Blackstar

Niven had said in an old interview that AC/DC aren't worthy more than being GnR's roadies or something like that; so from the title of this article and before reading it I assumed he said something relevant to that statement, which was unfair for AC/DC, but, anyway, the guy has the right to his opinion and musical taste. But saying that AC/DC is a satanist band and bashing Axl for playing under devil horns is just ridiculous.

A review from acdc-abruzzo, ac dc fan blog that has followed the tour:

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AARHUS

We got to the Aarhus airport the day of the show, basically a few minutes before the band’s private jet arrived. We reached the stadium a 8.30pm and got inside at 9.10pm. The access to the stadium was a nightmare, probably the worst organization/venue of the entire tour (after Imola 2015). Once tickets were checked you would be stuck in line with drunk people to get inside the stadium through tiny gates. With the usual Scandinavian "landscape" of drunk people, street fights and people urinating and dropping beer everywhere.
The venue was pretty small but we liked it. It was a small stadium with a capacity of about 30,000 people. Nice and intimate. The FOS looked packed but in fact there were lots of people coming and going (to buy beers or to go to the toilet) so we were not too far from the stage.
The band played very well from Rock or Bust onwards. You could tell everybody was more inspired than usual. After the energetic performance of Manchester the band was showing they could do even better. The crowd was “sleepy” as expected from a Danish audience. During the intro video the silence in our section was surreal.
Shoot To Thrill and Hell a Bad Place To Be were played very well. Then Thunder and Dirty Deeds, Damnation and Thunderstruck. High Voltage, came out better than before but we still think it should be dropped from the setlist. Rock’n’Roll Train (or Party Train, as Axl likes to call it) sounded better than usual but should be dropped too. Hell’s Bells, Given the Dog a Bone (very powerful) and then If You Want Blood, the new pinnacle of the concert setlist.
And when Axl said they were playing a song for the second time ever, we understood it was “Touch Too Much!”, one of the songs we were waiting for (the other is Gimme a Bullet). After Prague they played it again, and this time, much better than the first time (confirmed by both Spurky and Orangus). What a gift for hard core fans like us| Impossible to describe our feelings while being there.
Then TNT, Whole Lotta Rosie, and a fantastic version of Let There Be Rock with Angus ON FIRE! For the anchors we got to hear again a killer version of Riff Raff.
Aarhus was probably the best performance of the band in Europe 2016. We have felt the crescendo in the last few concerts after London and Manchester.

AXL ROSE

Probably this was Axl’s best gig with AC/DC. Axl has been doing a great job, no doubt about it. His voice is still excellent and he is getting more and more into the character of the AC/DC front singer. Thank God the chair is gone, and soon the cast will be gone too. In Aarhus he danced and walked for the whole concert. He spoke a lot to the crowd in between the songs. To tell the truth we also got to witness a couple of typical “Axl moments” such as when something was thrown on stage before High Voltage and Axl said “Let’s not get fucking stupid here”. Well, we felt the tension there but in the end he didn’t react too much. At the end of the song there was also some remarks regarding the security because, apparently, if we got it right, took away something without his permission (Orangus says he was referring to his sunglasses which were stolen “as a souvenir”).
Anyway, despite these moments of tension, Axl always seemed to be very committed and focused. He kept making witty remarks and comments, from his “ex wife” (before YSMANL) and to his “future ex-wife” (Shot Down In Flame)...
See you in Dusseldorf for the Grand Finale of the European Rock or Bust Tour.

Awesome, once more

The wife, again

The so called GnR-Nirvana feud was very saddening for me back then, because I liked both bands. There is more fiction than reality circulating about it in forums and yt comments, originating mostly from Nirvana fans. I've read implausible things, like that Axl hated Nirvana and Kurt, that the fan he had thrown out at RiR 2001 was wearing a Nirvana t-shirt, that he'd made disrespectful comments when Kurt died, even that he was a suspect for Kurt's death...

