2024.04.03 - X5 Podcast - Interview with Tom Zutaut

Talk about GN'R starts around 19 minute mark.

Excerpts from Ultimate Guitar:
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A&R exec Tom Zutaut recalled the first time he saw Axl Rose perform live, describing the moment he decided to sign Guns N' Roses.

Having seen the potential in Mötley Crüe and helped Nikki Sixx & Co. along their path to greatness, Tom Zutaut would sniff out another history-defining Los Angeles band only a few years later — Guns N' Roses. The A&R exec's first contact with the band happened on the streets of LA, where a particularly striking poster caught his eye.

"I'm driving down Sunset Strip and I see a poster at Fairfax and Sunset Boulevard. It's these two pistols with the roses, something Slash drew. Slash is an amazing artist and cartoonist... I stopped the Jeep, ripped that sign off the pole, and when I got to my office at Geffen, I gave it to my assistant. I said, 'Find out where and when this band is playing, I gotta go see 'em. I just got a feeling about it.' At that point, I'd already signed Mötley and Dokken, and I had brought Metallica to Elektra", Zutaut said during a recent interview on the X5 Podcast (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar).

As it turned out, GN'R were playing at The Roxy Theatre, but the future rock 'n' roll greats had traded their headlining spot with the opener Shark Island and had already left the stage. However, Zutaut recalls somebody telling them that Axl Rose was planning to go out with the other band again, so he stayed and listened.

"So, Axl comes out to do this song, and he slithers on the stage like a snake, and I'm watching him, even though I think it was a cover song; it wasn't anything I recognized."

During that one performance, Zutaut says that Axl Rose checked out all the boxes that make a given frontman truly great, as previously explained to him by the former Doors manager Danny Sugerman on the example of Jim Morrison:

"He described to me what Jim Morrison was. And then, he said to me, challenged me, 'If you see anybody that has this animal magnetism, a powerful thing when they're on stage, and they slither like a snake...' there's a whole bunch of other criteria. Well, in that one cover song that Axl Rose did with Shark Island, I checked all the criteria Danny Sugarman told me, and I thought, 'Oh, my God, this is the real deal. This is going to be the biggest rock star singer in the world.'"

However, Zutaut was yet to see the rest of the band. When he did so at The Troubadour about a week later, he was similarly impressed:

"I said to Axl, 'I'm going to come to that show. I'm going to come early and hang out with you guys before the show. I'm only gonna stay for a couple of songs', because I already knew what I needed to know. If his band sucked, I'd put a band together around him."

"So, I go to The Troubadour, and they hit 'Welcome to the Jungle', 'Night Train', and maybe half of 'Paradise City'. It was the loudest thing I'd ever been to in my life... It was ear-splitting loud. I learned that Slash wrote this song, Axl wrote this, Duff [McKagan] wrote that one, Izzy [Stradlin] wrote that... I'm like, 'Damn, 'This is like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young'..."

"I'm like, 'I know everything I need to know. I'm gonna sign this band.'"

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/i_thought_this_is_going_to_be_the_biggest_rock_star_singer_in_the_world_aampr_exec_who_discovered_gnr_recalls_first_time_he_saw_axl_rose_sing.html

Another episode of the same podcast with Tom Zutaut as a guest was released on April 24. I don't know if there are any GN'R mentions in it:

Blackstar wrote:Another episode of the same podcast with Tom Zutaut as a guest was released on April 24. I don't know if there are any GN'R mentions in it:

Well, he answered a question about the locker leaks, so I guess I'll post the second episode separately.