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[NOISEY] Why I'm Breaking Up With Axl Rose... For Good


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Sitting in a booth at Canter's Deli in West Hollywood while partially hung-over and flipping through my "Like"-less Facebook page, I read this: "The Owner of Canter's Deli Has a Plan To Reunite Guns N' Roses." I'm also meeting someone who was on the Sunset Strip in the mid-'80s, snorting coke and shooting vodka at the Rainbow Room. Today, her ability to give a fuck has been medicated into a fast-talking prattle. All the stories she crams in-between guzzling coffee and pastrami sound depressing. Faded tramp stamps, shiny leather, and bottling Poison fans over the head. She’s a less evolved primate like the all the rest rudderless carnivores who want to see GN'R reunite. In 2015, 22 years after their last gig, a GN'R reunion is still the biggest draw in rock 'n' roll fantasy booking.

Full disclosure: One of my first musical engrams was a video of Axl gliding onto the stage in Wembley wearing a black leather kilt and singing the chorus to "Bohemian Rhapsody" like some coked-up BDSM cheerleader. But I'm too young to have ever seen them live. What I want to remember is the ginger ayatollah; a paranoid chain-smoking psychopath – riffing on just about everyone he can think of with his stainless-steel 9mm in one hand, and a bottle of champagne in the other – that was the Axl Rose that scared the shit out of me. Slash, who roamed Amazonian snake farms on his time off, was even more demented. In other words, GN'R was dangerous, sexy, and full of shock-and-awe in an age where we wanted our heroes to be half-mutated gods, like Hulk Hogan's 24-inch pythons, or Michael Jackson walking in space. Axl Rose was the trashy Michael Jackson.

Today, in an era of cutesy cultural icons like Joseph Gordon Levitt, where being quirky is a national identity, GN'R would nosedive into parody like a Pauly Shore cameo in "Girls." Where does Axl Rose, in his boxer-briefs and "Victory or Death" tattoo, fit into riot grrrl or another op-ed on misogyny? We're in a world that still embraces Kurt Cobain in an evening dress. Guys like Axl and Slash are now caricatures in Guitar Hero video games: cartoony renderings of what rock and roll used to be. The closest thing to a legitimate rock star today is Kanye West, and he's never started a riot or toured with an Uzi semi-automatic.

Noel Gallagher thinks he's the last rock star, but no. Axl is. But today, he's a Chucky doll in a fluffy fedora, with bedazzled garments and enough gaudy jewelry to finance his next album (GN'R's last album Chinese Democracycost $11 million). His current band, Axl Rose and Company, is a bloated cover band nobody takes seriously. His guttural falsetto has been softened into a starving baby's screech. As for Slash, well, he sobered up and started collaborating with Fergie. How dangerous.

A GN'R reunion would be a massive payday, but even if Axl and Slash did manage to pull something off for the 30th anniversary of Appetite for Destruction, it's too late now. The 2002 MTV Video Music Awards may have been their last shot, back when Axl still had his serpentine glide and crazy eyes and Slash was a shadowy figure with a lit cigarette peaking through his hair. It didn't happen then, and in an age of third-wave feminism and veganism, GN'R is dad rock; a slab of bloody factory-farmed beef we no longer have the appetite for.

But fans still want to know why two men haven't been able to reconcile their differences for nearly 20 years. They want answers to rock 'n' roll's most childish breakup. They'll never have it. What they might get is new GN'R material that sounds like Eltonian piano ballads over EDM beats. Before that happens, let's kill the past. Let’s scrawl "sorry I'm late" across Axl's coffin, like he asked. Let GN'R meet its maker (a giant pink dildo) and listen to their magnum opus, "Sweet Child of Mine," to remember that they could have been bigger than the Beatled instead of band that was blown to smithereens by Nirvana’s drone-strike into the heart of the Sunset Strip.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/why-im-breaking-up-with-axl-rose?utm_source=noiseytwitterus

Edited by Silent Jay
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Well, I totally understand Axl not wanting to reconcile with Slash.

I also have some family issues and the things that were done to me and my children I can never forgive.

Some things you can't forgive or forget. I commend Axl for standing his ground and not giving in for money or fame.

GNR had it's time. they have gone their separate ways and have all benefited by it.

Let it go. either you can support Axl and the other members or not. To each his own.

