The Tapes Archive

Steve Harris: Yes. I’d like a room 207, please.

Hotel Operator: 207?

Steve Harris: Yes.

Hotel Operator: One moment.

Steve Harris: Okay.

Axl Rose: Hello?

Steve Harris: Hello, my name is Steve Harris. I’m calling

Axl Rose: From Japan. What’s happening guy?

Steve Harris: Hi Axl.

Axl Rose: Hold on, let me get a cigarette.

Steve Harris: Okay.

Axl Rose: What’s happening?

Steve Harris: We were kind of a little bit worried that, in the middle of your big victory return there you’d be out partying instead of waiting at the hotel for the phone call.

Axl Rose: No, I’m setting up the party to come over to me right now. I just got in yesterday. Cause I went, I’m from Indiana and I had been there about two or three years, and I went back to visit my family and my friends.

Steve Harris: Why did you decide to fit that right in before the homecoming there?

Axl Rose: Well, just because it was like, I hadn’t been back in two years, and the last time I was back there I just told myself I’m not coming back until I get a record out. Had too many people keep trying to say, “Oh you’ll never get anywhere.” Crap like that. I finally said, okay I got three days to go back and just see what it’s like. It was great.

Steve Harris: Have you always been known as the town rock and roller back then?

Axl Rose: Yeah. Yeah. A bit. But you have to remember that in Indiana, people are real opinionated and biased and things like that. So I have a real open mind and I listened to a lot of material. By listening to a lot of material, you listen to the Rolling Stones well then you’re bad or people think like that back there, tell you all kinds of different names depending on what you listen to and since I listened to everything, I was called everything in the book all at once.

Steve Harris: Things are still that way. Even when you were growing up. You’re not that old.

Axl Rose: 25, I’ll be 26 in February.

Steve Harris: Even 10 years ago people were still thinking like that.

Axl Rose: Oh yeah. Well, Indiana is really closed off from the rest of the world. Maybe not Chicago so much, but even Chicago is a huge city but it’s not like LA or New York or in Texas and Florida. The Midwest likes to just keep itself to itself and everybody else has a problem. That’s how they look at it. It’s like they don’t venture out to the world where people from Texas, they go to LA or they go to New York on vacations and stuff. It’s not like that a whole lot in the Midwest. People don’t get out too much.

Steve Harris: What do you have to listen to to be considered normal there?

Axl Rose: Well, it used to be Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith which I was amazed at Aerosmith because Tyler wore makeup. But for some reason it was okay for Tyler but not okay for Mick. It’s kind of weird, but it was a certain group of kids, I mean certain group of people and they grew in numbers, and they had a big influence.

Steve Harris: Do you think that that sort of conservatism led you in the direction you were to go in with a backlash?

Axl Rose: Yeah, but I’ve drawn from the conservatism itself. I’ve found places where I can be considered a conservative. I’ve drawn from both sides. I always work at trying to put things back together. When I say back together is people who have an opinion, and so immediately before they’ve even met, they’re not together. When I say back together means likely to be friends, like maybe in five years we can work it out and be able to understand each other. So I was talked with some guys that I’ve gone every year of school with. We didn’t really understand each other until this time, and they weren’t just talking because I was rocker. They were talking to me because they finally had some respect for me. They were going, “He’s not just full of crap.” Just so many kids back there talked about being in bands. They’d talk about getting out there, but it’s all talk. It’s all talk. It’s all wishes and pipe dreams and things. No one goes out and really puts their balls on the line.

Steve Harris: Why is that?

Axl Rose: Scared. It’s easy to live at home in Indiana with your parents, working your parents’ job. It’s what everybody else does.

Steve Harris: For you when did the big break come in? When did you decide that you were going to bust out the mold?

Axl Rose: Well, when I got kicked out . When I got told to leave, got told, “Cut your hair.” And I said, “no,” he said, “go.” I said, “I’m leaving.” That was when I was 16, but now when my dad is one of my closest friends I have. It’s taken us 10 years to build up that kind of relationship again, but we’ve worked at it little by little, and it didn’t start happening just because of my band. It did just happen this year. It’s been coming back together over the last five years.

Steve Harris: You’re being his son, you must surely understand your rebellious spirit cause I’m sure that exists in him as well.

Axl Rose: Yeah. I was telling a friend just recently that still has hard feelings against my father. I was telling him, I was going, “Yeah, it was one reason Dad was so hard on me was because he didn’t know that I was following the things he taught me to do. To go for your dreams and things. He thought I was messing up. He didn’t know . It’s my dog I haven’t seen in four months. The famous dog they say I go murdering.

Steve Harris: I don’t want to break up a tearful reunion. They said, you’re murdering your dog in England?

Axl Rose: Now he remembers, now he’s jumping around. Okay. So what’s happening?

Steve Harris: Yeah. You were talking about how they said you murdered your dog in England. What’s the story behind that?

