Did you know? (Rare & little known GNR facts thread)

[seagullview]

Let's make a thread where you can post any facts about GNR that aren't well known.

To start it off I will come up with the first one.

Did you know that on AFD Axl Rose recorded each song line by line? So high were his perfectionism and ambitions that he just did one line at a time.

Source please.

The AFD-song Think About You is not about a woman, it's actually about heroin

Source please. Struggling with this one. "Honey now you're my best friend..." "Said baby you'd be looking real good, I remember the time we met"?

I'll try one. In Perfect Crime when Axl says t-1:09 and counting, it's exactly 1:09 left in the song.

Let's make a thread where you can post any facts about GNR that aren't well known.

To start it off I will come up with the first one.

Did you know that on AFD Axl Rose recorded each song line by line? So high were his perfectionism and ambitions that he just did one line at a time.

Source please.

The AFD-song Think About You is not about a woman, it's actually about heroin

Source please. Struggling with this one. "Honey now you're my best friend..." "Said baby you'd be looking real good, I remember the time we met"?

I'll try one. In Perfect Crime when Axl says t-1:09 and counting, it's exactly 1:09 left in the song.

Line by line:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080619081602/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/15690883/page

Think about you:

http://rabbit75.hubpages.com/hub/10-Guns-and-Roses-Facts-About-Appetite-for-Desruction-You-May-Not-Have-Known

[Carburetta]

Let's make a thread where you can post any facts about GNR that aren't well known.

To start it off I will come up with the first one.

Did you know that on AFD Axl Rose recorded each song line by line? So high were his perfectionism and ambitions that he just did one line at a time.

Source please.

The AFD-song Think About You is not about a woman, it's actually about heroin

Source please. Struggling with this one. "Honey now you're my best friend..." "Said baby you'd be looking real good, I remember the time we met"?

I'll try one. In Perfect Crime when Axl says t-1:09 and counting, it's exactly 1:09 left in the song.

Let's make a thread where you can post any facts about GNR that aren't well known.

To start it off I will come up with the first one.

Did you know that on AFD Axl Rose recorded each song line by line? So high were his perfectionism and ambitions that he just did one line at a time.

Source please.

The AFD-song Think About You is not about a woman, it's actually about heroin

Source please. Struggling with this one. "Honey now you're my best friend..." "Said baby you'd be looking real good, I remember the time we met"?

I'll try one. In Perfect Crime when Axl says t-1:09 and counting, it's exactly 1:09 left in the song.

Line by line:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080619081602/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/15690883/page

Think about you:

http://rabbit75.hubpages.com/hub/10-Guns-and-Roses-Facts-About-Appetite-for-Desruction-You-May-Not-Have-Known

Nice read but I couldn't see a mention to the line by line bit in the first link.

Not hating either but I don't think the Think about you story has come from a reputable online source. Without a quote from a band member I won't be taking that as fact, seems quite far fetched.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Carburetta

[Amir]

I thought Izzy wrote Think About You about some rock singer/guitarist's wife/gf he had a crush on? Wasn't it Joe Perry's wife or something?

[dalsh327]

Izzy's mom worked at Purdue University's call center.

Edited February 19, 2014 by dalsh327

[Chris1989]

Slash isn't in the band any more.

[Subtle Signs]

Oh My God won a 1999 Metal Edge Reader's Choice Award for Soundtrack Song Of The Year.

[username]

Oh My God won a 1999 Metal Edge Reader's Choice Award for Soundtrack Song Of The Year.

Didn't know that, but that's really cool!

[Mastodonny]

Axl eats little pieces of shit for breakfast.

[Subtle Signs]

Oh My God won a 1999 Metal Edge Reader's Choice Award for Soundtrack Song Of The Year.

Didn't know that, but that's really cool!

It's from Wikipedia so take that for what you will. I can't imagine a Gn'R fan is bored enough to put that in as an edit but there are a few nutters on this board so anything is possible!

[Padme]

I thought Izzy wrote Think About You about some rock singer/guitarist's wife/gf he had a crush on? Wasn't it Joe Perry's wife or something?

She was Alex Van Halen ex wife. And yes, Think About You is about her and it was wrote by Izzy

[Amir]

I thought Izzy wrote Think About You about some rock singer/guitarist's wife/gf he had a crush on? Wasn't it Joe Perry's wife or something?

She was Alex Van Halen ex wife. And yes, Think About You is about her and it was wrote by Izzy

Thanks, found this after Googling Izzy and Alex van Halen:

FIB MUSIC: In Lizzie Grey's interview, he said that the reason Izzy left was because you had beat him up. What happened?

Nadir: Let's get this straight, Mr. L Grey never really liked Izzy OK! The reason being, Izzy would come up with tunes and ideas. Izzy was a rhythm guitar player, as far as Mr. Grey was concerned. I believe that Mr.Grey did not want anyone to write the tunes. He wanted all the credits for songwriting, which is fine, if you are the only one with all the song ideas in the band. He was very insecure about this or maybe just greedy. On our BMI Publishing split, we had to re-negotiate the percentage split between Brian West, Mr. Grey and myself. Brian and I contributed a lot and we wanted a fair split. We did not get the split we wanted, but we took what we could. We wanted to keep things cool. That is the way it was as far as I recall. We made things happen as a band and for him to have that attitude is not unusual. We thought we were a team, sad but true, it eventually came to an end. The Izzy fight well! The story is that I had a girlfriend, her name was Valerie Kendall, she was amazingly HOT! I met her in Hollywood, it was small circle of Hot! Girls in Hollywood. She hit on me and we had a bit of chemistry, so we started hanging together daily and staying at her house at West View Towers. She was in the middle of a nasty divorce from none other than Alex Van Halen....drummer of you know the band, Van Halen. I was banging this girl, we were steady so I thought. One summer day I woke up and found a little leak in my plumbing. I was very surprised by this, cause I was only doing Valerie. I confronted her and eventually after drilling her for a while, she did admit banging Izzy and that's were the origin of the leak came from. I called Tracii Guns at his mom's house and asked him if Izzy was there, he said yes! Izzy would sleep on his couch every so often. I went there, confronted him, asked him if he was banging Valerie, he denied it in my face. At that point, I was very upset since she had told me that he did bang her. Basically I think that I was mostly upset about the lovely gift he had transferred to the both of us. So! Without any notice, within a split second, I punched him in the face, once.... I wanted more, but! He did not want any part of it. He was scared and I don't blame him, I would have been to, if I did that to my bandmate. In those days, I was very volatile for some reason and I was notorious for my temper. I did not take shit from anyone. I warned him to stay away from her or else. I left Traci's house back to the rehearsal room as nothing happened I had a drink of vodka and smoked a joint. So that's it. So I guess I was part of the departure of Mr. Stradlin. By the way, I eventually found out that she was a heroin junky and was banging many guys, including Jeff Beck among some. In LONDON we explained the rules clearly to all and one of them was that WE! did not bang each other's girls. Whores, girlfriend's, slut's, groupies, any of them. Your meat was yours only, no sharing or proprietary control of all pussy. The reason was that this would avoid any conflict between the band and that way we would all have no conflicts over an important factor. Can you believe how our minds worked, the analogy. Funny stuff.

EDIT: And here's a bit from Marc from Reckless Road: "Izzy wrote "Think About You" after hanging out with Alex Van Halen's ex-wife Valerie Kendel. She dropped him off at the Sunset & Gardner Studio Alley. Izzy walked down the alley, found a place to sit down and wrote the song!"

Edited February 19, 2014 by Amir

[Amish]

And here's a bit from Marc from Reckless Road: "Izzy wrote "Think About You" after hanging out with Alex Van Halen's ex-wife Valerie Kendel. She dropped him off at the Sunset & Gardner Studio Alley. Izzy walked down the alley, found a place to sit down and wrote the song!"

"A blowjob SO EPIC he wrote a song about it!" lol

[seagullview]

Let's make a thread where you can post any facts about GNR that aren't well known.

To start it off I will come up with the first one.

Did you know that on AFD Axl Rose recorded each song line by line? So high were his perfectionism and ambitions that he just did one line at a time.

Source please.

The AFD-song Think About You is not about a woman, it's actually about heroin

Source please. Struggling with this one. "Honey now you're my best friend..." "Said baby you'd be looking real good, I remember the time we met"?

I'll try one. In Perfect Crime when Axl says t-1:09 and counting, it's exactly 1:09 left in the song.

Let's make a thread where you can post any facts about GNR that aren't well known.

To start it off I will come up with the first one.

Did you know that on AFD Axl Rose recorded each song line by line? So high were his perfectionism and ambitions that he just did one line at a time.

Source please.

The AFD-song Think About You is not about a woman, it's actually about heroin

Source please. Struggling with this one. "Honey now you're my best friend..." "Said baby you'd be looking real good, I remember the time we met"?

I'll try one. In Perfect Crime when Axl says t-1:09 and counting, it's exactly 1:09 left in the song.

Line by line:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080619081602/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/15690883/page

Think about you:

http://rabbit75.hubpages.com/hub/10-Guns-and-Roses-Facts-About-Appetite-for-Desruction-You-May-Not-Have-Known

Nice read but I couldn't see a mention to the line by line bit in the first link.

Not hating either but I don't think the Think about you story has come from a reputable online source. Without a quote from a band member I won't be taking that as fact, seems quite far fetched.

Sorry, I thought I read it in there. It was from wikipedia:

According to drummer Steven Adler, the percussion was done in just six days, but Rose's vocals took much longer as he insisted on doing them one line at a time, in a perfectionism that drove the rest of the band away from the studio as he worked.^[10]

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appetite_for_Destruction}

[DieselDaisy]

I thought Izzy wrote Think About You about some rock singer/guitarist's wife/gf he had a crush on? Wasn't it Joe Perry's wife or something?

She was Alex Van Halen ex wife. And yes, Think About You is about her and it was wrote by Izzy

Thanks, found this after Googling Izzy and Alex van Halen:

FIB MUSIC: In Lizzie Grey's interview, he said that the reason Izzy left was because you had beat him up. What happened?

Nadir: Let's get this straight, Mr. L Grey never really liked Izzy OK! The reason being, Izzy would come up with tunes and ideas. Izzy was a rhythm guitar player, as far as Mr. Grey was concerned. I believe that Mr.Grey did not want anyone to write the tunes. He wanted all the credits for songwriting, which is fine, if you are the only one with all the song ideas in the band. He was very insecure about this or maybe just greedy. On our BMI Publishing split, we had to re-negotiate the percentage split between Brian West, Mr. Grey and myself. Brian and I contributed a lot and we wanted a fair split. We did not get the split we wanted, but we took what we could. We wanted to keep things cool. That is the way it was as far as I recall. We made things happen as a band and for him to have that attitude is not unusual. We thought we were a team, sad but true, it eventually came to an end. The Izzy fight well! The story is that I had a girlfriend, her name was Valerie Kendall, she was amazingly HOT! I met her in Hollywood, it was small circle of Hot! Girls in Hollywood. She hit on me and we had a bit of chemistry, so we started hanging together daily and staying at her house at West View Towers. She was in the middle of a nasty divorce from none other than Alex Van Halen....drummer of you know the band, Van Halen. I was banging this girl, we were steady so I thought. One summer day I woke up and found a little leak in my plumbing. I was very surprised by this, cause I was only doing Valerie. I confronted her and eventually after drilling her for a while, she did admit banging Izzy and that's were the origin of the leak came from. I called Tracii Guns at his mom's house and asked him if Izzy was there, he said yes! Izzy would sleep on his couch every so often. I went there, confronted him, asked him if he was banging Valerie, he denied it in my face. At that point, I was very upset since she had told me that he did bang her. Basically I think that I was mostly upset about the lovely gift he had transferred to the both of us. So! Without any notice, within a split second, I punched him in the face, once.... I wanted more, but! He did not want any part of it. He was scared and I don't blame him, I would have been to, if I did that to my bandmate. In those days, I was very volatile for some reason and I was notorious for my temper. I did not take shit from anyone. I warned him to stay away from her or else. I left Traci's house back to the rehearsal room as nothing happened I had a drink of vodka and smoked a joint. So that's it. So I guess I was part of the departure of Mr. Stradlin. By the way, I eventually found out that she was a heroin junky and was banging many guys, including Jeff Beck among some. In LONDON we explained the rules clearly to all and one of them was that WE! did not bang each other's girls. Whores, girlfriend's, slut's, groupies, any of them. Your meat was yours only, no sharing or proprietary control of all pussy. The reason was that this would avoid any conflict between the band and that way we would all have no conflicts over an important factor. Can you believe how our minds worked, the analogy. Funny stuff.

EDIT: And here's a bit from Marc from Reckless Road: "Izzy wrote "Think About You" after hanging out with Alex Van Halen's ex-wife Valerie Kendel. She dropped him off at the Sunset & Gardner Studio Alley. Izzy walked down the alley, found a place to sit down and wrote the song!"

I just lost a few dozen brain cells reading that.

[cheesecake]

OK. I'm not a native speaker, can someone explain this to me: found a little leak in my plumbing. ???

I literally thought he meant the plumbing at his house, (I know, laugh away at me ) but upon reading the next sentence I realized it's not that? But what does it exactly mean? Is it some kind of STD or something?

[Val22]

Okay it's all Axl's fault for everything that went bad with GNR.

What bullshit!

At least Axl worked hard for the band and wasn't fucked up on drugs and alcohol which was the main reason for the breakup of this awesome band.

What's wrong with Axl wanting GNR to be the best band they could be? They became big too fast and didn't know how to handle it.

Yeah, Axl was a perfectionist and probably still is, so what, at least he gave a shit.

Izzy left because he was the first one to get clean and didn't want to deal with the others who were still on drugs and drinking. You can't blame Axl for that.

As for the others, I think this band just had it's time together and that was it. I think it's a good thing they all left or got fired or whatever and got their shit together and lived to tell about it.

I don't see any of the original members bitching about it anymore. They've all moved on and so should some of you.

[liers]

In 1997 Todd Sullivan, who was then a talent executive for Geffen, sent Axl a sampling of CD's produced by different people, and encouraged him to choose one to work on Chinese Democracy. Todd Sullivan reported he received a call informing him that Axl had run over the albums with a car.

Axl took Buckethead to disney land and had a chicken coop built in the studio for him.

Supposedly, Axl checked himself into a mental hospital in 2002 after the tour ended for exhaustion.

When Axl first started working on CD, he rented one piece of specialized equipment for more than two years at a cost well into six figures and only used it for a month.

Axl has over 1,000 demos and audio clips from the CD era in his vault.

[Brunzopolis]

Axl might be a little bit psychic.

There is a quote in the book "Everybody Loves Our Town", from Bryn Bridenthal, who used to be the head of PR at Geffen:

"...when Axl was starting work on the album that would become Chinese Democracy, Jim Barber was A&Ring the project. And Axl at one point told me that Jim came to the studio and Axl felt Courtney Love energy coming off of him and made Jim leave. He couldn’t work with that energy in the room.

What I found out later, and Axl didn’t know then, either, is that Barber had taken up with Courtney. They kept it a secret from me and the company. So for Axl to feel Courtney Love energy coming off Jim Barber’s forehead, not knowing that they had a relationship, was sort of like, Whooooo! It was just amazing."

[Estranged Coma]

In 1997 Todd Sullivan, who was then a talent executive for Geffen, sent Axl a sampling of CD's produced by different people, and encouraged him to choose one to work on Chinese Democracy. Todd Sullivan reported he received a call informing him that Axl had run over the albums with a car.

Axl took Buckethead to disney land and had a chicken coop built in the studio for him.

Supposedly, Axl checked himself into a mental hospital in 2002 after the tour ended for exhaustion.

When Axl first started working on CD, he rented one piece of specialized equipment for more than two years at a cost well into six figures and only used it for a month.

Axl has over 1,000 demos and audio clips from the CD era in his vault.

Interesting.. I feel like something worse then exhaustion is going on to check one self into a mental hospital.. Is that 1000+ number confirmed? Seems you give a man like Axl that much stuff, he could be sorting through it for a millennia

[niceguy]

Slash isn't in the band any more.

Ha I totally busted out laughing at this!

True, to the casual fan, this is a little known fact.

[machinegunner]

VICKY HAMILTON (Original GNR manager): Oh yeah. So one day, I walk into the living room, and Kim Fowley (Elecktra record company exec) is sitting on my couch, talking to Axl and Izzy. I don’t think Slash was there that day. Kim is telling them he wants to buy the publishing rights to “Anything Goes,” “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Paradise City,” which was a brand-new song at that point. Three songs that ended up on “Appetite,” and Kim Fowley offers $2,500 for the publishing. Axl wanted to do it! I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me? Those are great songs that are worth a lot more than that!” And Axl goes, “Yeah, but I can write a million songs like those.” I was like, “You can’t write a million songs like THOSE songs. Don’t do it.”

source: http://www.metalsludge.tv/?p=34971

[Cosmo]

Slash isn't in the band any more.

Ha I totally busted out laughing at this!

True, to the casual fan, this is a little known fact.

Actually I think 80% of the people who are aware of Guns N' Roses know about the Axl x Slash thing. One thing 99% of the people don't know is that the rest of the band isn't the same.

[dalsh327]

VICKY HAMILTON (Original GNR manager): Oh yeah. So one day, I walk into the living room, and Kim Fowley (Elecktra record company exec) is sitting on my couch, talking to Axl and Izzy. I don’t think Slash was there that day. Kim is telling them he wants to buy the publishing rights to “Anything Goes,” “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Paradise City,” which was a brand-new song at that point. Three songs that ended up on “Appetite,” and Kim Fowley offers $2,500 for the publishing. Axl wanted to do it! I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me? Those are great songs that are worth a lot more than that!” And Axl goes, “Yeah, but I can write a million songs like those.” I was like, “You can’t write a million songs like THOSE songs. Don’t do it.”

source: http://www.metalsludge.tv/?p=34971

Kim's not doing so well. He's one of those guys who saw just about everyone starting out, I think he had been a child actor like Micky Dolenz, Paul Williams, and Van Dyke Parks. Axl took his songwriting talents for granted when he had help at the time, sounds like bragging and Vicki knew it. Good thing she knocked some sense into him.

[kanudo19]

In 1997 Todd Sullivan, who was then a talent executive for Geffen, sent Axl a sampling of CD's produced by different people, and encouraged him to choose one to work on Chinese Democracy. Todd Sullivan reported he received a call informing him that Axl had run over the albums with a car.

Axl took Buckethead to disney land and had a chicken coop built in the studio for him.

Supposedly, Axl checked himself into a mental hospital in 2002 after the tour ended for exhaustion.

When Axl first started working on CD, he rented one piece of specialized equipment for more than two years at a cost well into six figures and only used it for a month.

Axl has over 1,000 demos and audio clips from the CD era in his vault.

Interesting.. I feel like something worse then exhaustion is going on to check one self into a mental hospital.. Is that 1000+ number confirmed? Seems you give a man like Axl that much stuff, he could be sorting through it for a millennia

He may have a 1000 demos... i mean it took way long and the band had many members, buckethead for instance has released 47 albums in his relatively small career , songs like shackler were nothing but a bucket's demo until axl grabbed it and turned it into a song after bucket left. So he could have a shitload of demos

[Amish]

I don't like to believe stories unless they come directly from the source (especially with GNR, I've never seen so many fake stories for any other band ever) but I think I believe the Vicky Hamilton story about selling the rights because I'm pretty sure Axl referenced that same story somewhere...