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Typical Vice article. Nirvana didn't kill Guns N' Roses killed themselves and didn't try hogging the limelight by doing an act that would render yourself in pop culture history by killing yourself by placing a shotgun in your mouth while having enough heroin in your system to kill an Elephant yet still managing to pull the trigger and blow the back of your head onto the wall behind you while another heroin addict is taking care of your daughter. Personally I think Kurt was too far gone to get help, I don't think he wanted help and he intended to do what he did.

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Well, I totally understand Axl not wanting to reconcile with Slash.

I also have some family issues and the things that were done to me and my children I can never forgive.

Some things you can't forgive or forget.

What exactly did Slash do that was so horrible to Axl? I'm not sure what you are talking about.

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I don't like the authors view of what he thought Gn'R use to be. He seems to see them as a one hit wonder that wasn't as good as we thought.

He basically said that GN'R is undeserving of the mythical hype they've been given for what a reunion would mean. It's written from the point of view of a younger guy though that missed out on those days. He fairly admits that, and that's how people now view gnr.

It was well researched but again the nirvana killing gnr thing is ridiculous. Gnr killed themselves. They left at the time when nirvana came in. It wasn't like they stopped selling out shows or stopped selling albums. They just quit doing anything. So I hate when people say nirvana caused gnr to die.

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A GN'R reunion would be a massive payday, but even if Axl and Slash did manage to pull something off for the 30th anniversary of Appetite for Destruction, it's too late now.
may have been their last shot, back when Axl still had his serpentine glide and crazy eyes and Slash was a shadowy figure with a lit cigarette peaking through his hair. It didn't happen then, and in an age of third-wave feminism and veganism, GN'R is dad rock; a slab of bloody factory-farmed beef we no longer have the appetite for.

Seems like bacardimayne and a former banned member wrote an article together :shrugs:

well-written. i enjoyed it.

well-written?

nah, it's just wannabe hipster garbage

you would know this when the author mentions how Kanye West is a rockstar and bring this third wave feminism and veganism bullcrap that literally has nothing to do with hard rock bands

Punk is not hard rock, as far as i know

Edited by Strange Broue
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Well, I totally understand Axl not wanting to reconcile with Slash.

I also have some family issues and the things that were done to me and my children I can never forgive.

Some things you can't forgive or forget.

What exactly did Slash do that was so horrible to Axl? I'm not sure what you are talking about.

A question that will never be answered.

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What I want to remember is the ginger ayatollah; a paranoid chain-smoking psychopath riffing on just about everyone he can think of with his stainless-steel 9mm in one hand, and a bottle of champagne in the other that was the Axl Rose that scared the shit out of me.

Death Blade, Side Winder, it's go time!

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Shitty pretentious article. Who is this guy to assume he can make such sweeping generalisations and talk on behalf of an entire population of music fans? A GNR reunion in 2015 would be shit-hot news regardless of what this yuppy thinks.

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Shitty pretentious article. Who is this guy to assume he can make such sweeping generalisations and talk on behalf of an entire population of music fans? A GNR reunion in 2015 would be shit-hot news regardless of what this yuppy thinks.

But it wouldnt though.

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1431964460unnamed_3.jpg

Sitting in a booth at Canter's Deli in West Hollywood while partially hung-over and flipping through my "Like"-less Facebook page, I read this: "The Owner of Canter's Deli Has a Plan To Reunite Guns N' Roses." I'm also meeting someone who was on the Sunset Strip in the mid-'80s, snorting coke and shooting vodka at the Rainbow Room. Today, her ability to give a fuck has been medicated into a fast-talking prattle. All the stories she crams in-between guzzling coffee and pastrami sound depressing. Faded tramp stamps, shiny leather, and bottling Poison fans over the head. She’s a less evolved primate like the all the rest rudderless carnivores who want to see GN'R reunite. In 2015, 22 years after their last gig, a GN'R reunion is still the biggest draw in rock 'n' roll fantasy booking.