Axl Rose: I don’t like poodles, and I told some guy that everything about poodles makes you want to kill them. So the next thing there’s this magazine in England talks about this band in LA where this guy is a self-confessed poodle murderer. So then they have the National Enquirer type papers over there, and all those things came out calling me a dog butcherer, and that we’re beastier than the Beastie Boys.

Steve Harris: Is that rather representative of the type of treatment you received by the British press?

Axl Rose: Oh well, it worked out good, and but it was kind of fun but now there’s things in magazine here Hit Parader. Now, they’ve got quotes of Slash saying I run over dogs, and he never said that. I found out we were tired of this little dog, right. And I got him when he was really, really little my father was explaining how he imprinted off me, . Cause he never imprinted off other dogs and things. So he thinks he’s a person and all the rockers came around, it’s funny, everybody hates little dogs, but this dog is a party dog. It’s funny.

Steve Harris: He’s your Spuds MacKenzie.

Axl Rose: Yeah, well Spuds is a girl a had puppies. That’s a big why.

Steve Harris: Getting back to England, your success there was rather phenomenal. As a matter of fact, among the current wave of LA band, perhaps you stand out as the most successful band in England having done– I guess you started at The Marquee and went to Hammersmith Odeon rather quickly. What’s behind the success there? What do you think is making you go over in England, whereas they turn a cold shoulder to everybody else from LA?

Axl Rose: Well, I think it’s like if you think back in the seventies and stuff, a lot of things like Hendrix just went over to England for break, and a lot of real blues bands, hard rocking blues bands are going to England to break or bend from England. And it’s like, they were glad to see it back cause they think a lot of things are pretentious. They’re not into a lot of the new bands. They like them. They’re okay cause that’s what there is out there but they think it’s a lot. They think it’s real pretentious, and they thought we were the same way. But then we went over there and showed we weren’t, and they liked that. And I just started catching on.

Steve Harris: Was crowd reaction quite a bit different from in the States?

Axl Rose: In the States, we hadn’t toured in the States. So we had only been an LA band, and the LA crowds have seen everything cause they go to the shows every weekend or almost every night. And so they don’t get as rowdy over here at least in LA so much. And at least in the club scene, now that we’re doing bigger places, then you get a lot of people that never seen you before and are rowdy, but it’s the rock crowds. They were around when Mötley Crüe and WASP were starting, so they’ve seen everything. It doesn’t bother you that they don’t get this rowdy because if they’re there, they like it. The reactions in England were different compared to the places we played. The one place, Bristol Colston Hall was full of slammers and stage divers, people jumping off the balconies, jumping off amplifiers. We did a show in Manchester. The people just stood there. They all stood up the whole time, right? And some of them, they sang the songs and stuff, but not as much as other places. We were having so much problem with feedback on stage. I didn’t know that the people in the crowd weren’t hearing it through the main PA Which was our monitor system. And so we came back and did one song encore, and we left. We went up to our row. Didn’t think they liked us, right? Well then about 15 minutes later they started screaming. We didn’t know it cause we were three stories up in this room. The security was keeping everybody away from us. And then the reviews for the shows were the world’s greatest act . It was very surprising. We thought they hated us, but basically they were kind of mesmerized and didn’t know how to react.

Steve Harris: With that experience under your belt now, do you think you’d approach like say a future world tour differently? I mean, what did you learn from the experience?

Axl Rose: Well, we gained a lot more confidence in working the stage and dealing with crowds. And then we came back and we did a club tour of New York. Playing New York was a lot like playing LA. You know, we had to win those people over. And then we went out with Mötley and that was pretty insane. Any night that we did two nights in a row the first night we’d get them going. If we did two nights in a row, when we came back for the second night, they were like, whoa now we know who these guys are. The first time people see us a lot of times unless they’ve really heard us and been really into it, they’re more into watching and checking us out, and watching everything. By this time you do a second night, they’d lose their minds. They were like, yeah, now I can let myself go. And it’s cool to act like I like these guys. We’re really into being very real. It’s not an act. It’s not like the skit we put together the night before because we think the kids will like it. It’s something we want to do. We don’t quite, pre-planned things except a part of the song list. And I always kind of play that by how the crowd’s going what’s not going to do in a row. Kind of sometimes I’ll change it completely. Right now we’re using Fred Coury from Cinderella because our drummer has a broken hand, and him and Fed are really good friends, and Fred flew in, and Fred knows all the songs because he has time off right now. And so the other night when we played with Alice Cooper, Fred played two songs he’d never played before at all in his life live.

Steve Harris: How did that work out?

Axl Rose: He did great. I told the crowd, I go, “not bad for a guy who’s never played this song huh?” And they went screaming.

Steve Harris: Well, it sounds like your shows are quite a workout for you guys as well. Do you find it’s rather draining?

Axl Rose: Well, yeah. I mean, it’s like, but I spend most of my time just making sure I’m ready to go on stage.

Steve Harris: How do you stay fit for the show?

