Guns n' Roses' 'Appetite for Destruction': Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that gives you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite movies, TV shows, music and more. We are your two guitar texts of triviality. I'm Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan. Run Talk Jordan. Today we're gonna be talking about one of the all time greatest debut records, a true dirt bag magnum Opus that captured the nexus of the Los Angeles glam metal and hard rock scenes, minted both one of the all time guitar heroes and genius slash madman lead singers of all time. That's right, we are talking about Guns and Roses Appetite for Destruction, which turned thirty five this year or thirty five last year, this year, recorded think this week, this week? Wow, I believe so Yeah, it's older than all of the women they used to date. Jordan's I am guessing, by what I know about you that this album is something of a blind spot for you. That is true. I am more a fan of crooner Richard Cheese's lounge versions of these songs on his album A pair of Teef for Destruction, which is very good. He was an incredible version of Welcome to the Jungles. I'll give him that title. That's good. A par of Tief of Destruction is really good. But yes, you've correctly noted that I am not the world's biggest g n R expert. Um. My main memory of Axel Rose was basically just being frightened of him whenever I saw him on TV as a child, and just making those sounds like a strong out cat getting intricuted. Um. I mean, for me, guns and Roses came at a funny period when I was getting in the music in the mid nineties, because by that point they were sort of already passed it, and you know, Axel already kicked everyone out from the classic lineup, and he was sinking and there was fifteen year Chinese democracy saga, so they didn't have anything new then. They're old stuff wasn't old enough to be considered classic. I don't know. In the nineties, to me, it just seemed old. It just seem I remember the nineties thinking that all hair metal stuff just kind of seemed like, I mean, you know, up there with like disco stuffed with calling. I don't think they're hair metal, as I said, I am, it's a useless genre distinction. But I also I don't know, man. I heard these songs on like five The Rock of Central p a like constantly growing up. But we've talked about how formative VH one was for both of us growing up and watching like the Countdown fifty Most Shocking Moments in rock, Yeah, or even I mean for me it was more of the hundred Greatest Artists of hard rock starring Carmen Electra in a Louther dress. Um, but yeah, man, everything is like Axel fights a security guard. Axel spent thirty years making Chinese democracy acts of this acts that. Yeah, I agree. His heart stopped for eight minutes. Yeah, well that was NICKI six, I think, But yeah, Slash, oh really maybe they Maybe it was like a heart stop race. The arms race of l a hard rock was seeing who could die for the longest time, and yet none of them did. I was never really a G and R fan. I have to tread carefully because my wife was in a G and R cover band two years running in which she played Axel. Oh what were they called? Uh? There better be a pun or also going to be really mad buns and posers. That's good, that's medium funny. Um. But they played Hanks and I was in the bathroom and I heard this dude talking to his buddy and he was like, that was honestly, probably better than when I saw them in the late nineties. So she's a big Axel fan. I mean, having heard her sing, I can buy that. Yes, yeah, I don't know. Man. I went back and listened to it and I was like, these songs slap. I never want to hear of them again. Um, So thank what I assume is a dieheart station the rock and Central p A for overplaying this out of them to me anyway, from the band's disgusting pre and post fame lives in l A and the city's gutters to the records original extremely messed up artwork to the time g R had a cameo in the fifth and final Dirty Harry film Here's Everything you Didn't Know about Appetite for Destruction. By the mid eighties, l A was fully in the grips of the hair glam metal revolution. You have quiet riots metal health, which is the one with come on field to calm feel the Noise the Slade cover, Yeah, that came out in eighty three, and then also that year Motley Cruz Shout at the Devil. You know that song, Shout at the Yeah. Just because I don't react doesn't mean I don't know what it says. I don't like it. I'm just gonna keep throwing hair metal impressions at you yet, uh def Leppards Pyromania first, Robert John Mutt Lang reference. Yeah, soo's all three of us come out in eighty three and they are hits, and it cements the commercial viability of this semi mutant strain of hard rock that evolved out of this generation of bands absorbing the first wave of this gender bending glam rock. T Rex, New York Dolls, David Bowie and their Heart Edged contemporaries, Still Hookie, still jammed with hooks like Alice Cooper Kiss and Van Halen Slash actually goes on to play one of the less palls that belonged to Alice Cooper guitarist Steve Hunter just funny, Um, Yeah, I think it was. I think it was Nikki six actually maybe talking to Klosterman, talking to someone who's like our biggest influences Aerosmith. Like all those guys loved Aerosmith. That was like a huge thing for them, but the genre at that point had yet to calcify into the what we call pop metal. Um stuff like Poison, bon Jovi or Aerosmith. Once they meet Diane Warren and start cranking out Mr. Garbage starring his underage daughter and all the music videos. Uh. Slash has a tremendous quote about this. We hated Poison so much that we just spent a lot of time touring around the different clubs in Los Angeles just to blow Poisons doors up, just to steal their audience. Um. The other thing is this is like not yet even ten years removed from the first wave of l A punk. So like some of these guys were dangerous and grows. I mean, this is around the whiskey ago goes around gazaries the rainbow. I mean it is just a bunch of young, drunk dudes with chips on their shoulders, with live guitars, and it kind of rules. Mark Canter is a guy who grew up with Slash and wrote the definitive book about this record, Reckless Road, Guns and Roses and the Making of Appetite for Just Instruction. He's the son of the owners of Cantor's Delhi and l a institution, and there's you go in there and there's pictures of guns and roses all over the wall. Axel was suing them as we speak, no no, just He's very litigious. He explained. Los Angeles in the mid eighties seemed to be a place where anybody across the country could just drop themselves off on a Greyhound bus and go through the channels to see what they could become. You're in the middle of the Sunset Strip, and between the Troubadour, the Roxy and the Rainbow, you meet people who are there to get a band together and play, especially at the Rainbow. The Rainbow was the biggest turning point for all the bands. That's where they ate hung out and where most of the connections were made. There was a lot of band hopping going on. It was like a meat market for musicians. But as you said, this was a rough scene, and these guys were so poor. It's really sad. They lived like four to a room or with people's parents. Axel worked at the Tower Records on Sunset and he was sleep in the parking lot under the stairs. After the store closed, he showered at a local gym. And once this is just like Dickenzie meets meets what meets Sunset strip. I guess it's like if the Rolling Stones grew up in David Copperfield. Right once the band split a single cheeseburger five ways. That makes me really sad. Oh. I think the quote in the Cantor book is that at the time that one guy he was talking to, the one guy he aspired to shower at a gym he was trying to get so he didn't actually he had could. Yeah, he was like, I gotta get a membership to a gym so I could shower there. It was an aspiration for him, and so many of these bands on the scenes were looked after with the local strippers on the scene who were basically like dead mothers to whoever