television. It has the potential to make or break them and it almost doesn't happen.
Doug Goldstein: The 1988 MTV special was, in my humble opinion, the biggest by far - the biggest, biggest, biggest break that we had got. I get this request, Axl wants to see me, and I come into the dressing room, so what's going on? He said, “I don't know where my bandana is”. “Okay, so I'll go find you one”. I brought one back, it wasn't what he wanted. So now I have to find one that actually is what he wants. […] I absolutely thought if I don't find Axl Rose's bandana in this huge moment in the band's life, he may just decide not to go on (laughs).
[…]
Voice-over: The band come out and play “It's So Easy” and the performance is a huge success. […] Nearly a year after its release, Appetite for Destruction reaches number one on the Billboard 200 chart. It remains the biggest selling debut album of all time, and it threw Axl Rose into the mainstream. Axl's destructive behavior will shake the band to its very core. […] But this is just the start of things to come. By 1989, Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses debut album had made them one of the biggest bands in the world, but their talented and charismatic frontman Axl Rose is now infamous for his erratic and destructive behavior. On October 18th, 1989, the band is realizing a lifelong ambition to play with the iconic Rolling Stones at the LA Coliseum.
[…]
John Reese: At that time I was the tour manager. It was a chance to shine, you know, to do something unbelievable.
Voice-over: But when the band arrives at the venue for the sound check, their frontman is nowhere to be found.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: He felt like he wasn't ready to deliver. If he didn't have the energy to give to the audience, he didn't want to fake it.
Doug Goldstein: He was a huge Rolling Stones fan anyway, and now we're playing on a massive stage at the LA Coliseum. And so the whole magnitude of it was a little much for him. So he said, “Doug, I just, I can't see the stage. I just can't”.
Voice-over: To get Axl on stage, tour manager Doug Goldstein resorts to extreme measures.
Doug Goldstein: I sent police because Axl wasn't going to make it to the stage in time. So we put him in a car, got him down there as soon as possible.
Tom Zutaut: I mean, only in LA could… you know, you call the police and cajole them into going and dragging Axl out of his house and getting him there to perform.
Doug Goldstein: As soon as we opened the show, Axl ran to the front of the stage, not knowing that there was a cutout on the stage, and he went right into the pit. That's just one of the things that happens when you don't soundcheck and see the nuances of what's there.
[…]
Voice-over: After a few songs, Axl makes a shocking announcement.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: Mr. Brownstone was written by Izzy as sort of an ode to dancing with the devil, the devil being heroin. I think he was personally embarrassed that members of his band were absolutely incoherent on drugs, drink, and every other substance you can think of.
[…]
John Reese: It was very tense and it was tense backstage afterwards.
Voice-over: Axl’s impulsiveness is also evident in his personal life. On April 28th, 1990, he marries Erin at the Cupid Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. […] Throwing himself into both his marriage and Guns N' Roses' second albums, Use Your Illusion I and II, the pressure soon begins to show.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: Axl was always pushing the envelope and wanting to move forward. And when Axl writes a song, he painstakingly works through every word in a lyric to make sure it's right.
Voice-over: Axl's personal ambitions for the albums and his need for perfection means he often works all night. […] And tensions within the band are escalating with their increasingly hedonistic behavior. […] In particular, drummer Steven Adler's major drug addiction is becoming untenable.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: Steven was showing up, nodding out, and he wasn't able to perform his parts.
Voice-over: In July 1990, Steven Adler is officially fired from the band.
Doug Goldstein: When you get fired from Guns N' Roses for doing too many drugs, you know it's time to maybe curb your drug usage.
Voice-over: Adding to the tensions within the band, Axl's relationship with his new wife Erin is also under strain.
Doug Goldstein: It was an incredibly volatile relationship. So I'd get the phone calls, right? “Dougie, it’s Erin, get over here”, you know, he'd throw all the furniture through the window. “Okay”.
