2024.08.15 - Loudwire - Ex-Guns N’ Roses Manager Vicky Hamilton Auctioning ’90s Painting of Axl Rose: Interview

Ex-Guns N’ Roses Manager Vicky Hamilton Auctioning ’90s Painting of Axl Rose – Interview

By Lauryn Schaffner

Vicky Hamilton, Guns N' Roses' first-ever manager who helped jump-start their career, is auctioning a painting she did of Axl Rose in 1993 that helped bring her closure about the end of her relationship with the band.

Hamilton met Rose and Izzy Stradlin before they were in Guns N' Roses and were playing in Hollywood Rose. She was working as an agent at Silver Lining Entertainment at the time, and the pair came in with a demo tape.

"They brought me a cassette of some of the tracks from Appetite and I was blown away," she told us.

The duo eventually formed Guns N' Roses with some other musicians, but the finalized lineup featured Duff McKagan, Steven Adler and Slash, in addition to the two of them. It wasn't long before all five musicians — with the exception of McKagan — were living with Hamilton in her apartment.

Hamilton helped book Guns' shows and eventually landed them a deal with Geffen Records in 1986.

"They got the deal with Geffen, [and] Tom Zutaut felt like they needed a bigger manager, so to speak," she recalled. "I got evicted out of my apartment and they got the record deal and moved on. But I ended up doing A&R for Geffen, so we both went to different places."

She hasn't been in the same room as Rose since 1991.

"He acted like he didn't know me or he didn't see me," she admitted of the last time she saw him out and about. "I'm sure he's grown up a lot. We all have, so that's my hope for him."

As a way of bringing herself closure about the demise of her relationship with the band, Hamilton painted a portrait of Rose in '93 called Axl's Glow. Over three decades later, she's ready to let the animosity go, so she's auctioning the painting in hopes that a fan will appreciate it properly.

In addition to the painting, Hamilton will also include a letter detailing that time in her life, as well as an autographed copy of her 2016 autobiography Appetite for Dysfunction: A Cautionary Tale about her life as a manager of not only Guns N' Roses, but Motley Crue, Poison, Faster Pussycat and some other hair bands in the '80s.

Bids can be submitted through Appetite for Distortion at TheAFDShow@gmail.com.

Bidding ends Aug. 26.

See photos of the painting below and keep reading to see our full interview with Hamilton, where you'll learn about a TV show that's in the works, her label Dark Spark Music and more.

INTERVIEW WITH VICKY HAMILTON

Have you always been a painter?

Actually, I was in painting before I was in music. I went to art school in Indiana and I did this landscape in reds. And the teacher was like, "Oh, it's not very realistic." And I was like, "Well it might be realistic if you were on Mars." And I realized that they don't have much creativity or vision in Indiana.

So that was part of my process into moving to L.A. But yeah, at first I wanted to be a painter, so I went to art school.

How did you transition to band management from there?

I managed one of my boyfriend's bands. It kind of happened by accident. He cheated on me and I threw all his clothes out on the front yard and then I moved to L.A. He actually lives in L.A. now and we're like the best of friends.

He's married and stuff. He worked the grill at my last barbecue and he was going around telling everyone he was "Chapter Four," so I find that really funny.

Well, look at what it turned into — your career.

Yeah, absolutely. I found a couple other bands while I was in Indiana — one from Toledo, Ohio called Ebenezer and one from Fort Wayne, where I was from, called Destin. And I made this plan to move to L.A. and shop those bands. The singer of Destin's uncle was Johnny Bench, the baseball player, so he put up money for us to move to L.A. and that's kind of how it all happened.

Both the bands went back, pretty much. The guitar player and singer of Destin stayed for a while, but it just didn't pan out. And then I met Motley Crue and the rest has been history since then.

What was your first impression of Axl and the rest of Guns N' Roses when you first met them?