their current boyfriend and the boyfriend's bands were at the time. Slash later told Rolling Stone in two thousand seven, strippers were our main source of income. One of the places that Axel and his friends lived didn't even have a toilet. Somehow, that seems just like maybe number one on the list of essentials you need to know you have not fulfilled. You have not fulfilled Maslow's hierarchy of needs without a toilet, although Slash did later go on to say it wasn't like we actually lived there. He said, I can't remember one night that we actually slept quietly there, like goodnight Axel, good night Slash. It was more like that's where our stuff was, and that's where you could pass out. I like to imagine Guns and Roses doing the bit from the Walton's Goodnight Slash, Goodnight acts, so goodnight Duff, good night Matt, and then they all like pull their needles out of their arms at the same time. Uh, without getting too I say this every episode, and then I proceed to do exactly that, but without getting too granular. About the roots of the l A hard rock scene. At the time, two bands formed Guns and Roses Hollywood Rose and l A Guns, which you may be picking up on a theme. Hollywood Rose Good hourist guy named Chris Webber met the other guitarist in the non Slash guitarists in Gin Rzzy Stradlin, in the parking lot of the Rainbow Bar and Grill via l A Guns Tracy Guns Uh, Slash joins the band and so does gin R drummer Steven Adler. That band breaks up, and then Axel joins l A Gun while Slash fails an audition for Poison, or at least auditions successfully, and they decided to go with CC de Ville, which I can think we all could admit is probably for the best for all parties involved. And then Hollywood Rose merges with L A Guns in March, forming Guns and Roses. There's a bunch of guys in this band, including Tracy Guns, but they all get kind of replaced, including Seattle transplant Duff mccagan, who is now like a being crazy rich dude because he invested in Amazon early on, he like got sober and then went back and got his m b A and is now like richer than those other views by an order of magnitude because he made a bunch of savvy business decisions. I read that he had like serious cred with his friends in Seattle because he met Joe Strummer as a kid. Yeah, he was a big punk rock kid. He was like, you know, on the ground floor and punk rock. He also, if memory serves, has one of the more disgusting stories where he's like Pancreas was blowing up, and they had to like cut a hole in his side to release like the heat and gases that were being formed by his combusting organ. Otherwise he would have actually exploded from within. Anyway, that's fine. They warned us about pop rocks, but ah um as will become a theme. Tracy Guns, explaining the two thousand nineteen interview, Axel got into an argument with our manager, and our manager fired him. But we all lived together, so it was really weird. So that same night he got fired, we started Guns and Roses, and I called Izzy the next day and said, hey, we're going to start this new band. Do you want in rejected. Early names for the band included heads of Amazon. Sure, well, I mean considering Duff's future, that's very and uh aids, oh yeah, anyway, so that's are We're already establishing two of the running themes in Guns and Roses, which is Axle getting in fights and things that are in poor taste. For four hundred Alex. The band very quickly got to work. They played their first show after two days of rehearsals in June of eight five, and then two days after that they embarked on a West coast tour they hit Sacramento, Portland, Eugene, Seattle, and San Francisco, booked by Duff via his old connections from the punk rock days. Accounts differ as to whether or not they had an Oldsmobile or Pontiac, but they also had a U haul. The transmission died on the car and the band pulled all their guitars out leaves the rest of the gear and they hitch hiked up to Seattle, occasionally whimsically, as Slash recalls, making forays into local farms and stealing like onions and carrots from the fields so that they could eat anyway. That tour they called it the hell Tour, and everyone is like, that was our moment. We're like bonded it, forged in, fire bombed in blood um. And so when they get back to l A, they set up in a shared living space rehearsal spot, and they were discussing gross men is, he was dealing heroin, and their appetite if you will quickly became legendary. They were signed to Geffen Records by an A and R man named Tom Zuto, who, in an interview with Loudwire said no amount of alcohol or drugs will slow them down. Guns and Roses were able to consume those things yet deliver a live show and deliver in the studio. And our friend Mark Cantor added, Slash was like a monster. You could put two bottles of booze in him and put a blindfold around them, and he would still come out and play his part perfectly. And Zuto actually knew quite a bit about heroic substance in take. He was the guy who signed Motley Crewe to Electra, so we know what he was talking about. But guns and Roses maybe have Motley cruebeat. We mentioned this at the up of the episode. There's the time that Slash overdosed on a speedball at a hotel in I think he was in San Francisco and was declared legally dead for eight minutes, which is impressive because I had heard that brain damage starts at around five minutes, lack of oxygen to the brain. No one said it be nice, No one said it didn't start. Oh, I just said he came back. He later told the Guardian, these drug dealers came to my hotel room at five am. They had everything and I took all of it. I started down the hallway and I ran into a maid and I asked her where the elevator was, and then bam, I collapsed. There's the thing that happens when paramedics wake you up out of death like that, where it's just like this huge shock of energy and lights, voices and pandemonium and an unmistakable feeling. I've had it a few times, and I remember that that is not even his only overdose story in this episode. Yes, you actually my my heart stopped when I was born. I was a premium I had. I had a respiratory distress syndrome. My heart stopped for like five eight minutes too, and they're worried about brain damage. Did you come out with a little top hat and a last ball? No, but I came out with this weird fixation on researching pop culture things. Anyway, the band plays a show at the Troubadour in February of eighty six, and Zuto is in attendance, and that is the show that convinces him to sign them, and he was not alone. They covered Gimme Shelter and Heartbreak Hotel, which was their encore for a long time, which I find really adorable. That book is incredible. It has all these early photos of them and has like their little handwritten set lists that have like the stage Yeah, they have the stage cues on them like it says like welcome, Welcome to the jungle, like fog, and they have like Paradise City like light show, and then it's just it's really cute. Um uh yeah, so it's Mr brown Stone. We all shoot all over. Zuto said. There were five or six A and R people lined up in the same spot. It was literally the loudest show I ever seen in an l A club. But the band did not sign right away and took a great amount of pleasure, allowing themselves to get the proverbial wine and dine from every single other A and our person in l A. But they do eventually sign with Geffen in March, pulling a seventy five thousand dollar advance after turning down one almost double from Chrysalis Records. But Geffen crucially offered them creative control, and Chrysalis wanted to tinker with their sounds, so that was that. Zuto paid producer Spencer Proofer fifteen thousand dollars to record Night Train and Sweet Child of Mind basically as a demo test and a former Guzn Roses road, a guy named Ron Schneider's, explained the genesis of the title night Train. He said, night Train was the cheapest, nastiest bottle of wine you could buy. We could never afford fifths of Jim Beam or Jack Daniels, just night Train. And Cancer later told Loudwire Guzan Roses recorded those songs in two or three weeks at a time