Axl Rose: I get lot’s of rest. I drink lots of water. For me personally, it’s like, I’d like to party as much as the other guys but they don’t have to worry about if they’re able to sing. They can get up, play the guitar even if they got trashed the night before or the next day It doesn’t hurt my energy so much running around, but what attacks me first is in my voice. I can’t really go party unless I know I have a few days off.

Steve Harris: You said that this tour of England was basically the first one outside of LA, right? You think you you’re ready for the long haul though?

Axl Rose: Oh yeah, yeah. We came back from England and, well, we did a cult thing before we went back to England for a month and a half with the cult through Canada and then down the West Coast and over to Louisiana, , the Southwest. And then we did England. We came back and we did clubs for two weeks on the East Coast. And then we went with Mötley for a month and then we went with the Alice Cooper for two weeks and we’ve had like three or four days off and we’ll be doing these four shows here. And then we have a New Year’s Eve party that we have to play. And then we’re doing this show on the fifth. And in the meantime, we’ll be in the rehearsal series the whole time. Then we’re going back with Mötley for two weeks in Europe. and we’re trying to get another band to go with in the spring. What I like a lot is the fact that we’re going out, doing all kinds of different things, rather than just sitting and waiting, or rather than going out with a big long year tour with one band or with two bands. This way we get all these different experiences in one year. By next summer, we’ll be like a veteran touring band that’s been touring for like five years. We learned real quick. Okay. It’s better to have this kind of oxygen mask. It’s better to have this kind guitar stand. It’s better to have this amount of things to make it run smoother.

Steve Harris: Yeah. You guys are working at a remarkable pace right now. Who’s responsible for putting the schedule together so tightly?

Axl Rose: We work with a guy named Bill Elson and his secretary, Shelly Shelf from ICM. It’s our agency. And then our manager, Alan Nivon, and our drive because we do not like to sit on our ass because then we just get into drugs because we get so bored. So this keeps us moving.

Steve Harris: These people are pretty much experienced in the field, and they know how to set up an up and coming band and put you on the right course.

Axl Rose: Yeah. And also we have an idea of what we want to do and would be good for us too. We have full say so in all of that, who we’ll tour with, who we won’t tour with. So there’s been people we’ve turned down already which I won’t get into.

Steve Harris: Yeah. Have you had any say mentors or people you want to aspire to become like?

Axl Rose: Well, there was people that were our favorite bands. I think touring with Mötley Crüe would be a great learning experience that would be exciting. Opening for Alice Cooper. It’s funny. We leave Alice Cooper and go backstage and get our showers and have an old Alice Cooper tape in the deck playing, not because we were on tour with Alice Cooper because it’s stuff we listened to. Then I go, wait a minute, shut the tape off. We’ll go out and watch it live first time in our life.

Steve Harris: It’s kind of funny that you mention Mötley Crüe because actually the magazine I’m doing this interview for, one of the reasons they want to do this interview is so they can clear up a misunderstanding here. You seem to be compared a lot to bands like Mötley Crüe. However, this guy from the magazine who put together the questions here, he seems to think that there’s a little something deeper going on in this kind of a show biz flash of Mötley Crüe. Is that a valid observation?

Axl Rose: They have a more theatrical thing which for its own aspects in a way it’s done they worked very hard at it, and I have to respect those things. They have their own beliefs and way of doing things that they’re Mötley Crüe. We’re Guns N Roses. We have our own way of looking at things and things we will and won’t do. They have their things like they do a planned show almost every night. We don’t do that. It’s something we don’t believe it. But then again, I’m not gonna say it’s bad just because they do it. It’s easy for a bad to say, Oh what’d they do sucks about another band. But then when you’re out there touring with them and seeing all the work that they put in it, how professional they are, and how much they care and love what they do.

Steve Harris: But you guys basically aren’t into any sort of posturing or creating images that don’t really reflect your actual lifestyle?

Axl Rose: No, not at all. It’s us. People go, “Oh, Axl, why isn’t your hair up?” I can’t do my own hair worth crap. And I can’t afford to have someone sitting there doing my hair every day. Plus maybe I’d like to keep my hair. And if I did it every day, maybe it’ll fall out and I don’t want that to happen. So it’s like if I feel like putting my hair up, I do it. If I don’t, I don’t.

Steve Harris: The album Appetite for Destruction seemed to be pretty much straight ahead Guns N’ Roses, no flashy producer or no artifice by computer or trickery or anything. What exactly did you have in mind? Was this a sort of a live approach?