John Reese: It was just crazy. I just got a phone call, go up, the piano just got pushed out the window, you know. I'm just saying, “Axl, what's going on?” “Hey, man, we gotta get a new window. Might need a new piano, too”.
Tom Zutaut: You know, the love with Erin is the rose and the gun is the brutality of pushing a piano with brute force out your balcony and into the swimming pool five floors below.
Voice-over: But when Erin discovers she's pregnant in September 1990, everything changes. […] Then, in the third month of her pregnancy, disaster strikes. […] The next day, Axl's arrest is caught on camera. […] He's released on $5,000 bail, and the case is eventually dismissed six weeks later. But the incident only aggravates Axl's volatile state. His relationship with Erin can't handle it. […] In January, 1991, their marriage is officially annulled.
Tom Zutaut: When Axl split with Erin, I mean, it was pretty sad. It was the love of his life. And then it was sort of like, what's gonna happen now?
Voice-over: His marriage may have been over, but the two Use Your Illusion albums are about to be released to critical acclaim and accompanied by a massive tour. It will be one of the longest in rock and roll history.
John Reese: It was all bigger than life, the biggest sound. They were the biggest band in the world, so they wanted those big things.
Voice-over: Despite phenomenal success, Axl is playing by his own rules. […] John Reese was Guns N' Roses tour manager.
John Reese: He just ran on his own clock. Thinking back now, it was stressful as hell dealing with that, and that kind of, like, insanity of “He's gonna be on an hour and a half late, we're risking a riot and it's $10,000? Let's go”.
Voice-over: July 2nd, 1991, Riverport Amphitheater, St. Louis.
Tom Zutaut: The band went out, they started playing. Axl got pissed off at somebody in the crowd.
[…]
John Reese: It was a motorcycle guy that was taking pictures when there was a clear policy of not taking pictures. That's his right to not have his picture taken if he doesn't want to.
Tom Zutaut: And he walked off the stage and the place just erupted instantly into violence.
John Reese: And what people don't know is that he was willing to go back and he was ready to go back. I was with him in the dressing room and we were going to go back on the stage, but the riot had already started.
Tom Zutaut: They ripped the seats out, were throwing them around. I mean, that crowd was so violent. I've never seen anything like it.
[…]
Voice-over: For one band member, riots and late appearances are taking their toll.
Tom Zutaut: I was actually at Axl's house when Izzy pulled up for, like, the last conversation. And it had been brewing, and basically the rest of the band were really upset that they were paying out half a million dollars in penalties because Axl was getting to stage late. Axl goes, “It's the cost of doing business, take it or leave it”. And Izzy said, “I'm leaving it”.
[…]
Voice-over: But Izzy's frustration with Axl is only the tip of the iceberg. The Guns N' Roses frontman is in danger of driving everyone else away, too. 1991: Guns N' Roses' second albums, Use Your Illusion 1 and 2, are riding high in the charts. Axl Rose is now one of the most famous and controversial frontmen in the world. And he's dating model Stephanie Seymour.
John Reese: Axl and Stephanie, I believe, met on the Don't Cry video. […] He was 29, 30 years old and had more money than God, had, you know, more fame than you can - worldwide fame, dating the most beautiful woman on the planet.
[…]
Voice-over: Stephanie also comes with a young son.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: You know, he was a great kid. And my kid and Stephanie's kid, Dylan, you know, they played on the plane together, they played at the gigs.
Doug Goldstein: And he just loved that kid. Loved that kid. And he just wanted to be his dad.
Voice-over: Axl's dreams of fatherhood are coming true, but he's also about to fulfill another lifelong ambition. April 20th, 1992, Wembley Stadium, London, England. Guns N' Roses is performing in the Freddie Mercury tribute concert for AIDS awareness, when Axl is joined on stage by his childhood hero.
Doug Goldstein: Elton John has to be the one guy for Axl Rose that was the greatest songwriter, the greatest musician, who he really looked up to. It meant the world to Axl to have that support from his childhood hero.
