1988.07-08.DD - Faces Rocks - The Good, The Bad and the Gnarly (Slash)

Transcript:

The good, the bad and the gnarly
BY BRIAN BRANDES BRINKERHOFF

GUNS N' ROSES

Somehow and somewhere in the concrete jungle that passes for the city of Los Angeles, five desperados from points that cover the compass and armed with the diverse musical influences to match, formed a band. Not just an ordinary band, but one that's refused to follow the rules, spawned a collection of copycats, and seen their Top 20 debut album cover art banned.

Certainly not a bad way to start, but when you add the fact that said Top 20 LP (their Geffen Records release Appetite For Destruction) has gone gold, it's obvious that Guns N' Roses aren't your ordinary collection of streetwise musicians. Which may explain why, despite the success of the record and the fact that Guns have been doing sell-out business on the road as both a headliner and a support act, these last few months have not been a bed of roses for the band.

They've had to weather severe internal strife: At one point it appeared certain that vocalist W. Axl Rose would leave the band ... drummer Steven Adler missed a stretch of live dates after proving that a fist, and a wall can lead to a hand injury ... Guns were the target of allegations of involvement in the Nikki Sixx overdose affair that led to Motley Crue's cancelling a European tour ... and that's just touching the tip of the iceberg!

"Yeah, I guess the whole attitude and spirit of the band could be described as 'F*** it,' but not in a negative sense," explains guitarist Slash, from his current residence that's keeping him out of the Hollywood trouble he seems to attract at times. "It's more like 'F*** it, we're going to do what we're going to do and that's play.'

"It all comes from that time when it's poverty, and you're not eating or showering or anything and you've got nothing. It's doing what you have to do to survive and not letting anything get in the way."

"Survive" isn't exactly what Guns has done — prosper is more like it. What's the feeling like to have created such a buzz around town that the record labels came to you instead of vice versa? Or to have risen from the ranks of the unsigned to release a successful indie EP, and then grab the major deal without having to compromise?

"Reaching this certain level of success is gratifying because we had to kick and scratch and claw to get here," says Slash. "We went through a lot of sh*t the last couple of years to be here and get this far. It took us a few years to get accepted in L.A, I mean I can remember going to clubs to hang out and people just staring at me trying to figure out what the story was and never having anybody talk to me.

"We just kept playing and started making as much noise as we could. After the word started getting out around town, the labels would come to talk and we'd make them take us out to dinner so we could eat and drink. It was pretty funny dealing with the idiots that some of the labels have. We did get a lot of food from some of them though.

"The funny thing about the Live Like a @$*# Suicide record," he continues, "is that we released that after we had signed to Geffen. It was kind of a way to fill the gap between getting signed and finally releasing the record. So it wasn't exactly your usual indie release."

"Usual" is certainly a word that fits in neither the Guns vocabulary nor descriptions of the band. Whatever it Is about these five you're looking to analyze, don't count on it fitting into a nice, neat box. After all, this is a group of players that come from England (Slash), Indiana (Axl and guitarist Izzy), Seattle (bassist Duff McKagan), and Ohio (Adler), as well as a hundred other places along the way. But somehow it all came together in the melting pot of LA.

"Everybody had been through a lot of bands before this," describes Slash. "I know when I first started playing, I didn't know what I wanted, other than to play. But you run into people, the chemistry develops, the band evolves and things happen hopefully."

While things have happened rather quickly for Slash and his mates, one thing they have been able to avoid is getting caught up in the vast jungle of record company politics that can create problems for such a band. Certainly the album cover issue was a headache,
but otherwise, it's been rather smooth traversing, notes Slash.

"I guess the thing that has surprised me most about the industry is that it's easier to see what's happening with everything than I ever imagined It would be. I mean, I thought all the business aspects and that kind of stuff would be shrouded in secrecy and they're not. We know everything firsthand, and if we don't understand something, we have it explained. We haven't had a lot of executive bullsh*t or overshadowing by them so far.

"I'll tell you a story that I haven't told anyone else. My mom and dad know David Geffen from years ago in England because my dad used to work for him. A few weeks back my mom called Geffen up and it had been about 10 years since they had seen each other or talked. She's telling him that I'm playing guitar, just had my first gold record and that the tours are going well and all of that.

"So Geffen asks what band and label I'm with and she says 'He's on your label.' He only knows me by my real name, and he can't think of who I could be with. When she tells him that I'm 'Slash of Guns N' Roses' he just can't believe it because he thinks I'm some kind of a wild man!"

Guns have been busy cutting a swath of destruction across the world, what with tours on their own and with artists such as Alice Cooper and Motley Crue. Current plans call for dates with Iron Maiden. a tour of Japan, and another European jaunt, this time with Metallica. (Note: At presstlme this Guns N' Roses tour info was tentative.)

"The dates with the Crue have been the coolest of the tours we've done," says Slash. "Just being part of this huge production and walking around and hanging out backstage and seeing what goes into something like their stage show was pretty incredible. Going to Europe and playing there was pretty nice too."

As an offshoot of the Cooper tour. Slash, Izzy, and Axl combined with the shock-rock master himself to record the new studio version of that old Alice chestnut "Under My Wheels" heard on the soundtrack to the movie The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II: The Metal Years.

"It came out really cool," Slash enthuses. "The song's been updated but It's still a classic and Axl and Alice sound great. Me and Kane (Roberts. Alice's guitarist) and Izzy did some neat guitar work. It's definitely a pretty hot version of one of my all-time favorite songs."

While musical fads come and go monthly, don't count on Guns N' Roses to follow suit.

"We're a real down to earth band. There are people that still try and label us as a glam band or whatever, but I don't give a sh*t about it anymore. I don't think you can really hate us because the band is real and honest. Regardless of whether people like us or not, the band is still going to go out and do this."■