1989.07.DD - MTV - Interview clips (Axl)

by **Blackstar** Wed Dec 12, 2018 6:50 am

Combination of clips found in the MTV Rockumentary (transcribed by @Soulmonster) and in video compilations on youtube.

TRANSCRIPTION:

[Footage of Axl and West Arkeen in New York

Axl (does an impression): What are we doing here, what are we doing! What are we doing here? My name is (?). I work in this (?) under the street]

Axl: The name Axl, they said when I.. that I live, breathe, eat, sleep, walk, talk Axl. I new in first grade that I was gonna change my name, so W. Axl Rose. It’s like, you know, my name was William Rose. My mom remarried and then my name was changed to Bill Bailey, William Bailey. My dad has told me that he begged my mom to change my first name, cuz he knew I was gonna get crap. I mean, imagine, you're a little kid, you know, and every place you go someone sings “Won’t you come home Bill Bailey.” I wanna cover the song. I like the song (laughs).
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My dad wanted me to play piano because he felt that he wished he could have and wished he would have taken time as a kid to learn how, because as he was older he knew he had too many things to do and he would never get into it.
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We had “The Bailey Trio”, me, my brother and sister. And we worked out three-part harmonies, and we’d get up in front of the church and we'd sing, like, some gospel hit of the seventies - a little bit more rocked out than the actual hymns. You know, but I was like the bass then. It was like, (sings in bass voice) “One more time, Jesus (?)”. It was so much fun. It is really weird to think about that. We looked so geeky.
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Izzy was Izzy since junior high. You know, Isbell. I remember we had a sheet behind his drums, "IZZY"! You know, it was great. And everybody knew him as Izzy.
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“Axl" came along as name of band, cuz my friend used to write down... My friend Dave Lank wrote down names of bands, him and Mike Staggs and Roger Miley. And we always thought of names of bands and he had this page, like hundreds of names he thought of for names of bands. One day they called me up and they said, "We got a name for a band, 'Axl'". And, like, I don't know, the world was coming down on me in my house and it's, like, I answered the phone and I was like, "What do you want?" "We got a name for a band, 'Axl'. How should we spell it?" And I was like, "A-X-L". Click (laughs).
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We didn't own anything, you know. We didn't have cars, we didn't have anything. It's like, "What? You mean I have to change the oil?! I mean, you know that but you never had one of your own. The maintenance is.... I mean, Slash has, like, called me at times and gone, "(?) I got this house and my refrigerator's leaking all over the place and I feel comfortable just leaving it that way but I know I can't do that because this is my house."
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We generate a weird type of excitement. I mean, Izzy put it best, when you're doing a ballad and people are killing each other in a crowd like in Weedsport, New York, beating the crap of each other, then something's wrong. We don't really understand it. We like the energy, you know. And everybody likes you to see a good bar-room brawl or something, but when it turns into such a mess... I mean, a bar-room brawl is a movie, it's not real life.
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The band wants me to bring Torque on tour cuz he's fun to party with. Cuz he's fun! The dog is fun. He's this little dog, he tries to attack Akitas and things. He's four and-a-half pounds and would get bitten in half. But he's like gnarly. And he's fun and they wanted me to bring him on tour and I'm like, "Who's gonna clean up?" and they went, "Oh, that is a problem, uuuh." I can't do it, there's no way.
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[Footage of Axl and West Arkeen playing Yesterdays at the Scrap Bar]
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Interviewer: ... nipple here?

(Shows his nipple piercing): Nah. Yeah, I was really glad cuz I only wanted one. And it hurts really bad. I never yelled so loud in my life. When they did it it was like, AAAHH. The way I put it (?) If some girl gets involved with a guy with a lot of piercing and stuff, she’d better know what she's getting into because that guy can tolerate a lot of pain and might even like it (laughs).
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A lot of guys I know, and I'm one... We don't necessarily relate sex with love. It's recreation, it's something I do. It’s like people who go skateboard, people who play basketball, people who play pool, whatever. We’re looking for girls. It's something I do. So far, with the women that I've been in love with over the years, one of the most beautiful things in the world was watching them have an orgasm. And if they had an orgasm with someone else and I was there, I loved to watch that because I knew they were receiving something great, and having a great time, and feeling good. And watching them experience this meant the world to me. It's beautiful. You know, an orgasm is beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing (laughs).
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[Footage of Axl and West Arkeen in New York

Axl: New York is being very great to us. That’s... I don’t know.]

[Footage of Axl and West Arkeen playing The Garden at the Scrap Bar]

Axl: Before Guns N’ Roses was big, I would go to the Rainbow, like, for the whole week, hair down, looking just normal. And then, like, on Saturday night, I’d do it way up, the full makeup, perfect everything and the right clothes. And all of a sudden I’d be swarmed, you know, by all the girls and stuff, “I didn’t realize that you could look like this” and “Oh my god, you’re a different person” and dah dah dah. You know, it kinda made you want to do it. It had nothing to do with being, like, feminine or anything like that. You got more people into you, you got the girls you wanted, you know, and you had fun being wild and stuff. It was a fun thing.

Axl: I think if you can get a tattoo you should, like, think about it for a long time, maybe six months, a year, or something like that. I've been planning out a tattoo for my forearm here for a long time, and I had one drawn up and I liked it, but for some reason every time I would go get it everything would work out wrong. And after about a year I was in a tattoo place and I wanted to see the artwork again because I left it there with Robert Benedetti and he said that, "It's been a long time, maybe it's not the right tattoo," and I thought about it and I ended up kind of agreeing. Now I've decided that - I got it right here - if we work out this Stones thing, possibly - because I really want to get this as a tattoo but I'm not going to get this tattoo and not get this gig - so I want to get this dragon [shows a picture of a cartoon dragon] with the Stones lips on it. I love this picture, I've always loved this picture, so I told my manager about the tattoo and he said, "Yeah, I'll get this tattoo, too," you know.