1987.11.24 - MTV - A Night in the Jungle

Transcript video 1:

Interviewer: Thanks for joining us. It was approximately one year ago that an L.A. club band, hoping to gain recognition, released their first album, Appetite for Destruction. Now, some 50 weeks later the album sits on top of the Billboard charts, strengthened by the release of the new hit song, 'Sweet Child O' Mine'.

Do not mistake Guns N' Roses for a quiet, modest or glamorous group of musicians. These guys are anything but that. You've heard the rumors, a bunch of wild, crazy bad boys that would be trouble for an interview. Wild and crazy, yes, but as you will see, these hard-rocking musicians are a great interview.

On a recent concert tour, Guns N' Roses played before a sell-out crowd in Lakeland, Florida. That night they invited us and our cameras to join them for a night in the jungle.

[interviewer shows pass to get to the backstage area]

[footage of Steven practising drums ending it with "Time to play, boys!"]

Interviewer: Gentlemen! Final words before you go?

Steven: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Duff: Where's my vodka?

[Slash and Duff swearing to the interviewer]

Interviewer: We can not swear on this program but you can have final words.

Duff: Fuck.

Slash: Finality.

Interviewer: Bestiality, did you say?

[Slash offering a drink to the camera]

[unintelligble, band walks towards the stage]

Transcript video 2:

[band walks on stage]

[cut to backstage after show, the band is signing merchandise]

Voiceover [1988]: Guns N' Roses is composed of five musicians from such far-flung localities as Seattle, Indiana, Stoke-on-Trent England, and the heart of Hollywood. Guns N' Roses took the L.A. club circuit by storm three years ago with the blistering on and off-stage attack that use rock, rhythm-and-blues and punk as a jumping-off point. It was a giant leap. A leap that recently landed them at the top of the charts.

[insert of footage showing the rock charts with Appetite on top]

[cut to 1987 interview]

Axl: About six years ago I hitchhiked the country and on part of that trip I ended up kind of stranded in the Bronx, in the jungle in New York, and this old black man came up to me and my friend, we were backpacking, we have no money just enough for a cup of cokes [?] and we were sitting there on the side of the freeway, up on the bridge, and the black guy, "You know were you are? You're gonna die, you're in the jungle, baby!"

[cut to interview with Doug Goldstein who was the tour manager at the time]

Interviewer: Here with the manager of Guns N' Roses, [sound cut off when name is said?]. Is the concert tour wearing on the group, or, what's it like at this stage of the game? You've been onstage for a little while.

Doug: Yeah, it's not even the amount of time we've been onstage it's just the intensity, these guys are nuts. I mean, they keep me hopping, all the time. I'm getting about two hours sleep a-night.

Interviewer: Is it really true - you can hear the fans scream in the background - is these guys as hard-rocking and hard-playing as everybody says they are? Straight-forward?

Doug: Completely straight-forward. A lot of people ask me, "What are they like off-stage?" and there's nothing different! I mean, they are the craziest guys I ever worked for.

Interviewer: So they go just as hard as they play on the stage, in front, after the stage, after the show, in the morning?

Doug: All time.

Interviewer: They keep you busy?

Doug: Real busy. I have to make sure that I always have enough alcohol. It doesn't matter if it's 8 am or when.

[cut to interview with band backstage]

Interviewer: Guns N' Roses will be the first one to tell you they did it their way and they continue to do it their way with their [holding up condoms?] apricot selection, too

Izzy: Dried [?] apricots.

Interviewer: Anyhow, hitchhiking from L.A. to Seattle they wanted to make it big but their car broke down.

Izzy: We barely made it to Seattle.

Slash: So we just carried our guitars until the roadies [unintelligible]

Interviewer: They ended up back in L.A., the toughest city in the world to make it. Guns N' Roses pounded out their own special sound until the hands of different record companies came pounding on their door...

[Izzy imitates masturbating as the interviewer says "pounding"]

Slash: [?]

Interviewer: ...who ended up there with Geffen Records. Guns N' Roses, tell us how you chose…

Izzy: Tell you what?

Interviewer: ...how you chose Geffen over everybody else?

Slash: Because everybody else [interrupted]

Izzy: They was the coolest [interrupted]

Interviewer: Slash, they told us you were eating rough means but Geffen brought you lobster and steak and everything [interrupted]

Izzy: Nah!

Slash: Geffen bought us hamburgers, everybody else bought us lobsters!

Interviewer: Okay now, seriously [interrupted]

Axl: Everybody buy us drinks and dinners and everything else. It happened because we went with a guy named Tom Zutaut, who also signed Motley Crue, Tesla, Dokken... just worked with a lot of people, and basically gave us all the money we wanted and all the freedom to do exactly what we wanted, and also to help us do what we wanted. Someone who could also lend a hand. With a lot of these other labels we could get the money, we could get the freedom, but then they didn't know how to do it, you know. And us being a new band, you don't want to go into a record company and have tell them how to do everything when you don't have a clue.

