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What if Guns n' Roses Never Split Up?
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🎸🌹 Welcome to Episode 4 of "Rock n Roll What Ifs" by Armchair Rockstar! In today's journey, we explore an alternate universe where Guns N' Roses never broke up. Imagine a world where the iconic lineup of Axl, Slash, Duff, Izzy, and Steven stayed together, forging an unbroken path in rock history.
🤘 What new heights could they have reached?
🎤 How would their continued presence have reshaped the music industry?
🎵 And what legendary albums might we have seen?
Join us as we dive deep into this fascinating "What If" scenario, featuring expert interviews, unheard demos, and fan theories that will blow your mind! Uncover the possibilities, the music that could've been, and the impact on rock and roll.
IMAGE CREDIT: Geffen Records Handout
💬 Share your thoughts in the comments! What do you think Guns N' Roses would have achieved? Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for more rockin' episodes!
🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/c/ArmchairRockstar
📺 Watch Previous Episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9xY_Af4b5zc4Z_f0DEipE4Lu6e38Byg0&si=CO8g1y0bFyOTGbco
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, what's up everybody. Welcome to episode four of rock and roll. What ifs, I am Corey Knowles editor in chief of armchair rockstar.com. And today we're going to talk about guns and roses. And what if they had never parted ways in like 93, 94, there's a lot of, uh, a lot of wishy-washiness around the win of that. Also.
Podcast Expansion Announcement
00:00:24
Speaker
like to welcome Aaron Vaughn, one of our regular featured contributors and good friends. Hey, Aaron. And welcome again to Mr. Chris Melides, who works with us regularly as well, and is also a long time friend of the show. Cheers, guys. Thanks for having me on.
00:00:40
Speaker
Before we get started, please take a moment to like, subscribe, ring the bell. Also, this is the first episode that you will be able to get shortly after it comes out on Spotify and Apple Music. We've finally taken the podcast over there. So everywhere on social media, there are others we will be looking at. We're going to try to get it on Audible, iHeartRadio, some things like that in the short term. But in the meantime, those are the two biggies. So let's get rolling.
Guns N' Roses Rise and Challenges
00:01:08
Speaker
I guess to start, you know, a brief history. Guns N' Roses comes out like a house fire, 87, 88. You know, all of the things that came and went and the rise to fame and all of the drug issues, personnel changes and things that followed. And then we get to 93, 94. I'd paraphrase like a lot.
00:01:29
Speaker
But so at 93, 94, they're starting to slip apart. You know, Axel is, is up to his usual shenanigans, not showing up, showing up hours and hours late, infuriating crowds and slash. Duff, Izzy are all loaded full of heroin by this point and, uh, having, having a lot of issues. So, uh, they part ways in 93 to 94. And what we want to know is what if they didn't?
00:01:59
Speaker
So I don't know. What do you guys think? Any thoughts? Well, first of all, I don't know if this podcast should be called. What if guns and roses didn't break up in 93 as much as it should be? What if axle rose were not an asshole? I think that's, that's, that's a fair start. I think all the problems kind of come back to him, right?
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah. And then what was it? Was it after the release? Not to jump around, but after the release of Chinese democracy or prior to that, during public appearances, he looked like a meatloaf or like a swollen tomato. Oh, yeah. That period with the football jerseys and the cornrows. Oh, God, that was embarrassing. Yeah. Mickey Rourke really had something going. You couldn't tell who was who for a little while there. That was a bad scene.
00:02:51
Speaker
You know the one thing I'm gonna say in defense of Axel and all his craziness.
Steven Adler's Departure
00:02:59
Speaker
Axel was a great front man. Axel still is, he's still running the stage. I mean he's bigger and he can't hit some of the notes he used to, but he's out there busting his ass every night and that's more than other 60 plus year olds I know are doing these days.
00:03:12
Speaker
But what's unique about the situation is that everybody talks about what an asshole axle was. And he clearly was. You know, a good front man always has a serious ego issue. But at the same time, he was largely babysitting slash Duff and Izzy, who were loaded full of heroin and whiskey every day. And he was very frustrated as well. Well, here's here's the difference, right?
00:03:41
Speaker
they may have been loaded on heroin or whatever they were loaded on, and he was sober, yet he's the only one who couldn't show up for performances. That's fair. That's fair. Everybody else, despite their many addictions, managed to be at the stage on time for the tens of thousands of people who paid probably
00:04:01
Speaker
40 to 90 bucks to see him in them. I would say the exception may have been one of the original members, Steven Adler, who was unceremoniously fired from the band because he couldn't keep control of his addictions. He was addicted to cocaine and heroin, and he claimed that the band threw him under the bus because everyone at the time was using
00:04:26
Speaker
And then, of course, it all culminated, his firing had all come. What ended up happening was he wasn't able to lay down any drum tracks whatsoever. And it got to the point where the band gave him an ultimatum and said, hey, listen, you've got 30 days to promise that you're not going to abuse drugs. And it was like a probationary period. And if you break that contract, you're out. And of course, he couldn't keep his word, and he got kicked out.
Comparison with Mötley Crüe
00:04:51
Speaker
But like you just mentioned earlier, a lot of these guys were using
00:04:55
Speaker
I guess somehow they were able to play their instruments as well as they could, but Steven Adler was maybe an outlier in that situation, which is a bit of a shame because he was a great drummer. He was, he was, man. The drum tracks on Appetite for Destruction, top to bottom, are solid. But I did read that there were
00:05:13
Speaker
you know, during the appetite tours, even songs that he was struggling with already to play out. That's what I heard too. Yeah. He listened to some journalists, some music journalists, you know, they say he may not have been able to cut it at that level.
00:05:29
Speaker
So he was able to lay down the tracks in the studio, but could he repeat that night after night? Was that because he was loaded on heroin or whatever? Or was it because he just wasn't that caliber of musician that the rest of them were?
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, when when you talk about these guys and then we talk about them being trashed, it's important to fully grasp the idea that, you know, these guys were drinking more than a fifth a day of whiskey. They were I mean, we're talking hard, like the kind of stuff that that if I spent 30 minutes with them, I'm confident that I wouldn't go back to work this week. Like I would not have gone to work ever.
00:06:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean unless you know ghosts are real in which case then maybe Yeah, yeah, I mean parting with those guys I mean to me at least that seems like a death sentence for a regular person who's just not used to that lifestyle, you know Yeah, it does. I saw the other day. I was watching an interview with Tommy Lee talking about
00:06:38
Speaker
how they remembered like in the early, early days, like the appetite for destruction days, which would have been the girls, girls, girls days for Martin crew. So we're talking about.
00:06:49
Speaker
two groups of guys in the middle of their chemical alteration height. And, and Tommy says, you know, they thought they could out drink it. So he talks about him and Nikki six sitting down one night. I think it was at the rainbow with, with slash and doff and, uh, and, and go and drink for drink all night and said we had to carry them back to their hotel room.
00:07:11
Speaker
which is, you know, just just kind of illustrating the level of the amount of drug access there was in those days. Like, you know, you're talking about Hollywood scene. Oh, yeah. Everyone was using below.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah. And everything they could get their hands on. Oh, for sure. It was, it was a wild time. And it's, it's, it's an interesting one to look back on because it hasn't, I wouldn't say it probably hasn't aged well in the world of public opinion. Just, just, just based on the difference in social life in 1986 versus 2020, you know. Makes sense.
