2015.04.DD - Uproxx - 3-part Guns N' Roses Mini-Doc

Part 1:

Headline: There's one man who can get Guns N' Roses back together.

Marc Canter: So it's June 6th, 1985, at the Troubadour. Slash and Steven joined the band 4 or 5 days before that. The feeling I was getting, watching and taking pictures of this is, "Wow!" Wherever I pointed to there was something to grab. I was going through my film like toilet paper. My heart was pumping because everything sounded so cool, so good and they sound like they've been playing together for like months and yet they've only been together four or five days.  I knew that all they gotta do is stay together and not die or go to jail and they're gonna make it.

Duff: Mark became sort of when Guns N' Roses formed, he was sort of like a sixth guy in there. He was always around. He had unlimited access to the bands, especially in the early days when, you know, he was really the only guy who cared about the band. I think he believed in US.

Tom Zutaut: He knew the psychology of everybody in the band. He knew what things caused Axl to freak out, what things made Slash nervous. Mark Canter knew this band is going to be the biggest band in the world if you can just keep it together long enough.

Marc Canter: The first time I ever heard Slash play was right here in this garage in 1981. I was sitting right here, just kicking it and Slash was right here. And he was playing his BC Rich Mockingbird with the Sun amp. It was such a rich, thick sound coming out of it, and the notes that he was choosing to put in the guitar solos were just ripping a hole through my spine. To me it was like seeing Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix or some old blues guitar player, just it didn't fit the 15 year old kid.

We were best friends since we were like 11 years old in 1976. We rode bikes together and did all kinds of things. But when I saw what his true talent was for this guitar, I made it my job to make sure that he gets to the next level.

Here we are. In the garage of all the Reckless Road books and photos. There's a cool photo from Slash with the first gig with the Appetite For Destruction lineup. June 6th, 1985 at the Troubadour. Oh, here it is. Video camera with the original Guns N' Roses sticker from 1986. I haven't been in here in a while. Here's my Canon AE1. All the photos from Reckless Road were shot from this camera. And here it is, the old clunker right here. You drop in the VHS tape, hit record. I filmed 30 Guns N' Roses shows with this camera. 10 to 15 minutes before the show I used to get butterflies in my stomach because I needed to find a good place in the crowd where I could see the stage where no one's heads or hands were going to be in my way. Nervousness. They're going to debut a new song and I'm excited for it. See how the crowd reacts.

In 1985-1986, they were writing songs and they were all on the same page.

September 28th, 1985, at the Los Angeles Street Scene. March 21st, 1986, at Fenders Ballroom. February 28th, 1986, at The Troubadour. It was like watching The Rolling Stones at the Colosseum. He's on the drum riser and he's just being Slash. Axl's just down on his knees giving you a 150%. Slash, taking a moment, the most important show of his life. It was the night that got them signed, probably intoxicated and high. By then they basically had the city by the balls.

[In] 1993 I started putting this together which became my book, Reckless Road. And this is just my passion. Fans wanna know where this came from, how it started, and so I felt that it was my duty to share this with the world and let them see what I was lucky enough to witness.

I love them both. They are very special people to me. I wish they would love each other again, you know, because we were all one big happy family. Slash was my best friend since I'm 11, but when I met Axl, we instantly became very, very close friends. At my wedding... Well, the band was at my wedding, but we thought it would be cool if Axl could play November Rain while we walked down the aisle. But nobody knew what November Rain because it was two years before it came out. And thne of course it comes out and there's a video that's about a wedding, so it's kind of weird that I had that pegged first.

This is a shame to watch two of my best friends that made beautiful music together not communicate at all for the wrong reasons. This is where it all started right here. This was the first place they jammed together. You knew that there were something special here. It was the start of something great to be. What made it so good was the fact that this is just a little tiny, crappy rehearsal space. Slash was 19, Axl a couple years older. They were just finding themselves. This was the place that my friends came together for the first time and realized the chemistry. What it would take to get these guys back together? It's simple, come back to where it all started. Right here. This is the room they started in. No bullshit. Just put them in here without any management, any handlers, any roadies. I believe that the chemistry inside them, the gravitational pull, is so strong that if they would just walk in this room, music would pour out of their souls. They know they needed each other back then. They know they need each other now. You put those guys together and that little $15 an hour rehearsal space where it all started, that's all you need.

Part 2

Headline: The top selling hard rock album of all time almost died before it ever got started.