Full disclosure: One of my first musical engrams was a video of Axl gliding onto the stage in Wembley wearing a black leather kilt and singing the chorus to "Bohemian Rhapsody" like some coked-up BDSM cheerleader. But I'm too young to have ever seen them live. What I want to remember is the ginger ayatollah; a paranoid chain-smoking psychopath – riffing on just about everyone he can think of with his stainless-steel 9mm in one hand, and a bottle of champagne in the other – that was the Axl Rose that scared the shit out of me. Slash, who roamed Amazonian snake farms on his time off, was even more demented. In other words, GN'R was dangerous, sexy, and full of shock-and-awe in an age where we wanted our heroes to be half-mutated gods, like Hulk Hogan's 24-inch pythons, or Michael Jackson walking in space. Axl Rose was the trashy Michael Jackson.

Today, in an era of cutesy cultural icons like Joseph Gordon Levitt, where being quirky is a national identity, GN'R would nosedive into parody like a Pauly Shore cameo in "Girls." Where does Axl Rose, in his boxer-briefs and "Victory or Death" tattoo, fit into riot grrrl or another op-ed on misogyny? We're in a world that still embraces Kurt Cobain in an evening dress. Guys like Axl and Slash are now caricatures in Guitar Hero video games: cartoony renderings of what rock and roll used to be. The closest thing to a legitimate rock star today is Kanye West, and he's never started a riot or toured with an Uzi semi-automatic.

Noel Gallagher thinks he's the last rock star, but no. Axl is. But today, he's a Chucky doll in a fluffy fedora, with bedazzled garments and enough gaudy jewelry to finance his next album (GN'R's last album Chinese Democracycost $11 million). His current band, Axl Rose and Company, is a bloated cover band nobody takes seriously. His guttural falsetto has been softened into a starving baby's screech. As for Slash, well, he sobered up and started collaborating with Fergie. How dangerous.

A GN'R reunion would be a massive payday, but even if Axl and Slash did manage to pull something off for the 30th anniversary of Appetite for Destruction, it's too late now. The 2002 MTV Video Music Awards may have been their last shot, back when Axl still had his serpentine glide and crazy eyes and Slash was a shadowy figure with a lit cigarette peaking through his hair. It didn't happen then, and in an age of third-wave feminism and veganism, GN'R is dad rock; a slab of bloody factory-farmed beef we no longer have the appetite for.

But fans still want to know why two men haven't been able to reconcile their differences for nearly 20 years. They want answers to rock 'n' roll's most childish breakup. They'll never have it. What they might get is new GN'R material that sounds like Eltonian piano ballads over EDM beats. Before that happens, let's kill the past. Let’s scrawl "sorry I'm late" across Axl's coffin, like he asked. Let GN'R meet its maker (a giant pink dildo) and listen to their magnum opus, "Sweet Child of Mine," to remember that they could have been bigger than the Beatled instead of band that was blown to smithereens by Nirvana’s drone-strike into the heart of the Sunset Strip.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/why-im-breaking-up-with-axl-rose?utm_source=noiseytwitterus

Cannot say I disagree with any of that. Watching washed up fatties trying to imitate their heyday is always a soul destroying experience.

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Shitty pretentious article. Who is this guy to assume he can make such sweeping generalisations and talk on behalf of an entire population of music fans? A GNR reunion in 2015 would be shit-hot news regardless of what this yuppy thinks.

But it wouldnt though.

I have to disagree with you. IMO a reunion would be huge news. Despite GN'R not being relevant in the context of modern music, it is one of the most famous feuds in music history. If they decided to kiss and make up tomorrow, the story would be everywhere. The buzz would only last until the next big story broke, but for a couple of days, GN'R would be big news.

Just my opinion.

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Shitty pretentious article. Who is this guy to assume he can make such sweeping generalisations and talk on behalf of an entire population of music fans? A GNR reunion in 2015 would be shit-hot news regardless of what this yuppy thinks.

But it wouldnt though.

I have to disagree with you. IMO a reunion would be huge news. Despite GN'R not being relevant in the context of modern music, it is one of the most famous feuds in music history. If they decided to kiss and make up tomorrow, the story would be everywhere. The buzz would only last until the next big story broke, but for a couple of days, GN'R would be big news.

Just my opinion.

I think it'd be a joke and no one would give a flying fuck, just like they never do with reunions, it's just a big bang of the actual day of it happening, then no one gives a monkeys. And GnR won't even be able to do it huge like say The Stone Roses or whatever cuz no one'll give a fuck.

Same with The Sex Pistols, OMG OMG, the return, all you got was four fat old cunts onstage...and thats great y'know, brilliant but thats not what people are expecting, people are expecting what they were once deprived of...and that don't exist anymore.