00:07:51
Speaker
It was rowdy. It was neat. If you ever get a chance to visit the Rainbow Room, you can go to their booth. The booth where all the pictures you've seen of Guns N' Roses were taken, it's just a booth at a restaurant. Oh, nice. Yeah. It's a really, really neat place with a lot of history from bands of that era and before. Johnny Rivers and them were playing on Sunset Strip back in the 50s.
00:08:20
Speaker
Yeah, but I think the difference between Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses, yeah, they could both party, but Guns N' Roses were the real deal. I mean, they were the rock and roll band that brought back rock and roll in that time.
00:08:36
Speaker
It was kind of a lull during the late 80s. I think Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction actually knocked Tracy Chapman off the number one spot at that time on the Billboard. That car was a great song too. But it just shows you where the music scene was in that time. I don't personally think Motley Crue had half the talent of Guns N' Roses.
00:09:03
Speaker
It's interesting because they both fill a similar gap to me. They were both, they came out at the time of hair metal. And sure, they both had the hair, but they were also both significantly heavier than most of the other bands playing at that time. And a lot more raw, a lot more. Both of them, I would argue, at that period were still very
00:09:28
Speaker
Very authentic Crew just had a little more experience at that moment Yeah, I was gonna say, you know minus the androgyny that was very popular with bands like poison And yeah skid I mean to an extent even skid row had had that big hair But they had a bit of a different feel to them But I think it's important mentioning that like, you know, we talked about the 80s, but then you had the 70s glam rock Sort of movement that laid
00:09:54
Speaker
Which by the way, I love T-Rex and Mark Bolan. I thought T-Rex was one of the best rock and roll bands to come about, but that was during the glam era.
Musical Style and Direction Speculation
00:10:04
Speaker
And I feel like when you were getting into the early to mid 80s, where an 87 appetite for destruction was released, I think by that point, some of the hair metal aesthetics for Guns Roses had changed. Oh no, some of the big hair and stuff had remained, but really what changed was the direction of rock and roll.
00:10:24
Speaker
You started seeing them distance themselves away from some of those hair metal acts that, again, practice androgyny weren't all that great musically. And obviously, the glam era had died. And I think that Guns N' Roses was largely responsible for putting the final nail in the coffin for that genre. I agree with that. And the interesting thing about appetite
00:10:48
Speaker
is that at its core, that's a heavy record. It's a hard hitter. It holds no punches. The instrumentation is great. The lyrics are great. The production is great. In many ways, you could argue it was a damn punk record. It was ahead of its time. Yeah, it was heavy. The chords were different. Things were not
00:11:15
Speaker
It was the perfect bridge between Poison and Nirvana, in my opinion. It's so hard to pin it down. A song like It's So Easy has so many different directions that it goes in throughout the song. Yeah, it's got a little bit of grunge in there. It's got a little bit of punk in there. It's got some hard, heavy rock, almost metal.
00:11:39
Speaker
So if they had stayed together and kept that same vision, I'm wondering if they would have continued to go out more in those directions. As Grunge was getting bigger and bigger, would they have followed suit with the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam? Or would they have continued to do their own thing and keep elements of that?
Controversial Moments and Public Persona
00:12:02
Speaker
There were there were elements of that in the usual illusion albums, in my opinion. But I mean, there's always been a punk rock element to Guns N' Roses, like in terms of if nothing else, just Duff McKagan. Duff, Duff grew up punk through and through. And, you know, every night live, he still plays attitude every night. The Misfits attitude. And it's nice.
00:12:26
Speaker
It's solid. It's kind of one of those. Let's give everybody else a break to go get a drink of water and use the bathroom because we're all 60 now. But it belongs there. And it was, I believe it was on spaghetti incident. If I'm not- One of the covers? Yeah. I believe Attitude was on there. But it's good. And there's that
00:12:48
Speaker
They just didn't give a shit. That's what it was. Like you saw interviews, and I mean we're talking these guys that are at the beginning of their fame, the point where everyone comes out and they're all smiling and they're giddy, and it was not that with Guns N' Roses. Like they came out, Slash would sit down, he might go to sleep on the damn table during an interview. He absolutely walked out and sat a bottle of Jack Daniels down beside him like it was his, it was
00:13:13
Speaker
It was the image, but it was the image because it was his reality, in my opinion. Like, it wasn't just the image. It was, you know, I'm going to drink a bottle or two of Jack Daniels every day. Oh, he lived it. I mean, people around him will tell you, like, he lived that lifestyle. Yeah. That wasn't just a persona. That wasn't an onstage persona. And I think that is something that was missing in rock and roll in that time when you have those like hair metal bands.
00:13:39
Speaker
They they have this on stage persona, but then they they go back, you know, and I think we might have talked about this on previous podcasts, like they would go back and then they'd be eating like tofu wraps and like, you know, drinking like seltzer water, you know, and they'd be drinking Jack on stage.
00:13:55
Speaker
That's what they're all doing when they toured now. But with Guns N' Roses, that was not the case. Yeah, those guys. Yeah, I was curious to know like, you know, that aesthetic you mentioned in the interviews where like Slash was completely just zonked out of his mind and falling asleep or whatever. How much do you think
00:14:13
Speaker
Guns and Roses being in the public spotlight and being on MTV and having that access to a lot of media, their demeanor during those interviews, how does that play when it comes to their personal lives or their stage personas? Do you feel like there may have been a pressure for them to maintain that, that public persona? And how does that translate to stage performance and what was going on behind the scenes? Or was it just more authentic than I'm giving a credit for?
00:14:43
Speaker
There's always a
00:14:47
Speaker
There's always the risk of becoming a caricature of yourself. I mean, if you look at like Hunter S. Thompson, he felt his pressure to be this person that he was in his novels and like what everybody had built him up to be. And I think that contributed to his health problems later in life. So I do think at a certain point that catches up with you. In 87, I believe that was 100% their personalities. That's just who they were.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Whether that caught up to them later on. Yeah. I don't know. It's a good point. Yeah. You know, I feel like I feel like in those early days, it was definitely.
00:15:26
Speaker
mostly genuine. I mean, you know, probably there was there was some electro PR person chasing him around and making sure here, put your glasses on, you know, or something like that. But I doubt that anyone sat down and said, all right, slash, here's the image we'd like you to project and that he would have given even one tiny fuck about it. Probably. That's my guess. Right. But I could be wrong. And, you know, the other thing is they don't really run around like
00:15:56
Speaker
faking that anymore. I mean, I mean, he's still, he's still out there in black jeans, leather jacket and a top hat, but he's thankfully not just carrying around an empty bottle of whiskey to look good and things. Yeah. I feel like they managed to get away from that, but they were going at a pace that was just not going to be sustainable. Guns and roses at its core kind of involves that pace.
