1992.09.09 - MTV - Interview with Axl

Transcript:

TRANSCRIPTION:
----------------------

Part 1

Tabitha Soren: We talked to Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses recently, the terminally tardy guy. If fans think that they are the only ones that Axl keeps waiting, they should know that I waited till 4:00 in the morning for an interview with Axl last weekend in Houston, and we talked about Guns N’ Roses being the recipients of the video Vanguard Award. Here’s more.

Voice-over: Guns N’ Roses earned the video Vanguard Award by elevating the art of music video to dramatic heights, especially through the elaborate November Rain and Don’t Cry flicks. Those videos are two parts of a continuing saga that the band plans to expand into a feature-length film.

Axl: It was a fictional story that my friend Del wrote based off – you know, I inspired him to write this story, because we were a rock band and we were working on our first album - it wasn’t even out yet - and I was pretty much out of control and we were all into the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. And he wrote this story about this guy who just becomes bigger than life, and the troubles he has in his relationship and keeping that together; basically about this couple in this relationship, and trying to deal with this lifestyle, and what happens to them. And so, little by little, we think about it, figure out how the next part of the story and stuff – we talk about it and he’ll write a little bit more. And all of a sudden it was kind of like, we sold 8 million records, and all of a sudden I was becoming what he had written about. He called me really upset one day, going “I wrote my friend’s death.” It was like, we’re in that one video where I find my gravestone and stuff like that, and that really freaked him out and he’ll write two other stories. So it’s kind of like a fictional story which had autobiographical and based off things that happened in real life. And now it’s like, with Stephanie it’s a real trip because some things are based off my previous relationship, and some things are fictional, but I’m in relationship with her.

Voice-over: Axl’s girlfriend, model Stephanie Seymour, co-stars in Don’t Cry and November Rain. In both music videos Stephanie takes on roles partially inspired by Axl’s ex-wife, Erin Everly, one of the women in the Sweet Child O’ Mine clip.

Axl: It’s really strange, you know. It’s a bit difficult for her, but she gets into a part and understands what we’re doing. But sometimes it’s very surreal, like when we got married it was – I mean, Slash looked at me and said, “Dude, I just watched you get married 9 times.”

Voice-over: Surreal is one thing, but for some viewers the videos for Don’t Cry and November Rain are just plain confusing. And the fans aren’t the only people wondering what the videos are about.

Gilby: I have no idea what it means at all. I mean, just the obvious of what anybody that watches it gets, but, you know, when you’re doing it –

Tabitha Soren: You’re supposed to be on the inside.

Gilby: I know! I was on the inside and I’m still confused. I’m waiting for the movie to come out.

Slash: Both those videos, even if you don’t understand them or you can’t make any sense of them, they’re very compelling to watch, because you wanna try and figure it out, you know? I mean, I catch myself, like, flipping through channels and I hit the (?) and I see one of our songs, I’ll stop for a minute, you know, and look at it, and it means something new to me every time I see it.

Axl: I’m really proud of Don’t Cry and November Rain. I really like the writing of the story and putting all the scenes together. And “Why did she die?” “How did she die?” “What happened?” And it’s like, we’ll tell you later (chuckles).

Part 2

Tabitha Soren: Thanks John. I’m actually back by Axl Rose’s dressing room. He has been on tour with Guns N’ Roses for the past year and they’ve gotten in all sorts of trouble. Axl is getting very well known for his antics, and I talked to him in Houston, and here’s part two of our interview.

Voice-over: Guns N’ Roses has spent the past 15 months on tour playing to sellout crowds and being involved in more than their fair share of controversy. For starters, the band had a little trouble with punctuality, sometimes showing up two hours late for a concert. Axl says it took him a while to get back into the grind of touring.

Axl: That was a whole change of life. You know, realizing, “Okay, now we’re out on tour;” I haven’t toured, I’ve been sitting on my ass at home or whatever. And then I’ve been out, you know, running around and rocking out; and had to, basically, change my whole life in order to be able to keep doing this. And so, you do a show and then you’d be shot, you know, where you’d be, kind of like, shot for three weeks. But no, you’ve got a show tomorrow. So then it’d take, like, all these hours of preparation, where now it doesn’t take me as long to be ready for a show.  

Voice-over: During the course of the tour Axl has been involved in heavy-duty psychotherapy in an attempt to deal with the sexual abuse he suffered as a child, among other problems.

Axl: Last year I was doing extensive emotional work on myself, so when I go out to do a show, if something – I was, you know, uncovering something in my unconscious mind or whatever, and kind of experiencing it, it’d be really hard to go out and do the show, where that took, like, a year to get things under control. I’d come off stage, and either get on the phone or have the person fly out personally into four or five hours right after stage. You know, where someone goes, like, once a week to work out their problems for half hour or an hour, I was doing four-five hours a day; like, every day.

Tabitha Soren: Is it helping?

Axl: You were at the show tonight. It seems to be fine. I’m in a good mood now (chuckles).

Tabitha Soren: Do you feel like your fans are sort of understanding you better or take your problem seriously?

Axl: I think some people understand it, but a lot of people, you know, they want what they want, even if they understand. And it’s like, if there’s a problem on stage and you have to stop the show, they don’t really care at that point. They’re still upset (?), they came to see something and... You know, there was technical difficulties in Montreal and we had to leave, and the crowd was really upset about that and they didn’t really, like, take the time to think about what went on for us. Now, that’s kind of hard to take sometimes. I don’t feel responsible for that.

Voice-over: The ensuing riot in Montreal started after Axl walked off stage and stopped the concert because of a problem with their PA system. Axl says they’ve been having technical problems the whole tour and it was damaging his voice.

Axl: So, basically, I was happening to, like, sing over 50 kilowatts of sound or something. I didn’t do major damage to my vocal cords, but I did enough that if I sang anymore under those conditions, I wouldn’t be singing. In order to hear myself, to see if I’m on key and tell how loud or how hard I need to push to sing a song properly, I have to try to sing all over the PA, which was impossible.

Voice-over: After the riot in Montreal, the crew was able to fix the PA problem, but troubles aside, Axl feels like Guns N’ Roses pulled off a major feat, but putting together a stadium tour with their old friends Metallica.

Axl: One of the big things I learned was that everybody had wanted this tour so bad and worked so hard to make it – to be able to do this tour. You know, Metallica through their touring and through our touring, to be able to do a stadium tour together, that we thought that when we got here it would just be “perfect!”, that it would be so cool. Well, it kind of turned out to be that, “Wait a minute, this is so cool, that why shouldn’t it be the hardest thing we’ve ever done?”

More clips from this interview can be found in this MTV program:
https://www.a-4-d.com/t3469-1992-09-dd-mtv-gn-r-metallica-live-and-loud