when they were totally out of control. Even Axel wasn't in the best shape, and he was the cleanest out of all of them, but he was fooling around with whatever they were doing. Once he saw that they were totally spun out, he just stopped. But nobody showed up to the sessions on time. They throw up or pass out in the studio, but they got the songs done. Consummate professionals all prophet tells a pretty His version of this is messed up. His kid was born about this time. You know, he wanted to be with his family, his wife and newborn child, and so he basically offered to if I remembering correctly, split like a day with the band. He was like, I'll give you guys five hours and then I'm going home. To spend time with my kid, and he says. The band all rolled into the studio as one Slash pete on the wall and Axel threw up on the control board and asked him if he wanted to party, and he was like, no, I want to record you guys, and then I want to go home and be with my newborn child. And Axel then told him that he could either work with Guns and Roses or be a dad, but not both. And he called up a zuto and then the label and quit slashes quote, I don't recall any of that or else makes or else. I didn't know about it, and Tom didn't tell us that's a possibility, all right, I you know, I don't want to short sell the rest of the band here, especially Duff tremendous basis. Go listen to uh it Paradise City that has that crazy it's almost like gospel base at the end it anyway, and they also wrote a lot of this material collectively, which is interesting considering how it sort of becomes the Axle Show later on. But it's hard to argue that when you think of G and R, you basically think of Axel and Slash. Axel was born William Bruce Rose Jr. In Lafayette, Indiana, and his early life sucked. He was an unplanned pregnancy. His parents separated when he was around two. His biological father allegedly abducted and molested him before skipping town and was later murdered. Wow. Uh Supposedly this was the root of his beef with Slash in later years. Uh. Slash went on to work with Michael Jackson on the song Give In to Me, and I think also performed at a tribute concert for him that same year in and Axel was apparently angry that he went to work with somebody who had been accused of child molestation. And this is a cornoon interview given by the band's former manager, Doug Goldstein and Rolling Stone Brazil. And I'm confused about this because the big accusations against Michael Jackson in the ensuing court case didn't happen until so a few years later. But I don't know. Maybe there were whispers in the industry about stories with Michael Jackson before that, or maybe he kept up a relationship with Michael Jackson into the mid nineties and that was why Axel was mad. But yeah, he guess felt betrayed that Slash would associate with somebody who had these accusations against him given his own personal history with childhood abuse. So yeah, it's unclear, but that's the theory that behind there they're split in they got back together though they reformed minus I think it's just the three of them minus sor Um, who replaced Adler. Anyway, Axel's mom remarried again named Stephen Bailey, Steven L. Bailey, who beat Axel and his siblings and raised them in an extremely religious household. And he talks about like he said, I think at one point we would have a TV one week and then his dad would have like a fit of religious purity and throw the TV out. But Actuel grows up singing in churches, which is very interesting and cute, and that's where he kind of got all the different voices that he would use on the because he really does have a tremendous range. I mean he's ostensibly kind of I think when they did that, when they did that big like witch lead singer has like the biggest range. Thing. He was up there in like the top three is like Prince him, you know, Freddie Mercury, Uh, I have a controversial entry for this. I'm not saying that necessarily octave range, but just in styles that they can sing. Paul McCartney doing the little Richard stuff, I mean the gospel along the line probably got I'm not to like short Sell. I mean he's probably got like three three um the thing. He's really the falsetto register because yeah, because when you hit like like Prince, are like Mike Patton, like those guys are up in like dog whistle register, you gotta look up everybody going. Mike Patton is a guy who is briefly in faith no more. He sings the big faith you want at all, that one that sets him singing. But he has had an incredibly very career. He does all kinds of stuff. Just go onto YouTube and look up a compilation of his high notes. For a guy who does not have big name recognition, that man is one of the craziest singers at five. Anyway. Axel found out about his biological dad at seventeen and quickly descends into just the stereotype of juvenile delinquency. He racks up twenty plus arrests for things like public intoxication and battery, serves jail time um, and he moves to l A after So that's all before he moves to l A. Oh yeah, this is his origin story. We're not even in l A yet. Lafayette authorities, we're going to just charge him as a habitual criminal and just like I think, prison not jail. Prison, Can you do that? I'm sure in Lafayette, Indiana in the eighties you can do a lot of Axel is problematic. Uh, he not a good not a nice guy, sorry, not a nice guy, constantly getting into fights with people, just a garbage person to most of the women in his life. Was or is almost certainly a homophobe and racist. Giving some of the songs and lyrics, he just chose to lay down. But people have said for the most part he was at least less up than a lot of his bandmates. Chemically speaking, this was I think what some people have said because he was on medication to control his bipolar disorder, or because they called it back in the day manic depressive. The band's former European publicist, Arlette Viriq told a loudwire Axel wasn't really doing drugs because of the medication he was on. He was not a big drinker either. People have a misconception about that, but he was the clean and mostly sober one. Really, he wanted to preserve his voice and he was serious about it. And then Zuto adds to that Axel was the only sober one and he was surrounded by guys that were either strung out on heroin, drugged out on pills, or in an alcoholic stupor, and that added to some of the friction in the band. Axel didn't want to be around the guys that were all up. Still talk more about this in interview with Rolling Stone, he said that even in this rental house that had been completely ripped apart by the band, Axel locked himself away. He said, there was this path locked door you o inside, and there was Axel in the immaculate, perfect room, surrounded by all this squalor. That was the dichotomy of guns and roses. One woman, Vicky Hamilton's, who was an early manager There's, she even suggested that he had multiple personality disorder and raises a truly alarming fact. She said, he has this very likable little boy personality and then he has the demon dog from hell personality, and then she says the color of his eyes actually changes when he goes into this different person. Wow, little even sober he was, he was a handle. The band was Supposedly they were set to sign their Geffen contract at six pm on a Friday, which seems like a weird time but maybe part for the course of the music industry. And Axel was upset because he couldn't find his contact lenses in his apartment. I mean, that's why his eyes changed color when he's Yeah, he couldn't find him. He was furious, so he disappears in a huff and they found him meditating on top of the whisk. He like like like a like a sleazy sunset stripped dollar lama. He shows up to sign the contract three hours later. Ah. He legally changed his name around this time, but it had not gone through when he got his check, so we didn't have a bank account. And he just kept his portion of their advance stuffed in socks in his apartment or in his boots, just rolling around l a with like thousands of dollars crammed in his biker boots. Where is that? I