00:16:27
Speaker
Like, we're five years into their reunion tour right now, for example. It just keeps going. We keep hearing there's going to be a new record. There's going to be a new this. And there have been some songs, but they're not technically new. They're actually leftovers from the Chinese democracy sessions that they are rerecording with the OG band, you know. And so you've got a thought. Yeah. So, like, yeah, speaking of, you know, projecting images and
00:16:57
Speaker
It's like Guns N' Roses is just shrouded in controversy. No matter which angle you look at it from, right? So how much of like the controversy that we saw early on was them trying to push the envelope or like were they trying to be ironic at times or did they just not give a fuck and like this is what they said so this is what they meant. Like a song like One in a Million, right? Where I mean they used the n-word, they used the
00:17:27
Speaker
the bad F word. Which F word is that? I mean, it's the slur is what we're talking about, right? Yeah, yeah, but we have slur. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So like, were they trying to be ironic? Like when Axel Rose comes on stage and seeing Civil War in a rebel jacket, this got a Confederate flag on the back of it. Like, what statement is he trying to make there? Like, yeah, I would say that, like, back then, it was all about shock, shock value.
00:17:56
Speaker
I mean, antics like that, what was being reported in the media, or at the very least, what was getting whispered amongst rock fans at some of these venues, it helped to get asses in seats. People were buying the records, people were going to the shows, and whether or not that was authentic or if they were just playing it up for laughs didn't matter because it was guaranteed to broaden your fan base and get people buying your records. So at that point, I think it's kind of irrelevant
00:18:24
Speaker
No. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say so. And there was always this weird.
00:18:31
Speaker
this weird, weird, like fashion thing going on with Axel. Yeah. That we've talked about a little bit. And let's talk about the bicycle shorts. Like what the fuck is going on here? OK, now, even before that, like what you should know is that in like 1988, they came to a town nearby the rural area where I grew up. They opened for Skid Row. But I think it was Alice Cooper. Sorry, I was jumping ahead to the St. Louis disaster. That's another interesting.
00:19:01
Speaker
Please go on, I hate to, I didn't mean to interrupt. You're good, you're good. He came out that night in a leather vest, denim cut off shorts, tall cowboy boots, and a bandana.
00:19:15
Speaker
And I don't know if that was a conscious decision or if that was just the four items that would cover the necessary parts the fastest that he found. Because he had this vibe where he came out crazy. And then you've got Duff McKagan, who would always be in like a fishnet shirt with this giant log chain around his neck with a padlock on it that apparently he didn't take off until he got sober. I read about in, what's his book called? Duff McKagan's book, It's So Easy and Other Lies is a great book.
00:19:45
Speaker
Nice. It's really interesting, but yeah, a lot of that craziness felt real, but we should absolutely discuss St. Louis. Yeah.
00:19:58
Speaker
Well, it's your hometown. It was a riot, literally a riot. Yeah. It's about eight minutes from where I'm sitting while we're recording this podcast. That's wild. It was at that time, Riverport Amphitheater. Yeah. It has since, it became PNC Bank Pavilion or something like, not PNC.
00:20:16
Speaker
It became a couple other things over the years. Still posting shows there, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, great. Yeah, we get to have a dozen shows there every summer. Nice. It's like, you know how every city has its big auditorium that every tour circles through, and there's like four shows a week. That's ours. And Guns N' Roses comes through, and I believe the show started late anyways, is my understanding. There were some other things going on. But during that,
00:20:42
Speaker
The story goes that a guy was in the crowd who happened to be from one of our regional biker games, the saddle tramps, and he was taking pictures of Axel from the crowd. The thing you've got to understand, and I'm going to say this for any young people listening, is that
00:21:02
Speaker
Now we take pictures galore at shows and it's not a big deal. It used to be because since we didn't have access to photos everywhere in the internet or fingertips, people paid money for those. People sold them in hobby shops, things like that. The bands never got any money from it. So controlling cameras in a venue was a big thing for bands at that time. And Axel spots this guy and taking pictures in the crowd and he tells security, Hey, deal with that.
00:21:32
Speaker
security didn't do anything. He hollers again, deal with that. They didn't deal with it. He says, bucket, I will. And then Axel Rosen, a pair of cowboy boots, denim cut off shorts and a white mink stole looking thing dives headfirst into the crowd to attack the guy with the camera. And, uh, apparently got a few good shots in.
00:21:51
Speaker
And, uh, was then, uh, it kicked off this giant riot known as, you know, the guns are as a St. Louis, right? And that dude ruptured a disc in his spine after Axel had clobbered him. Yeah, actually clobbered him pretty good. Like Axel was the one who got pulled away.
00:22:09
Speaker
by security in the end. And but what it led to is he got on stage, slashes there and he says, fuck it, we're going home and throws the microphone down on the stage and walks off. And then the 29 ish thousand people that Riverport fills with because it was Guns N' Roses. It was absolutely full.
00:22:29
Speaker
They got pissed and they went on to the stage, destroyed their equipment, stole their equipment. Like, I'm not going to get too deep on it, but I mean, I personally know a guy who speaks of having a speaker cabinet or that used to have a speaker cabinet that was acquired at that show. Like the fans not uproot bolted down chairs. Yes.
00:22:53
Speaker
and throw them at on the stage. I don't know that's humanly possible. But yeah, they were bolted down and somehow these animals were able to get in there and just rip them out and destroy things.
Axl's Vision and Band Evolution Speculation
00:23:03
Speaker
So yeah, it was weird. It was crazy. And they left town and city of St. Louis or probably St. Louis County because technically this didn't happen in the city of St. Louis. He
00:23:19
Speaker
got charges filed against him and, um, can fly back two or three times for various hearings and eventually settled on the, you know, uh, fine and some other stuff that was pretty substantial, as I recall, if we even heard, and that, uh, guns and roses never welcome in the city of St. Louis again in perpetuity.
00:23:40
Speaker
No way. Wow. So when they came back here in I'm going to say 2016 and it's not going to be right. I saw him at the where the Rams used to play here. But when they came back, it was the first time they'd been to the city since 1993. Like they were not welcome and they made a big deal out of wanting to play St. Louis on the tour and that it either needed to be the first show or the very last one. And when they came to town, every new station in the city
00:24:11
Speaker
uh, relives the, uh, the interesting stories. Uh, there are still people in this city who hate Axel Rose's guts for what happened, uh, that were really bitter about, you know, screw him. The only person he screwed was me. You know, it was my money, my tickets. I didn't get sea guns and roses. All I got was attitude, you know, and there are people who feel that way. There are people who were concerned about, you know, the risk and what happened in the community that night because it was pretty rowdy, but
00:24:39
Speaker
They came back. It just took 30 years. Corey, I wanted to ask you a question. As a lifelong diehard Guns N' Roses fan, were you personally pissed off at Axel for that, for never coming back to St. Louis? No. And only because they broke up, they never like technically broke up. What happened is everybody just kind of went away and eventually it was just Axel.
00:25:09
Speaker
I was never pissed, but I was also not a person who was ever stuck at a show for two and a half hours waiting for him to show up and then cutting a show short when 11 o'clock curfew hit. You know, uh, there are people who, who very much had a right to be very pissed about what happened, about what happened here and about what happened with Axel on a lot of nights. But with that said, my understanding is he's doing really good these days and that he's, he's hit every show early.
00:25:37
Speaker
He did promises he would be here on time as well the night of the night he came to St. Louis. They interviewed him. They did several interviews around it. It was really funny. There's some great news footage. I'll try to find some and stick it in the description to the YouTube video. Only took 30 years for him to get his shit together. Yeah, 25 maybe, but yeah, a lot.
00:26:00
Speaker
So yeah, but you bring up an interesting point about the fact that they never really did break up. I mean, it was just a case of Axel leaving, Izzy leaving, and then Axel getting like... Sorry, did I say Axel leaving? If I did, I meant slash. No, you said slash and Izzy, but I mean, there's also tough, there's... Yeah, I think Izzy was the...
