The Rolling Stone Interview - Axl Rose - Part I
            Issue #558 - August 10, 1989 by Del James 

One guitar has been destroyed, a mirror wall shattered, several platinum albums broken beyond repair and the
telephone dropped off a twelfth-story balcony. Apparently, W. Axl Rose had to get something out of his system.

   Just two weeks ago, everything in Rose's posh condo in West Hollywood, California, was in order. The mirror
was intact, reflecting a space in which almost everything - including the refrigerator - is black. The platinum
albums, along with dozens of plaques and awards, hung neatly on the wall.

   So what happened? On the surface one would think that the twenty-seven-year-old singer for the hard-rock
phenomenon Guns n' Roses has it made. After all, there's a new BMW, a new condo, a parcel of land in Wisconsin
on which he plans to build his dream house and, of course, the adoration of millions. One would think that life for
Rose is pure rock & roll bliss. But one would be wrong.

   Rose doesn't want to discuss exactly what set him off and made him destroy his belongings. But it becomes clear
as he talks that a lot of it has to do with suddenly being famous. "When I was growing up, I was never really
popular," he says. "Now everybody wants to be my friend. 

   I like my privacy, to live alone in my own little world. I live in a security building, and all my calls are screened. I
don't even know my own phone number". Tucked tightly behind a couch is an Uzi semiautomatic machine gun;
nearby is a 9-mm pistol. "I'm not paranoid," he says, explaining his fondness for weapons. "This is how I choose
to live. This is comfortable."

   He wasn't always so comfortable. The eldest of three children raised in Lafayette, Indiana, Rose hitchhiked to
Los Angeles, hoping to hook up with guitarist Izzy Stradlin, a long time friend, and form a band. 

   The two struggled on the L.A. club circuit for years. Eventually, the duo met guitarist Slash and drummer Steven
Adler, Later, Duff McKagen responded to a classified ad for a bassist, and Guns n' Roses were born.

   The band's early gigs were tough going. Only two people showed up for the group's first "official" L.A.
performance. Over the following months, a series of frenzied, violent shows landed the Gunners on the shit list of
everyone, including club owners, rival bands and the press - everyone but the fans, who grew in number with each
passing gig. After playing together for about a year and building a strong following, Guns n'Roses were signed by
Geffen Records in March 1986 by A&R man Tom Zutaut.

   The band's debut, Appetite for Destruction,, and its quickly released follow-up record, the extended EP G n'R
Lies, have put Guns n' Roses at the top of the hard-rock heap. The records have sold upward of 12 million copies
combined, as well as simultaneously charting Billboard's Top Five - a feat no one else has accomplished in the last
decade.

   Sitting on a black Persian rug, chain-smoking Marlboros and sipping Corona beers, the singer welcomes any and
all questions about the band. His onstage roar is replaced by a soft-spoken tone, but nonetheless he can be brutal
in his honesty.

A few years ago you were a poor kid in a struggling rock band, and today you're in one of the most popular groups in the
world. How have you adjusted to your success?

Trying to handle success is a pain in the ass. It's really strange and takes some getting used to. I've never had my place to live
before, never had to deal with the amount of money we've made and not get ripped off, never understood doing your taxes
and all these things. I was hating it a few months ago, trying to get organized and trying to get a place to live and to get a grip
on everything. But now things are coming together. I've wanted to be here my whole life.

Did you ever in your wildest dreams think your first album AFD would do as well as it did?

Thought about it a lot.

Besides dreaming about it, did you ever believe it had a real chance to sell 9 million copies?

No, but it was like this: I thought about trying to sell more records than Boston's first album. I always thought that and never let
up. Everything was directed at trying to achieve the sales without sacrificing the credibility of our music. We worked real hard
to sell this many records. The album wasn't just a fluke. Maybe Appetite will be the only good album we make, but it wasn't
just a fluke.

Does the business end of rock & roll ever interfere with your creative attitude?

Not for us. This is music, this is art. It's definitely a good business, but that should be second to the art, not first. I was figuring
it out, and I'm like the president of a company that's worth between $125 million and a quarter billion dollars. If you add up
record sales based on the low figure and a certain price for T-shirts and royalties and publishing, you come up with at least
$125 million, which I get less than two percent of.

I like being successful. I was always starving. On the other side. When it came to people with money, it was always "The rich?
Fuck them!" But I left one group and joined another. I escaped from one group where I was looked down on for being a poor
kid that doesn't know shit, and now I'm like, a rich, successful asshole. I don't like that. I'm still just me, and with a lot of
people's help, the group was able to become a huge financial success. None of us were the popular kids in school - we were
all outcasts who got together and pooled our talents.

