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Tracci Guns


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Hey Marc, on Tracci's wikipedia page it says that he offered his services to Axl and Guns n Roses.

Do you know if that is true??

I'm guessing this was just before or around the time Ron Thal joined.

Also Marc, do you know why Axl and Tracii had such a huge falling out back in the day??

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I don't know if that is true or not but I know it wouldn't be what Axl was looking for at that time.

I'm not 100% sure of the split between Tracii and GNR, I have heard a few different things. Slash said that they got into a fight at the gig before the June 6th 1985 gig and that Tracii quit. Also he may have been fired too? I know Tracii didn't want to do what turned out to be Hell tour.

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Here's Tracii explaining why he left GN'R:

Axl kind of disappeared for a week in between two weekends of shows. I don’t know what he was doing. Maybe I thought I knew what he was doing, but I’m not going to assume what he was doing. He had called Izzy before sound check on the first night of two shows, and he told Izzy, “Tell Tracii to make sure that Michelle Young is on the guest list.” She was a friend of ours. So he showed up at sound check at 4:00 pm, and there was no guest list turned in. He went bananas on everybody. We were all like, “Jesus Christ, who is this guy?” It certainly wasn’t like Axl. It was a different person. I remember that we had a really good show that night – the place was packed. I remember Izzy and I starring across the stage at each other thinking, “What the fuck?” The vibe was just all dark and weird. The next night was the first time that Axl ever showed up late! (laughs). He really didn’t show up late, he just showed up at the last minute. After the show, I remember driving home with Duff. We were talking about how all of the fighting within the band wasn’t fun for anybody. The next week, I just stopped going to rehearsal. Axl would call me screaming and yelling, and then Izzy would get on the phone in a more calm voice and try to reason with me. I just wanted to have a good time. I was only 18 or 19 at the time. The band had turned into the podium for Axl to speak on stage, which is a great place to speak your mind, but the other four guys on stage wanted to play our songs. We were to the point where we were playing six songs a night rather than 12. We were definitely a tight knit unit. Nobody fucked with us when we were L.A. Guns, or Guns N’ Roses. It was like, “Fuck you, this is our way. This is how we do it.” Eventually we had the “Fuck you, it’s my way” attitude within the band. (laughs). That is when I left and Slash came in. [Tales From The Stage, February 2013]


He talked about the same period in 1999, too:

[...] then, all of a sudden, I noticed that Axl was like talking a lot in between songs. You know like we'd play, and then he'd talk to the crowd for like five minutes in between a couple of songs. And that kind of evolved to the point where me and Izzy, you know, really provided a lot of direction, and, you know trying to like keep this thing right, and just rock'n'roll, and just fun, you know? And he was like: No, the people need to -- you know, they like it, you know? So like: Okay -- whatever, you know? But it kept getting worse and worse and worse. And then he started hanging out with Michelle Young, And that's what that song "My Michelle"'s about, is about this girl. The two last shows that I did, we do sound check, and Axl shows up kinda late -- and he flips out. He's like: Tracii, motherfucker. You know, Michelle -- you know, Michelle Young's name isn't on the guest list. I'm like: Oh, well, I put it on there. And I did, you know? I was just like: What's this guy's trip? But he really, you know, fucked up the gig for me, 'cause I was like not into it. You know, I was like: Oh, this sucks. You know, this guy's all pissed off, and now he's dictating to the 150 people that are here, you know [spin Magazine, Outtakes for Axl Rose Issue, 1999]


And about Axl becoming mean:

Our friend Michelle was getting ecstasy long before it became a popular drug. Axl is bipolar and he was doing it, it made him mean. The guy I was living with for the past two years was now crazy [Glitzine, November 2005]


And in 2011:

Well . . . (long pause) . . . you know, I think . . . he really isn't a really weird guy. He's more of a simple guy who got thrown into a complicated world. That's really the best way that I can describe that. 'Cause I knew him . . . Izzy was already living with me at my Mom's house when Axl came up to LA to be in a band with Izzy. So a very young, nineteen-or-twenty-year-old Axl was soft-spoken, intelligent . . .would kick anyone's ass for you if he was your friend. He always had the fight in him, there's no denying that. He always had the fight in him. But I also think - which is one of the reasons I left Guns 'N Roses in the first place - once we started having this very minor success here in L.A., Izzy and I were running into problems with him. His extended speeches on stage, this newfound power . . . the power of his voice to communicate how he felt about situations on stage. At that time we were allotted an hour; you know, you go up there, you've got an hour to play your songs and then get the hell off the stage. The first show we did ten songs, a couple of shows we did nine songs, and then the last few shows I did, we were literally playing five or six songs and then letting Axl just stand there and talk, and tell everybody what he thought. Which is great, but for me personally, I wasn't playing music to support any cause, or any local clothes maker or whatever. And I think that he found that that worked for him; that he could be a voice to be reckoned with, and you're not gonna cross him. And he stuck to those simple values of, "You say something bad about me, I'm gonna fuck you up." To the point where he is a Howard Hughes type, where he took forever to make a record, it came out, some people like it and some people don't . . . he's got a band of great musicians now. They don't play very often; when they do, there seems to be a little bit of iffiness about it. You know, he's doing it his way, but I don't think he's that weird a cat. I think that he has an unrealistic view of the world. That doesn't necessarily make him weird. It just means . . . Michael Jackson kinda went through the same thing of really not having a childhood, for instance. How do you cope in the adult world when you already have everything, you can have anything, and then you have to deal with an adult on an adult, educated level? Here's what my Dad says: "The day you get your record deal is the day you stop maturing" [Hard Rock Examiner, November 2011]

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Thanks SM, I never heard before that Tracii was so upset about Axl´s rants. In fact I thought the rants came with the AFD Tour not earlier. On the other hand what Marc said about the Hell Tour it´s the same thing that Duff says in his book.

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I'd like to remind that in about 2001, when GNR played Rio 3, Tracii made a comment , along the lines of : my old pal Axl surely forgotten how to make records any more. Give me a call, buddy, and I'll help you out. Let's do it the old fashioned way.

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