00:26:28
Speaker
like the main catalyst for this. Cause like Izzy got sober while everybody else was still loaded. And he just didn't want to put up with Axel shit anymore. Like he said, okay, you know, I'll, I'll turn up for the show. I'm not even going to take the bus with you guys. Like I'm just going to show up for the show and then I'm going to leave after the show. And if you're not there, then whatever. Like I have my solo career. Like I don't care anymore.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah. Infamously, the band would fly to their gigs, but Izzy would always do road trips. He loved to travel. He would pack his trailer with his motorcycles and kind of do his thing. And he would actually, I think he said in an interview, despite the majority of the band traveling in an airplane, he was always the first one there.
00:27:13
Speaker
traveling by van, so it's got to say something. I mean, yeah, you bring up a good point, Aaron. They were very much still in party mode where Izzy was trying to get his shit straight, and he did. And then that will only take you so far if who you're playing with is a bunch of drug addicts.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, and Axel Rose. Right. Whose ego is monstrous. Oh, Gramadonna and a bunch of drug addicts. So fucked up.
'Chinese Democracy' Era
00:27:43
Speaker
Just a recipe for disaster. And you know, it was...
00:27:48
Speaker
one of the weird things about that is like, you know, Izzy was one of the first to go but Izzy was also like one of the first in the band to discover heroin. Like I think they met Izzy as a heroin dealer. And some of the rest of the band that that was kind of there. I mean, not like you got a moment but like
00:28:06
Speaker
might have been their introduction. And it's is an interesting dynamic because yeah, for a while before he left, he was already pretty done. Like the axle not showing up thing got really old for Izzy really quick. He felt like that was just unprofessional bullshit. And yeah, and when they brought in the new new guitarist, new rhythm guitarist and backup singer, apparently Slash was not happy with the choice. Yeah.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, so that created a rift between the two. And then Slash decided to go and then Axl just had this kind of rotating group of musicians who came in and, you know, as great as a song. Which are great ones. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, great studio musicians, great, great singers. Yeah, we're on Bumblefoot, Buckethead.
00:28:58
Speaker
Buckethead is a huge standout for me. Buckethead, yeah. I mean, to have had Buckethead and Bumblefoot at once is, I mean, not at once, but like back to back. That was a pretty killer lineup. Like any other band, I'd like to think you couldn't succeed with that. Yeah, I feel like Buckethead was like the West Borland of Guns N' Roses. What do you think?
00:29:21
Speaker
That's fair. Right? I always felt like... I mean, Borland never really laughed, but I kind of got the whole aesthetic with just the way that he looked and the way that he played him. He was a great player, but yeah, he just gave me West Borland vibes for some reason.
00:29:35
Speaker
As a slash diehard young man who had no idea who Buckethead was, at the time, I thought his KFC bucket was mocking Slash's top hat like this guy. Oh, OK. And I was like, what the hell? I didn't realize that that was like his thing. Yeah, he's just a weird dude. He's just weird and strange.
00:29:58
Speaker
I mean, you know, I still enjoy listening to Chinese democracy for Buckethead solos. If you're going to replace a band that had Slash in it, I feel like he's one of the few choices that you could maybe have to
00:30:15
Speaker
to make it even better potentially. Very, very different styles. He brought an incredibly different style to Guns N' Roses and to that album. But if you listen to just the guitar tracks,
00:30:30
Speaker
without everything else, everything stripped away. I mean, it's cool just to listen to because he's got such a unique style. The interesting thing about Chinese democracy that is strange to me is that some of this music was being written
00:30:47
Speaker
on the Usur Illusion tours in 92, 93, 94. And it was being written. It was intended for the original band at the time, what was ready was. And as it comes together, we're looking at a time when bands were rising to the top like Nine Inch Nails, other industrial bands like Ministry and shit. And Axl really kind of dug that industrial feel.
00:31:14
Speaker
So one of the things you'll notice is that it's kind of present on Chinese democracy in some places, I feel like. And the place it was most evident was they did
00:31:27
Speaker
They did a song called, Oh My God, on an Arnold Schwarzenegger film in the mid 90s. Terminator 2. No, not Terminator 2. That was where, that was where you could be, mine went this one. Oh My God. Okay.
00:31:46
Speaker
No, it wasn't Last Action Hero. No, I thought maybe the film was Last Action Hero, but that doesn't make sense. What a great soundtrack on that one, though. It's true. It's a great soundtrack. Shit movie. Shit. I liked it. I actually really dug that film. I don't know. Maybe it was because it was my youth, but what's that? It's probably a youth thing for me. Yeah, me too. I've always had a soft spot because it had
00:32:11
Speaker
Oh, it had Megadeth doing like Angry Again or something. And it was a killer soundtrack. And it was an OK movie. It was one of those that there are certain movies that I've found over the years are better left as memories. Mm hmm. That's a good point. I haven't rewatched that film in years. But to get back to Chinese democracy. Oh, yeah. Chinese democracy. Oh, here's the thing. It was lauded by critics. Everyone seemed to hate it. And to this day, I haven't heard a single track on it.
00:32:42
Speaker
Wow.
Influence Comparison with Metallica
00:32:43
Speaker
I just wanted to throw that out there.
00:32:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of people didn't because it was a Best Buy exclusive when it came out in 2008. So who's going to Best Buy specifically to buy the new Guns N' Roses album? Maybe it was just bad publicity that they did, like bad marketing that they did. But, you know, maybe a lot of people just didn't even know where to get the album. I will also add that in 1998, we found Napster.
00:33:14
Speaker
And that really changed a lot to do with the record industry. So there are a lot of albums in that era that maybe might have done better had we had any idea how to count illegal downloads. I remember the whole Napster thing. When I first bought Chinese Democracy, it was in a bargain bin, like a year after it came out.
00:33:35
Speaker
because everybody assumed it's going to be huge. It's the New Guns N' Roses record. They bought millions of them and people didn't care. There are some great tracks on that album. It got panned by
00:33:50
Speaker
by audiences and by critics alike. But, you know, a song like This I Love was like a follow up to November Rain. I mean, it was an awesome track. You know, it was a rock ballad that we, you know, was not around in that time around 2008. You know, so I do think it gets more hate than it deserves.
00:34:12
Speaker
Yeah. And and it's honestly it's less hate for the music than it was hate for Axel by the fans. I think the the fans 100 percent blamed Axel for all of Guns N' Roses problems. And plenty of it was. But I wouldn't say it was entirely. You know, I mean, of course, I'm looking from the outside. I was reading this shit through Hit Parader and Circus magazine as a teenager metal edge. And but.
00:34:43
Speaker
Chinese democracy has songs that they still play every night, too. You know, like Madagascar, they still play it. It's a great song. They play. It's better. I don't think they play better. I love that number. They might. I'd have to look. You can pull up online like their set list history and see how many times some of those songs have been played. It'd be a fun side project. So you guys are saying that it's the album's worth checking out.
00:35:12
Speaker
It's worth checking out. Absolutely. It's heavier. I might do that. I don't know why I've had such an aversion to that record. I think when it came out, when was it released? Do you remember? 1998? It was 2008. It's 2008. It's 2008. Okay, yeah. So when I found out about... Yeah, it's crazy. It's just beautiful.