think that being three hours late isn't that bad for like acle time or guns and roses, in the I mean grading on a curve. Yeah, um, Slash has a much more cosmopolitan upbringing, interesting enough. Born Saul Hudson in Hempstead, London. That's up there with a Cooper's real name, like Victor Fourier Vincent. Yeah, his mother Slash. His mom, Ola Hudson, was an African American fashion designer and costumier whose clients included David Bowie, whom she dated, Ringo Starr, and Janis Joplin. I didn't know the Jannis Chopol one while, but yeah, Bowie talks a lot about knowing baby Slash in the seventies and this was in his thin white Duke era. I think Slash his mom did the costumes for The Man Who Felt Earth movie too. Slash later said that having Bowie come over to see his mom when he was a little boy was like watching an alien land in your packing. And he also recall a time that he walked in on the naked, which is traumatizing. David Bowie had sex with my mom. I mean, kid, you weren't alone. His dad, Anthony Hudson, was an illustrator and he drew album covers with the likes of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell Uh and Slash said, I've always been amused that I'm both British and black, particularly because so many American musicians seemed to aspire to be British, while so many British musicians in the sixties in particular went to such great pains to be black. That's very astute. I like that. Ah. He was raised by his father in paternal grandparents in Stoke on Trent, and then when he was around five, he and his dad jointed his mom in l A fun fact. He was a bicycle moto cross star as a kid. Cantor grew up with him, and Slash says he met Mark Cantor trying to steal his mini bike. Um, but this guy says the tricks that he performed on his bike were ahead of the time. Slash was a star. Ah. He starts playing guitar. He initially wanted to be a bassist. Wait, so you've only been playing guitar like five six years when he when there was Wow, that's crazy to me. Yeah, tenours, baby. He worked twelve hour shifts in a clock factory to pay for his guitar collection, which is adorable. Imagine little Slash like lugging geppetto Well, yeah, I was gonna. I doubt he was a watchmaker, but that's much more funny. If he has like the jeweler's loop in his eye, like making watch mechanisms, it's probably just slepping like Rolex is around in a warehouse or something. Anyway, he forms his first band in one and another three along with Steven Adler, so these guys went back with each other. The second Man also included Duff, and they auditioned one time Black Flag vocalist Ron Rays as their vocalist didn't didn't take um slashes. Heroic chemical intake may have been because of his admitted stage fright. He gets nervous in front of crowds and he doesn't want to look directly at them, which inspired his most recognizable trademark other than the less Paul the top hat. I just think all of these super agro musicians with stage fright is just so cute. Let me famously sang in Motorhead with the mike up over his head and angled downwards, and that was so he would have to sing with his chin tilS it up and wouldn't have to look at the crowds. So cute. I don't know if this really counts, but John Lennon in well pretty much all the Beatles days, he never wore his glasses, so he'd be on stage and was kind of intense. Look especially in the early like Cavern days and in Hamburg, where he looked like he was just kind of glaring at the audience, is because he couldn't see a thing. And I think he kind of he thought that the glasses weren't cool, But I think he also kind of liked it that way too, because he didn't want to know what the crowd was like. Yeah, um slashes told the genesis of his hat a few times. My my favorite retelling of it is Conan O'Brien just this year. He found it in eighty five. He said, I remember this because there were two stores. There was Leathers and Treasures and the next door to that retail slut that's good. I went in there and I didn't have any money and I just saw the top hat. It spoke to me. I figured, what the I'll just walk out with it and see what happens. So I did. Then I went next door to Leathers and Treasures and I stole a conscho belt and went back to the apartment me and actually were living at the time. We had a show at the Whiskey that night, so I took the concho belt and I cut it up and put it around the hat, and I wore it that night. Eventually, he said, it just became a thing where I really identified with it, like I wore it all the time. There was a way to pull it over your eyes. You could hide be find it if you were really high. It was great for bad hair days. I had no intention of it being this long term show thing either. That was also a tribute to Mark Boland. Had you ever heard that? I didn't. It seems likely, but no, I didn't read him saying that I like the idea that has become this albatross around his neck, like he just like wakes up and looks somewhere. Time to make the doughnuts, Time to put on the top hat. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information and just a moment. The band struggled to find a producer for their debut record. My favorite anecdote this is Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley, who showed up at an apartment the label had rented for them. On sunset, found Izzy and Stradlin nodding out on the couch, and I guess just waited for them to wake up, and they play him some demos, including an early version of Night Train, which he liked but suggested that it may be need an extra hook in the chorus. And that was enough for Axl Rose to never speak to Paul Stanley again or even look at him. He supposedly refused to look at Paul Stanley. I mean, if you looked at Paul Stanley fair. I heard that Paul Stanley wanted to give Welcome to the Jungle, a chorus that I think, to use his words, was more memorable, more sing along, more anthemic, basically making a kiss song, and Guns and Roses were offended by that Welcome to the Jungle. Paul Stanley also supposed they wanted to take drums out of Adler's heroically large drum set, which was a no no. I had heard that the band like hid some of his kids, like exactly. They were all like, you guys, you have too many drums. I'm guessing he had like the big like seventeen talk probably like Neil Pert and Rush Style Kid, and they literally hid them from him so that he would not have his many to play in his autobiography, The Heroin Diaries. Meanwhile, Motley cruz Nikki six claim that he was bagged. Those are the words he uses. I'd take several times to produce Guns and Roses first album, Slash talked about eyeing producer Tom Warman, who had also worked with Motley Crue as you mentioned earlier, were signed by Tom Zuto. Warman attended a Guns and Roses rehearsal. They were playing the song Mr. Brownstone, and they were playing it so loud that he just walked out, never to return. Robert John Mutt Lang our guy, was also floated, but he cost too much, so the van went with a guy named Mike Clink, who would go on to work on a host of other iconic hard rock records like Metallicas and Justice for All, as well as the Super Bowl x x x V halftime show featuring Aerosmith and Sink, Nellie and Britney Spears, also known as the weirdest halftime show in NFL history. Yeah. Um, A big problem around this time in getting appetite off the ground is that they just refused to stop playing live, like they just did not take enough time off from playing live shows to get there together. Well, it's probably a trauma response to this is their only way of making money. And when they're splitting the Hamburger five ways, they probably were like I just could all evaporate, Like all right, we should, you know, do what we can to make sure we have money flowing. They did get seventy five grand, which they promptly blew the split five ways. Yes, sure, we'll give them that generous reading you know, my whole thing about being a musician post digital and reading about these guys who had more money than God and squandered at all. They burned through their advance within weeks, and Juto said they boot through a further hundred k a