Voice-over: Axl seems to have everything he could possibly want, but once again, it starts to unravel. August 8, 1992, Olympic Stadium, Montreal, Canada. Guns N' Roses are on tour with Metallica when their lead singer, James Hetfield, is badly burned by a misplaced pyrotechnic. […] The organizers ask Guns N’ Roses to get on stage quickly, so the concert can continue. But Axl makes the 53,000 strong audience wait for over two hours.
Doug Goldstein: I have to call him and say, “James just blew up and they need you to get here as soon as you can”. And he said, “I’m right in the middle… I’ll do the best I can, but I’m right in the middle of my four-hour prep”. I said, “I got it, but I need you to get here”.
Voice-over: When they finally get on stage, the band gives a lackluster performance.
Doug Goldstein: He starts singing and he calls me over. I always stood stage left so that he could communicate with me. And he walks over and he goes, [whispering] “I can't talk, let alone sing”. And I can hear it. “What should I do?” And so he tried to continue to sing for another two songs and it was apparent to all of us that he was physically incapable of singing. So he walked off the stage and a riot ensued.
Voice-over: More than 2,000 angry fans fight with police, resulting in nearly a half a million dollars of damage. […] The riot would cement Axl and the band's association with controversy. Everything that Axl is working for could fall apart, but he seems unconcerned.
Doug Goldstein: He's never gonna defend himself, he just won’t. He doesn't explain his art, and he's not into trying to clarify other people's opinion of who he is. Axl was a mess on that tour, particularly after it started getting really ugly with Stephanie Seymour. He was very suicidal, very depressed.
John Reese: He wanted to marry Stephanie and he wanted to live happily ever after with her. And I just think that they're combative personalities together. Sometimes lemon and vinegar doesn't mix.
Voice-over: December 1992, Malibu. Stephanie and Axl are hosting a party at home.
Mick Wall: It's Christmas. […] [Axl is] convinced that she's been conducting affairs behind his back.
Tom Zutaut: Supposedly she was writing in her diary about some other man and he had read it and just the whole relationship imploded.
[…]
Voice-over: Axl reveals the inner torment that could have been driving his destructive patterns.
Tom Zutaut: One night, Axl basically called me to come down to the studio, and I went down to the studio and he was sort of sitting on the floor with a big box of chili cheese fat burgers. He looked at me very solemn and he said, “Tom,” he said, “I want you to get me that cover of Rolling Stone. I'm gonna out my dad.” […] Here's a guy who's the biggest rock star in the world and he wants to take his one opportunity to be on the cover of Rolling Stone to out abuse. It was just absolutely horrific. He goes, “If I can spare one kid's life from having to live this kind of shit, then it'll be worth it.”
[…]
Doug Goldstein: And I think it was really cathartic for him to be able to get that out there and say, “You know what? I'm not the only person that's gone through an experience like this.”
Voice-over: After facing up to his childhood and its possible role in his erratic and destructive behavior, Axl continues on a quest to heal himself.
John Reese: Axl worked on his mental health. He had a number of experts working with him, and he knew he wanted to keep his shit together.
Tom Zutaut: You know, I actually went with Axl in his car for like four days and did some of the sessions. There's a little bit of chanting, humming, sitting in a mud bath for half a day, massage, I mean, you know, and spiritual sort of guidance of a higher power.
[…]
Voice-over: But despite Axl surrounding himself with gurus and therapists, his need for control continues to destroy everything and everyone around him. Axl Rose is one of the most successful rock stars of all time. But his journey to the top has been littered with heartache and destruction. Axl now seeks to control every other aspect of his life, and that includes taking ownership of the band. July 5th, 1993, Estadi Olympic, Barcelona, Spain. Guns N’ Roses is touring their second album, Use Your Illusion. Just before they're set to perform in front of a 40,000 strong audience, Axl makes a demand.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: Duff and Slash, who were inebriated the entire Use Your Illusion tour. Axl calls me to his room in Barcelona, Spain, and says, “If they don't sign, Slash and Duff, the name Guns N' Roses back to me, I'm not going on stage, and somebody's going to die because there's going to be a riot.”