00:35:34
Speaker
No, it's fine. 2008. So in 2008, I was going to shows at CBGB. He's now the defunct premier punk rock club that New York City had to offer. So I remember hearing the news about the release of Chinese Democracy. I was on a train heading back from Manhattan to Long Island. And when I heard the news, one of the one of the punk kids that was in the train had mentioned that he heard it and that was shit. And the minute I heard that, I'm like, yup, I'm not going to listen to that record.
00:36:04
Speaker
And that was it. And from that point, I have not listened to it because some punk rocker on a train just drunk off his mind as we were heading back home said, fuck that record. And I'm like, you know what? As 20-year-old something, I'm like, you know what? Fuck that record.
00:36:22
Speaker
And that was it based on that encounter. That's that's exactly why I've never heard Chinese democracy. That's the perfect microcosm of why it was hated. It really is. That's that's what happened is people are like, man, I don't even give a shit if it's good. I just don't want to hear it.
00:36:38
Speaker
Because it's not the real Guns N' Roses and like Axel went through you know for lineups during the Chinese democracy Really 2008 I was saying mamster thinking 1990. I had no idea it. Oh, yeah 15 years for him to put it out. I thought it was and time is funny. No, we're all this shit Cory I can't speak for Aaron, but we are fucking dinosaurs. Hey, I feel it too
00:37:03
Speaker
We are, yeah, and Aaron's day will come. Yeah, you know what? Oh no, Aaron, you'll get there. For sure. I may have heard a couple of tracks from Chinese Democracy from LimeWire.
00:37:14
Speaker
Oh, no shit. Yeah. Dude, you could get it before the album came out. Yeah. It was available on Napster. I probably still have those downloads and it's not the same album that released. Their early demos were out online. Wow. So I was like, you know, 13, 14 and I was probably like, you know, smoking weed and like downloading rock and roll albums on LimeWire and like hearing Chinese democracy. I was like, oh yeah, yeah, this shit is good.
00:37:39
Speaker
I think I liken Chinese democracy to Metallica. And the reason I do is because there's like the loyalist fans of Metallica. Like people were accusing Metallica of selling out on the Ride the Lightning album because there was an acoustic guitar on Fade to Black. When they came through St. Louis two weeks ago, it was the largest marketing extravaganza I had ever seen across the city in my life. I'm like, those people don't have a clue.
00:38:05
Speaker
No. But what happened is Metallica kind of evolved with the times. They got a little older, kind of got into some hard rock kind of stuff, little blues influence.
'Appetite for Destruction' Reflection
00:38:13
Speaker
And different generations love different eras. I discovered in walking around that show, you'd see people in load shirts, St. Anger shirts, and you could tell that that was just their Metallica. Like for me, it was Injustice for All. And it's that way with Guns N' Roses to put a bow on it, bring it back.
00:38:33
Speaker
They just weren't gonna like anything they did later Whether it was with eat. I don't even know if like spaghetti Wow, I can't talk. I'm losing my brain here. Like sorry. It's the perfect time for we're on a podcast. It is. That's right Large brain fart. Uh-huh. No problem. You'll get there. I'll get there. I'll get there and
00:38:59
Speaker
I just don't think anyone cared. I don't think they wanted to like it. I think kind of the moment had passed. But that they eventually have come back together, I think is a really good thing. Because like
00:39:14
Speaker
my generation, lots of my generation never got a chance to see them. And for those songs that have really stood the test of time, like, you know, people know most of the songs on appetite for destruction. It's one of those rare albums that like, if you just put it on, every one of them is a banger. Great.
00:39:39
Speaker
If I'm right, I don't think Paradise City or Welcome to the Jungle and definitely not Sweet Child of Mine were ever singles from that album either. I think Sweet Child of Mine was a single. Sweet Child of Mine was kind of a blower. Dude, it was the only single that went number one on the Billboard charts. Was it? Was it? Yeah, it was a very popular video. There was It's So Easy, then Welcome to the Jungle.
00:40:08
Speaker
And then Sweet Child of Mine is when everything went nuts. And Mr. Brownstone was... Mr. Brownstone was the B-side. Was it? Okay. And for what it's worth, I would also argue that, you know, Welcome to the Jungle, Sweet Child of Mine, Paradise City.
00:40:24
Speaker
are not the three best songs on that record. I mean, they're great, but to me, Rocket Queen, Mr. Brownstone, Out To Get Me. You're crazy. It's a great song. Out To Get Me is a kick the doors in hard rock and
00:40:40
Speaker
butt kicker. I don't know. What's interesting too about appetite for destruction was how it was kind of a dud at first. And then once, uh, welcome to the jungle, once that music video came out and it was all over MTV and the radio started picking it up is when they really exploded. Take about a year. Yeah. No, you want to play the video. She all right. What's that MTV didn't want to play the video. Is that right? Yeah. For welcome to the jungle. Okay.
00:41:06
Speaker
because they had bought, I saw this in a documentary an hour before this, it's something I didn't know.
00:41:14
Speaker
They had bought the rights to lots of news footage from NBC, CBS and ABC is what Axel said in an interview. And they had it all cut in to the video to make Welcome to the Jungle this like, you know, political rage against the machine kind of impact. And MTV is like, no, that shit's got to go, guys. It had to have got some play, though, right? Yeah. Well, they cut it all out and then it got a lot.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, I remember the beginning of that video so well, like, you know, Axel in the street corner, he's in like a flannel, trying to step on a bus. But they had no problem with Sweet Child of Mine. Like once they had gotten ahold of that, that got all the MTV play. Yeah. Sweet Child of Mine was the ballad, man. The ballad's what made all those bands. Like, you know,
00:42:06
Speaker
Poison's rocking songs were not what put them where they were. What put them where they were was every rose has its thorn and something to believe in instead of talk dirty to me and look what the cat dragged in, which are much heavier songs. It was kind of the age of ballads.
Future Prospects and Public Perception
00:42:26
Speaker
It was the power ballad era, yeah.
00:42:28
Speaker
So let me pose a question here. I mean, like everybody knows that Axl Rose is kind of an asshole. Like he didn't show up to a lot of his shows. He was what created a lot of the infighting between the bad, but what if everybody had just gotten on board with Axl Rose's vision, right? Like he had, you know, he had the ballads in him. He had November Rain, which I believe was off a usual illusion, either one or two, I can't remember.
00:42:56
Speaker
but like, you know, where he's got like these backup singers and like it's a whole production, right? And it seemed like, especially like Izzy didn't want to go that direction. Like he wanted to be more of a straight up rock band, you know, four or five piece rock band. And like, as you said, Corey, you know, Axel was into this industrial stuff. He was into, you know, adding more elements to the band. What if they had just gone along with his vision
00:43:24
Speaker
and created what he wanted to create. Do you think that they could have come out with more of these ballads that would have become number one hits, or they could have gone a more experimental direction where it may not have had critics success or mainstream success, but be known by people within the music scene, like Radiohead,
00:43:53
Speaker
or you know, maybe even like REM. I would not, there are so many directions it could have gone. They could have continued along that path because like you went from the rawest of raw rock and roll. I mean, if you watch that show in 1987 of Guns N' Roses live at the Ritz in New York City that it aired live on, or not live, but it aired on MTV in like the eight, in 87, 88.