When the cult of personality bollocks slows down a bit what are you left with really? Fatter, older, greyer and less good at what they were good at, the 'omg they're standing on the same spot' fascination will die down REAL quick.

And the whole famous feud thing, it's cute in a TMZ kinda way but it's hardly any substantial or related to any kind of merit.

Edited by Len B'stard
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"What I want to remember is the ginger ayatollah; a paranoid chain-smoking psychopath riffing on just about everyone he can think of with his stainless-steel 9mm in one hand, and a bottle of champagne in the other that was the Axl Rose that scared the shit out of me."

If only I could use that part as my signature.

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Shitty pretentious article. Who is this guy to assume he can make such sweeping generalisations and talk on behalf of an entire population of music fans? A GNR reunion in 2015 would be shit-hot news regardless of what this yuppy thinks.

But it wouldnt though.

I have to disagree with you. IMO a reunion would be huge news. Despite GN'R not being relevant in the context of modern music, it is one of the most famous feuds in music history. If they decided to kiss and make up tomorrow, the story would be everywhere. The buzz would only last until the next big story broke, but for a couple of days, GN'R would be big news.

Just my opinion.

I think it'd be a joke and no one would give a flying fuck, just like they never do with reunions, it's just a big bang of the actual day of it happening, then no one gives a monkeys. And GnR won't even be able to do it huge like say The Stone Roses or whatever cuz no one'll give a fuck.

Same with The Sex Pistols, OMG OMG, the return, all you got was four fat old cunts onstage...and thats great y'know, brilliant but thats not what people are expecting, people are expecting what they were once deprived of...and that don't exist anymore.

When the cult of personality bollocks slows down a bit what are you left with really? Fatter, older, greyer and less good at what they were good at, the 'omg they're standing on the same spot' fascination will die down REAL quick.

And the whole famous feud thing, it's cute in a TMZ kinda way but it's hardly any substantial or related to any kind of merit.

Nah, I still maintain it'd be big news. The amount of people who give a shit about GNR extends way beyond the nutjobs on this board who discuss the merits of Riad N The Bedouins and jack off over Bucketheads 28th album of 2015. It would bring out all the casual fans, the ones who keep GNR's Greatest Hits in the top 75 week in, week out, years after it was released, the same ones who still keep SCOM in the top ten rock tracks in 2015.

It's very cool to act all aloof and pretend like the world wouldn't come to a standstill if they announced a reunion, but I think it would be second only to finding a cure for cancer personally.

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Shitty pretentious article. Who is this guy to assume he can make such sweeping generalisations and talk on behalf of an entire population of music fans? A GNR reunion in 2015 would be shit-hot news regardless of what this yuppy thinks.

But it wouldnt though.

I have to disagree with you. IMO a reunion would be huge news. Despite GN'R not being relevant in the context of modern music, it is one of the most famous feuds in music history. If they decided to kiss and make up tomorrow, the story would be everywhere. The buzz would only last until the next big story broke, but for a couple of days, GN'R would be big news.

Just my opinion.

I think it'd be a joke and no one would give a flying fuck, just like they never do with reunions, it's just a big bang of the actual day of it happening, then no one gives a monkeys. And GnR won't even be able to do it huge like say The Stone Roses or whatever cuz no one'll give a fuck.

Same with The Sex Pistols, OMG OMG, the return, all you got was four fat old cunts onstage...and thats great y'know, brilliant but thats not what people are expecting, people are expecting what they were once deprived of...and that don't exist anymore.

When the cult of personality bollocks slows down a bit what are you left with really? Fatter, older, greyer and less good at what they were good at, the 'omg they're standing on the same spot' fascination will die down REAL quick.

And the whole famous feud thing, it's cute in a TMZ kinda way but it's hardly any substantial or related to any kind of merit.

Nah, I still maintain it'd be big news. The amount of people who give a shit about GNR extends way beyond the nutjobs on this board who discuss the merits of Riad N The Bedouins and jack off over Bucketheads 28th album of 2015. It would bring out all the casual fans, the ones who keep GNR's Greatest Hits in the top 75 week in, week out, years after it was released, the same ones who still keep SCOM in the top ten rock tracks in 2015.