Tom Zutaut: I mean, it got done.
Voice-over: Axl now has total control over Guns N' Roses, and just over two years later, Axl would take his power over the band to the extreme. He announced that he was leaving the band and starting up his own, taking the name with him.
Doug Goldstein: Part of the legal strategy on Axl's part was, “If I dissolve the partnership by removing myself and then starting it again as a fresh entity” - because he had the ownership of the name, he was entitled to do such. So it gave him a little bit more creative control, which is exactly what he was trying to do. I would say probably 100% of it had to do with control. […] But it obviously pushed Slash further away. And it was the causation, I think, in the long run for Slash just saying, “I'm out”.
Voice-over: Slash and Axl had always been the yin and yang of the band, but now their relationship is nearly at the breaking point.
Tom Zutaut: Axl wanted to change the musical direction of the band. I think that when Axl rejected Slash's songs, you know, I think that Axl hurt Slash's feelings. There was still a little bit of animosity over the drug use. So I think that all those things sort of built up.
Voice-over: Axl starts to try and control everything, even his past relationships. He sues ex-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour over an engagement ring. She then countersues him for abuse and other transgressions.
Tom Zutaut: It's really hard when you're going into the courts. I mean, she was claiming violence and that he was physically violent with her.
[…]
Voice-over: After Erin is asked to testify against Axl in Stephanie's trial, she files her own case against her ex-husband. She sues him for assault and sexual battery.
Tom Zutaut: And the both of them were, you know, claiming domestic violence against him.
[…]
Voice-over: Axl eventually settles both cases out of court. But the public exposure of his private life feels like a loss of control.
Doug Goldstein: The court cases with Stephanie were really difficult for Axl because he just wanted to be exonerated. A lot of depression, but less depression than frustration, I think.
Voice-over: By the time the Use Your Illusion tour ends, Axl stops and takes stock.
John Reese: At the end of the Use Your Illusion run, which was probably one of the most successful tours in history at that time and the longest tour a band had ever done in history, I mean, there was just complete exhaustion. We had a 150-person family that had dealt with four or five riots, that had dealt with drug overdoses, that had dealt with potential deaths.
Voice-over: To make up for his seemingly bad behavior, Axl regularly rewards those who stick by him.
John Reese: He's the most generous person and he wanted to take care of his people that, you know, it ended with him giving all his crew a bunch of money. That's how it ended, and saying “thank you” and “thank you for giving two and a half years of your lives to our band”. And then he threw a big Halloween party for everybody that year, which was awesome, and everybody came to his house and, you know, he created this amazing fantasy land at his house.
[…]
Voice-over: The party is a distraction from the disintegration of the band. Slash, who was once always by Axl's side, has been playing with other artists. But when he chooses to play with Michael Jackson, it's a step too far for Axl.
Doug Goldstein: Slash came to my room to tell me he was going to perform with Michael Jackson.
Tom Zutaut: Axl fully believed that Michael Jackson was a child molester.
Doug Goldstein: I said, “Your singer, your business partner, literally just exposed to everybody in the world that he was molested by his father”. When Slash decided to play with Michael Jackson, to me that was the beginning of the end.
Voice-over: Shortly after, Slash quits the band.
[…]
John Reese: The train had derailed at that point.
Tom Zutaut: I mean, Slash was basically the music director, musical director of the whole band. And so when he's gone, who's going to direct the music?
Voice-over: Alone and in charge of Guns N' Roses, Axl finally has what he wants, but the dark reality of his actions start to dawn.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: I used to get these phone calls at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, crying and “Dougie, he's gonna kill himself and I don't know what to do”. […] Yeah, sometimes he'd be laying there with a gun in his mouth. And this is the man that he's my best friend and I love him. And I know that if I don't think quick and say the right thing, I don't know that I'm going to be able to pull it off.