Well, I was an agent at the time Axl and Izzy came into my office at Silver Lining Entertainment. They brought me a cassette of some of the tracks from Appetite and I was blown away. They were still Hollywood Rose then, it wasn't Guns N' Roses yet.

I put them on a show, sight unseen, at the Music Machine with Black Sheep — which was the band that Slash was currently in — and Stryper, who I was also booking.

I introduced Slash to Axl, they shook hands. It was kind of like this slow-mo moment. I mean, later I found out that Slash had jammed with him somewhere else, so I didn't actually introduce them for the first time. But hey, I re-introduced them and the rest was kind of history.

There were apparently some really wild times, especially when they were living with you. But do you have any stories that might support the idea that Axl is misunderstood?

He doesn't like it when I say this, but it's the absolute truth, which is — he has two very distinctive personalities. One is a very sweet young man and the other is kind of devil dog from Hell. It depends on what you're getting that day.

But I don't think he could write "November Rain" if he didn't have a very sensitive side to him and that was sort of the side that I was attracted to. The first time I heard "November Rain," they were doing a photoshoot for Music Connection Magazine and he was playing it at the piano while we were waiting for the photographer.

I was like, "Wow I never knew you played piano like that." And he pulled down his glasses and goes, "Vicky, there's a lot you don't know about me." And I was like, "Okay, well apparently so."

I think all of us have different sides and personalities as far as how we are in the world and what we do as survival mechanisms, and for all of them back then because I managed them when they were baby bands.

When I think of them, I think of them as like my children, sort of. Because of all the bands, with the exception of June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash who I worked with, were baby bands when I worked with them. So I don't see Slash [as a] monster guitar player, I see him as a young boy that I pulled out of the gutter at The Cathouse and things like that.

It's not how the world views them now, let's just say, and there's a piece of me that will always think of them like that because that's how I knew them. I get that they're iconic now, but they weren't then.

I totally understand that perspective. I had the chance to interview Slash two years ago and it's hard not to have him on a pedestal. But he was so down to Earth, and once you have a conversation with somebody of that status you remember that they're just human like you are.

Slash is total Hollywood royalty. I got to know his mother pretty well and she was amazing, Ola Hudson. She made clothes for David Bowie and that sort of thing. When the shit hit the fan between me and the band, she called me and apologized for the whole band. [She said] "I'm so sorry that this happened." Incredible woman.

But Slash grew up in the heart of Hollywood and he really knows how to navigate those waters, I guess is what I want to say, more so than all the rest. He's kind of the only one I have any real relationship with now. He knows how to keep things going and not burn bridges and that sort of thing.

Did you have a falling out with the band, or did you just stop working with them professionally?

That's a hard question to answer. I mean, they were living with me, all except for Duff, who was living with his girlfriend. And they got the deal with Geffen, Tom Zutaut felt like they needed a bigger manager, so to speak.

I got evicted out of my apartment, and they got the record deal and moved on. But I ended up doing A&R for Geffen, so we both went to different places. I had tried to possibly hang onto the band as a manager and I took them to meet with Doc McGhee and Doug Thaler.

Doug Thaler pulled me outside and he's like, "Vicky, we love you. We love this band, but we have Motley Crue here," meaning they didn't want another drug-using band. And who can blame them? Motley Crue definitely put those two managers through a lot.

At that point, I just kind of gave up the hope of that and I was like having an A&R job and a steady paycheck and an expense account sounded like a really good idea. But in the moment that everything happened, it was very heart-shattering. I basically lost my apartment, I hadn't gotten the job at Geffen yet, I was still doing the paperwork and stuff to move on.

So there was this period of, Okay, what does it all mean? And for the next 30 years, basically, I was in my head going, Why, why why? Why did this happen like this? I think once I started writing the book, I kind of got a sense of why that happened, so that I would write this book.

And this is the first time I'm really saying this out loud — I've done a deal with a production company, and it's going to get made into a TV series.

[Screams]

[Laughs] They're hiring an insanely creative writer that has written many hit TV shows. I wish I could tell you, but the deal is not done yet, so I don't want to jinx it. But I'm very excited about this. And in my mind, this is why this has happened.