Axl liked Nirvana so much that he came near to humiliate himself (he can put his ego aside when he admires someone, up to a point of course), while Kurt kept on shitting on him and GnR. Kurt just didn't want Axl to like him; the two of them were much alike regarding personality and background, and Kurt hated this.

Here's an insightful and fair (which is rare) article: http://www.avclub.com/article/part-2-1991-whats-so-civil-about-war-anyway-46507

Axl wanted to work with Dave for a project in 1994 and he probably made another attempt in the early CD era. It was one of the cases that Axl had dreams of working with musicians that didn't like him.

I think Slash wasn't much of a Nirvana fan, at least not as much as Axl; He's said Axl was dragging him to Nirvana concerts. He liked the Foo Fighters, though, maybe because Dave has more traditional hard rock influences.

4 hours ago, Frey said:

Great post. But I've never really understood the part above.

Why would Stephanie Seymour care so much about GnRs musical direction or the quality of Axl's song writing output? It's not like she was in the band or a musician herself or anything like that. And even if it really wasn't any good, I'd never straight up say that to my fiance in such a way and call it "crap".

Thanks. I don't think this is odd. Maybe it was at the time when their relationship was deteriorating; it's not unusual for couples to say things just to hurt each other and she may have used his music to hurt him.

4 hours ago, Frey said:

Similarly, I also just can't picture Slash and especially Duff just walking up to Axl and calling him an indiot and a loser to his face. WTF?? Doesnt sound at all like them.

I really dont know what to think about this. If Axl isn't just making this up, then it probably shows his very skewed perception if reality. Probably Slash and Duff (and maybe even Steph) did make some remarks about how they didn't like something or disagreed with him about something, and in his mind it turned into "They think its's all crap. They think I'm an idiot and a loser!" He was always prone to exaggeration.

Slash was talking to the press calling Axl's piano songs "shit". Why wouldn't he say the same and more to Axl's face? From what I understand, there was a war going on where Slash and Duff were like "we did what you wanted, that's enough, now it will be done as we want it, no more fancy new ideas and changes from you". These guys had a long way together and they wouldn't be talking nicely to each other when they fought. Furthermore, Slash and Duff were so wasted at that time that may have said things on one day and forgotten saying them the next.

- Get in the ring - the speaking part will be replaced by Axl rants.

- Courtney Love as a guest for It's so easy or PC; she's done both and she likes Axl now

7 minutes ago, Epson said:

Seems like it, I heard it too 

Yeah, I played it twice, because on the other days he said "about my life"

28 minutes ago, Epson said:

https://web.facebook.com/julie.girly/videos/10154164931822954/

Did he say "Here's a song for my future ex wife"?

3 hours ago, RONIN said:

There's even crazier shit in Axl's post-CD interviews where he talks about Slash not even liking AFD much and how he wanted to take over the band by imposing his snakepit songs on the band. I think Slash was probably taking a stand since he felt he had compromised so much with the illusion albums (the videos, the ballads, tracy and roberta, etc). Like I said, It's hard to blame the guy for jumping ship but they could have made a really cool record in '96. That being said, I don't think Axl had any intention of releasing anything -- he never sang on a single song in the mid 90's like Zakk Wylde said and seemed more interested in just tinkering in the studio endlessly. That's what drove Duff out of the band, the inactivity. So, even if the band had stayed together, a new album would have only been ready by '99 or '00 I imagine. What a clusterfuck of a band.

Since I read those interviews, I'd been trying to figure out what the hell could Axl mean by that; his exact words are that Slash back then hated some of the influences on AFD.

Then I read this, from the radio interview they did together in 1994:

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Steve Downs - The first song we're gonna play tonight is "Hair Of The Dog", which I guess was a part of the early GN'R repertoire, right?

Slash - Actually, that goes back to Hollywood Rose.

Axl - Yeah, we played it only a few times a very long time ago. When we were in the studio, finishing up the recording of the song, Slash is going: "This is cool!". 'Cause he's the one that brought it to our attention to do it for this album and Duff reminded him'¦ He goes: "Remember the old days? This was cool." Duff reminds him: "You hated this song".

