1986.05.31 - Gazzarri's, Los Angeles, USA
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1986.05.31 - Gazzarri's, Los Angeles, USA
Date:
May 31, 1986.
Venue:
Gazzarri's.
Location:
Los Angeles, USA.
Setlist:
01. Out Ta Get Me
02. Welcome to the Jungle
03. Think About You
04. Move to the City
05. Rocket Queen
06. Nightrain
07. My Michelle
08. Jumpin' Jack Flash
09. Don't Cry
10. You're Crazy
11. Paradise City
12. Mama Kin
Line-up:
Axl Rose (vocals), Izzy Stradlin (rhythm guitarist), Slash (lead guitarist), Duff McKagan (bass) and Steven Adler (drums).
Bootlegs:
Notes:
Under the moniker "Fargin Bastydgis".
Quotes:
Slash: We saw [Paul Stanley] again not long afterward when we played a showcase that Geffen had set up. Basically, Tom [Zutaut] arranged it because we needed to play a gig, so it was this industry-only, invite-only "concert". It took place at Gazzarri's (today it's the Key Club) [According to Duff's autobiography this actually happened at Raji's on May 13], which was a venue that we'd never, ever played on the circuit because it was totally against everything we stood for. It was so glam and gay that there were radio ads for it where the owner, Bill Gazzarri, proclaimed in his thick East Coast accent, "All my bands got foxy guys in 'em! If they don't got foxy guys, they don't play on my stage." Gazzarri's was where the really plastic glam metal could be found. And we definitely weren't trying to be foxy. [...] Anyway, Paul Stanley attended that show, and he actually bullied the sound engineer into allowing hom to man the soundboard and control the mix. We didn't find out until later, but when we did, I cringed at the thought: Paul Stanley had mixed Guns N' Roses - at Gazzarri's [Slash's autobiography, p 143-144].
Duff: [...] Geffen asked us to stop playing live. [...] The rationale? We had to build mystique by dropping out of sight, putting a premium on our performances. To say we didn't meet eye to eye with this decision is an understatement. We acquiesced at first, though we had some gigs already booked that we honored. Soon, though, we had to figure out ways to play - we just functioned best when we could get onstage regularly. And we got bored. So we began to play a bunch of shows as the Fargin Bastydges to get around the label's injunction. We took the name from a scene in the movie Johnny Dangerously. It was an alias, not an alter ego: the set list and everything else was exactly the same as our normal Guns shows; it just allowed us to avoid fighting with Geffen. One of the shows we played was at Gazzarri's, a venerable Hollywood dive we had always sort of wanted to play - just to say we had - but not the sort of place a band signed to a major label was supposed to play [Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 118-119].
Next concert: 1986.07.11.
Previous concert: 1986.05.13.
May 31, 1986.
Venue:
Gazzarri's.
Location:
Los Angeles, USA.
Setlist:
01. Out Ta Get Me
02. Welcome to the Jungle
03. Think About You
04. Move to the City
05. Rocket Queen
06. Nightrain
07. My Michelle
08. Jumpin' Jack Flash
09. Don't Cry
10. You're Crazy
11. Paradise City
12. Mama Kin
Line-up:
Axl Rose (vocals), Izzy Stradlin (rhythm guitarist), Slash (lead guitarist), Duff McKagan (bass) and Steven Adler (drums).
Bootlegs:
Notes:
Under the moniker "Fargin Bastydgis".
Quotes:
Slash: We saw [Paul Stanley] again not long afterward when we played a showcase that Geffen had set up. Basically, Tom [Zutaut] arranged it because we needed to play a gig, so it was this industry-only, invite-only "concert". It took place at Gazzarri's (today it's the Key Club) [According to Duff's autobiography this actually happened at Raji's on May 13], which was a venue that we'd never, ever played on the circuit because it was totally against everything we stood for. It was so glam and gay that there were radio ads for it where the owner, Bill Gazzarri, proclaimed in his thick East Coast accent, "All my bands got foxy guys in 'em! If they don't got foxy guys, they don't play on my stage." Gazzarri's was where the really plastic glam metal could be found. And we definitely weren't trying to be foxy. [...] Anyway, Paul Stanley attended that show, and he actually bullied the sound engineer into allowing hom to man the soundboard and control the mix. We didn't find out until later, but when we did, I cringed at the thought: Paul Stanley had mixed Guns N' Roses - at Gazzarri's [Slash's autobiography, p 143-144].
Duff: [...] Geffen asked us to stop playing live. [...] The rationale? We had to build mystique by dropping out of sight, putting a premium on our performances. To say we didn't meet eye to eye with this decision is an understatement. We acquiesced at first, though we had some gigs already booked that we honored. Soon, though, we had to figure out ways to play - we just functioned best when we could get onstage regularly. And we got bored. So we began to play a bunch of shows as the Fargin Bastydges to get around the label's injunction. We took the name from a scene in the movie Johnny Dangerously. It was an alias, not an alter ego: the set list and everything else was exactly the same as our normal Guns shows; it just allowed us to avoid fighting with Geffen. One of the shows we played was at Gazzarri's, a venerable Hollywood dive we had always sort of wanted to play - just to say we had - but not the sort of place a band signed to a major label was supposed to play [Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 118-119].
Next concert: 1986.07.11.
Previous concert: 1986.05.13.
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Re: 1986.05.31 - Gazzarri's, Los Angeles, USA
Paul Stanley talks about this gig in his autobiography:
Howard Marks, our business manager, called me one afternoon and said he’d gotten a call from Tom Zutaut, an A&R man famous for siging Motley Crue. ‘Tom just signed this band,’ Howard said, ‘and wanted to know if you want to go check them out. They’re looking for a producer.’
Well, Gene was off making another movie. We weren’t going to work on the next record until the following year. Why not?
Howard came with me to meet the band—a bunch of young guys called Guns N’ Roses. We had arranged to meet them at an apartment their manager had rented for them near the corner of La Cienega and Fountain. I introduced bald, pot-bellied Howard as my bodyguard, as a joke; but after looking around for a few minutes, I could see why they didn’t get it.
Izzy was unconscious, with drool coming out of the side of his mouth. It wasn’t clear whether he was sleeping or dead—that’s how rough he looked. Duff and Steven were very nice, and Steven was just flowing about what a big KISS fan he was. I didn’t realize that the half-comatose, curly-headed lead guitar player who called himself Slash was what had become of the sweet kid I’d spoken to during the interviews before the recording of Creatures a few years earlier. Then Axl chatted with me and played a few songs on a crappy cassette player they had lying around.
When he played ‘Nightrain’ I thought it was really good, but I told him that maybe the chorus could be used a pre-chorus instead, and there could be another chorus added afterwards. That was the last time he ever spoke to me. Ever.
Slash roused himself, and he and I started talking about the Stones. I show him Keith’s five-string open-G tuning, which was the set-up Keith used to write all his stuff. I took a string off and retuned a guitar, and he thought it was very cool. I also offered to help Slash get in touch with people who could hook him up with some free guitars—we were sponsored by all sorts of instrument companies, and I figured a young guy like him could use some help getting equipment to record with.
That night, I went to see their gig at Raji’s, a little dive in Hollywood. I thought the song they had played for me were good, but they didn’t prepare me for seeing their band live. Guns N’ Roses were stupendous. I was shocked, given the collection of wastoids I’d seen earlier that afternoon, and I immediately realized I was witnessing true greatness.
I went to see them perform again at another club, called Gazzarri’s—it later became the Key Club. They weren’t happy with the guy mixing their sound, and Slash asked me out of the blue to help out. Decades later, Slash’s recollections of the night would be faulty at best. He liked to pretend I had dared to meddle with their sound. God forbid this guy from KISS would have anything to do with Guns—I mean, what could be worse than a guy from KISS, of all things? He also recalled that I had a blond trophy wife with me. But I wasn’t married and was in fact there with a short brunette named Holly Knight, who was a songwriter famous for ‘Love Is a Battlefield,” among other hits. There is obviously a reason why defense attorneys never want to put alcoholics or drug addicts on the witness stand.
That was years later of course. Immediately after my interactions with the band, I started to hear lots of stories Slash was saying behind my back—he called me gay, made fun of my clothes, all sorts of things designed to give himself some sort of rock credibility at my expense. This was years before his top hat, sunglasses, and dangling cigarette became a cartoon costume that he would continue to milk with the best of us for decades.
I didn’t wind up being involved with G’n’R’s album. No surprise there. The surprise came a few months later when Slash called me and wanted to follow up on my offer to help him get some free guitars.
‘You want me to help you get guitars after you went around saying all that shit about me behind my back?’
Slash got real quiet.
‘You know, one thing you’re going to have to learn is not to air your dirty laundry in public. Nice knowing you. Go fuck yourself.’
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Re: 1986.05.31 - Gazzarri's, Los Angeles, USA
I hated Gazzarri's. I never would set foot in there. But I did actually play there with Guns N' Roses, once, right after we got a record deal, and Paul Stanley did sound for us, because he was courting us to produce us at that time.
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