But for me, the painting was something that I did in '93 and at that point in time, Geffen had not picked up my auction. I mean, little did I know that David Geffen was going to sell the company, it went to MCA and all that. I didn't know any of that, [so] I took it personally like I did everything back in those days. It was all personal.

They paid me severance for a year. So in that year, I did a lot of painting, and that painting of Axl was one of the paintings that I did. I also did one called The Boys Club of all the Geffen executives and stuff.

But I was still trying to sort of work out what actually happened because, in retrospect, you're like, Okay, what really happened here? In the painting, I had put a whirling rainbow. I'm part Native American and that's kind of about the bringing of peace and bringing peace back to the situation and trying to fix things.

I called it Axl's Glow, I based it off of a Robert John photograph. It was a very sad time. I was trying to figure out what had actually happened and why it went down like that.

And having just come off a similar situation with Motley Crue and Poison, it was like, I think a little of it had to do with that I was a woman in the business and there's just not a lot you can do to rectify that. I mean, I hopefully have kicked the ceiling down for you and others.

But at the time, I couldn't really see the forest for the trees. That was why I did this painting. Consequently now, I'm trying to let all of those hurts go, so that's why I decided, Okay, let's auction it. Somebody will appreciate it and hang it. It's in my closet.

Is there a reason that it's just of Axl and not the rest of the band?

No, not really. I mean, definitely he was the explosive one. When he went into that mode, it was like everybody — including the band — would just get out of his way.

There was a morning where Steven Adler and I were cleaning up the living room and pitching beer cans into cash bags. And Axl was asleep on the couch and he's like, "Stop it. Stop it. stop it." And it happened to be the day of the Troubadour show.

After the third "Stop it," he got up and lifted this heavy coffee table and slung it at Steven. I have it in my living room and I don't know how anybody lifts that and throws it. It's like one of the few things I kept from that era.

He started beating Steven's ass. It was like, "What? You're going to kill your drummer on the day of the show?" I guess he needed his beauty sleep, what can I say?

I guess I never got closure in that relationship, so I had to give closure to myself. Does that make sense?

Yes.

II did everything I could possibly do and he didn't want to talk to me. And that's fine, you know? I can let that go now. I'm still managing bands, I have a band called Motherwind that's playing Rock Rally. They're opening for Faster Pussycat, who I used to manage.

I called Taime [Downe] yesterday and I was like, "Please come to see the show." And he goes, "Oh, I absolutely will." So, a lot of people, I still have really good relationships with. Like Slash, I can call. I try not to call them because people call me all the time to do things for Guns N' Roses. And it's like my least favorite thing to do is ask them for favors.

But if it has a kid involved, I'll do it. When they were playing in Europe, my A&R guy in Paris' nephew, who idolizes Slash, wanted to meet him. So I called Slash and Slash's family was going to that show. He was like, "I don't know how I can do it, but I'll put him on the list and we'll see."

The kid got a picture with Slash and they put it in his hallway at his high school. These are the things that make dreams come true. I will try and do stuff like that. But when my friends want to go to the show, I'm like, "Buy a ticket." Especially when they play L.A. — don't ask me for anything because I am not asking.

That's understandable. Have you spoken to Axl at all?

No. Not since, I'm going to say, 1991. I ran into him at the Hamburger Hamlet and I was with Tom Zutaut and another act that I was repping at the time. And he acted like he didn't know me or he didn't see me. I've not even been in the same room with him.

I'm sure he's grown up a lot. We all have, so that's my hope for him.

Have you seen any of the reunion shows?

I have, yes. I went to Madison Square Garden and... I saw it twice, [the other time was in] Las Vegas. I did a book signing in Las Vegas and it happened to be when they were playing, so we went.

Great show — not the same band that I managed. I mean, the band that I managed was like this crazy, wild, raw energy. That reunion show was professionally thought out — all of the bells and whistles. Great show, but not the intensity of what I fell in love with.

There are some videotapes, they're really not very good quality, from the Music Machine, that show. That was what I was managing. And they play with Johnny Thunders at Fender's Ballroom, just wild stuff.

At the Whisky a Go Go, Axl used to wear this chain that had all these charms and things on it. And I saw him go [rips chain off] and all the charms went out and the audience was catching them. It was just this beautiful moment in time. And in the painting, I have that necklace on him, so it would have been pre-Whisky show.

There were like all these little toy guns, I think they were lights or something, but he always did that. And when they first started playing, he wore chaps under a kilt... And with Slash, the hats just kept getting bigger, until the top hat.

One of my favorite videos of them ever on YouTube is from The Central in 1986, and they're doing 'Don't Cry.' Everyone is talking over their performance, and then once they get to the end and Axl goes into his Axl voice, everybody stopped talking and they listened.

That's cool. That's the Viper Room now, the Central, just FYI. I mean, when it was The Central, it was this horrible place and nobody wanted to go. Then it became the Viper Room, and everybody wanted to go. I don't know, you can maybe put 200 people in there. It's a very small place.

Were you surprised when things with the band fell apart in the late '90s, when Slash and Duff left?

No. No, not at all. I think sometimes the best singers and guitar players have a very love-hate relationship and I don't think that was a different relationship.

There's been a lot of stories, I feel, over the last couple of years that have come out where Axl does seem to have changed. He's very private, so I wouldn't really know, but he seems like he changed his reputation for himself over the last couple of years.

I don't think anybody can stay that angry forever. It eats you from the inside out. I hope he has a happy life. He deserves to have happiness. None of them have had an easy life. Me either, for that matter, so we all deserve to be happy.

This is just a fun one, but for the sake of subgenres and labels, would you consider Guns N' Roses a hair band?

Not really. At the time that I was shopping Guns N' Roses, it had gotten about as glammy as it could get. Every label had three or four glam bands and the next one more femme than the last one. And when it had gotten to like the Pretty Boy Floyd sort of time period, you could go no more glam, I don't think.

Guns N' Roses came out of that period where it felt different and dangerous. I know that Slash loved Aerosmith during that time period, Night in the Ruts was like his favorite album then. And Axl was singing Nazareth in the shower and stuff. It wasn't coming from that, Poison, who I also managed in that era, of bands.

They just were not connected to that and they kind of didn't like Poison and those bands. When Matt Smith left Poison, I got Slash to audition for that part and he actually got it — they gave him the gig. But he said to them, "I'm not going to say, 'Hi, my name is Slash,' and I won't wear all the fucking makeup."

The next day, [they hired] C.C. DeVille. So it was like, he was out at that point. I don't think he ever even really wanted the gig, he just thought that he should want it because they were popular. But it wasn't really his scene.

They did have the big hair for a minute, but that didn't last very long. They did the makeup and the hair for like two or three shows and that was it. I think all bands are somewhat influenced by their peers and whatever, but they figured out that wasn't for them and they moved on.

What did you think of the Use Your Illusion albums when they came out as opposed to Appetite?

I think it should have been one record instead of two and then it could have been Appetite part two. I mean they're good records — I can't take that away. But it could have been just one killer record.

That was the band and Tom Zutaut decided to do that. It's a lot of information. I know a lot of people love those records, so I'm not going to diss it. There's masterpieces on there and I think that they kind of got lost because it was just so much.

It's funny because I planned to ask you this before you even mentioned the show earlier, but if you were to do the casting for the show, who would you have star in it to play the band?

I don't know. The book is going to be all the bands. I certainly favor some actors over others. I really want Finn Wolfhard to play the Bret Michaels character, and I'm so obsessed with Finn that I tracked down his father and started a conversation with him. Then I started a conversation with his manager. I haven't reached out to him since I did the deal, but trust me, I will.