00:44:16
Speaker
but it's on YouTube everywhere. If you watch that, it is just raw, sweaty, grimy, nasty. These guys haven't washed their hair in a month. It was just raw rock and roll.
00:44:29
Speaker
where by the time you get to November rain, what you're putting out is more of a composition. I mean, it's got horns and cellos and it's got layers and it's Axel's Bohemian Rhapsody. You know, it's his big production. Now, the question is, is that the road they take or do they at some point decide to pull back and go the route of the
00:44:56
Speaker
you know that we're all rock and roll and I think from honestly the way Chinese democracy turned out I think they continue that use your illusion route like like those are big songs with deep heavy themes lots of imagery you know the show would have been bigger the the songs were more more bold in some ways
00:45:18
Speaker
And the thing with me is, I'm sorry, I was gonna say, I can't imagine having a record full of nothing but power ballads. I think I'd tear my fucking hair out.
00:45:31
Speaker
And the thing with me is being super into punk rock, I'm used to my songs being very, very quick. There's some exceptions, but we want, at least what I want out of music is, and it's not, I mean, right now I have a very tasty music. I listen from everything from jazz to hip hop to punk rock, to old metal and stuff like that. I mean, just about anything.
00:45:55
Speaker
But I like my songs to be structured to the, not to the same extent as a ballad, but something that I can put on and listen to for two, three minutes and call it good. I mean, November Rain was like an eight to nine minute track. And as much as I love it, having an album populated by nothing but that would drive me as a casual listener, absolutely insane.
00:46:21
Speaker
I don't think they'd have ever gone fully that way. But what I can see is a more produced, more polished direction. I think they might have wound up going. You know, in the end, yeah, Chinese democracy is pretty industrial, you know. But
00:46:40
Speaker
But if that band, if that same nucleus had stayed together, I think they'd have probably just continued on that path. But there were, I think, creative differences as much as there were personal differences and business differences and all of those things. So unpopular opinion, Axl Rose was a genius and nobody else could see that.
00:47:04
Speaker
I won't argue against it. I think Axl was quite the musical genius and with an ego that made it really hard for him to control that and use it effectively. Yeah, I think he embodied both the hero and the villain. He had this duplicity when it came to what he was and who he was, I think.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah. Well, yeah, I think that's pretty astute because, you know, he'll be the first one to tell you he has bipolar disorder. So, you know, that's where that dichotomy comes from. Late 80s and all of the chemical problems. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think he was actually on medication for like, they called it manic depression back then before bipolar was a thing.
00:47:46
Speaker
So he was the hero and the villain of his own story because he did have these bouts of rage as well. And that's maybe where some of the controversy came from. And they are a super controversial band. Look at the track that they did, the cover on GNR Lies,
00:48:14
Speaker
of Charles, Charles Manson's, um, what is it? Get your game girl, your game girl, look at her game girl, something like that. Yeah. I don't know the name. I just remember that one time I left the cassette playing too long and all of a sudden there was this weird song I didn't really care for that played on spaghetti incident. And, uh, Oh, spaghetti incident. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but I think the song was like, look at your game girl or something like that. Yeah. I was looking at your game girl. Yeah.
00:48:41
Speaker
And it's, it's, you know, it was written by Charles Manson. It was it was so, so I mean, you know, if they wanted to do it, I don't have a problem with doing it, but it was not. It was not anything special.
Role of Charismatic Frontmen in Rock
00:48:55
Speaker
It was very much the shock value of I was just going to say, was that a calculated move to do that on the on the record? He wore Manson shirts on stage and stuff. Pretty great. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Charlie, not Marilyn, just for anyone listening who maybe doesn't realize that. Yeah.
00:49:11
Speaker
And it was, he often wore things that had, you know, loudmouth political statements. And frankly, we talked about St. Louis a few minutes ago, and I'm afraid I might have given the impression that that was like the only riot. And apparently,
00:49:27
Speaker
They had a number of them. I think there was one in Toronto. I believe there was maybe something in Europe somewhere. One happened out by me, Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. Nassau. It was Nassau Coliseum. Huge venue. The Islanders would play there. But yeah, no, it's it was well documented that there was a huge fucking riot there, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There were a lot of those. Yeah.
00:49:57
Speaker
I'll never be able to figure this guy out. It's like why he decides to do a Charles Manson song. And to be fair, they did it better than Charles Manson did, which is not hard. Neither tracks were great, but it was a step up from the original.
00:50:19
Speaker
So I just don't understand why he goes out on stage wearing a jacket with a Confederate flag on it and why he decides to cover a Charles Manson song.
00:50:32
Speaker
I think it was all shock. I think so, too. I think he liked the feeling of being the center of attention. And and he was always the center of attention on stage, but he had the ability to be the center of attention beyond Guns N' Roses and Guns N' Roses fans when he went really nuts. Well, yeah. Yeah, it's like the band
00:50:58
Speaker
created news for music again. That wasn't a thing that was happening at the time. Since the time of the Stones and the Beatles and maybe Zeppelin, you didn't have headlining news about rock groups.
00:51:14
Speaker
Guns N' Roses kind of brought that back. And I don't know if it's just because of music, because like how huge appetite for destruction was, or because of the political statements that Axel was making, and whether that was a calculated decision as well to try and get them more on the radar of like mainstream news. I think Axel was the only one in the band that was calculated. I think Duff, Izzy, slash Steven,
00:51:43
Speaker
And I'm not saying that Axel wasn't the real deal. What I'm going to say is that Axel was kind of the brains in how to get it where it needed to be, the band. And I think he did that well.
00:51:59
Speaker
He's very much the one who would have been dealing with contract shit and things like that. That wasn't Slash and Duff's style. He did well with that. He did well with taking the band up to that next level with User Illusion. These were songs on the Hot 100. That's the thing that's difficult to think about now in a world where rock and roll is never
00:52:28
Speaker
in the top 40 these days. I mean,
Current Rock Music State and Expectations
00:52:30
Speaker
there are things we might call rock and roll or if the Rolling Stones release a new stone that counts as rock and roll and it gets there, but like new young rock and roll bands were what the chart was full of. Yeah. Your fun rock and roll or that edge that we talked about, that punk edge and a lot of these younger artists coming up that maybe started in rap, but then started including or
00:52:55
Speaker
incorporating rock elements and certainly that attitude into their music. So you're seeing, I think, the younger generation that's into much different things that don't really look back on, look back fondly on like the 70s or the 60s or the 80s. All they know is about what they're into now. And you saw a lot of these younger artists sort of going out and playing Ali pop punk songs. You know what I mean? Like I hate to use this as an example, but
00:53:25
Speaker
Christ, what's his name? Machine Gun Kelly. Thank you very much. Machine Gun Kelly, he had this huge rap career and then he put out two pop punk records with Travis Barker behind the kit. And they're good.
00:53:41
Speaker
And they're not, you know, it's debatable. As modern rock, as things on the top 40 go. Right. They are really good. You can't ask for much these days. Yeah. I mean, hip hop is what's huge now. It's yeah. It's 50 years of hip hop at this point. I'm pretty sure we talked about this, Cory, outside the show. Yeah. That, you know, hip hop started in the late to early 80s and this sort of
00:54:11
Speaker
Gain speed going from being very underground and having like these big block parties and these party party Um, uh con like these pop-up shows in people's game lord rubin Yeah, and then it's become This huge genre has been that's been going strong for 50 years and now it's become more relevant than ever was And it's a shame too. I think one of the things that is preventing certain rock artists from breaking out Is that their front man isn't an axle rose?