hundred gas, so twenty five more than their advance. They went through. They rented them apartments, They rented them Cecil B. Demill's former house, which will cover in a second. He said they were about two thirds of an album short of short of material. Um. Yes, this rented house that belonged to Cecil B. Demill, which is where Sweet Child of Mine came together. A jam session Slash it was noodling around on this technical exercise that he had worked out. He called it a circus melody, which now I can't unhear because it does kind of sound like a calliope, like do do do Do Do do? Wasn't it just like a string skipping exercise or something? Yeah, he was working on his he was working on his right hand picking, uh, and the bench just started jamming on it. Axel heard it from upstairs and started writing lyrics to it based on his girlfriend at the time, Aaron Everley. She's the daughter of Don Everley of the Everly Brothers, who fans will know from our American Pie episode, and her grandfather. I didn't realize this was a guy named Robert Stephenson who was a movie director. He directed Mary Poppins and other Disney movies, Herbie the love Bug and bed Looves and Broomsticks. One degree of separation between Axel Rose and her the love Bug and Mary Poppins and It's amazing. Um the mine where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky had a really personal meaning for Axel. Can you give us that? He told the l a times the blue skyline was actually one of my first childhood memories, looking at the blue sky and wishing I could disappear in it because it was so beautiful. That nice Okay, I hold that, hold that sweet moment in your soul. I'm about to rip it apart. There might be a slightly more sinister interpretation to the song, which again everyone is sort of historically thought was just a love song, basically to Aaron Everley Um. According to an interview that Axel gave with Eddie Trunk in two thousand and six, the video that they wanted to do for the song quote was supposed to be of an Asian woman carrying a baby into the United States. At the end of the video, the baby, which I assume is revealed to be a doll, is cut open and there's heroin inside. Because that's what the song is about. That's what Axel says. So that's oh street chat of my I alm a s wonder if you just was like making that up on the spot. I never makes up everything. He's just so full of it. I mean, that's the thing, dude, What do people say about like you stopped maturing at the age you get famous. And he was a juvenile delinquent who was into one of the biggest bands in the world when he was like twenty one. John mulaney thing is Mick Jagger dice No, well, I mean probably, I mean, in addition to the fan thing, he probably stopped maturing even earlier because of all the traumatic stuff that happened to him. Really, it's true. Uh So he finishes the word the next day and the band as the bridge and the where do we get? Where do we go? The breakdown at the end, along with a guitar solo inspired by Freebird. Every guitar solos inspired by Freebird? What are you guys saying? Yeah? Leonard Skinner was a big influence on the song. Slash is also cited influences like Man for Man's version of Blinded by the Light and my favorite Gary Rafferty's Baker Street Bit bit, best saxophone hook and a rock song of all time. Matt and turned the page. But he was gonna no, that song makes me sad. Yeah, it's so good. Um. Slash hated this song, which is so funny. I hated that song with a huge passion for the longest time, he said, And it turned out to be our hugest hit. So it goes to show what I know. It's got to be annoying to play, like if it was started off as a finger exercise, like if you try to get your fingers nimble, that's gotta be like a tough and probably very annoying song just to play from a physical standpoint. But and yeah, he said repeatedly over the years that have Axel hadn't been listening in and showed up with lyrics that he'd written to what they've been playing, there is no way in hell that Sweet Child of Mind would have been turned into a song. Um, I have a slash guitar question for you. Is it true that he used the Les Paul copy on this album because he'd like basically hawked his good stuff for money. Yeah? Yeah, The big one around the time in this in this era is ec rich, which is the pointed neon ones that you see. I think CC Deville was the notable. He played a mocking bird, which I think slash. Also you see pictures of him with that in the in the Canter book. But yeah, he went through a few different guitars. He was trying to play an SG on it and got so frustrated that he threw it through the window of a van, which I believe it was a rented guitar um and probably a rented van. Yeah yeah, although we've we looked this up last night, right, we actually found where that Gibson comes from. Oh yeah, it is a a luthier by the name of Chris Derek who died a few months before at that for Destruction was released in unfortunately, which is really sad because he couldn't He didn't live to see that this guitar. I think he made something like twenty copies of the les Paul became really sought after. I think Slash only has two of them. Lenny Kravitz has one, and like Charlie Daniels for some reason, I had one. Like they became really sought after, and then Gibson put out a signature model, so they put out a replica of a replica, which is great because they got passed off is the real thing there's For all I know, maybe one or two of these twenty copies out there are floating around by people who don't know they're not real because they have Gibson on the headstock. So there's a whole thing about what they call lawsuit guitars from the late seventies because Fender changes hands CBS by Spender around this time, and the quality kind of goes to Like if you're looking at used vendors online, they differentiate between pre and post CBS years, and companies like Ibanez we're making these like copies in Japan of famous guitar models that were many cases better and they even wrote the They would even write iban as in like the Fender script. They're called lawsuit bases because Fender and Gibson would suit them to get them to stopping mate. But yeah, it was uh so Gibson less ball copy. I think he had Seymour Duncan pickups in there, and then they just plugged into a Marshall Man Classic Classic sound C C DE Mill House CC DE Mill cecil B de Mill, c C DE bill Is. That was a portmanteau of Poison guitarist C. C. Deville. H. You know Poison grew up next to me in Pennsylvania, right, Oh that's right. Yeah, Brett Michaels was like the next town over, right. Macco's went to Mechanics, grew up Mechanicsburg. I think the bassist grew up in Harrisburg and the drummer went to my high school. Not at the same time obviously, but that was like our big musical success story. This would have been right around Laracco Love, right, so that must have been like serious. Yeah, bragging rights, that's the word for it. Uh So the de Mill House has my favorite quote. The landlord summoned Zuto and the band's then manager, Arnold still felt fetto Steve Felto Arnold, guy's name was Arnold. You're happy, guy said he almost fainted, possibly from the smell. The band had ripped the toilets out of the floor and thrown them through the windows. Maybe they were frightening of the side of them. They've been in a place with notes. What the hell is that? Kill it with fire? Uh Zuto says. The inside was even worse. Quote. People were defecating in the sinks. The holes in the floor where the toilets got ripped off were filled with urine. There were half eaten whoppers with mold on the wrappers. They would get in these drug rages and just go berserk. The damage to the house total twenty two thousand dollars, and Arnold, whose name was on the least, submitted that to Geffen Records and then promptly dropped the band as clients. So if you are keeping attention, the money that we know about, which I'm sure does not even begin to cover it, seventy grand advance, further hundred grand expenses, seventy five thousand damage to the CCBCC cecil B DE mill house. We are at a hundred and ninety seven thousand