[cut]

Interviewer: A sticker warning is on this album. Do you guys feel that at any time you need to tone down the lyrics or [interrupted]

Everybody: No.

Interviewer: ...do anything to take this off? Does it bother you that the sticker is on the album?

Axl: No. The sticker, the sticker are pointless. The sticker means nothing either way. And if I don't say the word 'fuck', or whatever, on the next record that is just because it wasn't put in that song. You know, it's nothing to do with… we don't write songs based on trying to get sales or anything else, we just write songs on how we feel and how we're writing that particular song.

Izzy: [unintelligible] they have a lot of cuss words, you know, it's street language

Axl: We're not going to change it because, "Oh, you can't say that."

Interviewer: Slash, you wanted to say something in here?

Duff: On the other side of the coin, we don't write words to put 'fuck' in it, it's just that they are real-life stories and when you talk to somebody on the street, when you talk to somebody anywhere, swear words are going to come into it. Yeah, you know, and so you tell the story and you're going to say, "Yeah, well, I was down there and this FUCKING thing", and this and that.

Interviewer: So whatever just comes natural to you guys?

Duff: Yeah, when you tell a story to anybody, which our songs are, really, you're going to add in... anybody in the world, I don't care who it is, adds in cuss words.

Izzy: The bottom line is, censorship is out the window, we don't give a shit, a fuck... we could care less.

Slash: It doesn't matter if we sit here on a couch for an hour and talk to you and you don't fucking print any of it. I mean, it does matter because our careers are still important, but at the same time the band and what we believe in is more important.

Transcript video 3:

Interviewer: 'It's So Easy'. Now, we need to know what parts of this is true. We won't let the girls come in [?] over there [interrupted]

Axl, pointing to interviewer's notes [?]: No, that's not true.

Interviewer: Okay, then we won't say [interrupted]

Axl: That's not true. That was found after the song was written.

Interviewer: Okay. After the song was written Axl, It's So Easy, found a Hustler magazine with an ad that said, "It's So Easy".

Interviewer: Duff.

Duff: What?

Interviewer: West Arkeen.

[the band starts cheering]

Duff: He's my pal. West if my pal.

Interviewer: Can you tell us what inspired you guys to write this song?

Duff: Well, me and West had a special time in our lives when we were really inspired by tequila and he was teaching me a different kind of tuning of the guitars and we were sitting around, and at this point in time it was, like, we had just got signed, and, ah, before we got signed, people, and girls, and this and that, wouldn't give you the time of day. All of a sudden we got signed...

Interviewer: By a major label.

Duff: Right. So girls were bringing over, you know, we were going to get booze, and they'd fuck you and suck your dick, you know, and all this and that, and it was ridiculous.

[cut]

Axl: Uhm, this guy named Scott, he works in a record store up in Detroit and he sells record, and he's got a Guns N' Roses tattoo and stuff and comes to a lot of our shows. And the show in Atlanta, at the Omni, they make the people… the people can't get in the aisles, people can't come to the front of the stage, it's a big law there. The security will get fined, like, $ 25,000 if people are in the aisles or anything. But, some of the security doesn't seem to really, like, care about that, they like the job so they can push around kids. At the Friday night show there was this one guy particularly hassling the kids. And the kids don't know. They come running to the front of the stage, they just think it is a concert. And this guy was being overly rough and I jumped off the stage into the pit, leaned over the barricades and grabbed him.

[cut to live footage from the Lakeland show earlier in the evening]

Axl: Two nights ago we did a show in Atlanta. At about the second song, I found myself on the way to jail. I won’t go into a lot of detail on that, but, basically, that was a case of people getting pushed around to sit in the back, people getting hurt to sit in the back; and people abusing their authority and guys going “Look, I got the lead singer!”. I’m gonna dedicate this to the “Atlanta’s finest” and to the guys that bailed me out. This is a song called “Out Ta Get Me”!

[cut back to interview where Slash takes the microphone]

Slash: You know, sometimes I like a big, long mic.

[cut with footage of Slash on stage]

Slash: My grandmother used to come up to me, right, when I was a little kid, right? And it would take her so far before... and all of a sudden it will be like, "You!" you know, "You blah blah blah! You fucking blah blah blah! Fuck! Fuck! Blah blah," and you'd be like, "Oh, my grandmother is pissed." And she carried a lot of weight around in those days, and she still does [interrupted]

Interviewer: Grandma is heavy here and she still does carry her weight.