00:54:41
Speaker
It isn't a Brian Johnson. There's no real appeal to some of these bands because none of their players stand out as rock stars. There's nobody bring in these younger crowds because a lot of these bands just aren't as interesting as they used to be. That's my opinion.
00:55:02
Speaker
I blame a lot of it on the loss of dynamics in music. There's very much a just monotone approach to everything now that it's what keeps me away. Now, with that said, there is great new music out there and that's kind of the message that I hope to
00:55:22
Speaker
Scream from the fences with armchair rock stars that there is great rock and roll, but It it ain't on Billboard and You got to dig a little and that's what we do. We dig through all the crappy music Aaron knows I spend my Friday mornings listening to crappy music and Pulling one song out of 50 as the all right. That's it. They're a keeper and
00:55:44
Speaker
you know and but you're right though we don't have that kind of front man you know who has it and i'm gonna pronounce it wrong but whose front man has it maneskin oh yes yeah you told me to check them out yeah man their singer their their bass player oh yeah their uh
00:56:05
Speaker
They've got like it to me. And they're probably an outlier man because you know rock and roll isn't as scary or as dangerous as it used to be. Yeah. If that's the opposite. It's the complete opposite. It is. It is. A note to any young starting out rock bands. Don't go indie.
00:56:26
Speaker
Yeah. You know, Indy was a cool thing at one point. Like Sonic Youth, as Aaron and I were recently discussing, were Indy before Indy was like the thing you wanted to be. Like before they took off, Indy was great. And then it was, Indy remained good up through a lot of the 90s. It stayed kind of unique. Now, Indy is just, just
00:56:50
Speaker
delay saturated chorus bladen guitars and lame sad vocals and that is not what indie was supposed to be and in my heart i feel it but every indie band right now
00:57:02
Speaker
Oh, God, I don't want to say that. Layer guitars and buried vocals. Yes. But when you see indie rock and you see a song listed as indie rock, there is a feel that's going to be there and you know it's going to be there. And and I listen to 50 plus new songs every week. And it's always like that. And I'm like, man, there's such an opportunity like Alt used to. You know, I mean, that fell under alternative back in the day. An alternative meant not the norm. It meant not.
00:57:31
Speaker
the shit you hear in the top 40s. Alternative was supposed to be something unique and different. What Depeche Mode would have been to a Duran Duran, for example, if that makes sense. But that's not there. I don't see that uniqueness. What there are right now, there are a lot of really, really good bands putting out
00:57:57
Speaker
pop punk emo kind of stuff right now. There's a lot of that out of there. There's a lot of good classic rock revival.
00:58:04
Speaker
Uh, there's really good bands like, uh, rival sons dirty honey. Wow. I'm on the spot and I can't come up with more, but there are a ton of those mother, you know, Wolf mother. Yeah. Black pistol fire and stuff that bled out from like the black keys and Jack white and that low fire era where we, we kind of merged back into garage rock for a while. That was a couple of years. It wasn't like around.
00:58:30
Speaker
2010, 2012, somewhere around there. And then it was kind of a flash in the pan, I think, with garage rock. It's very popular in the 60s and 70s, but when it came to its revival, it almost reminded me of the swing revival, if you remember that, with
00:58:47
Speaker
the cherry popping daddies or whatever. Everyone was in the swing. That window was maybe five years, and I think the same can be said of Garage Rock as well. There's still some really good Garage Rock bands. I mean, shit, The Hives put out a great Garage Rock record after 11 years of being in a hiatus and it fucking kicks ass.
00:59:12
Speaker
It does. There's elements of it that still exist. There's some bands that are still very garage rock. But yeah, I think that whole movement and that whole spirit came and went already.
00:59:24
Speaker
It's such a shame too because what for me, what garage rock brought back and Chris, I credit you for being the one who turned me really into that stuff, even frankly, after it had passed. But what it brought back was authenticity. Like what's being recorded was real.
00:59:44
Speaker
Like now, when you hear a song on the radio, it's so perfect. It's pristine. Sanitary. As a result, it becomes sanitary and it loses its soul. That soul is just gone from music, at least largely. When I say music, I mean,
01:00:07
Speaker
popular music that the masses ingest. So if Guns N' Roses comes out with Appetite for Destruction 2 today, how does that do on the charts? I think it goes straight to number one today.
01:00:24
Speaker
I think it would go fucking crazy too. I mean, what was it? Use Your Illusion. That's it, right? Am I fucking that up? Use Your Illusion wanted to. They were released simultaneously. But separately as two different albums. Correct. But they trended very high on Billboard. And I think within two to three hours of those records dropping basically a 24 or 48 hour period, 500,000 copies had been sold.
01:00:54
Speaker
of both records. People left work. What's that? People left work and lined up outside of Sam Goody. Yeah. The band dropped an album then. It was an event. Hands down. I imagine if what everyone was saying, if there was an appetite for destruction too, I think that there's a market for it. I think people are getting tired.
01:01:20
Speaker
I guess they want something new, but they want something familiar. And I think that that's kind of what Guns N' Roses could bring to the table.
Reunion Tour and Vocal Evolution
01:01:28
Speaker
And if they could, I mean, hats off to them because these rockers now, they need a kick to the fucking pants because they really need to get their shit together. A lot of it just feels very unsafe, very sanitary, very proper and fucking perfect. And that's not what rock and roll is.
01:01:46
Speaker
It's sloppy, it's energy, it's sweaty, it's imperfect by definition. Well, there's a note of that song where the lyrics are, when did punk rock become so safe? Even in the dangerous side of rock, it's become way too safe and way too standard. It's like we've been waiting with Guns N' Roses for so long for them to come out with that album. They've just been
01:02:15
Speaker
bullshitting around with whatever problems they have. Could they still come out with today something similar to that spirit that they had in appetite for destruction and GNR lies and some on usual illusion one and two?
01:02:32
Speaker
Yes and no. And I say yes and no because they're not the people they were going through the things they were at that time. Every one of them are better musicians today than they were at that point in their life. They have different experience, different tastes.
01:02:52
Speaker
I don't think what would come out would be a comparable thing to appetite for destruction. But what I do think is that it won't come out unless it's good. And I think that's why we haven't seen it yet. They released, you know, three or four new singles, all of which are like kind of leftover hang arounds from Chinese democracy, hard school, absurd.
01:03:15
Speaker
perhaps, you know, those those all kind of come back from that era. And hard school could have been on appetite as far as I'm concerned. It is such an ass kicker, where absurd feels very Chinese democracy. It's got a much more industrial flavor to it. It's heavier. Its axles voice is distorted and it's very angry and it's
01:03:40
Speaker
So I mean, I don't necessarily know which direction they'd go and it's interesting because they've all taken a lot of different directions over the years You know, I mean slash went on and he's got he had slash snake pit He had that album he did with pop stars doing duets with every one of them He has slash feature and Miles Kennedy and the conspirators Which is arguably one of the best active rock bands right at this moment in my opinion and then there's ye olde velvet revolver who I would hate to see disappear from history because I
01:04:09
Speaker
That was pretty cool. Velvet Revolver was pretty rad. Yeah, Scott Weiland and Guns N' Roses. It was like, oh my God, this makes so much sense. It came out and it was pretty hard-hitting, honestly. It was the closest thing to Appetite that had happened since Appetite in a lot of ways to me, songs like Slither,
01:04:36
Speaker
that just they're very riff driven very and I think that's what slash brings to the table is slashes the I can build a riff that people will not forget around. Yeah, man. And if velvet revolver weren't around like what would strip clubs play like in in the south, you know? Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah.