[…]
Voice-over: With Axl in such a dark place, Duff McKagan, the bassist and the last standing original member of Guns N' Roses, also throws in the towel. […] After the breakup of the original band, a deafening silence descends.
Tom Zutaut: You know, it can be pretty daunting to sort of look at your life and then reflect back on, you know, you're playing stadiums, you had, like, the biggest rock and roll band in the world. But what is Guns N' Roses?
Voice-over: Axl is lost and alone.
Tom Zutaut: You know, he likes to destroy something till it's almost completely irretrievably lost and damaged forever.
Voice-over: But help comes in an unexpected form. It's 1997 and Axl Rose's life is spinning out of control. All of the original band members have left Guns N' Roses and behind closed doors, the increasingly reclusive artist is getting more and more erratic.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: Everybody left and he's standing there naked and alone.
Voice-over: Axl is trying to record a new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, but it'll take him a total of 14 years to complete.
[…]
Doug Goldstein: All is gonna be on his shoulders. There's no longer a band to support him anymore and say, “Oh, Slash is playing great” or... Now it's all on Axl Rose. And I think that was really the holdup more than anything else.
Voice-over: Axl employs a new set of musicians, including a guitarist named Buckethead.
Tom Zutaut: So I worked on Chinese Democracy for about a year and Buckethead was the guitar player, and, you know, he insisted on building a chicken coop to be inspired to play better recordings.
Doug Goldstein: Axl called me and said, “I got him, he's gonna play with us. He wants me to build, have built a chicken coop in the studio for him to play his leads in”. I said - I'd been through so much, I was like, “Yeah, okay, I'll build a chicken coop” (laughs). I mean it's pretty bad when your new normal becomes a chicken coop.
Tom Zutaut: But he was also using porn as inspiration, so he had a monitor in there and he was running hardcore porn 24/7 when he was recording. Axl came to the studio one night and he went in the coop to talk to Bucket, and he looked up and he saw this hardcore, really horrific porn. And Axl looks at him and he goes, “We’re gonna have to erase all that,” because, he goes, “I believe that this record is an extension of my soul and people will feel that the guitar parts on this record were inspired by pornography, and I can’t allow that to happen.” So he instructed us to erase every single thing that Buckethead had recorded since he got into the chicken coop. Bucket was so pissed off and he left, and it took me a month to find him. […] That's why the record took so long. I mean, the New York Times reported it on the front page of their Sunday business section as the most expensive record ever recorded.
Voice-over: Other than time spent in the studio, Axl keeps out of the limelight and home in Malibu. Especially now he has a reliable companion, Elizabeth Beta Lebeis, a divorced mother from Brazil with three grown-up children. […] Axl met Beta when she was working as Stephanie Seymour's housekeeper and her son Dylan's nanny. Now she looks after Axl, taking on roles from everything from housekeeper to his manager.
Tom Zutaut: She sort of became, like, sort of a mother figure, you know, and someone who protected him in ways that his own mom never protected him.
Voice-over: Beta's presence in his life seems to finally give Axl the stability he's always been looking for. […] Through Beta Axl also acquires a surrogate family. […] Axl attributed his new calmer self to his custodians. At Rock in Rio 3, he called Beta onto the stage. […]
John Reese: She gave everything to him and I think there's a different Axl Rose middle and end of his story without Beta.
Voice-over: After nearly 15 years and 13 million dollars, Chinese democracy is finally released. But instead of touring, he hides away with Beta and her family and a life he can control. […] Having destroyed almost everything, Axl finally realizes there's only one way to put it all back together. […] Axl has spent so much making Chinese democracy that he now needs to make the money back. […] There's one solution, but it would involve a big change of heart. […] Axl can no longer be fully in control. A reunion is on their terms, not just his. […] Finally, Axl agrees to do what they ask. January 5th, 2016. After nearly two decades, Guns N' Roses announces the majority of the original members are reuniting.
