1989.06.DD - Hit Parader - Wild In The Streets (Axl, Slash, Izzy, Duff, Steven)

A huge thanks to @Euchre for sending us this article!

Transcript:

I always wanted to be in a band, but I never thought I'd be a singer — I never thought I had a good voice. But I was ready to do anything to be part of a rock group, and since I really got off on singing I figured I'd give it a shot. I ended up singing in bands out of necessity because I was the only one who could carry a tune. At first, I thought I'd play keyboards, then I shifted to bass, then I finally got to singing. But I guess things have worked out for the best.
—AXL ROSE

I really don't give a shit about all the rumors about us. We hear stories every day about how one of us has overdosed or been kicked out of the band. But we don't care anymore. We know what the truth is, and that's all that's important. Anyway, we've become kind of philosophical about things. We figure that, if nothing else, the rumors make the kids even more interested in as — even if most of them aren't true.
—SLASH

I was born a poor black child.
—STEVEN ADLER

I remember when we heard that Appetite For Destruction had reached Number 1 on the charts. We were just outside of Kansas City, in the middle of a soundcheck when somebody told us. We didn't celebrate or anything, we just kind of smiled and went right back to work. We were happy. Out we had a job to do.
—DUFF McKAGAN

I grew up in Indiana, and that's a real different place from Los Angeles. LA. is such a big city, it just stretches on forever. I still haven't gotten over the fact that you can start out in L.A. and just drive south, and the city doesn't stop until you reach San Diego. If you drove that far in Indiana, you'd have passed a couple of thousand farms.
—AXL ROSE

We've had some run-ins with the press because they seem determined to turn on into something we're not. They love to write how we're always acting crazy and destroying things Well, it's just not true. Maybe they think by writing things like that they're making us seem bigger than we are and badder than we are. But we don't need it and we don't like it.
—IZZY STRADLIN

Sometimes when were on tour I get these huge cuts on my hands. I try putting this junk known as "liquid skin" on those cuts, so they have e chance to heal. But it doesn't work. I just keep bleeding, and the stuff just keeps the cuts open and actually prevents them from healing. But that's part of being a drummer. I play so hard that my hands just blister. They don't heal up until we stop touring — and we haven't been off the road in a year.
—STEVEN ADLER

There's been on much fuckin' hype goin' on about us that sometimes it seems like we're the Stones or something. It's been really wild. I think all that shit actually overshadowed the music for a while, but we just kept playing until the fans realized there was more to this band than just wild stories. We've finally been accepted as a half-decent rock and roll band —and notice I say half decent. We still have a long way to go before we'll be more than that.
—SLASH

Hey, get that guy from Hit Parader out of here, we've got to rehearse!
—IZZY STRADLIN

We're not going to let the success we've had go to our heads. We're still just a rock and roll band. If we start acting like stars and saying, "Oh. our first album said millions of copies," that'll be the end of us. We need to stay hungry to make the kind of music we want. If we let what's happened to us change us, we'll all be on some unemployment line a few years from now.
—DUFF McKAGAN

When I was in high school I was an athlete, a real jock. But I kept having trouble with the authorities who kept telling me to do things a certain way. They'd tell me to stand in line, and I'd say, "Fuck you." That isn't the way to get along well in school. So after a few years, I just gave in and started to grow my hair and smoking pot. My attitude was that since I was already in trouble all the time, I might as well give everyone a reason to hassle me.
—AXL ROSE

I don't think we'll ever release another single. The success of Sweat Child O' Mine was more a fluke than anything else. We only did that as a single because the record company wanted us to. It was successful, but we're not a singles band. We want people to react to our entire album. I'm sure we'll do some more videos, but we'll really have to have our arms twisted to do another single.
—SLASH

We never set out to be role models for kids. We're just us. If some kid is dumb enough to try to act like us, we take no responsibility for what might happen. The kind of life we lead is good for us — but we've been lucky. You could end up dead just as easily as having a Number 1 album.
—DUFF McKAGAN

We try to avoid any association with the whole "glam" scene. I don't even take the time to do my hair the way I used to. Thankfully. we've already reached the point where we can do whatever we want and not get hassled for it. We may go back to doing some outrageous things with our appearance next time. It might be interesting to find out exactly how much we can get away with before we land in jail.
—AXL ROSE

I highly doubt Hit Parader managed to get all five members together for an interview in mid-1989. This is obviously quotes collected from other interviews, and not necessarily from older Hit Parader issues.

Well, except for Steven's joke about him being born a black kid, I can't really find any possible original sources for any of the other quotes. So either we simply don't have the original sources, which I doubt since our collection of articles is pretty substantial by now, or this is the first magazine issue publishing these quotes. It could still be that these are older quotes from previous Hit Parader articles that the magazine simply didn't use at the time.

I have a couple of Hit Parader issues from 1991/92 with quotes from the band. And from covers of Hit Parader and Circus I've seen on the net, it looks like those two magazines had something about GnR almost every month. Given that the band -or at least Axl- had stopped doing interviews with those magazine since 1989, the quotes were most likely taken from other sources.