Slash: No, but, no, she is a sweet lady, but, you know, you know, she is one of the sweetest ladies I know, but if you piss her off, you piss her off and she goes on, she goes on a...how's it called? A verbal splectrum?

[the band tries to help Slash find the word]

Slash: ...plethora of curse words.

Interviewer: And you thought writing songs was easy.

[cut to Slash putting a condom on a Heineken bottle]

Slash: You know, you know, but you know what I just realized? Is that it will never work. It just doesn't work.

Interviewer: This won't work.

Slash: This does not work. Not that I am saying I am built like a Heineken bottle.

[laughter]

Slash: But it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And the whole AIDS thing, you know, it's not going to do anything. It just fucking sucks.

[Slash throws bottle]

Slash: I'm on a search, I am on a search for the most normal, the most normal, respectable girl with the most dirtiest mind. Classic, you know, fucking nymphomaniac type.

[cut]

Interviewer: Slash, how's everything going so far with this tour?

Slash: Blaauahahahha!

[cut]

Axl: The next record will be a lot of different material on it and I am sure that some people that like the EP or this record, they'll go, "Oh they've changed, they sold out," but they don't know when those songs were written. They  could have been, you know... a lot of them were written before this album was put out. So there will be different changes. Never anything made just to try to get sales. If we can't make it by doing what we want then, you know, money won't...so you say you make a record that sells 7 million copies but you compromise the whole time, I wouldn't be very proud sitting in my car hearing that cassette. I wouldn't be very proud of that. I want the self-satisfaction more than I want the success. That's success to me. I think we made a successful record even if it could have sold 2 copies. I made the record I wanted to make.

Interviewer: Slash?

Slash: We could turn around tomorrow, alright, and cover a Barry Manilow song, because we felt like doing it regardless of what anybody thought about it. And that's our whole trip. And that's the only reason, you know, we're doing whatever we're doing is because, like whatever the fuck... We do whatever we want to do, we say whatever we want to say, we look however we wanna look, nd no one can say jack doodelee-squat to us about it. Just to be safe on the safe side of it, about cursing, saying 'fuck' and shit. Uhm, and that's what we do and if anybody wants to say anything about it, our whole attitude is completely fucking...

Transcript video 4:

Doug Goldstein: And I got a call from a business manager, and he said, "What do you know about Guns N' Roses, man?" Having not heard about the band at that point, I said, "I'd rather sniff the end of a rose, if I had the chance".

[cut]

Interviewer: "Welcome to the Jungle, we got fun and games, we got everything you want, we know the names."

Izzy: Honey!

Interviewer: "Honey"

Slash: We like to bring natural fluids into it.

[cut]

Doug Goldstein: I have just heard, over the years, any and all, any and all excuses for things to be done to be given a  backstage pass. I've actually seen it, without going into details.

Interviewer, pointing to the head of a mannequin. Does this female look familiar?

Doug Goldstein: Barely.

Interviewer: By the way, she did get a [?] backstage pass.

[laughter]

[cut]

Slash, holding round his girlfriend: She takes really good care of me. She brings me books and stuff to read. And she takes really good care of us, and we get, you know, the whole thing just... [pointing to someone] I don't know who those two guys are.

[cut]

Doug Goldstein: I get calls from calls from Aerosmith's management and they told me the guys love the band. I get calls from, before we were on this, from the Motley band themselves, they would call me and say, "I just love these guys and I have to talk to Slash."

[cut, scene with interviewer making some joke about giving BJs for backstage passes, cut]

Interviewer: How did the show go?

Steven: Fucking  righteous, man! It kicked ass. I had a good time. Highly satanic. In a big way.

[cut]

Doug Goldstein, opening a fridge tub: I can't believe it. I asked for a case of beer for each of these guys and somehow it didn't cut it [?]. We have Jack Daniels, [?] I need to take some beer and [?] [opening the door and yelling] Hey1 Can I get some beer in here, please!?

[cut]

Axl: I wouldn't have liked [?] Graphic, I would have said exactly what it says and everything on a big list, "This album contains the word 'fuck' at least 27 times.

[laughter]

[cut]

Slash, holding a bottle: I'll drink as much of this as I can, okay?

[cut]

Doug Goldstein: We try and keep them in half-way decent hotels s long as they don't rip everything off.

[cut to scene where Doug is doing something and asking for more of something]

So, if I get this right, the video itself was sent on MTV around June/July 1988 (50 weeks after the release of Appetite), but the interview itself is from November 24, 1987 when the band played at Lakeland, Florida. Does this make sense?

It could simply be that they reused an old interview that they had aired before in a program they made to coincide with Appetite reaching no.1 on the Billboard chart.