Axl Rose: It was done live. The drums, the rhythm guitar, and the base were all live in the same room. So there’s bleeding of the instruments and to each other’s mics and things like that, just to get the most energy, good live feel to the song. It was very hard to find someone to produce the record because some of the main producers of our favorite materials in the seventies have changed their styles or approach or burned out or people that the record industry won’t work with anymore. They don’t know what doing anymore. They’re a bit to into drugs or something. So it took us a long time to find Mike Clink. Mike Clink, it’s like we worked with Sam and it’s basically kind of like a co-produced album. We got him for a lower amount of money. And then he in turn gave us full freedom to do whatever we wanted, which worked really good for us. He trusted me a lot in the studio with all the vocal. I did most of the harmonies and stuff I came up with. I get it so easy. And third, I said, I came up with it the night I was recording those parts cause I’d never had the opportunity to work on it before.

Steve Harris: You have these ideas just brewing in your mind. Then when you try them in the studio, you found they worked. You didn’t come up against any brick walls or anything?

Axl Rose: Some places you had ideas burning in your mind. In other places, you didn’t know what to do in that part but you’ve heard this part and then right when you heard it, you thought, “Yeah this part would working there too.” And “What if I did this. Now, I’ll try this one and see if that works.” And a lot of times you had things that worked. Sometimes you had things that didn’t. You just decide what was best at the moment and what felt right, what sounded good. Take a tape home and listen to it that night and next day decided that you’re going to keep it or not. It was real exciting creating experience.

Steve Harris: If you could go back again, do you think you’d change anything at all?

Axl Rose: The only thing I would like to do is I wish we would have more time to mix, but we were working on a release date, and there was a couple songs I didn’t feel we had enough time to get just right. Paradise City, I think, could’ve been a little clearer, but we were mixing two songs a day to make a release date. There was all kinds of reasons why we had to make that release date like getting the record out before it would catch nerves for the month of August and things like that. It was all kinds of reasons why we had a certain amount of time that we had to get it done. So we just did the best we could in that amount of time. We didn’t really compromise. We still, I think hit pretty close to the mark we were wanting to hit. There wasn’t really anything I want to change. There’s two words I think in that whole record that I didn’t quite say the way I wanted to, and I forgot which ones they were. Didn’t have time to go back and find them to redo them. And they’re not out of key, so no one else knows it. I’m the only one who personally knows it.

Steve Harris: In retrospect, actually, I guess the fact that you were under the gun was a blessing in disguise.

Axl Rose: Yeah. In some ways it was definitely.

Steve Harris: You talk about having certain producers in mind, the ones that you liked from the seventies, but who exactly were you referring to?

Axl Rose: I can say that I’m naming, I don’t know that they were burnt out or whatever. Because I’d never met any of these people. Well, first off to get interested in Bart Lang, but he wants a million dollars and he’s busy anyway. Roy Thomas Baker’s supposed to be just kind of a psycho. I have been really looking forward to meeting him because of that. The guy who did some of the early Aerosmith stuff, the name’s escaping me right now, but that guy was one of them. There were different people. It was just, it’s hard to find people. You’d come up with a name on a record, the name to get tossed out in the first ten minutes of discussion or something. We flew in Manny from Nazareth. He was a very great guy. And we loved Nazareth, but he was in a different spirit than us at the time so it didn’t quite work. It wasn’t a bad problem. It was just like, it just didn’t quite feel right. We talked with Paul Stanley for about five minutes and he wanted to rewrite ‘Jungle’ and something else so that was the end of the conversation, and now he’s going round saying he was going to produce the record “but these guys were too crazy,” this and that. No, there was no chance of him producing the record. We talked to him once, that was it. We did some stuff with Spencer Proffer who did the second W.A.S.P tape. While that tape sounds really bold and powerful, he made our materials sound really weak, so we just kinda shined that, too. Our EP was recorded in his studio.

Steve Harris: It seems like you had a pretty concrete idea of what you wanted to commit to vinyl then?

Axl Rose: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’ve been in all been in all kinds of different bands in L.A., some of which exist now and some that don’t, where we’ve been going to go into the studio and right then and there that’s where I quit, because I will not allow myself to be on record and have the music come out that way. Yeah, I have a real strong idea of what I want to show people musically. And I’ve never let up on it just for the sake of getting successful or having a place to sleep. You can hear ‘It’s So Easy’ and go, “Oh, it’s just a crazy song,” yeah it is, but it is also art to me. And I have a wide spectrum of art, a beautiful ballad with full symphony which someone would call art just as much art as ‘It’s So Easy.’ And I believe in art first.

Steve Harris: Do any bands you think have been held back because they’re really good band but being rather limited on vinyl?

Axl Rose: It’s hard to say sometimes because it depends on who is doing the limiting. Is the band allowing someone to tell them what to do? Okay well then you can go, “well, in their contract, it says they have to do that,” well then, who was weak? They are the ones who signed the contract that was limiting them. Sometimes people talk about money success as being the success. That’s second. That’s being lucky and people being generous to you by buying your album. That’s successful on its own terms. But success to me is like you do a painting, it might not have been what you wanted, because when you think of a painting in your mind sometimes what comes out on the paint is a shadow of what you thought of, but still, it is something you are proud of, and if you can get that and you’re really proud of it no matter what anybody says, whether someone offers you a dollar or ten thousand dollars for that painting. If you’re proud of it, that’s to me what counts. And that’s what we strive for.