Tom Zutaut: The band were completely splintered and frayed, and at the last second, he pulled them back together and sold out stadiums. Axl likes to destroy something till it's almost completely irretrievably lost and damaged forever, and then at the last second, he scoops up the pieces and puts it back together.
Voice-over: April 1st, 2016. Guns N' Roses plays at the Troubadour, the same club they had broken onto the scene at back in 1985. […] The Not In This Lifetime Tour would turn out to be one of the most successful tours ever. In three years, they grossed just under $600 million from over five million tickets.
John Reese: And he figured a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And he figured a way to reconnect with Slash, which is his - you know, Slash and Duff, his two most important professional relationships. And they're out there kicking ass. […] The fact that he could front Guns N’ Roses and do it in his chair. When he started, his voice is magic. He's magic.
Tom Zutaut: It seems in these new runs of the Not In This Lifetime Tour that he's actually enjoying himself. He actually seems to be kidding around with the crowd.
John Reese: God bless the guy. You know, the fact that he's gone through all this bullshit and all of this stuff. And here he is today, headlining stadiums all over the world.
Voice-over: But there is one more twist to come.
Female journalist: And then, as if things couldn't get any more ridiculous, AC/DC's singer at this point, Brian Johnson, has gone deaf. And so these old Aussie rockers decide to replace Brian with Axl Rose, who's unable to leap around and perform because he's got a broken foot. So they replace Brian Johnson with Axl Rose sitting down.
[…]
Voice-over: Today, Axl is still writing, recording and performing. His love for music hasn't diminished. […] Axl Rose has spent a lifetime navigating the path of a talented and troubled man. Constantly veering between control and sabotage, collaboration and isolation, genius and insanity. Brilliant creativity and devastating destruction. […] But for Axl, there does seem to be something of a happy ending.
Doug Goldstein: I believe the combination for Axl of having Slash and Duff back in his life and having Beta and Fernando, who have lived with him for years. He has a family.
[…]
Tom Zutaut: I think that Axl Rose is the last of the great rock stars, like the real, charismatic front man, wild animal magnetism guy. When he's focused, I mean, there is no one better.
Doug Goldstein: He's the greatest singer in the history of music, particularly given what he's had to overcome on an emotional level. And I'm proud of him and he's my brother and I love him.
John Reese: I think Axl's biggest legacy is he did it his way. You know, he's like Frank Sinatra's lyrics. Whatever he did, he did it his way. And God bless him for that.
Blackstar- ADMIN
- Posts : 14407
Plectra : 94531
Reputation : 101
Join date : 2018-03-17
Re: 2021.01.30 - Reelz Channel - Axl Rose: Guns N' Roses Frontman (Doug Goldstein, Tom Zutaut, John Reese, Vicky Hamilton)
by Blackstar Fri Dec 20, 2024 11:44 pm
This quote seems to contradict Doug Goldstein's previous accounts on the matter:
In this interview a few days after the airing of the Reelz program, Goldstein would retract, saying that his words were edited out and taken out of context:
https://www.a-4-d.com/t5442-2021-02-08-appetite-for-distortion-doug-goldstein-gets-reelz
However, it wasn't the first time he contradicted himself, as he was quoted saying something similar in Mick Wall's book (that was released in 2017):
Axl calls me to his room in Barcelona, Spain, and says, “If they don't sign, Slash and Duff, the name Guns N' Roses back to me, I'm not going on stage, and somebody's going to die because there's going to be a riot.”
