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Guns N' Roses, Contracts & Lawsuits: An Intimate History (1979-1999)

Dr. Who

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Dr. Who DEMI-GOD

Dr. Who

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Over the years, GN'R, or Axl alone, have been involved with the law in terms of lawsuits on numerous occasions. Here is a chronological listing:

1979-1982: Axl is arrested 16 times over this three year period for a variety of charges including public intoxication, disturbing the peace and aiding a minor in breaking the law.

September 10th, 1982: Axl is arrested and ends up serving 3 months in jail on charges of battery, criminal trespass, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and mischief. It's after this arrest that Axl rapidly leaves Indiana, as he hears wind that he is going to be charged as a habitual offender, which carries with it a life sentence.

June 25th 1985: Axl and Slash are accused of raping a girl. Slash and Axl lay low and Steven is threatened with arrest if he doesn't reveal Axl and Slash's whereabouts. Axl and Slash are charged with felony rape due to the girl having connections with the LAPD. Slash and Axl go to court and the charges against Slash are dropped. Axl testifies and the charges against him are also dropped.

"Just as a record-company bidding war was heating up, two rape charges were filed against Slash and Rose.
"Everyone was trying to hide it from the record company," said Rose. " 'Rape charge? What rape charge?' The charges were dropped eventually, but for a while we had to go into hiding. We had undercover cops and the vice squad looking for us. They were talking a mandatory five years. It kind of settled my hormones for a while."

October 1987: Axl and Del are in New York. Del is threatened with a bat by a guy there, Axl picks up a street sign post and goes after the guy and is arrested.

November 20th, 1987: Axl is beaten by cops and arrested in Atlanta for assaulting a security guard, who had been beating up friends of the band in the audience.

December 18th, 1987: Axl is beaten up by cops and arrested for punching a guy who calls him a Bon Jovi look alike. Steven gets involved in the fight and is also arrested. This inspires Axl to say "Bon Jovi can suck my dick" at a concert a day later.

December 30th 1987: Axl is arrested at a show in Perkins Palace in Pasadena, CA, for assaulting a security guard.

"I have something I want to do with Guns & Roses and this is part of me that I want to get out and take as far as I can," he said. "That can be a long career or it can be a short explosive career--as long as it gets out and it gets out in a big way." - Axl, 1988

1988: Vicky Hamilton sues Guns N' Roses for $100,000, claiming she invested the money and helped to make Guns N' Roses successful. GN'R settle out of court, paying Hamilton $30,000 to avoid a public fiasco and trial. Geffen pays 15k of the 30.

August 4th, 1988: Axl is arrested for hitting a parking lot attendant, who told his brother Stuart to "fuck off."

August 27th 1989: Izzy is arrested over Phoenix on a plane for public disturbance, after urinating on the floor of the plane and being verbally abusive to stewardesses. He rapidly becomes clean afterward.

October 10th, 1989: Axl is arrested at the LA Cathouse for fighting with a security guard who was hassling GN'R's friends.

March 2nd, 1990: Steven is made by the members of Guns N' Roses to sign an agreement that if he comes to sessions high, he will be fined. Steven is fired July 11th 1990 and replaced by Matt Sorum.

October 30th, 1990: Axl is arrested for supposedly assaulting a female neighbor with a wine bottle, after she complained he was playing his music too loud.

July 12th 1992: Axl is arrested for the St. Louis incident, and pleads innocent of the charges.

September 1st 1992: Axl, Slash and Duff sign what would be a fateful and controversial contract. The contract creates a new Guns N' Roses legal partnership which establishes Axl, Slash and Duff as the sole legal members of Guns N' Roses who each have an equal share in the 'company'. A part of the contract includes a stipulation that if Axl is fired or withdraws from the partnership, the Guns N' Roses name and brand will become his automatically.

October 1992: Steven Adler launches a lawsuit against Guns N' Roses for royalties owed to him after his firing from GN'R.