His dad said to me, "Oh well Finn is busy until 2026," and that was like six months ago. So who knows? But Finn has his own band, he could play a rock star easily. And I just think that him as a glam rocker would be insane. And because of Stranger Things, he already knows what the '80s are about.

As far as Guns N' Roses, I don't really know who I would cast. I actually had a conversation with Matt Shultz from Cage the Elephant about it because I think he kind of looks like Axl, but I think he's too busy with his music career to do that. But he said to me, "If I was ever going to play anyone, it would be that guy."

He's an amazing singer, too. I've been listening to Cage the Elephant a lot lately. I don't know what that's about exactly, but I love their music.

They're a really fun performance too, he has a lot of energy.

He's all over the place. Incredible band. But the series will be about the early days, so it's going to be 20 something actors. It has to be young people, [I'm] trying to figure out who would play me in the thing too.

And since I've been thinking about the series, I wanted Amy Schumer, but now Amy Schumer would be too old to play the part. You just never know who's gonna end up getting these roles. There'll probably be a lot of upcoming, unheard of actors.

That would be good exposure for them too.

Yeah, I mean I kind of see it like a Daisy Jones & the Six, but like an '80s version of that. I don't know if legally they'll be able to work out to use the real band names, but who knows?

There's been a resurgence in interest in all the rock star movies and TV shows over the last few years, but it's funny that there hasn't been a vibrant rock scene like the one in the '80s in a while.

I feel like rock is coming back. A&R people are saying it to me, I'm always hopeful because that's what I like working more than anything else. But I think with the election and everything else, that bands are getting angry. I think this is good — we need to be angry. We got to like, save our country.

I think if there was a bit more anger and danger in rock again, then it would resonate more the way that the '80s stuff did with people.

Everything comes back in cycles, and I think that art and music and fashion all sort of coexist. I can see like, the '70s and '80s in the fashion right now and the artwork as well. So, bring it — is what I have to say.

When A&R people are saying rock's coming back, that's a really good sign because the last 10 years, they were like, "Oh, rock is dead. It's a niche thing." I have my own label too, Dark Spark Music, and I can see that rock is making a comeback. The records are streaming more and I think this is a good thing.

There hasn't really been a scene since like hip-hop and grunge and all of that. It would be nice to see a nice, healthy rock scene, and I'd like for it to come back to Los Angeles too. It'd be great since I'm still here.

Yeah, it seems like the last year or two, the big thing is country. A lot of artists from other genres are going in that direction, and I'm just waiting for that same thing to happen to rock again.

Those are like the '80s rock stars, I mean they're looking for a reason to do power ballads. So country's kind of the only way that they can do that. I mean, I'm still very close with John Carter Cash and stuff, so I talk to music people in Nashville a lot.

I think younger people are sort of looking for a reason to rock and rock shows are doing well, so why not? It hurts my heart when I have to say, "Rock is a niche thing." And when I'm trying to sign a band or whatever, I'm like, "Yeah, it's not like it was mainstream in the '80s for us. It's sort of niche now." But it feels like it can go mainstream or at least pop rock mainstream.

When labels like Big Machine are signing The Struts... Starcrawler and those type of bands, that's rock. When I look at Arrow [de Wilde] in Starcrawler, I see Iggy Pop meets Alice Cooper or something. Hopefully the songs will get stronger as time goes on too.

My band Motherwind has added like 13,000 followers in the last couple of months. There's definitely something going on in rock. And I'm bringing a band out here from New York called tricktheriddle. I have them playing Bar Sinister and Hotel Ziggy. They kind of write pop rock.

Thank you so much for your time.

Awesome. It's pretty exciting.

I just hope whoever buys it enjoys it and hangs it, it deserves that. I'm going to write a letter with it as well, taking about that period in my life when I painted it and stuff and give them an autographed book as well. So there's little perks in there with the painting.

We'll definitely be on the lookout for more news about the show as that comes out too.

Yeah, it'll probably be another year at least. But it's in the works — that's all I can say.

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