The Effect of Guns N' Fucking Roses In My Life

Originally published at Searching for the Young Soul Rebel. You can comment here or there.

I asked my mother if I could watch the telecast of the Freddie Mercury tribute concert on Channel 36, the local Fox affiliate at the time — back when Fox was actually a pretty cool station that had a lot of syndicated programs and really weird original shows. My father flips out cos Elton John, who was never really in the closet (and if you believe that he was, you're both blind and deaf), was going to be performing. My mother reasoned with him because Freddie Mercury was one of my heroes and he had just died, and she pointed out that a) it's going to be on the telly so there was going to be no real gayness and b) she was going to watch it with me cos Tony Iommi and Robert Plant were going to be performing.

I remember little of the televised performances save for Roger Daltry, George Michael, and Gun N' Roses. The Guns N' Roses performances stuck out in my mind the most. I was ten years old, but because I was a dorky goody-two-shoes little kid, I had no idea who this band was. My parents would say "Don't watch The MTV," during the times we had cable, and I'd freak out every time they'd go up the street and leave Molly and I in the house by ourselves, and Molly would turn on MTV. A ten-year-old kid in 1992 should have known who Guns N' Roses was, but I didn't, and I was completely captivated. There was this small-statured hyper red-head on stage singing in this highly stylised falsetto, emoting about as well as Mercury himself only wholly distinct from Mercury's vaguely operatic technique. His voice teetered on this razor edge between a scream and a skilled countertenor falsetto. More melodic than Ozzy Osbourne, more primal that Robert Plant; the man's fucking vibrato had a strut and swagger all its own. Where Freddie Mercury was this genteel yet flanboyant dandy patriarch of classically-trained rock-n-roll singers, that red-headed young man on that program was the middle son with the mohawk smoking clove cigarettes that nobody understood. I had been singing and performing for about six-plus years at that point, so all of the little techniques that he had used on those performances alone were so obvious to me. And better than I could at that time were his skills at conveying emotion through song; so many singers had then and still have now such a limited range of emotion when they sing, but not Freddie, and not this new "Axl Rose" I had just learned about — the subtleties and range of emotions they could express through combinations of words and notes was like two sides of the same coin, The Godfather and The Punk, The Noble and The Bohemian.

1993, Toledo, Ohio; AAA Records R Us, LaGrange Street
I'm twelve now and stopping at the used record store with some money that I have from my birthday and doing yard work; my parents have been divorced for about a year and a half. I've found a copy of Appetite For Destruction for $2, and a copy of the Woodstock concert album for $5. My father wouldn't let me by Appetite before when I'd begged him repeatedly, not even the censored version from K-Mart. I was at the record store by myself and after paying for both albums, I run around between the buildings and tightly wedge the jacket and dust sleeve for Appetite into the middle sleeve of the Woodstock record jacket and when I get home, I'd grateful that I'm home before Dad is and slip the vinyl into the jacket of another record. My father asks what I bought and I just show him the Woodstock jacket, knowing he won't look too closely, cos i have a reputation for being honest to a fault. This was the first time I ever deliberately defied my father, and successfully hid it from him, to boot. I had that record for two years before he knew about it, and had acquired the rest of the GN'R catalogue on cassette tape before he found out. I'd play them on my stereo with my headphones plugged in until I was fourteen. After he found out, he was rather livid. He successfully stole all of my Prince tapes and threw them onto the garbage fire, but I successfully hid my Guns N' Roses first in my mattress, then in my school locker, then at a friend's house.

Prince's music was skilfully crafted, but lyrically he was predominantly insipid, trivial. Even though Axl's love songs were about women, I could relate on some level. His emotions were universal while being distinctly personal all at once; only Freddie Mercury could do that before, but now here was some small young man, who i had just learned was from a small town in the Midwest, and even though we had so many differences, I was reading all of these old interviews with him, biographical notes in mass-produced "fanzines", and learning that we had so much in common: I was right, and he was trained as a choral singer. His father was physically abusive, his mother emotionally so. He had an identity crisis after discovering who his biological father was. He'd had bad memories with church, and at fourteen, in Adrian, Michigan (the small Midwestern town where I went to high school), mine were developing at full force.