Tom Zutaut: There was this anti-Guns N' Roses movement. They were too dangerous. I was like 26 years old at the time I get called up into the de facto President of Geffen Records, he said, "MTV is never going to play a video by Guns N' Roses." John Malone, who's a conservative Republican, owns half of the cable housings that MTV is broadcast. He basically told MTV if they showed any videos from this dangerous heroin junkie rock'n'roll band, that he would take MTV off his cable networks. He said his company is not going to spend another penny on Guns N' Roses. The record is over.

By the time the band hit the stage, I estimate there were like 6 record companies there. I could see like the beginning of some gigantic bidding war. Out comes the most charismatic lead singer I have ever seen. And I knew that there was an animal magnetism with him that was just undeniable. It was like watching electricity spark. When I heard Slash play the solo, I was like, "He's only 19." This is the Jimmy Page that you were destined to find. I knew from the first minute I saw him that he was going to be one of the greatest guitar players in the history of music. I was like, "Oh, holy shit! This is the real deal."

You know, I get this feeling about things and it's just like an instinct. I stayed for two songs, basically, and I didn't even finish the second song. I saw all I needed to see. I went back to the office the next day and I told David Geffen, I said, "I just saw the biggest rock band in the world. They will be bigger than Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones combined. They will fill up stadiums." There was no way that I was going to live and breathe without getting that band signed.

When I played the finished, mastered, completed record, I thought 10 million copies. One of the few records in my career that I felt like the record captured exactly what we heard in our heads and wanted it to be.

Text: 7 months after the album released it had only sold 200,000 units.

Tom Zutaut: Well, 200,000 isn't even close. It's not gold, it's not platinum. It's basically not even halfway there. Radio was afraid to play them. MTV was afraid to play them. I get called up into the de facto president of Geffen Records, he says, "I need you to sit down. We're going to cut our losses now. Appetite for Destruction is over. This record is dead. It's done. You've got to move on." I looked at him and I said, "Don't take it personally, but I have to go over your head. I cannot let this rest." Walked into David Geffen's office and he got off the phone, he said, "What's going on? Why are you in my office without an appointment?" And I said, "The guy who you have running your company day-to-day is gonna destroy Guns N' Roses' career and he's gonna prevent this from being the biggest rock and roll band in the world." And so he looked at me and he said, "What's the one thing I can do to make this right?" I said to him, "We made a great video for Welcome to the Jungle. If you can get this band on MTV, it will change history." About two hours later, he called me up into his office, and then he looked at me, and he goes, "They're going to play it." And then I was like, super excited, I was like "Yeah!" And he goes, "One time," and I'm like, "One time?" He goes, "It's going to be one time at 4:00 in the morning in New York, 1:00 AM in LA, Sunday night. Honestly, you asked me to do one thing. That's the best I could do."

I woke up at like three or four in the afternoon and I had a bunch of missed calls from my office and I was thinking, "They're probably gonna fire me or something, I don't know." The guy who called the most, or seemed to be the most urgently wanting to see me, they had a promotion. "Hey guy, MTV just added the video!" and I'm like, "What?" "Their switchboard blew up, it caught on fire!" And I was like, "Well, what do you mean? I mean how can it blow up?" "10,000 simultaneous calls came in! When the phone call comes in, it sends an electric spark like the wires melted and it caught on fire. The fire department came." I go into Ed Rosenblatt's office. He's like, "MTV has never had anything like this happen before. They think Guns N' Roses can build their channel. They're going to play the shit out of it"

The sales exploded, like in two weeks we sold another 200,000 copies. It was literally like every kid that saw that video play that one time went out and bought the record immediately. It was sold out everywhere. We quickly made a video for Sweet Child O' Mine and we put that out and it exploded. Every radio station in America played it. The record just started selling in millions. The last time I really was keeping track of numbers, it was at like 35 to 40 million copies. It was like a near death experience where you die and you see the bright lights and then all of a sudden you're pulled back into your body. That's how close to death that record came.

From the minute I saw them at the Troubadour all the way to the band breaking up, we captured the last great breath of hard rock music in the world. There hasn't been anyone since then. Somewhere there's got to be some desperate kids. All they can think of or want to do is make great rock music. If there's another one, the next wave, going to be the phoenix rising from the ashes, those kids gotta be somewhere, you know? I hope that I can find it. I mean, I'm here. And there's got to be some reason I'm here.

Part 3:

Headline: The girls behind Guns N' Roses

?: We were definitely the breadwinners. We were the money makers. They were out hustling record contracts and we were hustling our asses.

?: It seemed like the most happening thing to do, and it was the most dangerous thing in Hollywood at the time.

