1987.10.09 - Super Channel - Interview with Slash and Izzy

TRANSCRIPTION:

Interviewer: Now, regular viewers of the Power Hour would be well aware of the new Guns N’ Roses video, Welcome to the Jungle, a track from the band’s latest Appetite for Destruction album. And Guns N’ Roses from Los Angeles appear to be the name on the tip of everyone’s tongue at the moment, including mine. Well, I have good reason, as I’m joined in a minute by two members of the band, the two guitarists, Slash and Izzy. Welcome.

Izzy: Hey.

Slash: Yeah.

Interviewer: Welcome to the show. You’ve just completed, I think, your debut European tour. You started somewhere in Europe, didn’t you, Slash?

Slash: We started in [inaudible]. We went from Newcastle, to Nottingham, to Manchester, and then in Bristol, and then we came back to London. So we did, like, five days that were all really killer.

Interviewer: So, Izzy, you finished last night at the Hammersmith Odeon, but only in June you’d been playing the Marquee. It’s a massive step-up, isn’t it? Did you expect to be that successful that quickly here?

Izzy: Well, we didn’t anticipate so much but, you know, we hoped for the best. And the Marquee shows were great, and it’s, like, after that, you know, and it’s like [?]

Slash (talking over): I was standing there and I was just amazed that we were there, as, like, I couldn’t believe it.

Interviewer: Had you heard about the Marquee before you came over? Did you know about...

Izzy: Oh yeah. Sure.

Slash: The Marquee? Yeah, yeah. A band like us, you know, it’s pretty much hip to most of the cool stuff that there is to do for the band, you know, cause you always have something to anticipate. So...

Interviewer: Well, Izzy, your first album, Appetite for Destruction, got very good reviews. But I understand there’s a little bit of controversy regarding the photograph or the painting you’ve had, that there was on the sleeve. What was the situation with that?

Izzy: Well, it was just a postcard, you know, it’s like... (laughs). If they don’t get it...I mean, you know, we got flak because of whatever this girl’s tits hanging out or something. Half. It wasn’t even hanging out.

Slash: Her tits weren’t hanging out, I think...

Izzy: I think it was half out.

Slash: I think they had a little scratch. (laughs)

Izzy: They were scratched.

Interviewer: [?]

Izzy: There’s no heavy meaning behind it. It was just a postcard that Axl picked up at a card shop in Hollywood, and we just liked the artwork.

Slash: People are always so eager to put labels on things, you know.

Izzy: [?]

Slash: There was really no significant reasons, you know, except for that it was a cool painting. You know, there was no discriminatory thing with that, you know, as far as women are concerned, you know, and anything like that. It was just a painting that looked really cool, it looked really dynamic, and it was, like, who wanted to sit for two hours and think about what was gonna be the cover. And we saw the picture, “Oh, that’s fine, yeah, sure - let’s use that”. (Laughs). And then there’s this line “Appetite for Destruction” on the bottom. And we said, “We don’t have to think about the title, either! [?] It’s perfect!”

Interviewer: That was on the postcard too?

Izzy: (Laughs)

Slash: (Laughs) Yeah, you know...

Izzy: [That’s where’s the title]

Slash: I can’t just be sitting around for two months trying to figure out, you know, what we were gonna call the record, what was gonna be on the cover, you know... That would’ve been a nightmare.

Interviewer: OK, we spoke about the cover. Let’s now talk about what is inside the cover, the music. There’s lot of...

Slash: The sleeve.

Interviewer: Yeah, it’s the sleeve. And in somewhere the sleeve, we come to the record, and on the record there’s music. There are lots of different influences, I would say, in Guns N’ Roses, Izzy. I mean, what was that, British bands influences, is it punk bands?

Izzy: So many things, you know, just anything that moves, you know...

Slash: (Laughs)

Izzy: [?] some kind of motion [?]

Slash: Yeah, from one spectrum to the other, from, you know, like really, literally, classical stuff all the way upside to the hardest core punk and then everything in between. Anything that sounds cool.

Interviewer: I hear that you were born in England, Slash.

Slash: Yeah, I was born here in London and then I lived in Stock-In-Trent for about eleven years. And we almost drove through there. And my grandparents haven’t seen me since.

[Izzy and interviewer laugh]

Slash: I was thinking about calling them, but then I thought I didn’t want to be responsible for anything.

Interviewer: Are your grandparents aware of what you’re doing now?

Slash: They haven’t seen me since I was eleven.

Interviewer: It would’ve been a big shock for them?

Slash: Probably not, cause the rest of my family is pretty wackos.

[Izzy and interviewer laugh]

Interviewer: OK, let’s take a look at you, and Izzy, and the rest of the band on the video that I’ve already mentioned. This is Welcome to the Jungle.

[Welcome to the Jungle video is played]

Interviewer: Welcome to the Jungle from Guns N’ Roses, who, as I already mentioned, come from Los Angeles. Slash, do you feel that you actually fit in to the Los Angeles scene? Are you happy there?

Slash: Not anymore (laughs)

Izzy: (Laughs)

Slash: We didn’t fit in when the band first started. We didn’t fit in... ever. It was always like there was L.A. and then there was the five of us that were crawling around in the dark, you know.

(Izzy laughs)

Slash: It’s not that we fit in, it’s just we... um, let’s say... In Los Angeles... Los Angeles is just like one of those places that, I guess like any other big city but even more so. It’s got a lot... it’s real trendy and you go through fads and go through other stuff... And so, it was always real hard to say, like, we’re an L.A. band, because L.A. bands always, you know, always meant like this one little band from one particular time that everybody was into because there was a particular fad, you know. And so we never liked that, we were just us and we really stuck out compared to everything else. I was really surprised that we went on this big as we did, but that was because we were really real about the whole thing. And people pick up on that no matter how do you fit there.