Steve Harris: Being extremely particular about your own sound or whatnot, I’m sure it it’s rather vexing to always be mentioned in the same breaths such as Poison and Faster Pussycat which all seem to be part of the L.A. glut of glam bands.

Axl Rose: Yeah, it is. It really get on your nerves, really gets on your nerves. Faster Pussycat doesn’t bother me so much because we’ve done everything we can to help those guys. Just because they were just enough similar and thinking in the same wavelength that it was good to have someone else there and not be all alone. But in the actual approach in doing what we wanna do, everybody in this band is in this band because he wants to be in this band and around these guys, not just because he wants to be signed. Being famous is second. And I can say that for all the guys in the band. I don’t know where our are heads gonna be at in a few years, maybe somebody, , will get a really big coke scam, or something and really need 10,000 dollars, so he doesn’t care what be plays as long as he get the money to pay off the tab. That can happen, I don’t know.

Steve Harris: Do you think it’s easy to get caught in that kind of nonsense in the music business?

Axl Rose: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, well, people get their standards on how they wanna live, so they are willing to do everything to keep up those standards. I am not so much that way, not about everything, especially about not my art.

Steve Harris: How many years have you been knocking around L.A. before you really felt that you had the lineup you needed?

Axl Rose: I’ve been out here off and on since ’80, and then I was in here straight from ’81. So it took up to the last two and a half years to finally get this solid lineup cause we kept bumping into each other.

Steve Harris: You just knew when the right guys got together, it was gonna work out, or did you have to polish it up after…

Axl Rose: Well, we finally knew that we were the right guys, and then we said, “Okay, let’s stick it out together and let’s start working.” So we all liked finding new songs and being able to be proud of our songs going, “Wow, I’ve always wanted to write a song like that.” I’ve always wanted to write a song like ‘It’s So Easy,’ so finally having that song was great. We’re always looking for new types of material that we’ve always wanted to play. Songs that make us feel certain ways that we always want to feel when we play a song.

Steve Harris: How has the the chart action been for the album? Excuse my ignorance.

Axl Rose: No, it’s been going up and down, between 60 and 50 for the last month and a half. It’s doing okay with very limited radio play and limited video play. So, for that it’s doing great. Especially since we are a new band, , people don’t really know who you are. We’re hoping to put out a video for ‘Sweet Child‘ and that should move things up a little more. The record’s selling alright.

Steve Harris: Do you think your being limited radio exposure and video exposure because you’re a new band or this have to do with the music as well?

Axl Rose: I think it’s part of it, and the music, and the controversy around us. You know, people think every song on our record has the word ‘fuck’. Four songs have obscenities in them, four songs. Not twelve, four. You know, and we’re were not asking them to play those four. I’m saying, pick one of the others. Also, that, , we have loud guitars, real guitars, real drums. The guitars are not the same way on a lot of people’s records as they is on our. It’s toned down, or in a different way, or even if it is for major radio play real loud then the lyrics are something that is completely corny and has nothing to do with anything, . I’ll say a band I that I don’t care saying anything about, band Europe, that’s the most pretentious crap I’ve ever heard, by people that are talented and they could be doing something a lot more with their lives if you ask me. I mean, you can tell me every one of these guys are happy with what they are doing and I just don’t believe it.

Steve Harris: I find that Europeans have a somewhat different approach to rock and roll than Americans do, so maybe they get off on that kinda stuff?

Axl Rose: Ah, I don’t know. I think it scares them to have success and be rock stars, maybe they are happy being rock stars, but I don’t think they are gonna sit down in a year from now and go, “God, I am so proud of myself for writing that song ‘Cherokee’,” or whatever, or ‘Ninjas’ and stuff. It’s like a joke. What do they know about being a ninja? Nothing.

Steve Harris: I suppose that even if your record’s stiff, I mean, considering you’re a new band it’s done quite well from what you say about the chart action there, but what if it had stiffed? Do you think you guys would be taking a different approach now?

Axl Rose: No, no. We would just be a little bit scared about how we were gonna survive. I believe in myself and I believe in my songs and I think we will get there some day. It’s like this, the album ‘Queen II‘ wasn’t a very successful album for Queen in the States, but I think it is the best recorded album in the history of rock and roll, I think it is up there with ‘The Wall,’ , and stuff like that. So it comes down to an art thing. I am just very, very serious about doing something I believe in, at least at the moment. If I change my opinion about something I said in a song, well, as time goes by, that’s okay because that song as a reflection of where I was then. Like ‘It’s So Easy,’ I keep going back to that song, but it says “I drink and drive. Everything’s in sight.” Well, there was a time when we were a little bit careless and thought we were really cool, and we got away with it. It’s not something we do now. Or at least try not to. It’s not something I would do. Gotta watch Slash, though.