...and I was reading so many bad things about him, too. Many alleged that he hated women, Blacks, gays — all of which he both adamantly and very consistently denied on the counter-allegation that his work was simply being misinterpreted by people who were projecting common unartistic meanings into his words. Interviews were misinterpreted, as well, but somehow I always understood what he meant and was only reading his later "clarifications" just to prove I was right. How could this man hate Black people? His guitarist and, at that time, best friend, was half-Black by genetics, legally Black by U$ census definitions. If he supposedly "hated" gays so much, why did is Freddie Mercury one of his idols? Why did he perform with Elton John at the tribute concert? Why was his band scheduled to perform at an AIDS benefit sponsored by by a GLBT group until the word "faggots" appeared in one of his songs, prompting the aforementioned group to publicly remove GN'R from the band line-up? Poor taste in 1989, sure, but as the mighty Zappa once said, "it's just words, get over it" — words may mean things for a reason, but even in 1989, gays were reclaiming "faggot" and that was OK, five years later, Margaret Cho would satirically pepper her performances with former slurs and gays loved her for it. The only reason that there was such an uproar over Axl Rose saying is is because he was a heterosexual man in the biggest band in the world at the time and in the fast-becoming "politically correct" early 1990s, there were certain things that white heterosexual men just couldn't be allowed to say without tonnes of disapproval. Sure, the disapproval was relatively short-lived, Use your Illusions I & II became the biggest selling albums in the world two years later, but every rock-and-roll historian will agree that was the final leg of Guns N' Roses' peak before their anticlimax. By the time I knew about all of this, it was old news and GN'R was old hat, yet so many people still clung to those misunderstandings as reason enough to stop buying Guns n' Roses records. The sudden lack of new material probably helped, too.

1994; Adrian, MI

Due to the lack of new Guns N' Roses material, I sought out the originals to the songs on "The Spaghetti Incident?" An album of mainly punk covers, mostly from bands I had never heard of. From Guns N' Roses, I discovered The Misfits, whom i didn't like that much, but they were OK enough, T Rex and Marc Bolan, whom I loved a lot and from there discovered David Bowie, Velvet Underground, and others. The Damned were pretty good, too, kind of punk but kind of 1960s. New York Dolls were excellent, too. So were The Stooges, and I quickly discovered that Iggy Pop was also from Southeast Michigan. Because Matt Sorum used to drum for The Cult, I bought their LP Electric at PJ's Used Records in Ann Arbor, MI and discovered that band was pretty good, too (even if the cover of "Born To be Wild" on that record totally sucks). I had the damnedest time finding anything by The Dead Boys, but some research on a then-text-only Internet revealed that the singer from that band, Stiv Bators, did work with another band, Lords of the New Church and femipunk poet and art rocker Lydia Lunch — I could go on about every other musician that I ultimately "discovered" through Guns N' Roses, but I'm already getting into Six Degrees of Separation territory.

I was initially interested in the Interview With the Vampire movie because I had heard that there was going to be a Guns N' Roses song in the soundtrack — as an added bonus, I was yet another young teen going through an "OMG vampires are fucking AWESOME!" phase, sparked by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film, which I rented on a 2 for 1 deal at a local video place along with Wayne's World, a film that I wound up quoting through most of high school (along with Tommy Boy, which I mainly only watched because I had a crush on David Spade). I suffered through most of that book before i let myself see the film. I really didn't like the film, but i did like their version of "Sympathy For the Devil". After being disappointed with Anne Rice, I discovered Poppy Z Brite, hoping to redeem both vampire novels and the horror genre. I discovered Brite by just doing a search for vampire novels at the library in Tecumseh, Michigan, and reading the cover flaps, Lost Souls looked like it might suck the least. In retrospect, I think that Lost Souls may have been the Guns N' Roses of gothic vampire erotica: I can now see that Brite's influences were pretty diverse, and bringing it all together in this kind of voice all hi/r own; like Axl, s/he gave some interviews that were misconstrued (though for wholly different reasons); a sort of misfit among misfits that makes hi/r books either instantly endearing or something that you compulsively roll your eyes over, and while hi/r apparent skills cannot be honestly denied even by those who don't like hi/r work (those who deny it are simply allowing their bias to paint their opinion with dishonesty), there are still those who will always love hi/r work and those who will always hate it, those who will only love Brite's first few books and disavow the colloquially known Liquor series as "selling out", but those people can just go fuck themselves. Then again, I suppose that this comparison could be made between about just about any two artists with their own distinct "voices" and a large enough fan-base.

