1987.07.18 - Melody Maker - Shrink Rap (Axl)

Taken from the magazine "The History of Rock: From the archives of NME & Melody Maker", which republished the interview in its issue dedicated to the year 1987 (released in 2017).
The full issue of "The History of Rock" can be downloaded here:
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/UK/New-Musical-Express/History-of-Rock/History-or-Rock-1987.pdf

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Transcript:
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SHRINK RAP!
AXL ROSE

MM JUL 18
Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses tells all to the MM analyst.

Aerosmith

They’re a tradition I grew up with. They were the only band that the people who lived in my city in Indiana would accept wearing makeup and dressing cool. These people thought the Stones were fags, but everybody liked Aerosmith. We’re coming to England with them this fall. It’s something we always wanted. We are influenced by them, but it goes deeper than that - we’re also influenced by, like, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, old blues things, various black artists. One of my band’s favourite albums is the new Cameo record.

Policemen

There’s no such thing as a cool cop. The incident in Los Angeles just kinda happened real quickly. I got hit on the head by a cop and I guess I was just blacked out and was still raging and fighting. Two days later, I woke up in hospital tied to the bed with electrodes over me. I guess they had to give me electro-shock. I don’t know a whole lot about what happened.

Bad Reputation

At least we’ve got a reputation. It’s better than being unknown, I've been really tame over here in England because I’ve been concerned with the shows and the interviews. Slash has been going out and getting thrown out of nightclubs and smashing windows. He hasn’t had to concentrate as much as I have.

Harley Davidsons

They’re great. I don’t own one at the moment, but as soon as I can afford one, I will. Any money we get goes into the band. We paid to play for three or four years.

Drugs

Drugs were a major part of the early thing. A lot of people just could not break their heroin habits, and a lot of them had to leave California altogether to break their drug habits. Sometimes if I do something bad and I look like I’m having fun, I then find it plays on my conscience for a long time.

Sean Penn

He’s great. Bad Boys is one of my favourite films of all time. I’ve got nothing against hitting a photographer if he’s being an asshole.

“My Michelle”

It’s a true story. Slash went out with this girl when he was 13. I met her and I went out with her for a long time. Her name’s Michelle, her mother OD’d on heroin and she runs around doing a lot of coke. I wrote this nice cosy little song about it not working out and I thought, “That's nice and cute, but that’s not how it is.” So, right off the top of my head, I wrote this cruncher of a song, the true story, and the rest of the band said, “You can’t use that, man, Michelle is going to freak out.” After a few weeks I just shelved it, but it kept bothering me. So I asked Michelle’s opinion, she read it and she loved it.

And I was looking for the interview where the quote about being hit by a cop and then waking up in the hospital with electrodes originally came from. I had seen it only in later articles and books

Great find!

Blackstar wrote:And I was looking for the interview where the quote about being hit by a cop and then waking up in the hospital with electrodes originally came from. I had seen it only in later articles and books

When did this happen? I am trying to figure out where I have written about it before (if I even have).

In Sounds Magazine, November 1989, it says: "Two weeks prior to the band's debut UK shows at London's Marquee club in June '87, Axl lay under electrodes in an LA hospital's emergency ward." But here it is implied Axl had suffered an overdose.

In Select Magazine from February 1991, there's a fact file where it says that in May 1987, Axl got in a fracas with LA police and had to be hospitalized at intensive care with electroshock treatment. So fits with the date from Sounds Magazine.

It must be the incident I have written about here: https://www.a-4-d.com/t4046p90-the-history-in-their-own-words#15911 under the sub-chapter DEPRESSION AND OVERDOSES.

So it seems like Axl did take too much drugs but also fought the police. The electrodes indicate cardiac arrest.

Yeah, it definitely was before the band went to England for the Marquee shows, because the English press already had the story before Axl talked about it there, like The Star on June 8, 1987:

L.A. police recently raided their sleazy [?] and Rose ended in intensive care for three days after a vicious battle.

https://www.a-4-d.com/t3123-1987-06-08-the-star-uk-more-beastly-than-the-beasties

I think it's also most likely the same incident Axl referred to in the San Francisco Examiner interview from August 1987 (it's likely that the interview was done a while before it was printed):

"I JUST got out of the hospital a little while ago, 'cause I partied too much one night, blacked out, got into it with the cops, got stun-gunned, was knocked out, went into a coma for a coupl’a days and woke up strapped to my bed, plugged into a catheter."

In a later source, Tom Zutaut mentions an incident where Axl had taken pills as a suicide attempt and he was in a kind of a "manic" state, then the cops arrived at the scene and had to hit him and use a taser.

So maybe the suicide attempt with pills (that inspired "Coma") and the altercation with the cops were part of the same incident.