Steve Harris: Gotta watch what?

Axl Rose: Have to watch Slash though.

Steve Harris: What do you mean?

Axl Rose: Well, sometimes after a few too many he will try that drink/drive thing and you gotta grab him. Last time we rented vans for this band, he trashed both of them. We had to sneak them back into the building, to the van rental place and leave a note, sorry. If you look at our thank-yous, it says, “Back Stage van rental, sorry.”

Steve Harris: I guess that’s something you learn along the way. Is this basically a lifetime commitment, you think?

Axl Rose: As far as I see it. Say we get into some type of material they won’t play it anywhere and no one else will buy it, but it’s where I’m at, well then the only thing that bothers me is I won’t have the budget to record it as well but at least I’ll have my past records to be happy with and I can go somewhere, and be with that. I can go sell pot, smuggle pot from Mexico. Have a gun and a Harley and live in the desert in Arizona. If I play my cards right and pick the place to live just right, when California sinks I will be a rich man with beachfront property. I am planning out my alternatives if I leave the business!

Steve Harris: You got it all mapped out.

Axl Rose: I try to.

Steve Harris: Do you think you’re the spiritual head of the band, you sort of hold things together morally, you think?

Axl Rose: With the direction, yeah. With the direction and with my real strong beliefs and faith in what we do as artists, yeah. I’d say so.

Steve Harris: Have you ever had to, like, really argue with the guys to kind of get them to go in your own direction?

Axl Rose: Well, I’ll give you an example about that, we were practicing in a one-room studio and I was standing outside because there was no PA, so I stood outside to listen clearly, in a parking lot, I heard ‘Nightrain,’ and ‘Rocket Queen,’ and ‘My Michelle‘ coming together for the first time in rehearsal, right, and these guys were all okay, they were on top of it. I was like, my eyes were watering and I had chills, and I was like going, “We finally got the songs I’ve been looking for,” and Izzy told me when he gets out of rehearsal, he goes, “Now I see what the fuck you’ve been talking about for the last three years.” It’s hard to convince someone, they don’t know what they had, I’m real good at seeing a person’s potential. Sometimes so much so that it costs me problems because I see the potential in this person and I put so much belief in them, but they don’t have the guts to dig for what I see inside of them, so sometimes that’s been problems. But other times, like with Izzy, I was always pushing him with songs because I knew it was there, and now he’s really glad I did and it worked out good for the both of us. So now we don’t argue so much about material because of the fact that we don’t have, everybody has a good respect for each other, and those guys have a lot more respect for my direction and stuff, so it works out pretty good. We don’t really fight about material. We fight about things like, “Alright, who made all the phone calls and billed it up to my room?” You know, that’s what we fight about. Shit like that happening to each other. “Who came in my room while I was gone and raided my in-room bar?” And that could be any of us who have done that to the other guy and that person gets stuck with the bill.

Steve Harris: In this stage of your career, when are you the happiest?

Axl Rose: I’m the happiest when I write something new I really want to write, or, I don’t know. It depends on the show, actually, depending on how happy you are at the show. Getting accepted in a new place, not just because you’re, Axl Rose, the new rising rock star or something, but just because the person likes you and respects you now, or you showed them something that makes them respect you. That’s nice. I don’t like pretentiousness, and I like meeting new friends, that makes me real happy, somebody that I can learn from and they can learn from me. A profitable relationship, makes me really happy.

Steve Harris: When do you feel the most frustrated or angered being, you know, what you are?

Axl Rose: Um, that’s when I’m getting limited by a radio station that plays ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ as a joke because they’ve got all these papers and everything sat on it. They play it as a joke, a top-40 station. Paul said we’re the number one request so then they decide definitely not to play us. That makes me mad. That frustrates me. People are scared that they’re going to open up a can of worms. And what really frustrates me is the fact that fucking radio is basically run by advertising dollars. We are not talking money, okay, we are not talking art, we are not talking music, we’re talking, “What kinda of music can we play that we can get this guy to put his commercials on our radio station so we can make lots of money?” To me, then you have no business being in radio. Get the fuck out. Go home. If you want a job like that then work in a factory or something. Get the fuck out of this and leave these people that really care about their music alone, because these people are screwing with my bank accounts when I am being sincere, I got some insincere fuck worried about paying his rent so he is kissing ass and playing Madonna songs that he hates and he won’t play Guns N’ Roses that he loves. That guy’s fucking with my bank account. I don’t like wimps like that. That makes me mad.

Steve Harris: Just for the record, that’s just because of the obscenity thing, that it’s avoiding the band?