01:04:57
Speaker
How are they ever gonna get past, oh my God, fall to pieces? Oh man, that was a good era. Fun fact, Velvet Revolver's first show, MTV played a big role in kind of that, them coming to light. And they did a show at the pageant, which is a venue I regularly attend here in town. Well, in St. Louis, I'm in the suburbs.
01:05:25
Speaker
called The Pageant and that's where their first show was done and aired live on MTV. I have a couple of buddies who had been there. I had no idea it was happening because I didn't live here at the time.
01:05:37
Speaker
But yeah, that's that's that show that aired live on MTV when Scott Weiland and them finally got to get got together for the first time. It was right here. It was a pretty it was a cool show to watch. Like I wasn't there. I watched the video, though, and it was it was pretty great. Nice. Yeah, well, you know, I'm glad they're all back together. Apparently, Steven Adler is like, you know, doing some cameos here and there during the tour.
01:06:07
Speaker
Um, not a permanent part of the group, but you know, he's still alive and he can, he can come in and he can do some guest spots. I would love to see a new album within the next couple of years. I have no idea what it would look like. Uh, but you know, Axel doesn't have the same voice that he used to, you know, there are.
01:06:32
Speaker
You write the new songs for that though. There are times when you can hear that same voice that he used to have. He's got that range sometimes, but he's never going to hit those heights that he used to.
01:06:48
Speaker
You can tell he's put a lot of work into it. Frankly, the social media community makes a lot of fun of him, and I think it's unfairly. He's out there. Those are not easy songs for a 20-year-old. He hit some high notes that he held forever, and it required a lot of range because a song like, it's so easy. You're singing, I see your sister in you. He's way low.
01:07:16
Speaker
I mean Axl had a tremendous amount of range and pretty much no one still has that range in your late 50s early 60s. That range disappears so you know if they write new music that new music would then be written for the voice he has now.
01:07:30
Speaker
which I think would lead to less situations where he's struggling to hit those notes. But I'm just glad to see him out there making music again. They're five years into the reunion tour now and we thought we'd have a new album by now and they all say that they've been writing music together and they've been recording and they've been doing things.
01:07:50
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe there will be. Maybe there won't.
Live Performance Impact and Nostalgia
01:07:54
Speaker
All I know is if the chance to go see them live again happens, I'll be there. It was really great to finally be able to put a bow on that and have seen Guns N' Roses in my life.
01:08:06
Speaker
Yeah, you know, even if you do have to take out a second mortgage. Yeah, it's in the same fucking thing. Oh my god. They're going to charge. Yeah, and be willing to pay 600 fucking dollars for them, you know? Oh god, yeah, you're in New York. I hate that when we're talking music. I mean, there's almost like a purity about it. But then when money gets involved, it kind of sullies the whole fucking thing, doesn't it?
01:08:33
Speaker
It does. I had a chance to see, and this is a little off topic so I won't spend too much time here, but I had a chance to see the misfits perform in Madison Square Garden with the damned and rancid opening for them. I believe it was Halloween night, but I was not prepared to spend $500 to sit in the pit. Yeah. I could not fucking bring myself to do it. Now I'm kind of kicking myself in the ass for not doing it, to be honest.
01:09:03
Speaker
Well, you know what I'll say is that I had an opportunity. I was working for a magazine that Chris and I used to work on.
01:09:11
Speaker
And we were out, me and a friend of ours who ran the sales team were doing a cover shoot with a celebrity in that industry, if that makes sense, in Orange County. And the day of that cover shoot, we found out Slash was playing the whiskey that night. It was for his band Miles Kennedy and the conspirators was releasing a new album and it was the album release party show.
01:09:39
Speaker
And, uh, and we thought, boy, that would be cool. And, uh, we just, just gotten paid from, from a good issue that we'd just gotten out. And we were, we were sitting a little fat at the moment and, uh, and we bought $600 each tickets to see slash inside the whiskey ago. How was that? You know what? This is a once in a lifetime thing. It's slash it's, it's Mr. Whiskey ago go in the whiskey ago go. So we're never going to see slash from 12 feet away in our lives.
01:10:09
Speaker
We can't afford the tickets that put you that close, if they even exist at a major auditorium. I love those intimate shows, man. There's so much better than these big arena shows. They did probably Five Guns N' Roses tunes at night. They did Rocket Queen, Paradise City, Welcome to the Jungle, a lot of the early stuff. Nice. It was so great. It was so great. It was a slash for 10 feet away. I shot a ton of videos.
01:10:37
Speaker
We drank with strangers and we then went to the rainbow where I got tossed out Well, I didn't get tossed out. We kind of got like shadow tossed if that makes sense We got to the rainbow and I was really really really Inebriated
01:10:54
Speaker
And I behaved somewhat poorly and didn't want to wait for a table. So I just walked in and sat down at a booth like I own the place for some reason, like I had some undeserved sense of self-worth. And for an hour, nobody would come by and take our order.
01:11:14
Speaker
finally Jacob convinced me to go out and we went out and I stood in the middle of Sunset Strip and screamed that I was the lizard king and I could do anything just like Jim Morris. That's that's what you do. That's what you do on Sunset Strip. Come on. Yeah. I have not made a sunset a trip to Sunset that kind of didn't involve a little bit of shame when it was over. Like what I will say is that is my every couple of years that is my
01:11:42
Speaker
my pilgrimage we go out we get we get tickets to every bar on the street we'll get tickets at at least the viper well the viper room the whiskey the roxy um and end the night at
01:11:58
Speaker
the rainbow, just like Rockstar's dead as far back as before the Beatles. It is a trip that is well worth it for anyone who enjoys rock and roll music. I mean, every generation, the doors were the house band at the whiskey. No matter which generation you like, somebody you love,
01:12:22
Speaker
passed through that little chunk of road down there and probably got tattooed and hammered at the rainbow before it was over. There you go. Well, guys, this has been a, it's been a lot of fun. It's been a lot of fun. Remembering the good old days.
01:12:39
Speaker
You know, I look forward to seeing what comes next for those guys of the songs they released the three new ones.
Episode Closing and Listener Engagement
01:12:47
Speaker
I really liked two out of three and absurd is the only one I'm not like a hundred percent on board with, but, but it's solid. So I hope, uh, we'll see something new come out of there. Guys, Chris, Aaron, thank you so much for being on here with us tonight. This is always a blast. Not a problem, man. This is a highlight of my weekend. And, uh,
01:13:09
Speaker
That's about it from us. Please take a minute to like, share, subscribe. If you see us on social or anywhere else, please say hello. We love these chats. We'd love to hear what you think. We'd love to hear your opinions, what you think would have happened to Guns N' Roses if they didn't break up and maybe where they're headed now.
01:13:26
Speaker
So everybody have a great week. We'll see you back next time. Make sure you check out on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere else you get podcasts, video, and social media. But we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. Cheers, guys.