1986.12.XX - KNAC interview with the whole band

Transcription:

KNAC: Good evening ladies and gentlemen [?] and our special guests in the studio tonight to wrap up...[interrupted]

Izzy: It's history, it's history, it's history.

KNAC: Welcome to KNAC, it's Guns N' Roses. Hi guys.

Izzy: Hi, what's happening, lady?

KNAC: I am just excited you are here and looking real forward to 1987...[interrupted]

Izzy: We woke up so early today to come.

KNAC: Who do we have in the studio, you want to go ahead and introduce yourselves?

[Someone saying "we are all here"]

Axl: I want to introduce Izzy, this is Izzy Stradlin here. He's playing guitar in the band.

Izzy: And Duff here on bass. Steven on drums.

KNAC: Hi, Steve.

Izzy: Slash, uhm, guitar. And Axl Rose, singer. We're Guns N' Roses!

KNAC: I want to thank you for the Christmas presents, this is wonderful...[interrupted]

Izzy: We love giving...[interrupted]

KNAC: I am glad that I got one of the copies before they sold out. Ladies and gentlemen, what I have in my hand is Guns N' Roses EP, it's Live! Like A Suicide, which was put out in limited edition, but will be reissued right after the holidays?

Izzy: Somewhere around the 97.. [?]

Axl: No, no, we're putting out 15,000 copies of it. [?]

Duff: You can pick it up on all the local record stores.

KNAC: You are working on an album that is going to be put out by Geffen, right?

Axl: Yeah, we are in preproduction right now.

Izzy: That's due the 1st of April [1987].

KNAC: Does it have a name yet?

Steven: Njet. Gotta think of a name.

Axl: There's millions of names and we haven't picked one yet. When the record's done we'll probably decide.

Slash: Why don't you have some people call in and suggest some names?

KNAC: Oh, that's a good idea, we'll do that. [Says number to call in]

Axl: You can't think of anything worse than what we've thought of.

KNAC: You never know. We've got some incredible creative people out there who listen to the station.

Steven: The name 'Guns N' Roses record'.

KNAC: Let's talk about that show with Cheap Trick.

Slash: Excellent show, excellent show. It was excellent. Kinda like the LA Street Show but everyone was a little bit more controlled.

Axl: Fantastic, the people that were there, we went on an hour early so it wasn't as full as it was by the time Cheap Trick came on [...] They were slamming.

Izzy: They were climbing over the [...]

Axl: There was every kind of people you could imagine there.

KNAC: The Street Scene was a bit wild.

Slash: The intensity of the crowd, it was just so...

Axl: Street Scene was a blast.

KNAC: So the Cheap Trick, was that your last show for '86? You don't have anything planned for New Year's Eve, right?

Someone: It's up in the air right now / It's up for grabs!

KNAC: So you guys may show up anywhere on New Year's Eve?

Izzy: Yeah, we can show up anywhere, and we will show up somewhere.

KNAC: They will, they will be somewhere.

Slash: Happens every night.

Axl: Probably at your house. So have it well stocked.

KNAC: How long has the band been together as it is?

Axl: About a year and a half.

Izzy: '84-5. I've lost track of time this year, you know, we've been moving fast.

Someone: Yeah, it was in '85.

Izzy: '85.

Axl: June 6, the Troubadour, was the first gig Slash played with us.

KNAC: How did you manage to hook up and connect with your manager, Alan Niven, who is an excellent... I have to give the guy credit with all the bands [...]

Slash: He was gonna help us out with the EP as far as getting the thing worked out and then someone brought up the idea of him managing us, so we just felt the guy out.

Axl: And we went through a bunch of different managers...

Izzy: He put up with us, we put up with him.

Axl: ...and Alan does more work in one day than any of these so-called professional big-time people that we have worked with. We've got a lot of work to do, and we need work done, too, and we don't need someone [?], we need someone doing the job.

KNAC: He doesn't mess around. He gets the job done.

Slash: What is really important is that he has a real good impression of what this band's all about. He doesn't tell us "don't do this" and "don't do that", 'cause he knows it's gonna happen anyway.

KNAC: Is there a chance that working with Geffen, that the record people are gonna try to subdue you...

[Laughter]

Axl: Yeah allright, that's why we went with Geffen! We went with Tom Zutaut who signed Dokken and Motley Crue to Elektra then he went to Geffen and he was looking for a band that he could just go balls out with. As a matter of fact, in one of our songs when we first went in, we just laid done our song and I left out some obscenities and they told me to go back and redo them.

Someone: It's like whatever we do, they are behind us.

Slash: If we are not fully kicking ass [interrupted]

Axl: We recorded a couple of test tracks with different producers and [Geffen] decided it was "too radio". That was really nice to hear.

Steven: The bottom line is, it's total artistic control.