Axl Rose: No, it’s just hard rock band, loud guitars, man. Loud guitars get in the way. They think there’s gonna be a younger audience, so the younger audience won’t but the new Jeep, or this kind of microwave oven, so those people don’t want to put their ads on that radio station because it has too young listening audience, And plus, there’s not a whole lot of hard rock and roll, you got great, you got some great metal bands, some great ones out there. You have some good middle-of-the-road rock bands. But you don’t have a lot of rock hard rock and roll bands now that are talking and singing about whatever they feel like and doing it musically well, singing on key with harmonies and everything tight, planned very well, we don’t have much of that right you. So we’re one of the few in there. You can’t tell me the Rolling Stones are that way. They’re supposedly broke up. They were on their last record, in some ways like ‘One Hit To The Body‘ and stuff, but that still had a lot of special effects and things. It’s just is different. Aerosmith, the new record, that has all kinds of different things. That has real heavily thought-about commercial stuff and then it has some really, against the grain stuff. It’s kinda both on that record so it makes it a very interesting record as a mark of the times for me. I’m not saying it’s my favorite, I’m not saying I don’t like it. I’m saying it’s a very interesting record for where we’re at in the music business.

Steve Harris: This is ’87 and it has been really the year of the crunch guitar, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Ozzy Osbourne

Axl Rose: I don’t call Whitesnake crunch guitars. I call Whitesnake the biggest sellout I’ve heard in a very very long time.

Steve Harris: What makes them a sell-out?

Axl Rose: I’m not knocking, I don’t know, man, I mean making a mellow version of your song so you can get HR radio to play it, that’s like so served it’ll make you sick. Maybe, if that’s the way you wrote the song and intended it, that’s nice, but just doing it for the sake of getting money kind of makes me nauseous. Now, I’m not talking about the players, especially the players in a new band. Vivian Campbell blows my mind on guitar. I’m just saying I don’t enjoy the record. David Coverdale made a comment to someone I met in Carolina, saying there wouldn’t be bands like Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses and stuff if it wasn’t for him and I’m sorry, he hasn’t been influencing anything I’ve ever done. I like about two to three songs to the guys, that’s about it. I think he’s a great singer but I’ve never sat around singing David Coverdale songs. I mean, I think ‘Slide It In‘ was a much more rocking record than the new one. Took a lot more chances. It’s like you know how we got our record deal and we got Geffen to agree to a lot of things we wanted, We have to do it again, and we have to do with the whole world. We’ve just come back after like four and a half months of being on the road now. Okay, now we’ve gonna get ourselves together, play for the hometown, kick-ass as hard as we can with that, and then for the next couple weeks after that we’re going to go in with all our lawyers, the record company, and everything else, and our management and our accounting things, and we’re going to go in and put it all back together again and see where we stand and what we got to do and move hard, fast. Because all I know is this: I don’t know what’s going to happen or how far we’re going to get, but by the end of ’88 we’re gonna have done as many things as we possibly fucking could have because once your record is done, after that year of touring, yeah it might stick around and whatever but it’s done If you didn’t do it then, you ain’t gonna get no fucking second chance.

Steve Harris: You think you’re just going to have to take your music to the people via the stage because of the limitations?

Axl Rose: Yeah a lot, but we’re hoping ‘Sweet Child’ will have a chance to get through in a lot of ways. We don’t know. I think it should. I can see the hassles with ‘Jungle,’ I can see the hassles with ‘It’s So Easy,’ definitely. I can see the hassles with ‘Paradise City’ because it’s really long and the verses are a little bit too heavy for a lot of radio stations. But I don’t see a problem with ‘Sweet Child’ and I didn’t write ‘Sweet Child’ to get it on radio but I don’t see the problem with it doing that. And it doesn’t do it, then someone’s just slamming the door on us. If that happens then we got to figure out another angle, and who knows if we’ll be able to do it next year or not, we’ll see. I’m not going to not believe that we can’t do it, but anything’s possible, and if it doesn’t happen then we’re going to figure out another angle without compromising our music because once we compromise our music there’s no reason to be in this band. Get the fuck out. Go home. If I wanted to fucking compromise I could have cut my hair and I could be, a car salesman somewhere, or I could be climbing the corporate ladder. I’m not in this to compromise. Not at all. The only compromises are when it’s profitable for both people and, basically that’s not a compromise, that’s finding out how to work together. But someone’s telling me I have to change the lyrics to a song to make it a hit, that’s not working together, that’s something that’s none of their business.

Steve Harris: A silly question about semantics but do you object to the labeling of your music as heavy metal?

Axl Rose: Only cause like people see that word and they get this limited idea, and I think that we play all styles of music, we just have loud guitars, which gets the heavy metal label. I don’t see where a lot of heavy metal is. I don’t consider AC/DC heavy metal, I consider it as heavy as any metal out there, but I don’t consider it heavy metal. I consider it extremely loud obnoxious blues rock and roll, and that’s what I consider us cause that’s our strongest base. But that doesn’t mean we won’t play a heavy metal song, or we won’t play a country song. I mean if I do a country song, I still gonna– The Rolling Stones, to me, have done the best. ‘A Girl With Far Away Eyes’, ‘Far Away Eyes’ to me, that’s the best country song ever written, . Rolling Stones wrote whatever kind of music they felt like writing. They wrote ‘Miss You‘, one of the best disco songs ever written. and basically we’re just a rock and roll band playing whatever we feel.