dollars before they even record the basic tracks to this record. And that doesn't factor drugs, Yeah, exactly, stripper budgets or maybe it does. Maybe the uh, I don't know, we don't know that. But these people were feral. That is the word. I mean. They showed the story where they showed up the geff and offices of the woman Claude only in a shower curtain. We're still soaking wet Jesus Christ. Uh. Finally we get into the songs. Truly one of the greatest all time side one track ones, best album openers, definitely a shortlist. Welcome to the Jungle supposedly came together like three hours. Again, this is kind of the most united the band would be on that front. They were just bringing fragments to each other and work on different things together, uh, And Slash said, Welcome to the Jungle was really the first thing we all collaborated on. He said that Axel remembered the main riff to that song from something that Slash played while Axel was living and Slash his mom's basement, so at some point he had this memory of and like, hey, remember that thing you played four years ago or whatever. It was this incredible stuff and the breakdown Britten did boom badoom? Do you know where you are? Do you the jungle? Baby? There? It is there? It is uh. That was written in Night from Duff's first punk band, and Axel supposedly gets that thing that I just did uh from He and his buddy got off a Greyhound in New York and a homeless guy supposedly looked at him and said, do you know where you are? You're in the jungle baby, You're gonna die, which you know, I believe it the poor authorities rough. Yeah. The version I heard was that Axel was spending the night in a playground in Queens and some guys saw him and shouted that at him. Um. And yet still another version I heard was that Axel hitchhiked with a truck or to l A and the trucker dropped him off and he said, welcome to the jungle and drove off. Well, that is what's in the video, like he's like hitchhiking and comes out he literally has the wheat like hanging out of his mouth like he put it in his back. Uh is his girlfriend at the time, a woman named Desi Kraft, recalls the incident that led to the song Mr Brownstone, we've been dancing with mass stop bounced on my my mid register axles not as good as my falsetto axel. She said, Slash came to our place on Orchid with a lump of Mexican tar heroin and wanted to cook it all up is he and I told him to just do a little bit because there was this death tar going around and remember that izz he was dealing so he knew from heroin. Slash said it was okay and shot up. Well, he pretty much went rigor mortis in the chair and we got him on the floor and gave him mouth to mouth, after which she says, they all wrote the song, and she is upset that she is not cutting on that, which is fair. Didn't they write it on the back of like a paper grocery bag or something. I read that they read it on the back of something or a whopper rapper once they cleaned the mold off. There's been debate over the years. I mean, it's widely believed that the song was about Heroin. I think Slash is uh and some other members of the band have tried to kind of walk that interpretation back. But during a show that the band was performing in Los Angeles, I think they're opening for the Rolling Stones in October, Axel set on the stage unless certain people in this band get their crap together craps my edit there Can you imagine Axel Rose saying crap? I can't. Uh, these will be the last Guns and Roses show you'll ever see because I'm tired of too many people in this organization dancing with Mr Dan brown Stone. So it sounds like he at least believed it to be about heroin, and this on stage tirade got the attention of his bandmates because Slash and Izzy and Steven Adler promised to clean up after that. I don't know how long that lasted, but apparently the message got through uh. The song. Mr brown Stone also addresses Axel's habit of being uh party for show. There's a line the show's usually start around seven, we go on stage around nine, and Axel has addressed this tendency as if it were a medical diagnosis that he has no control over. He said, I pretty much follow my own internal clock, and I perform better later at night. Nothing seems to work out for me until later at night. I don't want to make people sit around and wait. It drives me nuts. That hour and a half or two hour time period that I'm late going on stage is living hell because I'm wishing there was any way on earth I could get out of where I am and knowing I'm not going to be able to make it. I mean, he literally caused a living hell. Look, I don't want to he's he has some demons. He has some Yeah, I am certainly in the depths of my depression being able to get up out of do anything. But also people were not dangling seven figure checks in front of me to just do the thing that is nominally what I'm supposed to do. I mean, you remember the whole Metallica thing, right, Um No, they were on torty other James Hetfield steps into a Piro and like horrifically burns half his body. I have not heard this no co headlining tour in between G and R and Metallica in Montreal. James Hetfield basically he said there was too much Piro. So they were choreographed for some Piro and there was extra Piro and it blew him up. I mean he had second and third degree burns. It could not finish the show. And you know they talked about this in one of those v H one shows. Um, I think it's Jason Newstead is like, you know, Guns and Roses really could have stepped up and saved that show. They could have come on and done like a heroic set and united everyone, and uh, Guns and Roses um did not do that. They took a long time to get on the stage and then they played like a short set and the audience rioted and literally took to the streets of Montreal and set fire to things and flipped cars. So like maybe set up alarm Maxwell. Anyway, moving on, My Michelle. The band also wrote the song My Michelle, intributed to the band's friend Michelle Young, who was one of the many women in their lives who supported the band by you know, every means necessary given them housing more like every single level of the Maslow Pyramids. These women fulfilled for these guys. Uh And I guess she was traveling with the band once and Elton John's Your Song came on the radio and she commented how she always wanted a song written about her, and Axel remembered this and eventually delivered with My Michelle. But instead of sweet, romanticized lyrics, he came up with this unvarnished portrait of her difficult life, and she was later told Classic Rock Magazine in two thousand five. At the time, I didn't care because I was so messed up. But what it says is all true. My dad does distribute porno films, and my mom did die even even the sweet story with considering me have this this underside. When they finally get around to recording in January, seven basic tracks were recorded at a studio owned by Captain of Captain and two deal That is so funny. Man Darryl Dragon was a musical powerhouse. He was remember yeah, it was just his real name, by the way. He was a touring member of the Beach Boys in the sixties and early seventies, and it was Mike Love who gave him the nickname Captain Keyboard. Oh that Mike um words. Yeah. Maroo five also recorded songs about Jane and his studio. I just think it's amazing that in the same place where Welcome to the Jungles recorded, Uh Sunday Morning was also recorded. Um Zuto said the band might have worked consistently for one week and the next week they didn't turn up. When Axel was in the frame of mind to work, he might work for two or three days straight and then not turn up for a week. He might come in every day during an eight hour period. I assume what he means is for eight hour period. Um yeah, I mean that's that's manic depressive. That's that's bipolar behavior. You know, the same thing with talking about Charles Mingus, the Loneous Monk. Yeah, how did it just go? Oh yeah, both of those guys, I mean, uh, undiagnosed but yeah, and like extremely self medicating. I probably already told you this. There's this anecdote in the Charles