Axl Rose Types “Get In The Ring” Into AOL’s Keyword Box
Another interview with formerly reclusive Guns N’ Roses mastermind W. Axl Rose has debuted on the Internet, and this one is kind of a doozy: It’s a lengthy chat that appears on AOL’s Spinner between Axl and his longtime confidant/road manager/video–trilogy inspirer Del James. If you think that the end result isn’t an interview as much as it is a series of questions designed to allow Axl to get some long-gestating beefs out into the open, well, you’re right!
The start of the interview sort of sets the “So, I know what you want to say, so let me just let you say it” tone:
Del James: As reported, were you, either in your mind or otherwise, trying to create the “best album ever made”?
Axl Rose: No. That’s f—-ing ridiculous and more negative media nonsense. We were all just trying to do our best for the fans and ourselves.
It might have been a little more effective for Axl to begin the interview by saying, “Dear fans, this is fucking ridiculous…” but maybe he didn’t want the Q & A to sound too much like a Presidential address.
Of course, there’s also the latest statement on how the Appetite For Destruction-era Guns lineup will never get back together, no way, no how:
It’d be highly doubtful for us to have more than one of the alumni up with us at any given time. I suppose Duff could play guitar on something somewhere, but there’s zero possibility of me having anything to do with Slash other than by ambush, and that wouldn’t be pretty. He wrote that whole bit about not having his guitar in Vegas, I’d assume, to save face. I was told by both the Hard Rock and different Guns industry people who had come out to be supportive of the new band and were a bit surprised to see him there, especially guitar in hand, but just assumed it was a surprise for the show and we were in on the arrangement.
Steven [Adler] brings assorted ambulance-chasing attorneys and the nightmare of his mother. One gig, or even a couple songs, could mean years of behind-the-scenes legal aftermath.
There’s also a bit about Slash that probably has Tracii Guns kicking himself and wondering if he can somehow get access to a time machine:
There is the distinct possibility that having his intentions in regard to me so deeply ingrained and his personal though guarded distaste for much of ‘Appetite’ other than his or Duff’s playing, Slash either should not have been in Guns to begin with or should have left after ‘Lies.’ In a nutshell, personally I consider him a cancer and better removed, avoided — and the less anyone heard of him or his supporters, the better.
But there are also a bunch of other targets in the interview:
• Clive Davis (who “fell” for Slash’s session work) • People who misquoted an interview with Kurt Loder where Axl allegedly claimed he hated Appetite For Destruction • A “writer who [Axl] mistook as a fan” in 2006, when Axl allegedly said he “loved” Slash • The segment of the public with high hopes for Chinese Democracy • The segment of the public that doesn’t understand how difficult Steven Adler’s drum parts were • A photographer named Robert John
This last bit is probably the weirdest, as it gets into a story that even the most die-hard Guns N’ Roses fans may not know about a photographer who got some financial help from Axl back in the day, and who might be “doing a lot of meth and sleeping on his mom’s floor” at present. Any editor would have covered this segment of the interview with “who? why?” in red pen and/or all-caps, and yet here it remains. Perhaps AOL running the chat between James and Axl without any edits was part of the deal that got it published, but even for a man who likes to spend a lot of time settling old scores, it sure is an odd way to close out such a highly anticipated interview.
Axl Rose Insists Original Guns N’ Roses Lineup Is Dead and Buried [Spinner]