November 1992: Axl is convicted and fined $50,000 and placed on two years' probation for the St. Louis incident. Axl doubles the fine when he learns the money will be going to a charity.

December 3rd 1992: Guns N' Roses rooms are raided by Chilean police on suspicion that they have narcotics in their hotel rooms.

July 16th 1993: 50 members of the Argentine police burst into Axl's hotel room, looking for drugs after they receive a tip-off. The search is unsuccessful.

August 1993: Axl sues Stephanie Seymour claiming she stole more than $100,000 worth of jewelry and that she 'kicked and grabbed' him during a Christmas 1992 fight. Seymour countersues and claims Axl abused her.

August 23rd 1993: Axl is in court trying to defend Guns N' Roses against Steven Adler's claims.

September 24th 1993: Guns N' Roses settle with Steven out of court and pay him 1.5 million

October 1993: Stephanie Seymour subpoenaed Erin Everly, Axl's former ex-wife, to testify on her behalf and verify her claims of abuse. Stephanie wins the case and is allowed to keep the jewelry.

October 21st 1993: Axl reaches an out-of-court settlement with "Stump", the biker who he hit during the 1991 St. Louis concert. The settlement includes paying Stump an undisclosed amount of money and autographing Stump's scrapbook.

January 1st 1994: Axl secures legal ownership of the Guns N' Roses name after a judge rules that the contract signed by the members in 1992 was legitimate.

March 1994: Erin Everly launches her own suit against Axl, claiming abuse.

April 20th 1995: The Everly vs. Rose case is settled out of court with Axl paying her an undisclosed sum.

April 27th 1995: Karen MacNeill, a deranged fan, breaks into Axl's house for the first time.

“I was at home playing guitar at my kitchen table,” testified Rose in a declaration, “And heard a noise at my front door.” He called out, but received no answer. “I assumed it was my housekeeper, Elizabeth Lebeis, and continued playing my guitar. Within a few minutes, I turned to my left and observed a woman I had never seen before. She was approximately 5’5”, and very heavy.”

When the startled Rose asked her how she got in the house, her response was, ‘I’m just here.”

“She acted as though there was nothing wrong or unusual …” stated Rose.

After the police took the woman away, Rose found out she was Karen Jane McNeil and she had come from Ohio just to see Rose in answer to his ‘psychic call.’ It also turned out she had been to the house two days before, standing outside his gate. Axl presses charges.

May 4th, 1995: Karen MacNeill reappears outside Axl's house, begging him to drop the charges. She is arrested again and sends a letter to Axl from jail:

“Good job,” she wrote. “Just make a big laugh of me. Don’t you ever consider how I feel? … If this is you being a kind and loving person, I’d hate to see you spiteful and kurt <sic>. The day I was at your house you said nobody there wanted me around. That’s fine. I’ll just find me a boyfriend. Oh gee, aren’t I a bitch?” You’re so self-centered. You know you say you won’t give me control <sic>? Goodie, cause I don’t want it. But there is no way I can take my brain out and just hand it over. … I can’t even have [my son] full time because of my head,” she wrote. She caustically told Rose to go out and find a supermodel or a ‘groopie’ and have a one-night stand.

“I guess none of my friends are in my head,” she wrote in closing. “Maybe I should follow Kurt C. I believe in reincarnation also.”

May 12th 1995: Axl files a restraining order against MacNeill.

August 31st, 1995: Axl sends a letter to Slash and Duff announcing his intention to withdraw from the existing Guns N' Roses legal partnership and his intention to create a new band with the name Guns N' Roses, which Slash and Duff are invited to join. This will go into effect 12/31/1995

1996: Gilby Clarke sues Guns N' Roses for misrepresentation of his name and image. The case is settled out of court.

January 27th 1997: Steven Adler is arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman in his apartment: "The victim was allegedly thrown against walls and furniture during the attack. She called 911 for assistance, however, Adler had already left the premises and couldn’t be located at the time."