2003, May through November
During this time, I'm mostly living on the streets, very literally, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. There's a tattoo parlour on Hollywood Boulevard, and at about 9pm on almost every night, somebody there plays Appetite for Destruction and pipes it outside onto the street. The first time I hear it, I decide to sit on the concrete and listen, it's the first good music I've heard in a few days. Something in my mind suddenly brings all these subtle references together, and it strikes me then and there that the whole album is essentially a concept record about living on the streets and trying to "make it" as somebody, anybody, tell your story, make your voice heard through the crowd of people who would just as soon spit on you. At that moment, Appetite For Destruction became the most important album in my life. Like Ziggy Stardust, Appetite is a concept album with the concept removed, most of the songs appear pretty stand-alone on the surface with only a comparative handful being linked through a vaguely defined theme, but the attitude and energy translated through the whole thing is consistent, connects the whole damned thing, brings the concept to a state of subtle obviousness like the bloom of a good wine. It's like watching PIG and suddenly understanding that it's essentially Rozz Williams' suicide note, either you're going to understand what it's about past the surface appearances, or you just aren't going to, and nothing short of a revelation or gnosis on some emotional and/or spiritual level will explain that meaning to you and make you truly understand that meaning.

2008-11-23; Ann Arbor, MI
After fifteen years, a full studio album has finally been released from Guns N' Roses. Granted, the line up now consists of only Axl Rose from the original line-up. Steven Adler, the original drummer, was fired in 1990 for failure to curb his drug use — some years later, Adler and his mother would attempt to sue Rose over Adler's heroin addiction, but it would be settled out of court. Guitarist and songwriter Izzy Stradlin, Axl's old high school friend, left in 1992 due to creative differences. Slash left in 1996 due to Axl's nature as a creative control freak that Slash would describe as being less in a band and more a civillian within a "dictatorship", and bassist Duff McKagan and replacement drummer Matt Sorum would later leave for similar reasons &mdash in 2006, though, Scott Weiland of Velvet Revolver would go on the record as saying that after being in a band with some of Axl's former bandmates, he's now pretty certain that the dissolving of the original line-up "isn't totally Axl's fault". Sometimes, even if those closest to you are calling your behaviour problematic, it's not just you, to say otherwise is an appeal to popularity and a logical fallacy.

Chinese Democracy was the most anticipated album, to me, since 1994. I was annoyed that Axl had signed an exclusive deal with Best Buy — in part because the local Best Buy is clear on the other side of town, and in part because I hate buying my music at an electronics store — but the latter is just one of my own mental weirdnesses. Scott suggested "punishing them" by not buying it until it hits other stores. My response: "I can't punish Axl, his songs are too important."

My sudden "understanding" of Appetite really affected me. Really affected me. Even if I was going to get it late, I had to have this record.

I discovered a few days before on bestbuy.com that it would be available in vinyl with an access code for the mp3's. This was cool. I prefer having vinyl, but I do most of my music listening lately at the computer, so mp3's are just convenient.

Scott's parents were visiting from Tennessee, so he spent the day out with them, and apparently perused Best Buy while out with them. When he came back, he handed me a Best Buy bag and said "here, Merry Christmas". The bag contained two discs of 180gram vinyl in a sleve marked "Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy". I nearly cried, but that would have been unmanly, so I just sat there staring at it for a few minutes before searching out the card with the access code for the mp3's.

I had previously downloaded leaked unfinished versions of this album over the last three years, but this is definitely the definitive version. This finished product is how the record is supposed to sound.

Certain reviewers of advance copies have dismissed this record as sounding "jumbled", pieced together in a rather "slapdash" manner, but being otherwise a really good collection of consciously-crafted and obsessively-perfected material. A friend of a friend who had only heard streams of four songs from it on MySpace called it "dated". I can't say either about this record. Maybe my "history" with this band has given me a highly approving bias in favour of almost anything Axl Rose does, especially considering the similar households we came from and hell, even both being short-starured natural redheads, I can't find anything wrong with the way Rose pieced this album together over the last fifteen years. There is a very apparent musical progression from Use Your Illusions I & II to Chinese Democracy. There is a lot of obviously very personal but universally-conveyed emotion in his words and his voice. The guitars may lack the distinct voice that Slash could give to even the most uniform factory-made electric guitar, but it's complimentary to the "classic" Gn'R sound. Even considering the mass exodus of the remaining original line-up, I really can't think of a way that this could have been done any better. The wait was worth it.