Mingus biography, UM myself when I am real where they go backstage and each just take a handful of pills out of a shoe box with with loose pills floating around it. It just gobbled them all down. So yeah, don't self medicate, folks. Producer Mike Clink tells an amazing story. Delf would show up at the door one afternoon what we were doing guitar dubs with his arm in a sling. I think he might have had a black eye and he was limping. When I asked what happened, he said, well, you know, we were stair diving. As if that ex blanes it, folks. What stair diving is is when you try and jump, at least in the g in R world, is when you try and jump from the top of the stairs at someone's apartment to the bottom landing without hitting a step in between. My favorite cousin Roses arm injury story of which there are many, involved Slash, who showed up to and if you mixing candidates for this album with his arm in a cast and apparently he broken it by repeatedly hitting the floor to stop a record from skipping. Why didn't he simply get up to fix it, you might ask, because he was having sex at the time before hard enough to at least hairline fracture his arm mid in flagrante but a jackass. Ron Schneider added that Slashes broken up with his girlfriend at the time and had two green garbage bag full of clothes and all of his other personal effects and was living in the studio in whichever room wasn't being utilized. Mike Klink said Izzy was also doing that, or maybe he just got both of them confused. Um, and apparently as Steven Adder threw a lot of tantrums over the drum sound, which drummers uh, and she was just throwing tossing furniture around. I mean he's got but but truly. The worst recording related anecdote for this album concerns the Closer Rocket Queen in Manhattan, where they were doing vocal dubs. Axel cajoled a stripper in the band's orbit named Adriana Smith, who was then nineteen, into having sex with him while he was recording in the vocal booth, supposedly pausing it points to yell at her to make it real and stop faking. This supposedly took two hours that they were in this booth messing around and Acte was giving her direction. Uh. She was the drummer's girlfriend at the time, she was mad at him for cheating on her, and she wanted to get back at him. The engineer Vic da Leo, who's credited in the liner notes as just Vick the engineer, if I recall, correctly described the vocal booth as like a Ron Jeremy set in there. She called this process pretty mechanical, which I just love. Man. Hermones end up prominently in the final Well, yes, I don't know prominently. I never knew about this until his pointed out to me, But I pointed out, no, no, it's just like I think I would hate to have that on my conscience. Predictably, when Adler find out about this, Smith said he freaked out and her resulting shame and guilt over the incident sent her into an alcohol and drug abuse spiral, which is very sad. But he has apparently mellowed on it Adler. Adler, Yes, he has a truly incredible quote in that book. I love Adriana. She is amazing. She did what she did. It was cool. It didn't matter. We weren't married or anything. We were just quote and here that was the wind up, and here's the pitch. We were naked skydivers from hell. I don't know what that means, but it's a truly incredible rock and roll quote. Baby, I wonder if when acts was having sex he makes all those dumb noises. Who do you know where you walk? Yeah? So I'm having sex with you? Yeah the chuckle? Baby? Ah. Well, I guess while we're on this topic. You know, there's so many topics out here that I really never have a chance to delve into until very specific moments. This is one of them. I'd like to take a quick conversational detours. We do a lightning round on artists having sex in the studio as it happens. This is something I know a bit about, albeit not from firsthand experience. About ten years ago, when I was working at v H one, I wrote an article entitled sex in the Studio Ten artists who got down. I'll laying it down so, with your blessing, i'd like to pull some excerpts from that first. Jim Morrison on The Door's track Your Lost Little Girl. The Lizard King is known for being a shouter on records, but he wanted to take a gentle approach while recording this delicate track for The Door's sophomore album Strange Days in nineteen sixty seven. Uh, he idolized crooners. He loved Frank Sinatra. I think that was like one of his vocal heroes. You kind of hear that on the song touch Me when he does a I'm Gonna love you that whole part. Yeah, he really goes yea. So he was trying to get this like soft close mike approach for the song Your Lost Little Girl, which is a beautiful song, one of my favorites. Uh, my love for the song is mired only slightly by this anecdote. He wasn't able to get that soft, delicate vocal approach. So um, his girlfriend Pamela Corson decided to try an unorthodox technique. According to keyboard player Raymond z Eric's autobiography Light My Fire, a truly fantastic book, she had the it's dimmed and quietly padded into the studio and gave Jim oral sex in the middle of a take. And I believe that's the one you hear on the record. Does Marvin Gay rubbing one out? Count? Uh yeah, we'll count that. No, well, no, no, this is like on the mic. We're going for on the mike okay, not pre al right, continue Biggie smalls on respect. Uh, there's a skit at the end of the song from Ready to Die that features I'm sorry what I can only describe as a distinctive slurpy sound that has grossed out rap fans for decades. Many have debated whether or not it was, you know, authentic or not, and it wasn't until two thousand nine that Huffington Post journalist Barry Michael Cooper had the chance to ask, did he who produced the record, and settle this argument once and for all? Did? He said? Yeah, these are questions that nobody's ever asked, but I think Big would be all right with it, and he confirmed the long held rumor. Moving on to My beloved Beach Boys. S. My beloved Beach Boys have a sex on record anecdote, although considering they also recorded a song by Charles Manson, maybe the shouldn't be that this has been one of the least surprising stories about the Beach Boys. Uh, it's the song All I Wanna Do, which is kind of a deep cut off of a deep album nineteen. It's all gets back to drummer Dennis Wilson. Anyone who knows anything about the Beach Boys could probably guess it he was involved with this. He was the true heart of America's band, the only member of the group who actually surfed. His daredevil spirit was matched only by his intense sexual appetite, so it kind of makes sense that he'd be the one to try to sneak a little smut onto the formally squeaky Clean groups records the song All I Want to Do, if you crank the volume at the fade out of this really raucous track, you hear um distinctive noises and screams. I'll just leave it at that. And I've known the song for years. I was never really sure what that was supposed to be at the end of the song. But according to the band's day to day activity book that was published I think in a day to day diary, it's confirmed. There's an entry for November twelfth that reads the group worked on All I Wanna Do, in particular the song's tag. For this, Dennis en lists the help of a female friend who's recorded having sex with the drummer in the studio. This sound effect is layered O. It's like studio technical jargon for this. The sound effect is layered onto the fade out of the song's final mix, and it's just about audible on the released version, and even the liner notes for the album boast of an X rated surprise at the end of the song. It wasn't a Fareman, it wasn't not Yeah. Let's move on to Prince and Kim Bassenger on the Scandulous Suite EP. Back in the eighties, Prince harbored not so secret ambitions to be a star maker, supplying gooey pop songs to gorgeous ladies, and they didn't always have to be singers. Case in point this unlikely collaboration with the film star Kim Passenger, whose rumored girlfriend at the time in The Purple One. By the way, I'm reading what I wrote like ten years ago, so this was would have