Slash - [laughs]

Axl - Slash goes: "Oh, yeah". Which was very strange when he brought it to us: "We gotta do this song." I was like: "You hated it". I was confused for months.

Slash - [laughs]

And this, from Slash's 2000 interview:

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The difference with when I was in GN'R? Well, all band members had wide scattered stylistic likings, but basically for every one of us, these leaded back to our musical roots, which lead us to be musicians. Izzy for example was into the Rolling Stones and Mott The Hoople, while Duff was totally into punk rock. Steven on the other hand loved Kiss and good pop songs. "When your feet tap and your hands clap to the rhytme, it's all good" was his motto. I on the other hand am mainly influenced by boogie-guitar stuff and really hard riffs. And last but not least there was Axl with his piano-shit, the gospel songs and a lot of Rose Tattoo, AC/DC and Nazareth. From these bands he also had the rage in his vocals.

So Axl says this because Slash didn't like Nazareth at that time? Who knows... From his book I got the impression that he isn't much of an AC DC and Angus fan, either. He says good things about Malcolm, though.

Regarding Axl, I think his vocals and performance were hard rock as well as punk influenced. It was this combination in the GnR sound that attracted me in the first place.

2 hours ago, wasted said:

I guess the best they could do is just kick up production rate. Put out records all the time. Here's Slash's record, here's my industrial crap record, here's my punk Sticky fingers, here's another blues rock album. Motely did that and released all sorts of garbage. Some times you hit, sometimes you miss. 

I'd go further and say that they could all have their side projects to do their own thing and have fun, and make a GnR album every, say, 5-6 years with songs they all liked and agreed on how to do them. It has worked with other bands. Had Axl managed to do that solo album he was thinking about in 1994, things might have taken a different course. Even UYI could have been, instead of two GnR albums, a GnR album and an Axl solo project. Maybe I'll write more about this in the Should the UYIs have come out later in GN'R's career? thread.

1 hour ago, RONIN said:

Only issue I have with Axl calling Slash's story "lies" is something called HISTORY. Axl has a proven track record of being obsessed with industrial and grunge bands around this period and wanting to jam with Dave Navarro and Dave Grohl. 

He recorded My World on UYI 2 and had NIN, Soundgarden, and FNM on tour with GnR. He tried to recruit Dave Navarro multiple times and eventually got him to record Oh My God (an industrial track) which according to him, Duff and Matt refused to work on.

For someone who wants to do a straightforward rock record, he sure was fixated on industrial and alternative. They recruited Robin Finck into the band when Duff and Matt were still there -- Finck ofcourse being the guitarist for Nine Inch Nails !

It's very difficult to believe Axl's side of the story based on all this. 

 

Axl doesn't deny that he liked grunge and NIN too much. It seems that he was planning to do a side project in that direction, kind of a prime "NuGuns" thing, with Trent Reznor, Navarro, etc (and then do a GnR album), but probably they weren't available or eager to work with him. He claims, though, that he didn't try or insist to do something like this with GnR, at least while Slash was still in the band. After Slash left, he went all the way for it, although Duff and Matt were still there. His reasoning for that is he couldn't do a "traditional" album anymore, without Slash, so he had to do something else. He'd brought Pro Tools and all that stuff before Slash left, but, on the other hand, the Zakk Wylde argument is strong; I don't think Wylde would go there to do an industrial influenced record.

I'm not taking sides. After all, only they know what happened (as much as their memory serves them, of course, because they weren't in good state of mind for different reasons each) and it doesn't matter, they are together now; and I don't think that any inaccuracies in Slash's book are conscious.

I don't blame Slash at all for not wanting to do TIL and other similar Axl stuff and for leaving the band (as well as Duff). I must say, though, that I don't like that he was mocking Axl about it in public.

I like Bon Scott era songs much more than Brian Johnson's and I think they fit better in a GnR set.