Is there any lesson you've learned that you wish you knew a few years ago?

What I'd tell any kid in high school is "Take business classes." I don't care what else you're gonna do, if you're gonna do art or
anything, take business classes. You can say, "Well, I don't want to get commercial," but if you do anything to make any
money, you're doing something commercial. You can be flipping hamburgers at McDonald's, but you're a commercial burger
flipper.

Now the band is getting ready to work on the follow-up to 'Appetite' and the 'G n' R Lies' EP. What's your frame of mind?

As my friend Dave puts it, I'm jacking off. [laughs] We're trying to regroup. I'm ready to work. I'm creating, and finally I have
an environment in which I can work. I haven't had that for a long time, since three years ago, when we all used to live in one
room, sitting around writing songs. Until recently, I haven't had peace of mind. There were always distractions, but now it's like
we can finally work on our songs.

Do you feel heavy pressure to sell as many copies with your next album as 'Appetite'?

We have two records out, both of them in the Top Ten, and everybody wants another record immediately. They all say, "Let's
milk this sucker." It'd be nice to outsell that album. A lot of groups are trying to outsell it. For a debut, it was the highest-selling
album in the history of rock and roll. Definitely in America, but I'm not sure that's true worldwide. I read where Bon Jovi was
saying nobody's out done their biggie, Slippery When Wet. He knew it was their biggie, and he didn't know if New Jersey
would be as big. Of course, you're gonna want to outdo it. What I want to do is just grow as an artist and feel proud of these
new songs.

Although you're only in the preproduction stages of the next album, how do you feel it will compare with the others?

The next record will definitely be much more emotional. I try to write so the audience can understand what emotions I was
feeling. Also, I think the songs are worded in a way that a great number of people will be able to relate to the experiences; it's
not so personalized that it's only my weird, twisted point of view. We hope to make a very long record. It'd be nice to make
one that's seventy-six minutes long, A seventy-six-minute CD, with varied styles.

The most important songs at this point are the ones with piano, the ballads, because we haven't really explored that side of the
band yet. They're also the most difficult songs to do - not difficult to play, but to write and pull out of ourselves. The beautiful
music is what really makes me feel like anartist. The other, heavier stuff also makes me feel like an artist and can be difficult to
write. But it's harder to write about serious emotions, describing them as best as possible rather than trying to write a syrupy
ballad just to sell records.

Any specific titles for the next album you can talk about?

Well, there's a song called "November Rain" and another one called "Breakdown". There's also a song tentatively titled
"Without You". Last night, I wrote a whole new intro to that. It just appeared out of nowhere, like the verses - just little pieces
that have come whole.

How do write complete songs from seperate bits and pieces?

They'll just show up. I keep them on file in my brain and then add them together. Like, I'll be brushing my teeth and all of a
sudden a prechorus will come, and I won't know why. Then a bridge came about a year ago. Six months ago another part
came. Last night a whole intro came. When I was writing it, I wasn't planning on putting it with this song, but all of a sudden it
just flowed.

The 'G n' R Lies' EP surprised a lot of people because of it's emphasis on acoustic material. Aren't you afraid that some
people may be turned off by the band straying from the sound that got them on top?

We're not getting away from hard rock. Our basic root is hard rock, a bit heavier than the Stones, more in a vein like
Aerosmith, Draw the Line- type stuff. We love loud guitars. George Michael was telling me he really loved our melodies and
wondered why we covered so much of it up with loud guitars, and I said because we love that. I told him he should put some
more loud guitars in his music. He has such beautiful melodies, and it'd be nice to hear some loud guitars in there. At the same
time, I have my favorite symphony pieces, orchestra pieces if you will.

I've always looked at things in a versatile sense because of Queen, ELO, Elton John, especially early Elton John and groups
like that. With Queen, I have my favorite: Queen II. Whenever their newest record would come out and have all these other
kinds of music on it, at first I'd only like this song or that song. But after a period of time listening to it, it would open my mind
up to so many different styles. I really appreciate them for that. That's something I've always wanted to be able to achieve. It's
important to show people all forms of music, basically try to give people a broader point of view.

Speaking of versatility, you're known primarily as a singer, but you'vebeen playing piano quite a bit lately.

I've been playing piano my whole life. I took lessons, but I only really played my lesson on the day of the lesson. All week
long, I'd sit down at the piano and just make up stuff. To this day, I still can't really play other people's songs, only my own. I
haven't had a piano for years. I couldn't afford one. I couldn't figure out where I was sleeping at night, let alone try to have a
place for a piano. So I had to put it aside and have the dream that I'd get into it. Now I really want to bring the piano out.