Steve Harris: It’s interesting because a lot of the bands you’ve mentioned, like the Led Zeppelin’s, Aerosmith’s, Queen, Rolling Stones AC/DC, all the bands that spun the legacy that they’re still alive and kicking.

Axl Rose: When I first got the new Queen record, ‘It’s A Kind Of Magic’, it was out like last year or so, I heard one of the songs off it and I thought, “Oh, they sold out,” but I didn’t listen to it closely, I just closed my mind because I was so used to their old material. Now it’s one of my favorite records. I mean, the vocals that he does on this, I compare it to some of the old stuff, and, you know, the range is much higher and there is much harder technique and things. It was amazing. I’m glad to see that. When I read about Live Aid some of the reviews, like in Kerrang! where Queen just, Queen was it, Queen was the whole show, no one was as good, as hype, as bad-ass as Queen was. That’s very good for me to see.

Steve Harris: How about of course the sole exception to that list of bands, is Led Zeppelin.

Axl Rose: He’s moved on, he hasn’t compromised his art. I’m talking about Robert Plant there. He hasn’t compromised his art. He’s moved on, he’s an older guy. He doesn’t agree with some of the things he wrote about before but, like, you go through life and you make changes. I mean, Pete Townsend isn’t saying, “Hope I die before I get old now,” You say things one day and that’s how you really feel and you believe it. Then, maybe, you grow past that. And Robert Plant is like, I don’t listen to a whole lot of the stuff, but I have a lot of respect for it. I really like the song ‘Big Log’. But I have a lot of respect for it because he’s being himself and he’s not compromising. And Jimmy Page is pretty much the same way. Sure you miss old Led Zeppelin, but, people go back to their high school reunions and they are standing there talking to some bald fat guy, and then they don’t even realize that was the quarterback of the football team who got all the girls. They miss that but the guy is changed. Now he’s the guy could be like happy whatever family man in Idaho or something now. You go through changes. I just don’t like compromises for the sake of being successful. That bothers me. I’d rather starve than paying the rent by bending over and taking it in the ass, and that’s how I consider it.

Steve Harris: One last thing I want to ask you, that I forgot to ask you before when we were talking about Indiana. What do you think of John Cougar Mellencamp who stayed back of course?

Axl Rose: One, I liked the fact that he has the balls to go back and live in Indiana rather than live where all the other people in the industry would think he’s cool He’s doing what he wants to do, and he’s being true to the people he grew up with. That’s real important to me because I have strong friends in Indiana too. I don’t necessarily like the place because there’s not a whole lot to do. I like some of the scenery. It’s not a whole lot to do there, though. And I don’t get along with the law there. I get thrown in jail all the time and usually it’s for something I didn’t do, so then I had to pay lawyer fees to get my way out of court. And that’s happened more than not. Is the album called ‘Scarecrow,‘ the last one?

Steve Harris: I think that was the one before that.

Axl Rose: Yeah, that’s a phenomenal record, whether I am totally into it, where my head’s at the time, there are different times I can sit down, hear one of those songs and go, “Yeah.” There are other times when John Cougar is the last thing I want to hear. It’s not like it’s my very, very, very favorite thing. But, he’s a good artist.

Steve Harris: I guess I got what I need to know then. Thanks a lot, Axl.

Axl Rose: I will say one more thing, If this comes out before we get there, man, we’re gonna tear that place up, man. We are so excited. Me and Izzy have talked about going to Japan – me and Izzy’s been together for the last 13 years. It’s been a dream, going to Japan and playing the shows in Japan. Our favorite records were ‘Cheap Trick At Budokan‘ and ‘Unleashed in the East.’ You hear the screaming Japanese people and we go, “You know, we have to go there! We have to go!” Hopefully we will have the people be like that for us and we’ll have fun with them. And I’m looking forward to all he sushi.

Steve Harris: Well I ‘m sure the kids will go apeshit because

Axl Rose: We can find some opium den and have some oriental girls can teach us some things American girls don’t know.

Steve Harris: That’s right, so exact new positions to take home with you.

Axl Rose: Oriental basket tricks and things.

Steve Harris: Well, I’ll leave those arraignments to you once you get here.

Axl Rose: All right, you can put in your thing that we are looking for new things. We need a little instruction in oriental sex

Steve Harris: “L.A. rock and rollers with hard-ons seek oriental masseuse.”

Axl Rose: Yes, definitely. That’s how it is.

Steve Harris: All right, okay, well, thanks for your time and sorry to take you away from your pooch there.

Axl Rose: Oh, that’s okay. Look forward to meeting you.

Steve Harris: Okay, we’ll see you when you get out here.

Axl Rose: Take care.

Steve Harris: Okay, thanks a lot. Bye-bye.