My first pick would be If You want Blood (You got it). Axl nails it and I see some common patterns in the lyrics with WTTJ.  Sin City is great, too.

2 hours ago, Original said:

He had to have known all along what a Slash return would me.  Does anyone actually think that deep down he thought to himself he could have a band as big as real Guns were without Slash?  I mean if he were off his meds maybe?  Andwith all the 'yes men' surrounding him maybe he did.  He also once said something like "I only wanted Slash to be loved and appreciated" ..... And he told Loder in regards to why it was taking so long to record and get CD done his answer was "Slash".

Yeah, he must have been fully aware of this when he made the big decision to reunite with Slash. He's not that delusional. I'm sure he is also fully aware that there's no going back to an "old" nuGuns lineup after this; not because he wouldn't want to go back, but because the fans, at least the majority, won't accept it. He's not at the same position as Slash and Duff; they are active and have other projects to go to when the reunion thing is over, but Axl has nowhere to go to. That's why he wants it to last for quite a while and at the same time he explores other possibilities (to work with Angus, to make music for films, to write a book...)

6 hours ago, MillionsOfSpiders said:

Just imagine if Slash and Duff had been with Axl on his last interview. What's Slash meant to do when Axl says there are lies in his book? 

If ever, by some miracle, they do an interview together, I'm betting Duff will be sat in the middle! 

I don't think he would have said it if Slash and Duff were present, at least not with these words. He could have been less blunt anyway without being inconsistent; he could, for example, have said something like "my account of what happened is quite different and it's hard to write about it without being negative to the others". It's funny that while his point was that he doesn't want to be negative to the others, he said something negative, but this is Axl.

It would be a miracle indeed if they did an interview together. I don't recall them (Slash and Axl) doing this since the AFD era, maybe they did it once. They'd been doing separate interviews and in quite a few occasions they'd been saying things about each other.

1 hour ago, Top-Hatted One said:

AFD was very collaborative. Naturally Axl would be more proud of his work on UYI and CD and hold them in higher regard

He likes to feel that he's a part of a collaborative effort, though.

For him, i.e. as he wants to see it or present it, CD was a product of collaboration, too (not in the way Appetite was, of course, because those circumstances can't be reproduced). He has struggled all these years to convince the public that NuGuns were a real band and not his solo project with some session musicians.

On the other hand, he's said that UYI was more like three solo albums put together than a product of a band and he doesn't like it so much now, although he's proud of his songs.

24 minutes ago, Fitha_whiskey said:

Yeah, I'm not sure how to take that. He said he wants to put out new music, and if Slash wants to play on it, that's cool... Did he just state it weird? Meaning CD2, but we ain't writing shit together?

I think he said later on another question "if Slash wants to write or work on something..."

https://www.periscope.tv/w/1BdGYkENkmExX

8 minutes ago, SWINGTRADER said:

This interview was pretty sad. It pretty much confirms the doubts we had about the band. The guy is still fixated on Chinese Democracy and we will never see Steven and Izzy in the band again. He enjoys playing CD songs the most? This is still Axl Band with Slash as guest. One thing that I noticed in the interview(which speaks volumes),is that when a guy commented on how he believed AFD is one of the greatest records ever, Axl seemed bothered and immediately interrupted him and said "what is the question"?. He still seems to resent that record after all of these years. I bet that had the guy said that about CD, Axl would not have reacted in that way.

Axl is still very much the "dictator" he was in the 90's and I don't see any new material in the future. I think Axl/DC is more of a cohesive band than GNR at the moment. New material will come from them, not GNR.

I seriously do not see a future for GNR beyond 2017. Slash and Duff will go their own way. 

He doesn't resent Appetite; he never did. On the contrary, he's said it's perfect

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"With 'Appetite,' for me the parts, playing, etc., timing flaws, whatever, are perfect, and as a moment in time for me, the whole record is."

(2009)

He was just being humble. It's the same as when a site voted him as the best singer and he said that there loads of better singers than him.