So far the song that's inspired the most controversy in the band's short career has been "One in a Million." How did you come
to write that song?

"One in a Million" was written while sitting in the apartment of my friend West Arkeen, who's like the sixth member of the
band. I wrote it at his house, sitting around bored watching TV. I can't really play guitar too well, I only play the top two
strings, and I would write a little piece at a time. I started writing about wanting to get out of L.A. , getting away for a little
while. I'd been down to the downtown-L.A. Greyhound bus station. If you haven't been there, you can't say shit to me about
what goes on and about my point of view. There are a large number of black men selling stolen jewelry, crack, heroin and pot,
and most of the drugs are bogus. Rip-off artists selling parking spaces to parking lots that there's no charge for. Trying to
misguide every kid that gets off the bus and doesn't quite know where he's at or where to go, trying to take the person for
whatever they've got. That's how I hit town. The thing with "One in a Million" is, basically, we're all one in a million, we're all
here on this earth. We're one fish in a sea. Let's quit fucking with each other, fucking with me.

The lyrics have incited a lot of protest, so let's go over them line by line. Let's start with one of the verses, "Police and niggers,
that's right/Get outta my way/Don't need to buy none/ Of your gold chains today."

I used words like police and niggers because you're not allowed to use the word nigger. Why can black people go up to each
other and say, "Nigger," but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big put-down. I don't like boundaries of any kind. I
don't like being told what I can and what I can't say. I used the word nigger because it's a word to describe somebody that is
basically a pain in your life, a problem. The word nigger doesn't necessarily mean black. Doesn't John Lennon have a song
"Woman Is the Nigger of the World"? There's a rap group, N.W.A., Niggers with Attitude. I mean, they're proud of that
word. More power to them. Guns n' Roses ain't bad. . . . N.W.A. is baad! Mr. Bob Goldthwait said the only reason we put
these lyrics on the record was because it would cause controversy and we'd sell a million albums. Fuck him! Why'd he put us
in his skit? We don't just do something to get the controversy, the press.

How about the next verse? Immigrants and faggots/They make no sense to me/They come to our country/And think they'll do
as they please/ Like startsome mini-Iran or spread some fuckin' disease." Why that reference to immigrants? When I use the
word immigrants, what I'm talking about is going to a 7-11 or Village pantries - a lot of people from countries like Iran,
Pakistan, China, Japan et cetera, get jobs in these convenience stores and gas stations. Then they treat you as if you don't
belong here. I've been chased out of a store with Slash by a six-foot-tall Iranian with a butcher knife because he didn't like the
way we were dressed. Scared me to death. All I could see in my mind was a picture of my arm on the ground, blood going
everywhere. When I get scared, I get mad. I grabbed the top of one of these big orange garbage cans and went back at him
with this shield, going, "Come on!" I didn't want to back down from this guy. Anyway that's why I wrote about immigrants.
Maybe I should have been more specific and said, "Joe Schmoladoo at the 7-11 and faggots make no sense to me." That's
ridiculous! I summed it up simply and said, "Immigrants."

How about the use of the word "faggots"?

I've had some very bad experiences with homosexuals. When I was first coming to Los Angeles, I was about eighteen or
nineteen. On my first hitch-hiking ride, this guy told me I could crash at his hotel. I went to sleep and woke up while this guy
was trying to rape me. I threw him down on the floor. He came at me again. I went unning for the door. He came at me. I
pinned him between the door and the wall. I had a straight razor, and I pulled the razor and said, "Don't ever touch me! Don't
ever think about touching me! Don't touch yourself and think about me! Nothing!" Then I grabbed my stuff and split with no
place to go, no sleep, in the middle of nowhere outside of St. Louis. That's why I have the attitude I have.

Are you anti-homosexual then?

I'm proheterosexual. I can't get enough of women, and I don't see the same thing that other men can see in men. I'm not into
gay or bisexual experiences. But that's hypocritical of me, because I'd rather see two women together than just about anything
else. That happens to be my personal, favorite thing.

How about gay-bashing? Have you ever beaten up somebody simply because of their sexual preference?

No! I never have. The most I do is, like, on the way to the Troubador in "Boystown," on Santa Monica Boulevard, I'll yell out
the car window, "Why don't you guys like pussy?" 'Cause I'm confused. I don't understand it. Anti-homosexual? I'm not
against themdoing what they want to do as long as it's not hurting anybody else and they're not forcing it upon me. I don't need
them in my face or, pardon the pun, up my ass about it.