Barbi Von Greif: Everybody was completely bent on whooping ass on the Strip, kicking every other bands ass that was wearing frosted lipstick and spandex.

Pamela Manning: Before all the fame and the fortune, 1984-1985, the guys were struggling, on the street, starving. And thank God they met us girls because we helped them survive.

Barbi Von Greif: At that time, Izzy was telemarketing. Axl had just gotten fired from a video store. They were the underdog a 110% of the time. They were always the bad guys. So of course we wanted them to win.

Adriana Dawn Smith: I was a stripper at the Seventh Veil and we were making money. If they knocked on our door and they needed something, "Come on in," you know, "the water's fine."

PM: They'd come take showers at the house and they were hungry. We'd feed them food and give them new clothes because they didn't even have any clothes to wear.

ADS: Socks, razors, booze, drugs, [?]. You know, whatever.

BVG: I used to get phone calls from the road all the time. "It seems like we're out of gas. Can you get us a bus fare back?" "Can you get us this?" "We lost the van." All kinds of crap would happen. I mean, anything that could go wrong went wrong 10 times over and just nobody would give in. You're just too pissed off to give in.

PM: I was their dancer. I did their hair. I was a roadie. I handed out flyers. I did their makeup. I did wardrobe. They had an energy about them. They just made you want to get involved.

ADS: I'm sort of one of those girls that likes to stir the pot. And sometimes it ends up bad. One night in the studio Axl had his head on my lap and I was stroking his hair and he closed his eyes and he was really serious. And he was like, "Adriana," you know, in his Axl voice,
"you know, there's something I'd like you to do, it's very serious." He wanted to have live sex sounds on a song he was mixing. We were young and wild and free, and there was the notion that it was for an artistic purpose. Of course I would do that. Eventually I found out it was Rocket Queen. I had no idea that I was going to be rock and roll history, that it was gonna be a legendary act.

PM: The Rocket Queen is the one where Adriana is like "Ooh-ooh." It was a fun song to dance to. When Axl would do it, he would be like "Ooh-ooh" and of course the the audience was going crazy.

ADS: Somehow I became the Rocket Queen and I have never, I have never said, "I'm the Rocket Queen." It's just not me. The real Rocket Queen is Barbie.

BVG: It's been published before that Rocket Queen was co-written by me. The original song was written for my band to do. And it is the only song I ever helped him with that I wanted [?]. [?] Axl trying to write. Axl would be sitting on my couch saying, "What do you think of this?" I'd say, "That sucks, let's do this." It was a couple of friends, you know, both of us [?] writing. Any song assistance I gave him was because I loved him. And I wanted him to succeed. He's like, "If I make it," I said, "There's no friggin 'if'. There is no 'if'. It's 110% from here on out, that's it. This is what you're doing." He already felt that way, but I think he needed to hear it.

PM: Long before they made it, they were in the rehearsal studio they're playing and Axl's singing this song. And when his face turned red, I just went, "Wow, this guy's really trying, man. He's really, really, really trying." And I go into this vision, kind of like a daydream, I see this crowd of people, thousands of people. And then when I came out of it I'm like, "Axl, Axl, I just had this incredible vision. Oh my God, I see you as a rock star." And he's like, "Do you really think it's gonna come true?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I do, I believe in you. I think it's gonna come true."

BVG: Every landlord, boyfriend, girlfriend, my dad, everybody that I knew would ask me what the hell I was doing with [?] them. "Those guys are really [?] take a shower. What do you do with those guys?" And you know, I love telling people, "You guys gonna be studying this one day. Your daughter will be buying this record and your daughter's daughter be buying this record."

ADS: We didn't have to answer to anyone. It was a collective. It was a way of life.There never has been, nor will there ever be another Guns N' Roses. And if you were associated with that band, you're you're tattooed for life.

Is this worth transcribing? Any new quotes in it?

Soulmonster wrote:Is this worth transcribing? Any new quotes in it?

It has interviews (all new, not taken from old documentaries) with Marc Canter (first video), Tom Zutaut (first and second video), Adriana Smith and other girls from the early days (third video).

Blackstar wrote:

Soulmonster wrote:Is this worth transcribing? Any new quotes in it?

It has interviews (all new, not taken from old documentaries) with Marc Canter (first video), Tom Zutaut (first and second video), Adriana Smith and other girls from the early days (third video).

Shit.

Done.

Feel a bit bad for Barbie Von Greif. She looked bitter, and looked like life hadn't been good to her.

Duff commenting upon being in the documentary: