Popular Post RONIN Posted October 29, 2017 Popular Post Share Posted October 29, 2017 Thought this was an interesting overview of the Illusion albums. Albums Revisited: Guns N’ Roses ‘Use Your Illusion’ Turns 25: a reappraisal of Guns N’ Roses overstuffed 1991 albums on their 25th anniversary. We live in a time when everyone’s a critic. Mix tapes are now playlists. Fan fiction doesn’t live on the Internet fringes anymore. And fight as I might to stave off the elements of cultural evolution that I may find problematic or shallow, I am only human, and thus occasionally succumb to the conveniences of technology that allow me to so easily and publicly expose the whims of my imagination. Case in point – I’ve recently rewritten the history of midnight, September 17, 1991. In my fantasy, I am still at the mall with my incredibly patient parents, waiting giddily in line to get the new record by Guns N’ Roses, their proper follow-up to Appetite for Destruction.The band had been teasing it for months, with cryptic ads in Rip magazine, but no one really knew what to expect other than the single “You Could Be Mine,” released a few months earlier. Since that release, GNR had gone on complete media silence, and we didn’t even know the title of the record. Anticipation was at a fever pitch. And then, at the moment of truth, as I get to the counter, I am confronted with not one new GNR record but two! The first has a suitably “RAWK!” cover (probably involving skeletons – I haven’t quite thought that through); it’s got 11 tracks on it, the first called “Right Next Door to Hell”. Fuckin’ A. The second record, though, has a totally different cover. It’s very un-“RAWK!”, featuring a painting of a black and white figure writing in a book, overlaid on a blue painting of some old dude in a robe. It’s got nine tracks and according to the track list on the back, only three of those songs are under seven minutes long – several extend past eight minutes. It’s called Use Your Illusion (which celebrates its 25th anniversary on September 16th). An illusion indeed. I have to admit – I’ve spent WAY too much time thinking about GNR’s magnum opus and last commercially successful hurrah. The reality, which of course you know if you’re reading this, is that Use Your Illusion, which turns 25 this month, does indeed consist of two separate records, but each one tops 75 minutes, and taken together, provides 30 songs (basically a triple record). It’s a twisty mess of crazy, a collection so dense and audacious, so wrought with contradictions, and so all-over-the-place consistency-wise that I can’t help but be sucked into its vortex. Oh to be a time traveling fly – to go back and sit on the cigarette-scented walls that housed the song writing process and subsequent recording sessions. I am absolutely intrigued by it as an expression of a band trying to follow up a bona fide classic debut album, and I’m absolutely fascinated by its legacy, or lack thereof, as the case seems to be at this time. Again, my imagination runs wild as I dream of what Use Your Illusion might say to us GNR fans if it were to somehow become sentient. “Appetite, Appetite, Appetite! That’s all you care about!” it would mourn aloud. “What about me? What about my 10 radio hits? You loved me back then – we toured the world together for 2.5 years! We were so massive we had to hire TWO keyboard players, some back-up singers, and God knows how many fucking tambourine players! And we did it in the midst of the flannel takeover!” Indeed, Appetite for Destruction cast a shadow so large that even GNR throwing everything they had at the wall couldn’t get them out from underneath. But the question I ponder is – could they have? With this same collection of songs, with the same personalities, with even all the bullshit on and off-stage ass-hattery – was there a way that Use Your Illusion could have been the epic follow-up they hoped it would be? That today, a spirited debate could be waged between fans about what GNR’s best record was? These sorts of what-if’s represent Monday morning quarterbacking at its worst, fan fiction at best. But there is one truth here, and that’s the music. No matter how it all went down, we’re left with a collection of songs, and if those songs suck, the question is moot. I argue that if you carve away the context and trim a serious amount of fat, a legitimate case can be made for the GREATNESS of Use Your Illusion. So respect for the artist be damned, I’m gonna give it a shot. Let’s start first with Appetite for Destruction as an obstacle – a piece of art by which all subsequent releases would be compared. Its attributes have been widely and justifiably praised. It was an honest portrayal of a hungry band, where intentions and outcome fused themselves into a lean, mean slice of visceral, dark life in sonic form. There was a purity in its descriptions of sleazy Los Angeles, and it happened to come along when GNR’s peers were laughing it up in hedonistic excess. You can say Nirvana brought a certain realness that served as antidote to hard rock. But GNR was for those of us who weren’t seeking an antidote – we were looking for higher standards from our rock stars. The baggage that Appetite brought to the follow-up was two-fold. First, what resonated with fans was its honesty, but by 1990, GNR was a changed band. They were no longer hungry. They’d even cleaned up – maybe not 100% (maybe not even 60%), but enough that they could function (mostly) as a touring act and recognize the toxic nature of drummer Steven Adler’s drug problem. They were successful and seemingly doing well financially. For them to paint another grimy picture would have been disingenuous and counter to what we appreciated in GNR in the first place. It was a no-win situation, and in the end, singer and lyricist Axl Rose opted for honesty most of the time, resulting in a record largely dealing with these themes: Pain-in-the-ass women Pain-in-the-ass journalists Pain-in-the-ass neighbors living in Axl’s high-dollar high-rise Pain-in-the-ass anyone who tried to tell Axl what to do or how to live Talk about your all time disconnects! If Appetite for Destruction was “Straight Outta Compton,” Use Your Illusion was “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems.” I must concede, then, that Use Your Illusion never really gets under your skin lyrically in the way its predecessor did. It was left then for the music itself do the talking, but again, Appetite put them in a tough position. The songs on that record wouldn’t have succeeded had they not kicked unholy ass. But those songs also didn’t branch out beyond blues-based hard rock riffing. For GNR to attempt to recreate that sound again across 12 songs – it might yield a good record – but it might also yield diminishing returns. And that would be OK for some bands, many of whom make decent livings churning out similar records over and over again. But GNR was more than just a hard rock band. They wanted to be Queen, Elton John, and the Stones. Their musical ambitions clearly surpassed what was represented on Appetite, and for them to succeed, they would have to expand their sound and explore their influences, a risky move when your biggest supporters are notoriously fickle heavy metal fans. So what happened? Good art almost always involves making tough choices, and well, I think it’s fair to say that GNR, ever the rebels, didn’t want to be forced into an either-or scenario and opted instead for a have-cake-and-eat-it-too approach, one that allowed them to craft songs that would appeal to their base but also satisfy their own creative aspirations. And the thing is, it could have worked! But the final product suffered not only from being overstuffed but also oddly sequenced. As notorious perfectionists (they actually scrapped original mixes partway through recording), one would’ve hoped that GNR had been more judicious when deciding not only what made the final cut, but how those songs would fit together coherently. Interviews from back then indicate that they did intend for Use Your Illusion I to be the more straightforward rock record with II being more experimental; in general, I guess that’s true, but the end result is still undercooked. Were they concerned that if one record just had the weird stuff, it wouldn’t sell as well? Possibly, but it’s just as likely that they simply didn’t put that much thought into it. SIDE NOTE: I would be remiss if I didn’t briefly examine Lies, the double EP which some might argue was the true follow-up to Appetite for Destruction. The live first half of that record is classic GNR, but then the second acoustic half begins with “Patience,” a song that blew me away the first time I heard it because I couldn’t believe that GNR was capable of crafting something so gentle. Releasing that as a single was a bold decision, and the fact that it was a hit is testament that their fans were open to some experimentation. That said, Lies was released right on the heels of Appetite’s success. It was a palate cleanser comedown, and as such, didn’t have to endure the levels of anticipation and scrutiny placed on Use Your Illusion. My inquisitive mind wonders if anyone ever stepped in and suggested they scale this monster back. Given that they fired their manager during the recording process, it wouldn’t surprise me if those in the GNR inner circle decided it best to tip-toe on eggshells or else risk losing their seats on the gravy train. But again, I’m just speculating. Here are ten things I do know though: Two versions of “Don’t Cry” were completely unnecessary. An alternate version is the kind of track you put on a follow-up EP or special edition release, but as no such release ever transpired, I shudder to think what GNR left on the cutting room floor, if anything. The back-to-back servings of “Get in the Ring” and “Shotgun Blues” represent Axl at his worst. These two sorta-OK musically in a B-side kinda way rockers are both derailed by the stupidest, most petulant sets of lyrics in the whole GNR catalogue (“Ring” invites detractors to suck Axl’s dick; “Shotgun” invites them to suck his ass. When I mentioned making choices earlier, this isn’t what I had in mind). “Back Off Bitch” makes “It’s So Easy” sound like an ode to chivalry. This is actually a pre-Appetite tune, and while some bands have found success in re-working old songs and releasing them later, this feels like an example of, “If it wasn’t good enough the first time around…” I suspect “Pretty Tied Up” has its fans, but I’ve always felt that it lyrically sinks to the levels of cock rock’s most egregious offenders. The less said about the pseudo-industrial “My World,” the better. And allow me to correct an earlier statement. This is Axl at his worst. “Live and Let Die” was a big hit, and for good reason. The original was great, and GNR didn’t reinvent the wheel, adding their hard rock oomph to a rock solid template. But on a statement record of such magnitude, maybe GNR would have been better served sticking to their own material and letting “Live and Let Die” serve as B-side bait on a cassette single. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” was already played out by the time Use Your Illusion was released (“I’ll sing one. You’ll sing one. We’ll do this a few times…”). Of the eight aforementioned songs, six appear on Use Your Illusion II, which is why that record is such a slog despite containing some of Use Your Illusion’s best tracks. Of the eight aforementioned songs, guitarist Izzy Stradlin only had a hand in writing one of them (“Pretty Tied Up”). Has there been a more publicly underrated musician than Izzy? I get that fans are excited about Slash and Duff McKagan rejoining the band.They were certainly the most recognizable original members other than Axl once Izzy left shortly after the release of Use Your Illusion, but Izzy was arguably the man who gave GNR their mojo in the first place. He had a hand in writing all of their best songs. If you excise the eight aforementioned songs, you’re left with 22 songs ranging from OK to great in quality. Still plenty for a double record with a few left over for B-sides! So let’s return to my fantasy – the day I buy two new GNR records. The one with nine incredibly long songs – the one titled Use Your Illusion – begins with the somber “Civil War.” It lets the listener know right off the bat that this record will be different. It segues into the uber-cheesy but thoroughly awesome Elton-esque “Breakdown.” It’s a rocker, but it’s also a piano rocker, so again, things are a little weird. “Locomotive” is funky but sounds more like “traditional” GNR; it’s also almost nine minutes long. Duff’s crooning “So Fine” is the most underrated track on the whole shebang. Then you have the centerpiece – “Don’t Cry” into “November Rain” into “Estranged” – and suddenly their outlandish video trilogy for those songs takes on more weight. The record wraps with the one-two weirdness of “The Garden” and “Coma.” Admittedly, the record skews dark and mellow at times, but man does it go down epic. Had this been the actual release, undoubtedly there would have been some fan discontent, but I bet it would have its fierce defenders still today (I know this because I would have been one of them. Thanks to the ease of iTunes, I listen to this “version” front to back more than any other GNR release – yes, even Appetite). SIDE NOTE: The above collection emphasizes the moments when GNR went big and bold. And when you go big and bold, there’s a good chance that not everything will land in the way it was intended. Which is a nice way of saying there’s a lot of goofy shit on Use Your Illusion. Too many moments to count here, but some of my faves include: The “yaaaayaaaaayaaaa” interminable vocal drone at the end of “Don’t Cry”; the incredibly questionable jive-talking monologue at the end of “Breakdown”; anytime Axl has to end a song with some exclamatory statement or spoken commentary; and pretty much all of the sound effects / spoken word moments on “Coma,” my favorite being, “Zap him again. Zap the son of a bitch again!” My favorite line on the whole record: “Funny how everything was roses when we held on to the guns” (C’mon, that’s GOLD!). For those of you out there who absolutely HATE these sorts of moments – I get it, and I won’t argue. Other than Lies’ ”Used to Love Her,” GNR was not known for their humor, intentional or otherwise. But hell, I find it kind of endearing. And fun. What can I say, I like to laugh. The beauty of compiling all the “weird” songs together is that GNR would have still been left with 13 songs to craft the other “RAWK!” record. Now we could argue on which of those songs to include, but at the very least, the up-tempo slammers “Garden of Eden,” “Perfect Crime,” “Don’t Damn Me” and the Izzy-sung “Double Talkin’ Jive” rock as hard as anything on Appetite. “You Could Be Mine” was a great single. “Yesterdays” is a pretty track for those who love the more tender side of GNR. Songs like “Dead Horse” and “Dust N’ Bones” show signs of musical growth but don’t alienate anyone. It might not be Appetite level quality, but it would have been pretty damn great while throwing a bone to the fans turned off by the Use Your Illusion comp. Oh, and the name I would give to this “RAWK!” compilation? Your Illusion – as in, this is who you think we are, but in reality, we’re so much more. Who knows if this would have changed anything? GNR probably still would’ve toured the world for close to three years and released umpteen thousand videos. They were everywhere back then. Was it too much? Too much touring, too much exposure, too much property destruction? Was it so much that when the inevitable break-up occurred, we as fans said, “That’s OK, we needed a break anyway”? And then the question becomes, why, as the nostalgia train rolls through, are we clamoring for the Appetite line-up? And I think the answer is that Use Your Illusion-era Guns N’ Roses broke a cardinal rule of show business – they didn’t leave us wanting more. To the point that even still today, most fans want the version of the band that did. I’m not sure any reconfiguration of Use Your Illusion would’ve changed that. But it sure is pleasing to these ears! Happy birthday, old friend! And until next time… Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em! All riiiiiiiiiight, that SUCKED! http://smellslikeinfinitesadness.com/albums-revisited-guns-n-roses-use-your-illusion-turns-25/ 2 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h2sublime Posted October 29, 2017 Share Posted October 29, 2017 They are straight up perfect records to me. I wouldn’t change anything. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-W.A.R- Posted October 29, 2017 Share Posted October 29, 2017 Great albums with a few filler tracks. They didn't click for me until the second listen but now i actually prefer them over AFD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tadsy Posted October 29, 2017 Share Posted October 29, 2017 Not sure I agree with everything he says but that's how the world works. He makes obvious points, like alt version don't cry, my world ect weren't really needed. I'd have preferred to have a track of slash just jamming the god father at the end of UY2 than my world but that's just me? I think he's barking up the wrong tree with LALD, and KOHD though, I have no issue with either over being on the records and they were separated anyway so I've no issue with them. I like the fact that the records have so much material and it seems mish mashed, it keeps me listening to them. Obviously if you wanted to be not picky, you could pull the best of 1 & 2 apart and have a record that could justifiably be in the conversation as a match for AFD, but what's the point? May the find I was wrapped we got a double album and I wouldn't change too much, especially seeing we haven't exactly been bombarded with new material so I'm happy with everything we have on these albums. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MyPrettyTiedUpMichelle Posted October 29, 2017 Share Posted October 29, 2017 8 hours ago, h2sublime said: They are straight up perfect records to me. I wouldn’t change anything. I agree with what you said except I would say, 'They are straight up imperfect records to me and I wouldn't change anything.' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ratam Posted October 29, 2017 Share Posted October 29, 2017 17 hours ago, h2sublime said: They are straight up perfect records to me. I wouldn’t change anything. Agreed👍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ludurigan Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 the author has a problem confusing Axl Rose and GNR === Was there a way that Use Your Illusion could have been the epic follow-up they hoped it would be? THEY? Who are they? Anyone in their right mind wouldnt expect that. There is no indication that anyone actually expected that, with the possible exceptin of Axl. === They wanted to be Queen, Elton John, and the Stones They who? The only person in GNR that wanted to be Queen and Elton John is Axl === Their musical ambitions clearly surpassed what was represented on Appetite Their? You mean Axl`s, right? === As notorious perfectionists who is this guy talking about? GNR or Axl? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PsychoKiss344 Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 I honestly enjoy the Illusion albums more than Appetite in the past couple years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sydney Fan Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 (edited) To a huge guns teen fan back then these albums took for fuckin ever to come out. Theres was no internet so you had to rely on magazines and even Geffen didn't know when the albums were due out. Does everyone remember when the illusion albums came out and the band were so paranoid about being taken out of context when doing interviews that the band (axl and slash) would approve or not approve the interview in print before the magazines hit the shelves.That was slashs idea if memory serves. Edited October 30, 2017 by Sydney Fan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 (edited) Izzy Interview 1992: M: Have you seen your old partners lately? I: We haven't talked to each other for seven or eight months. Actually, we did. Two weeks ago I was in New York and I bumped into Slash. Of course, he was furious. Well... We finally talked a little bit, just him and me. That was cool! M: Why did you leave in a few words? I: Well, this gig wasn't making me laughing anymore. You know, it's quite easy, I wasn't happy anymore. So I told myself, all right let's do something else! M: Can we say that Nick Kent's article in the 13th issue of Vox ("The Daze of Guns N' Roses") accelerated the processus? I: I read this one when I arrived in London, and I found he perfectly summed up the situation and understood the vibe of the "Get In The Ring" tour. For the first time I saw it written in black on white. Actually, no need to exagerate, it's an accumulation of internal things that drove me out of the band, not an article. M: Yeah, but you weren't going to the video shootings either! And now, alone, you put out an album in six months? I: How can I say this without spitting more venom into the debate? I saw all their dirty laundry bashing all over the magazines. At some time, I felt a little bit like picking up my phone, call a journalist and spit my answer, my version of the story... M: As in the "Van Halen wars"? I: Yeah, you see... Finally I decided to get into the studio. The others can say whatever they want. M: That thing about the co-written songs, what was it? I: Listen, to sum it up, at a momemt, I felt like scraping it all down to the bone. Do some rock n' roll. Stop complicating the thing with a six-piece brass band, three back up singers, the harpist and the pianist... Dizzy plays great, that's not the problem, but that's not rock n' roll... What Guns did well, and that I will always defend, is our erruption on the scene. You remember? Our songs were good too! But me, I wanted to go ahead. M: I felt like I couldn't hear your guitar in the final mix of the "Illusions". .. I: Yeah, what happened there? (laughs) They took two years to finish the two records, and at the end I don't even feel like listening to the final product. Not at all! In fact I listened to the records only after the concert at Wembley in August 91, and I freaked out: "Where the hell is my fucking guitar?" It's gone! From there I lost the little interest I had left in the G N' R enterprise. This and the stadium tour! M: And I find you with Alan Niven as manager, which I have met with Great White, and who was Guns' first manager! I: Yes, yes, yes... Alan of course. Axl fired him. M: How? I: We weren't given any choice! It happened like that. Four members of the band were against and Axl said "All right, take him as a singer then because if he stays, I leave!" What can you do? What can you say? M: You say: "We're four and you're alone!" I: Yeah, but at this time, discussion had a little bit rarefied.. M: Axl and you, you had been friends for years. You were together in high school, right? I: Well, Axl and high school... He must have spent at least two days there! (laughs) Yeah, I saw him briefly there. But don't count me in to bad talk Axl, Guns and all the rest. Time... time's gonna heal all this! M: Slash's position is "I haven't spent two years of my life giving birth to the "Illusions" albums to give up when the first incident comes around". I: Slash's forgetting that he didn't spend two years on these records. He spent like... hmmm, two months! Like all of us! Afterwards, we waited for a year for the other to write the lyrics, you see? So... But it all gets too complicated. Hey! Music! Rock'n'roll! After all, four guys write some songs, record them, and go play them in front of the public... Keep it simple. What about listening to the EP? M: Does anybody get you excited in the current rock? I: Who gets me excited? M: Yeah... I: Well... The last record that made me feel like listening and listening to it was the Nirvana album. Great! Otherwise I dig the second Black Crowes', yes, it's good. Ronnie Wood also made me listen to his new album in LA. It's superb, really cool. And that's all. M: According to you, what is rock music's problem in 1992? I: A lot of things. The click tracks used to record the drums. All that synthetizers shit too. That's the reign of the machines, the end of rock'n'roll! Well, that's the crap of the machines, man. M: You're still very young. I've always wondered where you found that science of the riffs you were using since the very begining of Guns. Where did you take it from, tell me? I: From the Ramones (laughs)! I've stolen it all from Johnny Ramones! Actually, at the begining, from them and Motorhead. Then you discover the blues, you slow down, and you find out about the Great Chuck Berry... M: And you, Guns, you lost Steven Adler, your first drummer... Was it another decision made by Axl or by the whole band? I: At this time I had nearly managed to get clean up, from everything. When I was looking at the band, I would see Stevie, who was a good guy, who's been struggling with us during all these years, but couldn't handle it anymore. He was a real millstone, he needed to clean up! Fuck... We all tried to help him, to support him. But no, finally, we'd been on the road with this guy for years and we lived this dilemna: "OK. We leave him six months doing nothing without any guarantee it gets better, or we forget about the double album and we burry the band?" Actually, the industry's machine woke up and the answer was: "We take someone else to cut these records." It's wasn't an easy decision. Look, yesterday, I talked to him over the phone for the first time in a year. I told him: "God Stevie, get your act man, record..." And he answered: "Fuck, man, my reputation is fucked up." I couldn't help laughing! And I told him: "Open your eyes, your reputation has always been fucked up (laughs)! Get a band! Play!" M: You didn't think about taking him with you? I: I might have thought about it (smile). But (silence).. I told myself: "Let's do something new, a little bit." M: Axl was making fun of you in "Rolling Stone". He was saying "Izzy doesn't have any vision. He sees the things very small. He doesn't have any vision." I: Ah, I read that too. Ah, and you know what? M: Well... I: He must be right! Yeah, that's right! M: You mean that he had, him, from the begining, this super-star, international band vision? I: Surely, yeah, whereas we wouldn't see beyond an hotel bar's closing at two in the morning. Without doubt! We played behind him for five years, and never, at any time, we thought about what was happening! Authentical! Whereas him, he was cogitating, in his bedroom. You know, we were just trying to stay in life, behind. Sometimes, you find yourself thinking... hmmm...two plus two, how much is that? It's always been madness, like this, for five years. I don't have any precise example, but it had become a maelstrom, fuck, it wasn't the thing to do, not for me anyway. I'm proud of the songs we managed to knock together. And what we did...Everything! We smoked everything, drank everything, ate everything! Yeah, everything! I won't say more, we broke havok, and that was great, we were the walking revolution! Only one thing was happening, and we were this thing. I remember the gigs in England, the first time, it was complete hysteria! And then everything changed. It wasn't the same anymore. At the begining there were two guitars, two! On my album, that's what I wanted to do with Rick: two guitars. The same school... Like Keith Richards and Brian Jones. Like Aerosmith and Hanoi Rocks, that's the trick. M: And the vocals? I mean, you sang one or two songs in Guns, but that's a long way from becoming a singer. I: In five years with Guns, Axl never came to a rehearsal. So I always was the one who would end up singing. I would do "Welcome To The Jungle", "Mr Brownstone"... I got to like it. Singing just cleans up your head... http://www.a-4-d.com/t1659-1992-09-dd-interview-with-izzy DEL: You really haven't yet addressed why Izzy Stradlin left GN'R. If you would, explain what happened and, more importantly, how you feel about Izzy. AXL: I feel like shit all over me, and I wiped it off and ain't too happy that it happened. I think for a long period of time Izzywanted to be more independent, but Guns N' Roses took off fast, and he was such a part of it, it was hard to take that step. That's my opinion. There are certain responsibilities to Guns N' Roses that Izzy didn't want to face. He basically didn't want to work as hard at certain things as we did. He pretty much just showed up before we went onstage, would get upset that I wasn't on time, played, then split. There were times when we'd get off stage, and five minutes later he was gone. He didn't socialize with the band on any level, and he had a real problem being sober and being around us. Izzy's always been very compulsive and impulsive, and although he's quit abusing various substances, he still hasn't gotten to the base of the reason why he was abusive. He hasn't solved that, so instead of doing drugs, drinking and womanizing, he was keeping himself busy traveling, bicycling and buying lots of toys. There's nothing wrong with any of that, except that he wasn't able to do the things required of him in Guns N' Roses. Getting Izzy to work hard on the album was like pulling f?!kin teeth. Everybody dreaded it. Nobody would go by the studio while he was there, because no one wanted to deal with it. He's play something out of key, and we'd ask him to do it again, and he'd be like, "Why? I just did it." Izzy was very unsupportive of me in general. He was very concerned about his free time, and he didn't have a whole lot of understanding of what to takes me to do my job. As far as I'm concerned, he was a lazy, selfish user. There are ways that I miss him and wish it could've gone on, but he was a real f?!king asshole to me. I was always a massive Izzy fan and supporter, but now that he's working with Alan Niven [former GN'R manager], f?!k him - and you can print this. Even if we work things out between us, I won't regret what's coming out in this interview, because it's how I feel. I'm glad we got the songs out of him that we did, and I'm glad he's gone. DEL: He really hurt you, huh? AXL: You wanna know how he really hurt me? When he came up here to my f?!king house and acted like, "What's wrong, man?" It's really weird; I knew he was coming. I could literally feel his car driving up as I was getting dressed. I went outside and sat down, because Izzy couldn't come into my house. I couldn't act like he was my friend after what he'd done to me. He came up and acted like he hadn't done anything, but he let us down at a weird time. It wasn't like someone leaving the band because they couldn't take it anymore; he left in a shitty way. Izzy called up members of the band and tried to turn them against me by saying that I pushed him out, and that's not how it went down. He said a lot of shit behind my back. He tried to make a power play and damage us on his way out, and that's real f?!ked up. DEL: Want to talk about another former member of Guns, drummer Steven Adler? AXL: The misconception is that we kicked him out for the hell of it, and that I was the dictator behind it. The truth is, I probably fought a little harder to keep him in the band, because I wasn't working with him on a daily basis like the other guys were. They grew tired of not being able to get their work done because Steven wasn't capable of it. I've read interviews where he's saying that he's straight. Most of the time he isn't. He's the type of person who wants everything handed to him, and he did get it handed to him. He got it handed to him from me. At one point, in order to keep this band together, it was necessary for me to give him a portion of my publishing rights. That was one of the biggest mistakes I've made in my life, but he threw such a fit, saying he wasn't going to stay in the band. We were worried about not being able to record our first album, so I did what I felt I had to do. In the long run I paid very extensively for keeping Steven in Guns N' Roses. I paid $1.5 million by giving him 15% of my publishing off of Appetite For Destruction. He didn't write one goddamn note, but he calls me a selfish dick! He's been able to live off of that money, buy a shitload of drugs and hire lawyers to sue me. If and when he loses the lawsuit he has against us, and he has to pay those lawyers, if he has any money left, it'll be the money that came from Guns N' Roses and myself. At this point I really don't care what happens to Steven Adler, because he's taken himself out of my life, out of my care and concern. I feel bad for him in ways, because he's a real damaged person, but he's making choices to keep himself in that damage. There's nothing we can do at this point. We took him to rehabs, we threatened his drug dealers, we helped him when he slashed his wrists. I even forgave him after he nearly killed my wife. I had to spend a night with her in an intensive-care unit because her heart had stopped thanks to Steven. She was hysterical, and he shot her up with a speedball. She had never done jack shit as far as drugs go, and he shoots her up with a mixture of heroin and cocaine? I kept myself from doing anything to him. I kept the man from being killed by members of her family. I saved him from having to go to court, because her mother wanted him held responsible for his actions. And the sonofabitch turns on me? I mean, yeah, I'm a difficult person to deal with, and I'm a pain in the ass to understand, and I've had my share of problems, but Steven benefited greatly from his involvement with me - more than I did from knowing him. Stevenhad a lot of fans, but he was a real pain in the ass. I need to keep him in my life for you? F?!k you! DEL: Now that we've taken care of that, what about the flipside of the coin: the new guys, especially guitarist Gilby Clarke? AXL: Gilby is awesome, and a pleasure to be around. He works the stage and the crowd really well. Also, he helps give us a sense of rock 'n' roll normalcy - if there is such thing. Gilby has a way of understanding and dealing with situations that makes the whole trip more tolerable. His insights from being on the outside of GN'R helps us. He has his opinions of what's going on with us, and it helps us get a different perspective, ' cause Slash, Duff and myself have been in GN'R for so long and are so close to it that sometimes we don't see things like other people would. Every now and then he'll say something to me, and I'll go, "Wow, I didn't see it that way." He's been putting himself through his own rock-and-roll education with his other groups for years. Now he's a part of Guns N' Roses. DEL: Is he a "member" of Guns N' Roses? AXL: This "member" thing is quite interesting, I read in an interview where Matt [Sorum, drummer] said that if he didn't get made a member, he wasn't going to be in Guns N' Roses. The truth of the matter is, Matt's a member of GN'R, but it doesn't really mean anything. It's kind of like a clubhouse/gang thing. We're all members of this gang. What it boils down to is, whose yard is the tree house in? Matt's a member of GN'R, and his opinions are taken into consideration. As far as that's concerned, Gilby is a member too, Dizzy is a member of the band. With all the background singers, horn players, keyboardists - we look at it like we're all Guns N' Roses. But the bottom line is, the business is basically run by Slash and myself. Then we run whatever it is we're discussing by Duff and see if he's cool with it. Guns N' Roses is basically Slash, Duff, Doug Goldstein and myself, but there's a lot of other people involved that are a part of our lives and a part of our family. DEL: Do you think Matt's gonna be pissed when he reads this? AXL: It would be nice if he wasn't. I love everybody in this band. It's kicking ass and feels really warm and really cool onstage. At this point it's the 12 of us that get onstage and f?!king go all out. DEL: There's 12 of you? AXL: There's Teddy, there's Dizzy, there's Roberta, Tracy, Lisa, CeCe, Anne, Gilby, Matt, Duff, Slash and me. Slash put this new band together, did all of the groundwork. He did such an amazing job that I just can't believe it really happened. I'm glad to be a part of it. It's a pretty huge thing, and we might even add some dancers, like we used to have back in the old Troubadour days. It's something we've considered. DEL: When you and Slash aren't at each other's throats, you're really a force to be reckoned with. AXL: Let me say something about us being at each other's throats: We haven't really been that way in the past year and a half. I love the guy. We're like opposite poles of energy, and we balance each other out. We push each other to work harder and complement each other that way. We had a run-in in Dayton [Ohio], because both myself and Dougie thought he said something shitty to me onstage. That was the night I cut my hand to the bone. Backstage we have monitors much like the ones onstage, and while I was back there dealing with my hand, I thought I heard him take a potshot at me. I wrapped my hand up in a towel and was like, "Let's get it taken care of, so I can finish the show." I came back onstage and was a dick to him and told him I'd kick his f?!king ass in front of 20,000 people. That was f?!ked up. I was wrong, and I apologized the second I realized I was mistaken. Someone who is supporting me as strongly as he does is a hand I never want to bite. http://www.a-4-d.com/t545-1992-09-10-11-dd-interview-with-axl Edited October 30, 2017 by RONIN 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 This summer, former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin finally saw his old band mates in concert for the first time since he left the group - on TV. Like many of his neighbors in Lafayette, Indiana, Stradlin coughed up twenty-five bucks to watch GN' R's live pay-per-view broadcast from Paris on June 6th. Looking back on it now, he's still not sure exactly what he saw. "It was really bizarre, like an out-of-body experience," he says, a bit hesitantly, over coffee and cigarettes in a high-rise Chicago hotel room. "I didn't really recognize them all together. They had horn players and harmonicas and girl singers. Of course, I was Gilby for the night (a reference to his replacement, guitarist Gilby Clarke). It was weird, you know?" "I was happy to see that they carried on without me," he continues. "That's all I would hope. Those guys...'" Stradlin's voice trails off, and he gazes out the window, as if hoping to find the rest of the sentence written out for him on the choppy turquoise waters of Lake Michigan. Actually, Stradlin confesses, he didn't watch the entire Paris broadcast. After it was over, "I put on some tapes of my new stuff," he says. "And it felt good." Stradlin's debut solo album on Geffen Records, Izzy Stradlin and the Ju Ju Hounds, and the launching of his new group of the same name mark the end of the thirty-year-old guitarist's extended retreat from the music business -- and the business of his old band in particular -- following his stormy, highly publicized departure from Guns N' Roses in November 1991. He made no official statement of his own at the time, and he has maintained a conspicuous silence on the subject, even in the face of several impassioned public rebukes by singer Axl Rose. Until now. Stradlin's return to action as a singer and bandleader with Ju Ju Hounds -- an infectious, Seventies-flavored groove-fest that rocks like a three-way pile up Desire-era Bob Dylan -- has forced his hand. But when he does talk about his final months with Guns N' Roses and the showdown with Rose that precipitated his exit, Stradlin takes pains to do so in an honest but neutral manner that suggests he's long since wrung himself dry of anger and regret. "I don't have any communication with them," he says matter-of-factly. "I don't know what they do anymore. About the most I know about them is when I watch CNN once in a while: 'Oh, shit, Axl got arrested again.' "Still, I like to think that those guys are all my friends," he adds. "It's not like I never want to see them again. The channels are very much open." As he tells it, though, his last days with the band were mostly full of static. Making the Illusion albums was no picnic. By Stradlin's count, Guns N' Roses rehearsed and recorded the material for the albums three times. During that three-year period, Stradlin kicked both drugs and alcohol, and he wrote or co-wrote many of the albums' best songs, including "Dust N' Bones" and the frenetic "Double Talkin' Jive." But as the Illusion sessions dragged on, Stradlin's friendship with Rose -- which went back to their days as Jeff Isabelle and Bill Bailey, fellow teenage tearaways in Indiana -- started to unravel. "I tried talking to him," Stradlin says, "during the Illusion albums: 'If we had a schedule here, come in at a certain time...' And he completely blew up at me: 'There is no fucking schedule.' "There was one song on that record that I didn't even know was on it until it came out, 'My World' (the closing song on Illusion II, written and sung by Rose)," Stradlin continues. "I gave it a listen and thought, 'What the fuck is this?' " Stradlin concedes that the growing estrangement was partly his own fault. "I had to let go of certain aspects of it," he says. "I didn't feel my opinions were really being taken seriously anymore." When Guns N' Roses finally hit the road in May 1991, Stradlin traveled between shows in a separate tour bus. He failed to show up for the shooting of the video for "Don't Cry," saying now that the million-dollar cost of the clip was a pointless indulgence: "I didn't have any say in it, and I didn't want to be in it." Push finally came to shove in the fall after GN' R completed the first European leg of the tour. Stradlin says he confronted Rose and the band with some changes he felt had to be made "for the sake of the livelihood of the band." One of them was ending the chronic lateness of the shows. Stradlin even went so far as to propose that the responsible party should be fined. That was the last straw. "It was really fucked that it even had to come into play, to base something like that on money," Stradlin grumbles. "But the reality was that it was bumming me out, to be waiting there because someone else is late. It's just not fair to the audience, to the other band members. And the crew! When you go on three hours late, that's three hours less sleep they get." "I expressed my feeling to Axl," he continues, "and the very next night on MTV I saw that I was going to be replaced by the guy in Jane's Addiction. So I took that as an indication that I'd really pissed him off." Stradlin insists that he never wanted to quit GN' R and pursue a solo career. "But Axl made it clear that he was going to do things his way, and there was no space for debate," he says. "So I had to make it clear to everybody that that was the end of the line for me." Two days before Thanksgiving, Guns N' Roses officially announced that Izzy Stradlin had left the group. http://www.a-4-d.com/t521-1992-10-29-interview-with-izzy IZZY STRADLIN shocked the world when he turned his back on fame and fortune and walked out of Guns N' Roses last year. Now he's back with his first solo album and a new band, The Ju-Ju Hounds, to have another crack - this time on his own terms. Izzy discusses his past, present and future with EDGAR KLUSENER. Izzy Stradlin had it all. The main song-writer with Guns N' Roses, he not only invented a heap of hits for them, he was a great stage performer, belting out solid guitar rhythms with passionate conviction. Was there any more a rock star could hope or want to achieve? Mega-sales, big bucks, loads of adulation and ego massage, sell out concerts in the biggest stadiums all over the world. Not to mention all the sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll he could handle. And then he quit Guns N' Roses. Overnight he went from immortal rock god to...just another guitar player. Back to life, back to reality...From the pampered world of mega-stardom he was back in the world of seedy clubs and dodgy deals. Yet there was a little more to it than an inexplicable rush of blood to the head. For not only did Izzy turn his back on fame and fortune, he also left behind the heroin, alcohol and cocaine that had become synonymous with his lifestyle at the sharp end of Guns N' Roses story. Izzy Stradlin knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he walked out on Guns N' Roses. He's started out with his pals in the gutter and he didn't think twice about heading back there. "Guns N' Roses was pure chaos," confesses Izzy. "The smallest thing could turn into a massive problem. You'd get pulled in one direction and then the other. It was really difficult keeping hold of where you were supposed to be going. What really bothered me was working on 'Use Your Illusion I and II'. It progressed really slowly. Each song kept being taken to bits and analysed again and again and remade and before you knew it was weeks and months had gone by. When we finally finished a song I'd forgotten how to play the others. Slowly but surely, I began to realise that I wanted to have less and less to do with it. When things went on and on I finally realised that I'd have to do something about it." It wasn't easy for Izzy to split. Guns N' Roses had given him everything, but in his heart of hearts he knew he had to go to preserve his own sanity and self-respect. So he moved back to Indiana where he got himself a place to live and slowly weaned himself off drugs and alcohol. At first he felt confused and disorientated. He tried to relax by jumping on his bike and cruising around the mid-West in an attempt to sort out his life. His guitar, meanwhile, sat in a corner minding its own business doing absolutely NOTHIN'. It was a very strange time. "We left Hollywood as street urchins. When we left, everyone was betting that we'd never last and that we'd burn out. We were on the road continuously for almost two years and when we got back we were suddenly really popular. Lo and behold, suddenly everyone wanted to be our friend, everyone wanted to hang out with us. Everyone wanted to sell us something or get something off us. "Getting drugs was as easy as getting bread from a baker. I just slipped into a totally crazy way of life. I'd spend all night, right 'til the early hours, in bars and clubs or at parties that were always going on. but that slowly got boring and tiresome. There was no point in it. I had to get out of there as quickly as possible back into reality." When I think about how we worked when I was with Guns N' Roses it was the complete opposite. It was impossible to get organised, there was always stress. It was pure chaos. The simplest conversations or situations would get turned into massive problems. It's only now that I've learnt what a little self-discipline can do. That's how we worked in the studio, we concentrated, we worked quietly and thought everything through first. Everyone knew what they wanted and what they ought to do. It was incredibly creative, friendly and kinda exciting. Nothing could be more different to the way it was in Guns N'Roses. When I look at Guns N' Roses now nothing's changed, they still stumble along on that treadmill. So what? I wish them all the best, I really mean it, but it's just not my kind of thing anymore." "I know that it'll follow me for a long time. Guns N' Roses are just that big. Wherever I go I bump into the band. If I put the TV on there's Axl on screen, if I go into a supermarket you can bet on the way there I'll see posters for their tours. If I put the radio on some Guns N'Roses track will be playing. We had a lot of fun together. I like remembering all the times we had together. Of course there were times when it wasn't all fun, but the good times far outweighed the bad times. Guns N' Roses was an experience that I just had to be part of. http://www.a-4-d.com/t569-1992-11-dd-interview-with-izzy 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 (edited) "Yeah, getting sober played a part in my leaving," says Stradlin, his eyes glancing alternately at the floor and out his hotel room window at the rain clouds over Chicago. His long, dark hair is gradually entangling itself into dreadlocks, and you have to search his glowing complexion for evidence of canine mastication. The overall impression is vibrant shyness. "I think you make more decisions when you're sober. And when you're fucked up, you're more likely to put up with things you wouldn't normally put up with. When I have something I wanna do, I gotta do it. I like just doing it. I didn't like the complications that became such a part of daily life in Guns N' Roses. Sometimes for the simplest things to happen would take days. Time was so slow, you sat around for days just to do a photo shoot. Schedule it, get a phone call, it's been delayed. Reschedule it, get a phone call, it's been delayed again. That pattern could stretch out for weeks. On "Illusion", we did the basic tracks in about a month. Then there was a time lag of about a year before the vocals were finished. I went back to Indiana and painted the house. If you've got a group and people are focused, it just shouldn't take that long."Why did Axl take so long? "I never really knew, I guess. Just one of those things. On tour he had a real hard time finishing the sets. And he had a hard time getting onstage. So you're sitting there in the dressing room at a hockey rink and for, like, two hours the walls are vibrating while the audience is going, `Bullshit! Bullshit!' That time goes "slow" when you're sober. And they have to send a helicopter to the hotel to get him. He would just `get ready,' and sometimes he would `get ready' for a long time. I don't know what goes on upstairs with him. To me it's simple. Get an alarm clock, ya know? There's a modern invention that seems to work for people. You set it, and then you wake up when you're supposed to."It's almost like Johnny Thunders with a big following. "We opened for him once in Long Beach during the early days. This was back when Axl used to wear those chaps with his ass hanging out and no underwear. I remember it was backstage, and Johnny Thunders said, `What are you, some kind of biker fag?' Axl goes, `I'll fuckin' kill you.' Really wanted to kick his ass. And Johnny just sat there smoking his joints and drinking his Budweisers. Great first impression." It's wierd how you and Steven Adler, G N'R's original drummer, took opposite routes out of the band. You got straight and had to leave. He couldn't quit and got fired. And now he's suing on the grounds that he was encouraged to use heroin. "I talked to him about a month ago. The lawyers said don't because of the lawsuit, but I'd heard he was in a bad way. He said he was having a hard time stretching it for more than a day or two. Really scared me. I know how I'd feel if he did himself in and I didn't make an effort to help him. I said if he cleaned up, I'd like to cut a couple of reggae tracks with him next summer. I know he's really bitter about the whole situation. He needs to start thinking forward."Replacing him with Matt Sorum for the recording of "Use Your Illusion I" and "II" changed Guns N' Roses from a rock 'n' roll band into a heavy metal band. Adler's drumming made the band swing. Sorum hits hard but he plods. "Yeah, a big musical difference. The first time I realized what Steve did for the band was when he broke his hand in Michigan. Tried to punch through a wall and busted his hand. So we had Fred Coury come in from Cinderella for the Houston show. Fred played technically good and steady, but the songs sounded just awful. They were written with Steve playing the drums and his sense of swing was the push and pull that give the songs their feel. When that was gone, it was just...unbelievable, weird. Nothing worked. I would have preferred to continue with Steve, but we'd had two years off and we couldn't wait any longer. It just didn't work for Slash to be telling Steve to straighten out. He wasn't ready to clean up."What was your relationship to Slash? "I don't think he really wanted another guitar player, but it was kind of a package deal, Axl and I. We had periods where we actually wrote songs together and worked out our parts. There was a little bit more interplay on "Appetite" than "Illusion". He was like a brother, but a brother who really wanted to be out on his own. "On "Illusion" I did the basic tracks, then he did his tracks, like a month or two by himself. Then came Axl's vocal parts. I went back to Indiana. I'd been around for rehearsals, learning the songs and all that stuff. I didn't really listen to the record until it was out. When I finally did hear it, it was what I expected: The guitars were basically buried."Slash has accused you of turning in sloppily made demo tapes. "That's not Slash talking. That's Axl talking and Slash repeating it. Axl did say the tapes weren't up to GNR standards. Well, in the beginning nobody owned an eight-track. All our tapes were made on a cassette player. Whatever, I'm credited with just about everything I wrote. I will say that Slash was much better at keeping tapes in order. He always labeled stuff."Does it bother you when Axl bad raps you from the stage? "I've heard he's still slinging mud. I can't take it personally, because if it wasn't me, it would just be somebody else. Somebody's gonna get it in every city. There's nothing I can do about it. When I left the band, he got real pissed off, told me to get off his property. When I talked to him a couple weeks later, he said he wasn't still mad, but who knows? I've left him all my phone numbers since December, and he still hasn't called. When he's ready, he'll call and we'll talk." What about DuffMcKagan? His face has gone the way of Jimmy Page in the sense that he used to be beautiful and now he's lost his chin to toxic bloat. "The doctors talked to him two years ago," Izzy sighs. "They said your liver is supposed to be this big." He holds his hands in the shape of a hardball. "They said his liver was this big." He holds his hands in the shape of a softball. "And when his liver gets this big, it's all over." He holds his hands in the shape of a canteloupe.Another complaint that the remaining Gunners have is that you left the band even before you left the band. You traveled to gigs by your- self and they never knew where you were. "I did prefer to travel at my own pace. They had a jumbo jet and most of the gigs were 200 miles apart. When a gig was over, my girlfriend and my dog and I would get on the tour bus. I didn't need to go out and get laid. I had to pass on the booze. There just wasn't much for me to do backstage. http://www.a-4-d.com/t570-1992-11-dd-interview-with-izzy Edited October 30, 2017 by RONIN Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 Guitar Player: When did you realize you had to leave Guns N' Roses? Stradlin: During the last three months I spent on tour with them, it was growing increasingly tough for us to get onstage on time and finish a gig without some sort of interruption. Things were just out of control. In the early days I had some sort of balancing factor in the band, and we'd discuss things. But towards the end, I was less and less spoken to about decisions. I'm sure a lot of it s my own doing, because those last few months were so chaotic that I took a sideline position. I didn't want to be wrapped up in all the madness. Guitar Player: Was there much creative tension between you and Slash? Stradlin: On the last record I wasn't around for the mixes, and when they finished them you really don't hear my guitar at all. It was just a big Les Paul through a Marshall sound on most of the songs. Live, it got to the point where I didn't even know if the audience could hear my guitar. I was playing, and my amp was on about 8 or 9 to keep up with everybody else. We were a really loud band; so loud you can t imagine--even at rehearsals. It finally came to this. After the tour, we'd taken a break, and they did a video for "Don't Cry," but I didn't make it to the video shoot. It just kind of fizzled out from there. This was November '91. I felt a lot of relief once I got out of the band. I was going, "What am I going to do now?" I'd made some money, and I could do just about whatever I wanted to do. It only took a few weeks, and I was back digging the 8-track out of the basement and setting up mikes and drums. I said, "Shit, I've got songs." http://www.a-4-d.com/t578-1993-05-dd-interview-with-izzy-and-rick-from-ju-ju-hounds The Sydney date of that GN'R tour was an interesting character study of both Axl and Izzy. Axl was outraged when he read that openers Kings Of The Sun had said something about the influence of Rose Tattoo on Guns. When he hit the stage, he lashed out savagely at the Kings. Then, later in the night, a member of the crowd began giving Axl some lip, and the singer moved to the front of the stage to try to sort him out. Izzy seemed to sense the potential for big trouble and grabbed Axl's arm with casual reassurance, as if to say, "Forget it." "I was always pretty quiet, and that band was pretty much...." The thought and his voice faded. "I don't know, I guess in some ways I was sort of a balancing factor between Axl and the rest of the guys at one point. I don't know how it evolved to where it is now. I don't know what goes on with them now. " Izzy's firm belief in the need to get on with the show was to be frustrated enormously in the years to come. Toward the end of his tour of duty with the Gunners he even traveled separately from his comrades which earned him the nickname Mr. Invisible. "It was only because it was much simpler," he explained. "Most of the time I got there before the plane did. As weird as it sounds, that was usually the case." His last show with the band was at London's Wembley Stadium in August 1991, though it wasn't until November that he was a free agent. The decision to split wasn't sparked by any one incident. "It was a gradual process," he admitted. "Before I left I spoke with Axl for a couple of hours on the telephone, and he made it real clear to me that he was going to be running things, so to speak, and there were some conditions put up that I was going to have go by. He was trying to make it good for me as well, I guess, but at the same time I realized that was it, I was done. The next day I signed my leaving papers. What a relief, too, I gotta tell you. I got tired of it, man. I just didn't understand it anymore. It didn't make any sense to me." For Izzy, punk is far form being just this or another year's model. In his youth he played drums in a punk band called the Atoms. He later switched to guitar and became a skateboard maniac to a blazing soundtrack of all things angry and energized. "I was just living on that stuff [punk] every day, all day long," he said. "I loved it. I still do. I still love that music." For these reasons I figured Izzy must have had a lot of his heart and soul wrapped up in the punk covers Guns recorded a while back when he was still with the band. "I don't know what happened to that," he said. Did he have much of an input into it? "I'm trying to think what songs were on that thing." Wasn't it a Dead Boys song, a Damned song, a Fear song? "Oh, yeah, sure. Those were all the records and cassettes I had at one point. Yeah, I was into that stuff. I forget how it came about that we recorded it, though, and I don't know what happened, if they're going to put it out or what's the plan." That concept would appear to be more to Izzy's style than a lot of the stuff on "Illusion I" and "II". "For "Illusion"?" he said, "That record, for me, had it been my way in a perfect world, I would have done it as a lot shorter and a lot more to the point sort of record." Apart from the frustration he felt at the trials and tribulations that rocked GN'R during the long period of recording the "Illusion" albums, Izzy, who is far from a slouch in the axe department, also had to battle the complexities of a song like "Coma." "That was a long song, wasn't it?" he said. "I never did learn that song. What I did is, I had a chord chart onstage for the tour, because there were like 30 changes, and they didn't flow naturally for me. I think that was Slash's song more than anything, because he was more into that heavier, Metallica sort of thing. I think we only played it three times live." http://www.a-4-d.com/t577-1993-04-dd-interview-with-izzy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 (edited) I know this has been covered before, but tell us a little bit about what happened with Izzy Stradlin and how playing with Gilby Clarke now compares to this.After, after the whole drug period… Um, I think everybody went in their own directions. And as far as dealing with getting off the drugs, everybody had their own approach. And from the time that we'd more or less quit, you know, dope and stuff. Um, Izzy had more or less lost interest in… I don't know if he lost interest or, I mean there could have a lot of phases, and I don't wanna, you know, put Izzy's personality into one little sentence. But what it seemed to me was that he'd lost interest in doing the work that was involved. He didn't feel comfortable with all the other guys. Because we'd all gone through this massive emotional experience in trying to get ourselves out of the slum. And he just didn't wanna run with the ball anymore. So, when we finally did get through that whole period and we, we got into the studio he wasn't that interested. He didn't have that much input, as far as recording and all that was concerned. And that was a really stressful time for the entire band anyway. And we went out on tour, and he finally quit. And the time that he was on tour, right before he quit, I was just really pissed off. Because it seemed like he'd show up and he would stand on the stage, for the alotted two and a half, three hours. And then, you know, split. I felt for that whole period of time that he was on stage, he really didn't wanna be there. So Gilby likes doing it. So there's a lot of interaction, and ahh, you know. I don't like to say anything against Izzy because we've all been playing together for a long time. Um, but I mean, it just got to a point where he just didn't wanna be there. So Gilby does wanna be there, so… You can feel it, you know. There's definitely some different feeling. And I don't feel like I have to rely on myself to cover the guitar and stuff, as much as I used to. http://www.a-4-d.com/t576-1993-03-15-interview-with-slash Do you ever think twice about your decision to release 'Use Your Illuision I' and 'II' at the same time? Slash and I were talking about that this morning. We're very proud of what we've done for ourselves. We planned it out since before we released the first album. We didn't know it was going to be quite so many songs, but we still feel it's the best thing we could have done. We needed to hurry 'Appetite For Destruction' in some way. If we didn't out do 'Appetite' in one way or another, it was going to take away from our success and the amount of power we had gained to do what we wanted. We got all the material out of our systems, and commercially it's been a major success.Now that you've out done 'Appetite', how will you out do 'Use Your Illusion'? Slash has been working with a lot of riffs, and I've been working out where my head's at about things. I'd like the next record to go to farther extremes. If I'm expressing anger, I'd like to take that farther; if I'm expressing happiness and joy, I'd like to take that farther. We haven't actually gotten together to collaborate on too many songs. I wrote and recorded a new song that I want to have on the record called 'This I Love.' We're not even sure how we're going to go about writing the record this time. Slash wrote all his tunes, I wrote mine and Izzy wrote his, and we put them all together. Well, now there's no Izzy, and Slash isn't just writing his songs. It's going to be more of a collaboration thing, but we don't know whether we're going to be writing with Gilby, or if we're going to be writing with someone else. We know we want to play with Gilby, but we don't know if we want to write with him yet. But we're pretty confident that we're going to do what we want to do, and we're going to be happy with it.Are Guns N' Roses still evolving? It's an evolving thing. Everybody has different directions and different desires about what they want to do. I wanted to get the band big enough so everybody would have those opportunities. We have a lot of new people in the band, but what ends up getting Slash and I off is what's going to work. We're into the idea of letting Matt go more off on his own in the drumming department of GN'R, because on the 'Use Your Illusion' albums he was playing what we wanted to hear. On the record, he's one of the most amazing drummers I've ever heard, but he's better than that. When Matt goes off on his own creative accent, it's even more extreme than what was on the 'Use Your Illusion' albums. I want to facilitate that getting out and Matt just exploding.Do you feel that you've become bigger than the band? The bottom line is that nothing can come between Slash and I. As long as we have that bond, we still have Guns N' Roses. And however big I get can only help Guns N' Roses. I'm not worried about that at all, and I'm not worried about being pulled in other directions, because this is where I'm grounded. And I need this in my life.Duff has just released a solo album, and Gilby has recorded an album. What about you? I want to do some stuff on my own, but I'm not trying to get an autonomy out there to establish my own sense of identity. I want to do some things like the song 'My World' on 'Use Your Illusion II'. I want to do a project like that by myself, with anyone who wants to be on it. But it's pretty much me and a computer engineer just putting things together, raw expression. You just go in and sing about what you want to sing about. We did 'My World' in three hours. It's something I need to get out of my system, but it's not something I want to base my career and future on. Guns N' Roses is my foundation.What musicians would you like to work with? Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails and Dave Navarro (formerly guitarist with Jane's Addiction and now of Red Hot Chili Peppers). Those are the two people I want to work with more than anybody else. I've talked with Trent about doing the industrial synth thing, and hopefully we'll work together on a project. And I definitely want to work with Dave. I've always been curious to see what it would sound like to have him and Slash on at least one song.Wasn't Dave rumoured to be replacing Izzy Stradlin in November 1991? There was a lot of talk about that, and we were open to it. It just wasn't the right time in Dave's life. He was needing the time to pull himself together and see where he was at. I don't know what will happen in the future. I still put on Jane's Addiction, and no matter how many times I've heard it, it surprises me that it always seems brand new.There is a lot of hidden intricacy in that music. I'm interested in the fusion of what GN'R has with that futuristic style. If it was taken seriously and patiently, that combination could be amazing. It would be a much fuller thing than anybody's ever heard. When Slash does solo things, or plays with other people, it just totally gets me off and makes me happy because I've always wanted him to have that recognition and that place in Rock history as a guitarist. And I also feel that way with Dave. I obviously have a much closer bond with Slash, having been involved with him for so many years. We're like each other's balance and counterpart. The world kind of missed Dave. He was a little bit too beyond them, and I'd really like people to see what he has to offer. http://www.a-4-d.com/t2650-1993-mm-dd-raw-magazine-an-appetite-for-construction-the-axl-interview Edited October 30, 2017 by RONIN Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 Q: How about life in the band? How big a blow was it to you last year when guitarist Izzy Stradlin decided to leave the group? A: I love the guy dearly, so I don't want to belittle his character by saying anything about him. But he just got sick and tired of dealing with everything. I think more than anything he didn't want to do the amount of work that Guns N' Roses has to do to keep it together. I totally sold my soul to this thing, but Izzy wasn't that way. He didn't want to do videos or spend all those hours in the studio, and slowly but surely he started to drop out. Q: Were you angry about that? A: Not at all. In fact, I was really happy because I could never understand what was going on with him. Like even on stage, he would just sort of stand there--and that was the only time I'd see him on the road because he traveled separately. When he finally left, it was like a relief because there had been no communication at all. Q: Did you begin to worry about the future of the band? After all, Izzy was the second personnel change in a year. A: It made us all closer. I had always been close to (bassist) Duff (McKagen), but the changes made me and Axl (Rose) a lot closer than we had been. We had always been friends, but there is really a bond there now. What used to happen is we'd misunderstand each other. We'd have fights because of something I was supposed to have said about him in the press or something he was supposed to have said about me. All these problems have pushed us closer together, so that we communicate better and avoid the misunderstandings. Q: What about Guns N' Roses' decision last year to put out two albums simultaneously? Do you still think it was a good idea? A: Yes. We went through so much emotional turmoil after the success of (1987's album) "Appetite for Destruction" and the albums reflect that. I'm talking about all of a sudden going from a garage band to becoming some sort of half-assed celebrities. The albums are so close to us that every single song has its own meaning and memories attached to it--the problems with drugs and adjusting to all the other drastic changes in our lives. That's why we put out two albums. We had so much material and we wanted to use it all. Q: What about the next album? When do you think it will be out? A: I don't know. We still feel there is a lot we want to do with the "Illusion" material. We have been touring for a year and a half to this point, but we have all these Metallica shows left, then a Brazilian tour and maybe a little club thing in the U.S. next year where we go out and play all our thrash stuff. I'm not even thinking about the next record until we finish all that. When the time does come to begin work on it, we'll take however long is necessary. We've never been the kind of band that rushes in and forces things--like one of those album-a-year type bands. http://www.a-4-d.com/t2451-1992-08-09-interview-with-slash-in-los-angeles-times MUSICIAN: When we go see Guns N' Roses now we're seeing three original members and three hired sidemen. You're one man away from a Steely Dan situation. AXL: Slash and I are avid Steely Dan fans. MUSICIAN: What's different about playing with guys you've hired, as opposed to guys you slept on floors with? AXL: In some ways it's not a whole lot different because in the beginning we were putting a band together to achieve something. It was always kind of a triad between Slash, Izzy, and me. And when Izzy wasn't so much being a part of that triad, Doug Goldstein, our manager, kind of took his place. As far as keeping Guns N' Roses going and figuring out what we're doing, Izzy really wasn't that much involved anymore. He wrote songs, but those songs were on the record because I wanted them on the record and because the band agreed to learn them and liked them and we all worked on them. I really believed in Izzy. I was an Izzy fan for 15 years and I wanted his songs to be a part of this project. But it was like pulling teeth to make that happen. A lot of people might have liked the way Izzy was standing there onstage and it was kind of cool, but the truth of the matter was that Izzy wasn't handling any of the weight. MUSICIAN: It seems like you have the other guys in the band over a barrel sometimes. Everyone knows you're capable of saying, "The hell with it, I won't go on" or won't record or won't show up. Doesn't that force the band to say, "We better do it Axl's way or it ain't going to happen at all"? AXL: Yeah. MUSICIAN: Does that take something out of the band? It seems as if Guns N' Roses has gone from being a shared vision to being your vision. Is that fair? AXL: Yeah, it's somewhat fair. That's definitely the case with Izzy. Izzy wanted the financial rewards and the power rewards of my vision. Izzy's vision was much smaller. The other guys in the band just though I was crazy. In order to make certain things happen, certain people had to think certain ideas were completely their own. I definitely knew what I wanted. I didn't know quite how to get there. And sometimes the only way to have everybody going the same place is to allow them to think that they're the ones who thought of it. It's not so much that way anymore and it's been real difficult to uncover that reality. It's been hard for people to accept. But it has been a basic reality of Guns N' Roses since the beginning. It just wasn't seen. Because I wasn't someone who had all the answers and all the plans, I just had a vision. I wasn't necessarily someone that people wanted to follow blindly and say, "He's got the plan, let's go." I've finally earned respect from Duff and Slash that wasn't necessarily there before. And Slashand I, more than anyone else, are very much a team. MUSICIAN: In "Garden of Eden" you talk about "kiss ass sycophants." Are there people around you who can look at you in the eye and say, "Hey, you're being a real jerk, knock it off"? AXL: Yeah. I have some close friends in the band and in our organization. That's why I'm friends with them. We pretty much lay things on the line with each other. MUSICIAN: Use Your Illusion has been out for a while now. Do you find that one volume holds together better than the other? AXL: No, I've never really looked at it as two separate albums. That was Geffen Records' marketing plan. I've always looked at it as an entire package. For me it fits together perfectly for the 30 songs in a row. Everything that we decided to record for the album made it. Actually there were 29 songs and "My World" just kind of presented itself. MUSICIAN: Did you suddenly say, "Hold on, there's another song coming"? AXL: Yeah. That happened with "Don't Cry." While I was recording the original version I started hearing another melody and words in my head. It really surprised me. I told Mike Clink, our producer, "Put me on another track! I don't know what's happening here but I've got a different song coming through my head and I want to get that on tape." "My World" happened when we were sitting around being a bit bored. We had been working on "Live and Let Die" all night and it was early morning. I'd been listening to a lot of industrial music and all of a sudden I said, "Hey man, let's do something. Let's see what happens. Let's just make it short and sweet and see what we come up with." In three hours we wrote and recorded the song. MUSICIAN: In it you refer to you "socio-psychotic state of bliss." AXL: I'll expose a little more of myself - we were also on 'shrooms. A friend of mine had stuck some mushrooms in my tea and I didn't know it. All of a sudden we were being really mellow. So it was kind of a socio-psychotic state of bliss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Cnut Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Revisiting UYI and Appetite is pretty much what being a GnR fan is. And has been since the mid 90s. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 (edited) You had a motorcycle-accident last year and Izzy Stradlin replaced you for some gigs in Europe. Where you worried that he had come back to stay? - Yes, the accident came like a serious chock for me. It happened on a day-off and I was in a fucking hospital with a broken wrist when we were going the next day! The whole Europe leg was left and it included a lot of important places that we hadn't visited yet. All the arrangements were done and there was no way that we could reschedule the tour. Someone wondered "how will we find a replacer? Are we going to do it without Gilby?" and someone else came up with the idea "we'll ask Izzy, he knows all the songs". I went totally… "What? Can't you get someone else but Izzy? I have several pals that can learn the songs in no-time". It was a shock. To be totally honest I was so gone due to all the analgesic medicine that I took, so I wasn't thinking entirely clear. That's why it didn't take me so hard then. After having rehearsed with Izzy for a week in Israel Slash called me and asked, "when will you come back? Are you sure you can't come a little earlier?". I think Izzy had fun during those weeks but it wasn't his thing really. They thought it was good that Izzy was there, but they didn't feel comfortable with him. I talked with Izzy on the phone all the time. I even played with him later on-stage in England. Didn't it feel strange? - Yeah, really. I came out of the hospital late after having went through a surgeon operation. Couldn't even look at the band, but had to stay in a hospital in USA. I came to Izzy's last gig in Milton Keynes in England and I sat by the side of the stage. I thought "but what's happening here. This is my part!". Even though it was Izzy's from the beginning. He used all my old equipment too, so it felt very weird. Then I went on-stage and sang a song with the band. I didn't notice I sang it on my own! We never rehearse and Axl came to me and said, "we do a cover of Rolling Stones. Izzy knows everything with Stones" and so we played "Dead Flowers". Axlsaid, "hit it!" and I thought we were gonna sing together. There I was in front of 50,000 people and sang [laughs]. It felt good that Izzy and I could talk. We hadn't been talking with each other since I took over after him. What happened then with the relationship with Izzy? A week later in Stockholm Axl told Izzy to fuck off. - Since I couldn't play it was intended that Izzy was going to take my place for the first five shows and then stay if he was needed. We didn't know if I could play, because I held a guitar for the first time exactly before my "first" gig. Izzy had promised to stay with us, but after Milton Keynes he said, "I call to see if you need me" and went off. Axl was really pissed. This is not my opinion, but what the others have told me - there was a lot of bad blood between Axl and Izzy and when they then sat down and talked everything was cool. They had fun together but as soon as Izzy had made his money he left. And now there's bad blood again. http://www.a-4-d.com/t604-1994-06-dd-interview-with-gilby K!: Were you freaked out when you bust your arm and Izzy filled in for you on a bunch of European dates last year? G: "A little bit. But I was so drugged up I didn't really notice it! "Yeah, it was really strange, but when it first came up I was literally still in a hospital bed. I'd just gotten my wrist reset. And that's when they brought it up. 'Well, we can't cancel the tour. Who are we gonna get to play guitar?'. And I'm like, 'Wait a minute...'. And so they came up with the Izzy idea. "In the back of my head I was going, 'Well, I don't think that's a very good idea', because what if Axl goes, `Hey, this is kinda cool, let's just get Izzy back'. But it didn't happen that way. "It was nice - as soon as I got home, Izzy called me and we talked for a while. He just did it to see the guys, cos he hadn't seen 'em in a while. And then it was funny because I had Izzy on one line going, `When are you coming back? I gotta get out of here!', and Slash was on the other line going, `When are you coming back. We gotta get him out of here!.' It was the funniest thing. "They did five shows without me, and I didn't get to go because I was in surgery. And then I got in for the last Milton Keynes show. We jammed. It was nice, because I hadn't seen Izzy in a long time." K!: I suppose it was kind of like getting together with an old lover. Both parties had just moved on. G: "That's exactly what had happened with the band. What's kinda cool is they just kinda realised, `Oh, Gilby really is a part of the band and Izzy's not a part of the band any more'. It worked out the best for everybody, cos Izzy didn't want back in any more than they wanted him back in. But it was fun, it was kinda cool, and I think it was really special for anybody who got to see any of those shows." http://www.a-4-d.com/t607-1994-05-24-interview-with-gilby To make matters worse, nobody really seemed to know what Izzy played. I would perform something, and Slash would say, "I thought you knew this tune." And I'd argue that I did. And then he'd say, "No you don't - you're playing my part!" And then we'd realize that you couldn't really hear Izzy's part on some of the songs. So then we had to try to reconstruct his parts the best we could. Duff knew what Izzyhad played more than anyone, so I leaned on Duff a lot. But it also might have been a blessing in disguise. It gave everyone in the band the opportunity to suggest a fresh approach. I think they were giving me stuff to play that they always wanted to hear, but Izzy would never do. So my rhythm parts are a combination of Izzy's original ideas, some of my ideas and a few additional ideas provided by the band. Slash, how do Gilby and Izzy differ, stylistically? Even though the band always sounded cool, Izzy and I never sat down together and worked out guitar parts. We weren't really a team, in that sense. We would just jam, and he'd play things his way and I'd play things my way. And even though Gilby is essentially playing Izzy's parts, he adjusts them so there is more of a sense of unity - more of a sense that we are playing together. This isn't to put Izzy down in any way, it's just that Gilby and I have a different relationship. http://www.a-4-d.com/t546-1992-11-dd-interview-with-slash-and-gilby It was recorded the way I'd prefer to do any Guns N' Roses record. When we did Appetite and Use Your Illusion, I had to deal with Izzy. I never liked playing with Izzy the whole time I've been in this band. It was great not having to deal with him on this record. It sounds a lot tighter, or at least a little more cool than it sounded before. I always used to get bummed out about certain songs on Appetite that Izzy didn't play right. For this record, we took off all of Izzy's tracks and Gilby played them. I wasn't there when Gilby did it, but when I got the tapes back, it was a relief. It sounded perfect. http://www.a-4-d.com/t2655-1994-01-dd-interview-with-slash-in-guitar-player And previous guitar player Izzy Stradlin that left the band during the fall of 1991?Well, he returned as familiar for five gigs on the European tour this summer as replacer of Gilby Clarke who had hurt his wrist. Slash really doesn't want to talk about Izzy but he does it anyway.- I really looked forward to playing with him again and really hoped that he had changed. I booked a place before the first gigs in Tel Aviv to rehearse. But Izzy thought it was unnecessary, that it was just wasted time. He hadn't changed one bit and therefore the gigs turned out the way they did. Izzy simply doesn't like playing rock at the level where we are right now. We understand it now and I'm personally very fucking disappointed at his previous behavior. http://www.a-4-d.com/t581-1993-12-dd-interview-with-slash The credits to The Spaghetti Incident? thank hundreds of individual people and various organizations for their help on the Use Your Illusion tour. It says: "We Did It… Thanks!" You sound surprised. It's a long story. I mean, the album was hard to make. We were getting into drug problems and the band was going through line-up changes. And even before Izzy quit, he was pretty much phased out - he's even phased out of his own band. He's just not interested any more. But Izzy started to lose interest anyway, so that was another thing that made the record hard to make. Going on tour was… the band had such a ball, and we managed to tour for two and a half years against all the fuckin' odds. It really was a fuckin' endurance test, of pretty big proportions. Would you agree, though, that it was only Use Your Illusion that convinced most people you were a band of musicians, and not an image-conscious rock 'n' roll band? I don't know exactly. I mean, I hadn't given it much thought when we were making the record. We were just trying to have a good time. Y'know, the six of us are trying to draw together to make a record and there are so many fuckin' outside distractions. So that's why there was so much material and so many different instruments and expression and stuff. I think we were really trying to get it off our chests. http://www.a-4-d.com/t2668-1994-03-dd-interview-with-slash-in-q-magazine Edited October 30, 2017 by RONIN 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 A spokesman for the band's management also dismisses the breakup reports and says that GNR, though officially on hiatus at the moment, is starting pre-production work for its next album. He does confirm that Slash is beginning work on a solo album with Clarke participating. Zutaut says that GNR, or some part thereof, was supposed to start work on a new album this weekend.But will anyone care when (or if) it is finished? "When Guns first came out it was fresh and exciting," says Bryan Schock, program director of L.A. hard-rock radio station KNAC-FM. "But now Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam are the exciting things. If Guns N' Roses puts together a solid record with an hour's worth of great material, sure, there's gonna be interest. But if they don't, this could be it." If those sentiments are widespread, it signals a tremendous fall from favor for a band that once seemed on its way to becoming the top attraction in the world. The reason, many observers feel, is that rock fans have tired of Rose's antics. He started a riot by diving into the crowd after a photographer and then walking off stage during a 1991 St. Louis concert. During a 1992 tour with Metallica, he was booed several times after either launching into some tirade or angrily storming off the stage before the show was over. And the antipathy has grown as lawsuits have been filed by his former wife Erin Everly and former girlfriend Stephanie Seymour alleging that Rose physically and mentally abused them. Those tales are recounted in the current People magazine cover story. The image of Rose as a spoiled rock-star crybaby doesn't wash in an age when the new heroes are such earnest if tortured figures as Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and the late Kurt Cobain. "Guns N' Roses alienated enough people that no one cares anymore," says a concert promoter who asked not to be named. "You've got to pay a lot more dues than Axl has before you can do stuff like he does. He ain't Keith Richards." http://www.a-4-d.com/t2460-1994-07-17-interview-with-tom-zutaut Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 (edited) Highly recommend reading these great articles on the making of Use Your Illusion if you're a fan of those albums: Quote Use Your Illusion I and II became records that said plenty about their time: they are indulgent, bloated and created by men who weren’t hearing the word ‘no’ too often. And yet they are also unafraid and unapologetic, and contain some of the best work GN’R ever produced. Interestingly, too, they lend perspective to the band’s two other major releases: a clear line can be drawn through them from Appetite For Destruction to Chinese Democracy. Alan Niven can still remember the long, lost weekend with Slash when he understood that things had changed. That delicate ecosystem that Steven Adler somehow had a part in maintaining was gone. When a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the world… “We make choices every day. With Use Your Illusion, Slash made a choice and I totally understood it, and to this day I don’t agree with it. One night, he and I were sitting alone in his house up in Laurel Canyon and he was really bemoaning what he thought Axl was doing to the band, and he was doing it in the context of the material he was writing. He felt it wasn’t Guns N’ Roses, he felt that he was being compromised by having to apply himself to it. He felt that one song of that kind of epic style might be appropriate, but so many? I looked at him and said: ‘You’ve got to express this’. And Slash looked at me and he said: ‘Listen, my father [an artist who designed album sleeves] has got a cupboard full of gold records, and he hasn’t got a pot to piss in.’ And that’s where he folded. From then on, Axl was in charge.” Slash’s response is measured, guarded: “Well…” he says slowly, “I think that Axl’s always been difficult, but we managed. Because of the five individuals, and Alan, and Tom Zutaut, we managed to make it work. So you lose Steven, and then the Alan thing… I backed Alan all the way up to a certain point and then he did actually do something that set me off and I said: ‘I can’t fight for you any more’. But that was a volatile situation that was going to explode at some point. Alan wasn’t going to take Axl’s shit and Axl could not stand that, so it was a battle. I think in hindsight, although it wouldn’t have been any fun, but all we could have done differently was just to refuse Axl everything that he ever wanted. I don’t think it would have been very productive, but all things considered, what we ended up doing was going along with a lot of stuff just in order to be able to continue on, which built a monster. All I can see happening is that nothing would have happened, because it would have been at a standstill. I think we probably would have broken up a lot sooner. But I can’t support hiring Doug Goldstein as a manager. I knew that he was a creep from day one.” http://teamrock.com/feature/2016-09-17/the-chaotic-crazed-story-of-guns-n-roses-use-your-illusion Quote Looking back on landmark double release 25 years later: Axl Rose and Co. were falling apart but their creativity was at a peak. In April 1990, the classic lineup of Guns N' Roses played its final show. The occasion was the nationally televised Farm Aid concert, a disastrous set that included, among several bizarre highlights, Steven Adler drunkenly belly-flopping in the general direction of his drum set only to miss by four feet, and Axl Rose ending the live broadcast with a climactic "Good fuckin' night." It was the mark of a band breaking apart. Amazingly, though, the imploding GN'R were in the midst of an artistic surge. One of the songs played at Farm Aid (in a version hampered by Adler's inability to learn it) was "Civil War," a sweeping epic that would eventually open the second disc of the massive 30-song, two-and-a-half-hour opus they were hard at work on throughout 1990 and '91. Slash would later liken Use Your Illusion I and II to the Beatles'White Album (though "maybe not as good"), a titanic mix of gritty ragers, passionate rock-opera ballads and decadent screeds – from the failed-relationship triptych of "Don't Cry," "November Rain" and "Estranged" to the rock-critic indictment "Get in the Ring" to the misogynistic double-header of "Bad Obsession" and "Back Off Bitch." "Thirty-five of the most self-indulgent Guns N' Roses songs," Slash said. "For most bands, it would take four to six years to come up with this much stuff." Like the White Album, it was brilliance created amid collapse. When they were released in September 1991 – a week before Nirvana's game-changing LP Nevermind – the Use Your Illusion albums were immediate hits, selling more than 14 million copies combined. "There's a ton of material we want to get out, and the problem is, how does one release all of it?" Slash said of the unusual twin-disc offering. "You don't make some kid go out and buy a record for $70 if it's your second record." The gambit made history: No other artist had put out two records on the same day and claimed the top two spots on the Billboard album chart before. "We poured everything into those albums," Sorum says of their creation. "The music was all that mattered." http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-guns-n-roses-history-making-use-your-illusion-lps-w439521 Quote Use Your Illusion I&II is exactly what too much money and too much privilege does to a band and not only did it cause the bedrock of GN’R’s core to crumble, it betrayed the very essence of what made GN’R great in the first place. A lion doesn’t have to explain he’s a lion. And a lion would never have made Estranged. The lethal charm of Appetite is that it was the work of sharp-eyed predators, predators who created an album so perfect no one can touch it even thirty years later. Predators who were lean and mean and possessing of keen feral intelligence. Illusion sounds like something fat dummies would make. But all is not lost. Deep within the stacks and stacks of Illusion’s so-so’s and eye-rollers there exists a great rock'n'roll record. Not Appetite great, but certainly, you know, Van Halen II great. http://teamrock.com/feature/2016-09-17/hey-guns-n-roses-we-ve-fixed-use-your-illusion Edited October 30, 2017 by RONIN Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
default_ Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 I agree that some of the songs are unnecessary, but I'll never agree with those who think the band should've stick with the Appetite formula, I dont think they'd be as nearly as sucessful as they were on Illusions had they released an Appetite copy/paste instead of the Illusions. They wouldnt be unique as they are to this day, they'd just be another one in thousands, they'd be just a hard rock band and not a Rock N' Roll legend. They'd probably be some sort of Kiss/Motley Crue doing the same album over and over again. Thank god they werent. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackstar Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 (edited) Where do you want to go from here? Slash: I always live day by day; I'm not one to set goals. The main thing is to keep touring. That's really my whole life. When the album has run its course, Guns might go right back in and do the next record. But if we take a long hiatus again, I'd like to put out, not really a solo record, but something with another band-a temporary thing that I'd control. It would be geared towards an almost heavy metal funk-rock concept-music with killer rock and roll vocals and the most awesome riffs. Almost like "Jungle," only a little bit tighter and heavier. http://www.slashparadise.com/media/interviews-slash/the-hands-behind-the-hype-guitar-player-december-1991.pdf 'Use Your Illusion', the last real Guns album(s), was the Album From Hell. If the band had burn out, broken up, killed themselves or each other before those records were completed, no one (themselves included) would have been surprised. "Yeah. Me and Clink (producer Mike Clink) were saying, 'When this is all over, we'll just sit back and have a beer and laugh about it', but we haven't laughed about it yet! It really was crazy." The problems with drummer Steven Adler have been well documented. So too have the arrival of ex-Cult Matt Sorum, the departure of guitarist Izzy Stradlin and the recruiting of ex-Kill For Thrill six-stringer Gilby Clarke. The GN'R work rate on the LP is something which has perhaps been forgotten in the rush and the rumours. Slash was at the heart of the frenetic activity. "At one point, we realised we didn't have all the vocals finished, so I started mixing the songs that were finished in the studio opposite, while Axl was still singing the other ones," he states, illustrating the band's frenzied studio state. "And we started touring before the record was finished! It really was as ass-backwards as it gets! "I remember playing in a stadium in Mannheim, Germany, playing all new material - which I thought was the coolest way of getting your material accepted, playing a bunch of songs people had never heard and winning them over with that. "But I couldn't go through the last record again. I mean, I've got a lot of stamina, but those last records and that entire tour, it was such an endurance thing." He planned to go into pre-production with Mike Clink this month, though LA's January's earthquake, which forced Slash to evacuate his house and set up temporary home in a Hollywood hotel, has set things back a bit. But he's still talking of having a new album out by the summer. It'll be all new songs: "Some written on the road, some since we've been off". No covers - 'The Spaghetti Incident?' took care of that one - and no left-overs; anything even vaguely resembling an earlier-era song was squashed onto one of the two '...Illusion's'. "It's really important not to look back. When we did the 'Illusion' records we cleaned our whole slate. We did all the songs that Izzy ever wrote - because Izzy was really on the way out at the beginning of that; he started to phase out and we grabbed a bunch of his old songs, some of the ones that we were currently doing, some old songs from before Guns N' Roses, so we'd never have to think about it again. This is all just new stuff. "You know how a lot of bands go, 'This is our best stuff'? It's such a cliché, so I hate saying it, but I'm really happy with this, so let's just see what happens." Slash may not be into dealing with what's past and gone, but what's past and gone seems to have a habit of wanting to deal with them. Not all of it they ask for - for instance, the lawsuit from former drummer Steven Adler which left them a couple of million dollars poorer - but wasn't asking Izzy Stradlin to stand in for the injured Gilby Clarke (the man who replaced him) asking for trouble? "It was my idea to call Izzy; I thought it would be interesting. I didn't know he hadn't picked up his guitar in the last f**king year! It was really nice at first, because regardless of whatever animosity, it wasn't anything so deep-rooted that it didn't blow over. "So, we hung out, we went shopping in London together, we had fun. Then right towards the end he turned around and did certain things that were so f**ked. Right towards the fifth date, because of his hand Gilby still wasn't sure if he was going to be able to play, and Izzy all of a sudden turned around and stabbed us in the back again, asked for an amazing amount of money to do one show - it's like, 'I can't believe this, go home!'. That's the last time we talked. I don't know what's going on in his head... I have this great photo of Gilby, Izzy and Ronnie Wood together - the flunkies from hell. Gilby and Izzy got along great. Gilby didn't feel intimidated, which would have been an easy thing to do in the circumstances." Gilby got to re-do the parts on '...Spaghetti...' that Izzy had originally recorded back at the time of the 'Use Your Illusion' sessions, when they were just thinking of releasing it as a Punk EP. "Actually", says Slash, Izzy didn't even play on most of them, only the first ones that we recorded during '...Illusion', and they were very heartless. So Gilby never even heard Izzy's stuff. We just gave him the songs." http://www.slashparadise.com/media/interviews-slash/home-sweet-home-kerrang-march-1994.pdf Edited October 30, 2017 by Blackstar 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MyPrettyTiedUpMichelle Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Would love to know what Alan Niven did to upset everyone (I mean that 'incident' no one will speak of)....and to lose Slash's backing. Must have been pretty bad - but then Izzy was happy to be managed by him later on knowing that the others wouldn't be impressed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DieselDaisy Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 5 hours ago, default_ said: I agree that some of the songs are unnecessary, but I'll never agree with those who think the band should've stick with the Appetite formula, I dont think they'd be as nearly as sucessful as they were on Illusions had they released an Appetite copy/paste instead of the Illusions. They wouldnt be unique as they are to this day, they'd just be another one in thousands, they'd be just a hard rock band and not a Rock N' Roll legend. They'd probably be some sort of Kiss/Motley Crue doing the same album over and over again. Thank god they werent. Kiss? Kiss never did the ''same album over and over again''. They did quite the reverse in fact. Kiss upset their entire fanbase by ditching hard rock in favour of, firstly disco/pop, secondly progressive rock and then heavy metal. They finally settled down to hair rock for the remainder of the '80s before returning to hard rock with the onset of the '90s, even delving into grunge just before the reunion happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 I think these guys put together a nearly perfect Solo Illusion tracklist: http://teamrock.com/feature/2016-09-17/hey-guns-n-roses-we-ve-fixed-use-your-illusion I'd only swap out Bad Apples and Bad Obsession for 14 Years and Perfect Crime. Save Estranged, November Rain, etc for the next album. Side 1 You Could Be Mine This was the Illusion project’s first single but for some reason it was buried on II. It is the most obvious successor to Appetite on both albums and makes the perfect introduction to the new big-budgeted, space-age version of GN’R. It’s just as snaky and venomous as anything on the first record, only it’s bigger, louder, and clangs like a giant robot in a airplane hangar. It whets the appetite (ahem) for the destruction that is surely to come. Load it in up front and you’ve got one hell of a party-starter. Dead Horse Both Illusions are stuffed with Emperor’s New Clothes moments, most of them courtesy W. Axl who, according to all known accounts, was acting about as rationally as Scarface during the recording sessions. So we are obviously deleting all those embarrassing moments forever. I mean, was there no one around to tell this dude that “I’ll kick your bitchy little ass” is about the most bitchy little thing you could possibly say? Anyway, this was the most authentically rock'n'roll song Rose composed for these albums. It’’s a great metal-y Stones rip-off, and keeps things flowing nicely. Don’t Cry The 80’s were over, sure, but a great power-ballad is still a great power-ballad. Originally tracked at song number four on part I, I’d cinch it up one to provide a short breather for the ruckus to follow. It’s also the last time we need anything soppy from these dudes. If you’re that much into November Rain, you can have it on a b-side or a bonus EP or something. This is not a Queen record, man. Pretty Tied Up Another ferocious glam-slammer shoved into a corner in part II, Pretty Tied Up is a fantastically sleazy little number that harkens back to the band’s salad days. It sounds like the work of dangerous men with disturbing proclivities, and it rocks like crazy. As the 90’s wore on, songs like this became the province of Scandinavian action-rockers like The Hellacopters which is fine and all, but it’s kind of a drag that Guns traded in snarly rockers like this one for whatever Queensryche/NIN bullshit was going on in Chinese Democracy. They had more of this in them, I’m sure of it. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door - Swap w/ Dust n' Bones? You gotta acknowledge that the band is older and wiser at this point (well, older at least), so this one pretty much does exactly that. No way the Appetite version was sitting around listening to Dylan, but now? Sure, why not? It’s also got “classic rock” stamped all over it, in a way that never existed for Guns before. It’s what they sound like with all the punk drained out. It’s also just a great song, no matter who sings it. The Garden Why not close side one with a surprise cameo? Alice Coooper pops up outta nowhere on this delightfully bonkers ode to drugs, strippers, New York City and other forms of madness that finds the band wandering into psychedelic metal territory, and thoroughly nailing it. As with Knockin’, it shows maturity with restraint. And it’s fun, even if it’s about being fucked-up on heroin. Side 2 Bad Apples - swap w/ 14 years The opener on Side 2 is supposed to remind you of why you love the band you’re listening to, and Bad Apples is quintessential GNR, a cowbell-banging all-night rocker that you can dance to if you’re drunk enough. And in the alt-world where Illusion is a lean-cut single album, we’re all drunk and dancing all the time. Bad Obsession - swap w/ Perfect Crime One of Izzy Stradlin’s finer moments, this slurry, wobbly-legged Stones pastiche is GN’R at their slinkiest. Civil War While we definitely don’t need it to be seven and half minutes, this powerful slow-burning churner really is one of Guns’ best songs, even if it is kind of a Heaven’s Door redux. But it also serves as a reminder that the band had more on their mind than drugs and women giants piles of cash. They also had anxiety and depression and dysfunction and all the other stuff that drug, women and money often bring. Right Next Door To Hell After Civil War, you gotta bring the tempo back up, and this’ll do it. A fast, thrashy, head-spinning howler of a song, this is the heart-pumping Guns we were promised in ‘87. Locomotive Keeping things cranked to 11, Locomotive is one of Illusion’s forgotten gems, a song so raucous it threatens to devolve into chaos at any moment. Another reminder that they were called The Most Dangerous Band In the World for a reason. Coma Let’s end it with the craziest shit imaginable, an eleven-minute drug psychosis nightmare written by Slash in a heroin haze. There’s no real chorus and everybody might die at the end, even you. The perfect ending for a band living on the razor’s edge of everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RONIN Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 4 hours ago, MyPrettyTiedUpMichelle said: Would love to know what Alan Niven did to upset everyone (I mean that 'incident' no one will speak of)....and to lose Slash's backing. Must have been pretty bad - but then Izzy was happy to be managed by him later on knowing that the others wouldn't be impressed? The only explanation for what Niven did comes from Doug Goldstein - Niven allegedly hit on Slash's gf. He also tried to be "one of the guys" which some didn't mind (Izzy, Slash) and others did (Axl). Izzy and Niven were natural allies - they saw Guns n' Roses in the same way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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