Axl: It was a little 'too mellow', 'too radio' so let's just pull out all the stops. If you listen to this EP you will understand.

KNAC: And the thing about this EP, we are gonna listen to, let's listen to a track right now...which song did we want to listen to, guys?

Someone: Reckless.

KNAC: 'Reckless Life' [talking about the radio channel]

[Reckless Life is played]

KNAC: we are back in the studio with Guns N' Roses. All this stuff on this EP, can we expect this on your LP when it arrives?

Izzy: No, no, definitely not. It will be new stuff.

Axl: As I said, there's 15,000 copies out and then, possibly, when the other record comes out, and you know, sales of that can do whatever, then there is a possible chance we will re-release it if there's a demand for it. We'll see.

Slash: You get four songs and a beautiful picture on it, but the next will probably be 10 songs and it might even open up with sideward pictures and all that.

Axl: I doubt there will be any covers on the other one. There is covers on this that we wanted to put out because we do them live and the people like them live, and we kinda wanted to do this like, 'this is for you', and this is something that we have been doing in our set.

Slash: It's the songs the kids always wanted to hear [?]

Izzy: We got a set of like 50 tunes.

Axl: Really hard to figure out what to play during a set. At this show at the Roxy we played for two hours and played a lot of things, and we got more songs since then. And we really don't like any certain songs better, so it's just about the mood whatever we play [?]

KNAC: They are all good, they are all exciting and your show is particularly visual and high-energy thanks to all of you, you all put an equal amount of effort into making it seem that way and come across that way-it is that way.

Someone: Thank you.

KNAC: As a vocalist, has the sexiest buns in California.

[Laughter]

Someone. Show me your buns, Ax!

KNAC: I was hoping you would arrive here tonight [?] What a shame!

KNAC: What do you think is the most exciting thing about performing live?

Slash: It's when the chicks try to pull your pants off.

Izzy: Just the whole aura of it.

Axl: The energy that the crowd gives us and we give back. It's really exciting. It's like the only place where you can like release all this energy. If you walked around on the street acting the way we do on stage they'd put you away. So we go on stage for that, half hour or up to two hours, or whatever it is, it is like that whole time you are getting everything out of your system.

Slash: You're getting off for that hour.

Someone: We are kept in like individual wooden crates.

[Laughter]

KNAC: Where do you think the local scene is going in 1987, musically of course?

Izzy: [?] a more 70s type of...

[talking in each other mouths]

Axl: The reasons I think for that is, okay, a lot of bands seemed to come out of the 80s where everybody was jumping on some kind of bandwagon, "I am gonna be heavy metal," "I am gonna be new wave," "I am gonna be this," "I am gonna be that," because that's what it takes to make it, and a lot of people forgot about feeling, a lot of the people forgot about why they were writing the music and what it did for them. And in the 70s there was a lot of bands that were getting in touch with themselves, and writing their music on what they believed and felt and that's what we are doing.

[talking in each other mouths]

Izzy: [?] that rockability revival, I say in the next two months it's gonna be back to this.

Slash: It's always this and that, if you look around you see what keeps going on. I mean, you guys are playing it.

Izzy: We've been doing the same thing since we all started.

Axl: We've been [?] together for like, what, three or four years. Izzy and I have been together for over 10 years. Slash and Steve've been together for like seven or eight. Duff's been in this picture for two years.

Someone: Everybody's been rocking!

Axl: He was in Seattle, he put out four different records up there, in a band called The Fartz and things like that.

[Someone making fart noises]

KNAC: Who are your biggest influences? What particular band at this time?

Someone. Nixon and the Watergate tapes. I mean if they were recorded in stereo it would have been much better than that mono.

[The band mentioned The Stones, Zeppelin, Aerosmith]

Someone: The Stones are great because they are still alright live, and that is an accomplishment.

[Talking in each other mouths]

Someone: The Sex Pistols, The Dolls [interrupted]

Someone: We've been through a little bit of everything, this band is pretty open.

KNAC: Well, good luck to you all in 1987, we will certainly be looking forward to your music. You know, and everybody out there knows, that it will certainly be played here at KNAC [...] and Happy New Year to you all!

I got to hear this clip at beenafix.com before it closed. We all marveled at how chatty Izzy was way back then. Must have been the caffeine or something consumed before that early morning radio interview.

Finally finished transcribing. It is hard to hear everything and almost impossible to always know who says what. I probably made quite a few mistakes in that regard. But at least we now have a transcription of this early interview.

Soulmonster wrote:Finally finished transcribing. It is hard to hear everything and almost impossible to always know who says what. I probably made quite a few mistakes in that regard. But at least we now have a transcription of this early interview.

And just as the video became unavailable!

Here is one that's working (until it isn't):

In 2004 Duff would talk about the first time they got interviewed at KNAC: