1992.07.12-14 - MTV - Reports and interviews (Axl, Slash)

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Kurt Loder: Hi, I’m Kurt Loder with an MTV News special report. Guns N’ Roses singer, Axl Rose, was arrested at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport at 8:45 a.m. on Sunday morning, as he and his girlfriend, model Stephanie Seymour, were disembarking from a Concorde flight from France where they’d been vacationing prior to the beginning of the big Guns N’ Roses and Metallica concert tour, which begins this coming Friday. A warrant for Rose’s arrest has been out for the past several months, issued by a St. Louis prosecutor who’s been trying to get Rose to come to that city to answer four misdemeanor assault charges and one misdemeanor property damage charge stemming from a riot at a Guns N’ Roses concert one year ago. Rose was brought from the airport here to the Queens County criminal court building for processing in the back of a New York City squad car and his hands were handcuffed behind him, but he said he was in very good spirits. He said the only reason he was here was because the St. Louis prosecutor reneged on a deal they had to let him come on his own volition to St. Louis tomorrow. He’s now being processed inside. He has a cell all to himself, that’s been arranged, and his lawyers are on the case. He’s expected to be released at about 6:00 p.m. Sunday evening and it’s not expected that this will interfere with the beginning of the Guns N’ Roses tour. We will see. He’s expected to get out on bail and proceed to St. Louis on Monday. We’ll have more on this story on MTV News, so stay tuned.  

[cut to footage of Axl after he was arrested]

Loder: Axl, you’re alright?

Axl (chuckling): I’m doing great. I’m doing great. Just awesome.  

Loder: What happened?

Axl: The prosecutor reneged on a promise he made. I’m going there on the 15th, and he said this wouldn’t happen and he lied.

Loder: You’ll be out soon?

Axl: I think so!

Loder: So, see ya!

Axl: (?)

Loder: Okay!

[cut to MTV News]

Loder: Rose was jailed in New York for ten hours, then released on $100,000 bail, following which he hopped into a limousine headed for a Manhattan hotel, and we hopped in with him.

[cut to footage of Axl after he was released on bail]

[cut to the interview in the limousine]

Loder: What did they do when they put you in jail? Did you have a cell by yourself or were there other people? Did you get to talk to any other, like, inmates or anything?

Axl: No. I mean, I basically spent my time writing autographs for cops and talking with them about rock ‘n’ roll. I met all these cool cops that were telling me all about when they went to Woodstock and everything. It was great. New York cops are the best.

Voice-over: The question in many observers’ minds, of course, was why Rose didn’t just return to St. Louis to plead his case months ago. According to Rose, it’s taken this long to work out an ironclad deal, which, as things stand now, means a sentence of two years’ probation reduced to one year.

Axl: We’ve just been waiting till, like, to get the case somewhat solidified and in writing before we go. Cuz I don’t wanna go there and get set up. You know, like, “Well, you come here, it’s gonna be like this,” and then it’s a whole different story and you end up sitting in St. Louis for a long time (chuckles).

Loder: What does this probation mean? That you can’t come back to St. Louis and do something bad? Or you can’t do something bad anywhere in the country?

Axl: It’s, like, anywhere. It’s anywhere, but I’m not really worried about any of that, because I really don’t spend my time breaking the law. So I’m not really worried about that. It just depends on, you know, if you play someplace where somebody doesn’t like rock ‘n’ roll or Guns N’ Roses, they could say I did something. You never know what will happen with that.

Voice-over: And what exactly happened at that St. Louis concert one year ago? Did Rose provoke a riot or was he simply reacting to a collapse in concert security? Here’s what he told us.

Axl: We have a tape of one guy on stage with a knife and we lost a million dollars’ worth equipment in that show. And I don’t see anybody else taking any responsibility for anything. I’m saying, yeah, I jumped off stage and yeah, things went haywire after that. And maybe I could have handled it better or whatever. But no one was really handling anything at that point. So I took it into my own hands with what I could do and what crossed my mind at that time, cuz I’d been pretty much pushed to the limit by their lack of security. But I don’t see anybody else in St. Louis really taking any responsibility for anything that happened.

[cut to MTV News from July 14, 1992]

Loder: Axl Rose finally turned himself in to authorities in St. Louis on Tuesday afternoon, more than one year after the riot plagued Guns N’ Roses’ concert there, for which the St. Louis prosecutor has been seeking to formally file charges against Rose ever since.  Tastily attired in what appeared to be a salmon-colored Versace suit, Rose appeared before a local judge and pleaded not guilty to four charges of misdemeanor assault and one count of misdemeanor property damage stemming from the concert, which ended in a riot last July 2nd. Rose was given a trial date of October 13th and told that he could travel in connection with the big Guns N’ Roses and Metallica tour that starts in Washington DC this Friday, but, that if he gets into any further legal trouble, his $100,000 bail could be revoked and he could find himself in jail.
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Loder: Will all this legal turmoil be weighing on Rose’s mind when the Guns N’ Roses and Metallica tour gets underway in Washington DC this Friday night? We asked Rose’s partner, guitarist Slash, and here’s what he had to tell us.

Slash: Axl’s fine. I talked to him yesterday. He’s dealing with the logistics of this guy in St. Louis and... I don’t want to say anything that’s gonna put the band in a weird position, but I think the guy is an asshole (laughs)

Loder: Apart from that...

Axl: So he’s dealing with him and he’s got a good attitude about it.  

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Some more clips from the interview with Axl in the limousine:



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Axl: This is, like, the first video of the miniseries that we are trying to create. So who knows, because, I mean, we paid for November Rain ourselves, because Geffen didn’t really know what to think of that kind of budget. So...

Loder: What kind of budget was it?

Axl: It was like, 1.6. Two. It was two, okay. Two (chuckles). But it’s something we believe in and I think it ends up speaking for itself in this quality. And there’s – hopefully there will be four more that will explain the story with other songs on the album.  

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Axl: Versace is a huge Guns N’ Roses-head.

Loder: Really?

Axl: He loves Guns N’ Roses. His fashion shows, the majority of music is Guns N’ Roses. He’s just really, really into Guns N’ Roses. And I went to an Elton John show there with him, and we got along great. He wants me to do a fashion show (laughs).

Loder: Are you gonna do it?

Axl: I think so, I don’t know.

Loder: Will this involve any modeling or something?

Axl: I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. He wants to make me clothes to wear, so it could be fun.

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Voice-over: ... Getting the music right is one aspect of this show that nobody is worried about. Guns N’ Roses says they’re so well oiled, that the band needed only a single day of preparation, and that without singer Axl Rose, to rehearse a few oldies for the tour [with Metallica]. Axl has no concerns about missing the practice.

Axl: Once the music is there, it’s kind of like getting in a car and driving it when the car is completely tuned and it’s running well. And you know how to drive – drive the car. It’s like, when the band’s got the song down, I know the song.

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Loder: Guns N’ Roses are no doubt even more sympathetic than usual to any censorship efforts having just had their two Use Your Illusion albums banned in South Africa. A country where, by the way, a doctor told news media this past weekend that South African police murdered 180 of the 200 people who’ve died in police custody over the past two years. Obviously Guns N’ Roses won’t be playing South Africa any time soon, but frontman Axl Rose does have an eye on some rather exotic concert sites these days, as he told us recently.

Axl: Hopefully we’ll go off and on till about next May. Because, you know, hopefully in December and stuff we will be doing South America and things like that, and then we’d like to try to do some really strange places like, we’re working on China, so who knows.

Loder: How complicated is that?

Axl: I’d like to play China, I’d like to play Israel, I’d like to play Moscow...