In this interview a few days after the airing of the Reelz program, Goldstein would retract, saying that his words were edited out and taken out of context:
https://www.a-4-d.com/t5442-2021-02-08-appetite-for-distortion-doug-goldstein-gets-reelz
However, it wasn't the first time he contradicted himself, as he was quoted saying something similar in Mick Wall's book (that was released in 2017):
The most important date in the band’s history is July fifth of ’93. [...] What transpired on that day, the band was in Barcelona, Spain, and I’m given a directive to go to Axl’s room. Axl says, “Look, either the band signs their rights to the name back to me or I’m not going onstage and there will be a riot and people will die and that will be on them.” Well, I’m not a dumb guy. If you present a contract like that, that’s signing under duress. You might as well wipe your ass with that contract.
Mick Wall, Last of the Giants: The True Story of Guns N’ Roses, July 2017
Blackstar- ADMIN
- Posts : 14407
Plectra : 94531
Reputation : 101
Join date : 2018-03-17
Re: 2021.01.30 - Reelz Channel - Axl Rose: Guns N' Roses Frontman (Doug Goldstein, Tom Zutaut, John Reese, Vicky Hamilton)
by Blackstar Fri Dec 20, 2024 11:44 pm
From an interview with Ed Taylor, managing director of Honey Bee TV, the company that produced this TV programme:
BIGGEST TV-RELATED LEGAL PICKLE YOU’VE GOT YOURSELF INTO?
We made a programme about the life of the Guns N’Roses singer, Axl Rose. Despite having not seen the film – which wasn’t in any way damaging to him – he tried to stop it going out. He threatened legal action, then the band got on board and Sony Records fired warning shots. Our small company received a lot of letters from these powerful institutions which was stressful but we had a fantastic American lawyer who addressed all of their concerns. The programme went out and all the legal issues disappeared.
Source:
Broadcast Network, August 25, 2022
https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/broadcast-network/twenty-questions-ed-taylor-honey-bee-tv/5173737.article
BIGGEST TV-RELATED LEGAL PICKLE YOU’VE GOT YOURSELF INTO?
We made a programme about the life of the Guns N’Roses singer, Axl Rose. Despite having not seen the film – which wasn’t in any way damaging to him – he tried to stop it going out. He threatened legal action, then the band got on board and Sony Records fired warning shots. Our small company received a lot of letters from these powerful institutions which was stressful but we had a fantastic American lawyer who addressed all of their concerns. The programme went out and all the legal issues disappeared.
Source:
Broadcast Network, August 25, 2022
https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/broadcast-network/twenty-questions-ed-taylor-honey-bee-tv/5173737.article
Blackstar- ADMIN
- Posts : 14407
Plectra : 94531
Reputation : 101
Join date : 2018-03-17
Re: 2021.01.30 - Reelz Channel - Axl Rose: Guns N' Roses Frontman (Doug Goldstein, Tom Zutaut, John Reese, Vicky Hamilton)
by Sponsored content
Sponsored content
Similar topics» 2021.02.08 - Appetite For Distortion - Doug Goldstein Gets Reelz
» 2024.08.15 - Loudwire - Ex-Guns N’ Roses Manager Vicky Hamilton Auctioning ’90s Painting of Axl Rose: Interview
» 2019.06.16 - Reelz Channel's Breaking The Band - Guns N' Roses (Gilby, Alan Niven, Marc Canter)
» 1989.02.DD - RIP Magazine - Aerosmith Meets Guns N' Roses (Doug Goldstein)
» 2007.09.DD - Blender - The Worst Jobs in Rock & Roll: Guns N' Roses Tour Manager (John Reese)
» 2024.08.15 - Loudwire - Ex-Guns N’ Roses Manager Vicky Hamilton Auctioning ’90s Painting of Axl Rose: Interview
» 2019.06.16 - Reelz Channel's Breaking The Band - Guns N' Roses (Gilby, Alan Niven, Marc Canter)
» 1989.02.DD - RIP Magazine - Aerosmith Meets Guns N' Roses (Doug Goldstein)
» 2007.09.DD - Blender - The Worst Jobs in Rock & Roll: Guns N' Roses Tour Manager (John Reese)
Page 1 of 1
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