4 hours ago, Live Like a Suicide said:

I don't think there are any lies... Slash was drug fucked during the collapse of GN'R, and Axl wasn't exactly in the right state of mind either. I don't think any of them have an objective and clear perspective on what actually happened...it's probably all half-truths and subjective memories.

I totally agree. There are stories in the books, particularly Slash's, that can be easily checked and found inaccurate. These are not lies, but the result of bad/confused memory and/or lack of information. Here is a good example from Slash's book: Slash says that there were no horn players or any other musicians in the Illusions recordings and that what we hear as horns in LALD is the product of Axl's keyboard effects. This contradicts what anyone who's read the credits knows, which is that there are horn players in LALD, among them Duff's brother! So, unless Slash wants to say that the band committed fraud by crediting people for work they didn't do (which is unlikely), it's obvious that either he doesn't remember or he didn't know.

Even if they weren't fucked up and they remembered everything, autobiographies are subjective by default and reflect more the writers' current state of mind than their past feelings and thoughts. For example, Duff's book is written from the viewpoint of his sober and balanced self; it would be a different book if he'd written it when he was still an alcoholic. Memory of past events with other people is affected by how one feels about them today and by what has happened in-between; if he is now in good terms with a person, he'll probably depict this person with brighter colors. It isn't conscious, it's the way that human mind works. Therefore it's inevitable, at least to a certain degree, and even if someone honestly tries to be objective, he just can't be. In Slash's case, I don't think he really believes that Axl's version is as legitimate as his.

That said, an Axl book intended to be a tell-all autobiography about his childhood, the band, his personal relationships. his dark years etc would be fascinating. If, on the other hand, it'll be focused on his version regarding the breakup, it isn't the right time for it, as he himself said.

2 hours ago, alfierose said:

The book thing has been brought up for years now, If it's going to continue being mentioned as a main point of contention it would be useful to know what bits were considered untruthful and what Axl's version of those events are.

We might find out in about another 10 years if we're lucky. 

From what he's said in interviews and in the 2008 chat, the main issues are the "blackmail" part in the brand name story (Axl denies it) and the musical direction of the new record (who rejected whose songs/ideas etc.)

8 hours ago, Estranged Reality said:

He's still got that stubborn streak, which is great in a way to see. Just the fact he says he enjoys performing Chinese Democracy songs the most...  Not a knock against the record by any means, but you can tell he's still very attached to that era and what all went on.

Although his answer wasn't what I (and many others)'d like to hear, it's completely understandable. Not only because he gave ten years of his life on making this record, but also because performing ChiDem songs with Slash is something "new" for him (and probably what he always wanted). And it seems that as much as he enjoys singing straight rock n roll with ACDC and Guns, he's still a lot into the progressive/experimental/eclectic/wall of sound/bloated -whatever someone calls it- thing.

3 hours ago, Asia said:

Some things he says are quite contradictory like that this is going to last for quite a while and yet that he's not sure Slash will want to be on the next record and at the same time that Slash and Duff are working on some of his music and they like it... So what's the real deal Axl?

I don't think this is contradictory. He says is that he'd like this lineup to last and that Slash and Duff liked the material, but he can't be sure whether it will work. And how can anyone be sure? These people haven't worked together for ages.

4 hours ago, Asia said:

The reunion being always a possibility is some kind of bullshit. Maybe he meant it was always possible as in "nothing is ever impossible in this world" or whatever. Anyway he was the one who claimed he'd rather die so not sure what he's talking about.

Yeah, this doesn't make sense at first sight. But if we review the last few years in the light of the Axl/Slash reunion eventually happening, we could see the rejoining with Duff as a first step. Axl accepted Duff's role as the middleman between Slash and him; this means that he was at least open for a reunion. Another indication is that in 2011-14 interviews his comments on Slash were less harsh and not hate-driven; they sounded more like complaints. He also didn't reject RHOF immediately; in the 2011 Eddie Trunk interview he said he'd been thinking about it.