June 4th 1997: Steven is arrested for allegedly assaulting another woman, "Adler allegedly pushed the 35-year-old woman’s head into a wall and threw her clothes off a balcony during a dispute over money."

1997: Steven Adler sues Guns N' Roses a second time, and is awarded 2.5 million by the court. Karen MacNeill reappears outside of Axl's house and is awarded another restraining order.

February 26th 1998: Axl is arrested for disturbing the peace in Phoenix. "He began to yell threats and obscenities at [a security] guard,” said a witness, reading from a report of the incident in which Rose allegedly shouted, “I’ll punch your lights out right here and right now,” while allegedly shaking his fists at the security worker.

September 24th 1998: Steven Adler is convicted and sentenced to 150 days in jail for two separate domestic violence incidents.

February 18th 1999: Axl pleads guilty to disturbing the peace. He is sentenced to a $500 fine and a day in jail.

July 26th 1999: Slash is arrested on charges of domestic violence by Perla, who claims he beat her on July 19th. Perla drops the charges two weeks later.

December 14th 1999: Big FD Entertainment, Axl's management, sues Slash and Duff for breach of contract, claiming Slash and Duff refused to pay monies owed from the profits of the Live Era album. It also claims they breached the 1992 contract by hiring independent managers in 1997 and again in 1999. In addition, the suit claims that Slash and Duff were legally bound to pay a percentage from their non-GN'R work to Big FD and they have not paid it.

Edited by Dr. Who
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Dr. Who DEMI-GOD

Dr. Who

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thanks, but how did that woman show up at his front door, while there is a gate and a fence?

Maybe she climbed the fence or found a weak point? It happened at around 11am in the morning so it's possible no one was monitoring at the time. She had been there two days earlier hanging around for a few hours so perhaps she deduced some way to get in during her first visit.

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Rdeyahlxp Senior

Rdeyahlxp

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The forum should get a insightful history / article / column section or something where you and anyone else who has a talent for documenting interesting facts and typing fun reads can contribute. It's a shame a lot of these interesting topics get swept and buried by the giant tidal wave of shittopics in D&N after 2 weeks or so.

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Dr. Who DEMI-GOD

Dr. Who

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The forum should get a insightful history / article / column section or something where you and anyone else who has a talent for documenting interesting facts and typing fun reads can contribute. It's a shame a lot of these interesting topics get swept and buried by the giant tidal wave of shittopics in D&N after 2 weeks or so.

If we had an active history subforum or something, maybe people wouldn't get so much of the facts surrounding sensitive areas such as the break up or the recording of the Illusions wrong, also. And it'd give us something to talk about. As GNR now is more a nostalgia band than anything, the past is really all we CAN talk about.

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Rdeyahlxp Senior

Rdeyahlxp

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The forum should get a insightful history / article / column section or something where you and anyone else who has a talent for documenting interesting facts and typing fun reads can contribute. It's a shame a lot of these interesting topics get swept and buried by the giant tidal wave of shittopics in D&N after 2 weeks or so.

If we had an active history subforum or something, maybe people wouldn't get so much of the facts surrounding sensitive areas such as the break up or the recording of the Illusions wrong, also. And it'd give us something to talk about. As GNR now is more a nostalgia band than anything, the past is really all we CAN talk about.

A subforum with a weekly/2 week decently written column about some random show/year/event with rare pictures etc. could work out really well.

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dalsh327 LEGEND

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There's probably way more than that we don't even know about.

We also have a plethora of shit that happened from 1999 to present day.

I'll get to '99 to present at a later point. It was a lot to type up and find as it was.

No one's ever seen the LA county files from the 90s, probably because it costs 20 bucks to get copies made.

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ManetsBR FRONTMAN

ManetsBR

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The forum should get a insightful history / article / column section or something where you and anyone else who has a talent for documenting interesting facts and typing fun reads can contribute. It's a shame a lot of these interesting topics get swept and buried by the giant tidal wave of shittopics in D&N after 2 weeks or so.

Guns N' Fn' Roses had (still has? idk) a GNR Wiki.

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