It's very cool to act all aloof and pretend like the world wouldn't come to a standstill if they announced a reunion, but I think it would be second only to finding a cure for cancer personally.

i dont even think they'll manage a run like The Roses did with Heaton Park.

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1431964460unnamed_3.jpg

Sitting in a booth at Canter's Deli in West Hollywood while partially hung-over and flipping through my "Like"-less Facebook page, I read this: "The Owner of Canter's Deli Has a Plan To Reunite Guns N' Roses." I'm also meeting someone who was on the Sunset Strip in the mid-'80s, snorting coke and shooting vodka at the Rainbow Room. Today, her ability to give a fuck has been medicated into a fast-talking prattle. All the stories she crams in-between guzzling coffee and pastrami sound depressing. Faded tramp stamps, shiny leather, and bottling Poison fans over the head. She’s a less evolved primate like the all the rest rudderless carnivores who want to see GN'R reunite. In 2015, 22 years after their last gig, a GN'R reunion is still the biggest draw in rock 'n' roll fantasy booking.

Full disclosure: One of my first musical engrams was a video of Axl gliding onto the stage in Wembley wearing a black leather kilt and singing the chorus to "Bohemian Rhapsody" like some coked-up BDSM cheerleader. But I'm too young to have ever seen them live. What I want to remember is the ginger ayatollah; a paranoid chain-smoking psychopath – riffing on just about everyone he can think of with his stainless-steel 9mm in one hand, and a bottle of champagne in the other – that was the Axl Rose that scared the shit out of me. Slash, who roamed Amazonian snake farms on his time off, was even more demented. In other words, GN'R was dangerous, sexy, and full of shock-and-awe in an age where we wanted our heroes to be half-mutated gods, like Hulk Hogan's 24-inch pythons, or Michael Jackson walking in space. Axl Rose was the trashy Michael Jackson.

Today, in an era of cutesy cultural icons like Joseph Gordon Levitt, where being quirky is a national identity, GN'R would nosedive into parody like a Pauly Shore cameo in "Girls." Where does Axl Rose, in his boxer-briefs and "Victory or Death" tattoo, fit into riot grrrl or another op-ed on misogyny? We're in a world that still embraces Kurt Cobain in an evening dress. Guys like Axl and Slash are now caricatures in Guitar Hero video games: cartoony renderings of what rock and roll used to be. The closest thing to a legitimate rock star today is Kanye West, and he's never started a riot or toured with an Uzi semi-automatic.

Noel Gallagher thinks he's the last rock star, but no. Axl is. But today, he's a Chucky doll in a fluffy fedora, with bedazzled garments and enough gaudy jewelry to finance his next album (GN'R's last album Chinese Democracycost $11 million). His current band, Axl Rose and Company, is a bloated cover band nobody takes seriously. His guttural falsetto has been softened into a starving baby's screech. As for Slash, well, he sobered up and started collaborating with Fergie. How dangerous.

A GN'R reunion would be a massive payday, but even if Axl and Slash did manage to pull something off for the 30th anniversary of Appetite for Destruction, it's too late now. The 2002 MTV Video Music Awards may have been their last shot, back when Axl still had his serpentine glide and crazy eyes and Slash was a shadowy figure with a lit cigarette peaking through his hair. It didn't happen then, and in an age of third-wave feminism and veganism, GN'R is dad rock; a slab of bloody factory-farmed beef we no longer have the appetite for.

But fans still want to know why two men haven't been able to reconcile their differences for nearly 20 years. They want answers to rock 'n' roll's most childish breakup. They'll never have it. What they might get is new GN'R material that sounds like Eltonian piano ballads over EDM beats. Before that happens, let's kill the past. Let’s scrawl "sorry I'm late" across Axl's coffin, like he asked. Let GN'R meet its maker (a giant pink dildo) and listen to their magnum opus, "Sweet Child of Mine," to remember that they could have been bigger than the Beatled instead of band that was blown to smithereens by Nirvana’s drone-strike into the heart of the Sunset Strip.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/why-im-breaking-up-with-axl-rose?utm_source=noiseytwitterus

Cannot say I disagree with any of that. Watching washed up fatties trying to imitate their heyday is always a soul destroying experience.

I hope the kid who wrote the article posts a picture of himself in his 50's, and we can see what a specimen of eternal youth is.

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