been written in a more respectful tone maybe if this was post Princess death. The Purple One recorded an EP entitled The Scandalous Suite, which was a twenty minute expansion of his songs Scandalous from the Batman film soundtrack. Kim's vocal contributions consisted primarily of moans, leading many to speculate that the pair were really partying like it was the recording studio. According to studio lore, Prince and Kim showed up to the studio one day with a jar of honey and told everyone to get lost. The pair were done for the day by the time tape engineers had returned, but the entire mixing board was smeared with honey, like Winnie the Poo was in there. Early editions of the EP came with a collectible jar of honey, uh, leading many to assume that this was just, you know, to commemorate this sticky occasion. Um. But you know, honey is really good for soothing throats of vocalists, so maybe it was just a you know, vocal lubricant. I didn't mean it that, I really UM, and we gotta end with Serge Gainsburg. Serge, the Parisian pop maestro, wrote the notoriously erotic song j tim one Umplu. The ultimate love song was what he wanted it to be, and he wrote it for his then girlfriend, Bridget Bardo. I didn't really realize they were dating until researching this story. Uh. The original recording took place in nineteen seven over a two hour session in a Parisian studio where the pair were jammed into a cramped glass vocal booth and the glass apparently literally got steamy. Um. Yeah, it was like the same Titanic. Yeah. Um. Reports of this song hit the press before it was even released, and it was described as audio verite, featuring groans, size and Bardo's cries of play as you're giving the impression you're listening to two people making love. The news made it all the way to Bardo's estranged husband. Of course, she was married at the time, so this is one of the most French stories we were discussed on the show. Um. She was married to the German businessman Gunter Sachs at the time, and he was a powerful guy. He furiously demanded that the single be withdrawn, and Gainsburg relented after a very emotional letter from Bridgitte, Bardou, herself and Gainsburg. He was heartbroken. He said, this music is very pure. For the first time in my life, I wrote a love song and it's taken badly. He's devastated. But he recorded the song two years later in nineteen sixty nine with another girlfriend, the English actress Jane Burkin, and it was released too much shock, outrage and success all around the world, where it was banned in many countries as well. I think probably the United States as well, but I think it went to number one the UK anyway. And then later he tried to pull the same trick with in Houston live on television. Yeah, and he also recorded a song with his fourteen year old Dollar Charlotte Gainsburg called I Believe Lemon incest right God Anyway. Paradise City was, according to Slash, written the back of a rental van on the way back from San Francisco, and he and Rose worked together on the chorus polite euphemism. Rose sank, take me down to the Paradise City, and Slash responded, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty. Rose sang the first line again and Slash responded, this time with where the girls are fat and they've got big titties. Uh. And he lobbied to keep that line in the song. Thankfully, the rest of the band out voted him. Gosh uh. An old friend of Axel's named Jake Queery called the new in Indiapolis radio station I think at the height of the band's popularity, and he claimed that the line in the song the grass is Green and the Girls Are Pretty is about when Axel and his his family would go down to Bloomington, Indiana. UM probably a rare positive moment from a childhood So make of that with you will as you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more too much information. After these messages, before Guns and Roses started recording Appetite, they did a one day demo session with the guitarists from the band Nazareth Manny Charlton at Sound City Studios in l A. And one of the songs that was recorded during this early demo session was November Rain and according to Slashes memoir, this early version was eighteen minutes long. I've also seen accounts that says that it's up to twenty five minutes that I believe that U Manny Charlton recorded this piano demo, which he just said left him absolutely stunned, and he said, you know that's going to be the centerpiece of your debut. That's the one. What an incredible track, And Axel looked up from the piano and said, nope, that's for the second album. Yeah. They didn't want to have quote two ballads on the record, and they considered the considered that a ballot, didn't. Shannon hu And from Blind Melons sing back up on the user relutions, Yeah, he and or his sister and Axel war friends and from Indiana. They're both from Indiana, right, or maybe they just bonded over being from Indiana once. No, they knew each other. He knew Shannon's older sister in Indiana. Wow, I even know that. Yeah. He claimed that this record was a lot of just second or third takes because like that's where the energy is man or whatever. But Clink has been also cited as doing a lot of tape edits on this one, with the old razor blade working like eight hour days on this Jesus, the perfectionism on this album really doesn't get discussed enough. I know we talked about them ripping out toilets and routed whoppers, but Axel in particular had a perfectionist streak. I mean, you know, how long did Chinese democracy take fifteen years to make? So uh you get let's see the seeds of that here. I heard that excellent system recording his vocals line by line, and that's what ate up most of the album's fairly sizeable budget. Um. I think Dusty Springfield used to do that too at one point in your career, And so I guess while Axel was doing this line by line thing, the rest of the band would just, you know, they couldn't deal with just being in the studio for that, so they would just go and hang out at local bars, which I'm sure worked out great for everyone. Yeah, Clink, I think talks about doing the scream at the end of Welcome to the Jungle over the course of many, many takes. It's a great scream. It's up there with Won't get Fooled Again All Time Rock Rocks and like everything Robert Plant recorded from mieteen sixty seven to sixty United. How can you do that many screams in physiologically though not even just like energy wise? I read somebody that Kendrick does like twenty takes of his verses just to like warm up his voice. I don't know, dude, It's insane. Vocal chords are muscle, can work them out like anything else. The total budget for this record was three hundred and seventy thousand dollars, which is unheard of for a band's debut. What were we at before we were at a hundred with all of with the pre recording expenses and do a quick, quick little math here, hundred ninety I think it was a hundred five hundred ninety five plus three hundred seventy five hundred and sixty five thousand dollars before the record even comes out. And again that is just what people have quoted as saying. This is not including you know, whatever cash they were handed at the time. Whatever. We don't have the expense reports, so someone else's oh yeah, whatever. I mean, it's weird to me that this almost seems low for me, considering it's the peak of the mid eighties record blow But UM, it's interesting. My Clink and a number of others associated with the album have observed that it's really one of the last records made in the manner of old school classic rock albums. It was mastered with vinyl in mind, edited with the razor blade and two inch tape, and mixed on a non automated board with a bunch of hands moving the faders frantically. UM and assistant mixing engineer Victor Digilio, who you mentioned earlier. For the UM you mentioned earlier, Let's leave it at that. Uh, it could be seen as the last great rock record made totally by hand. Yeah yeah, um, you seem to disagree. I do. I mean, digital boards and digital stuff had kind of been coming around, But I don't know, man, I mean, like Albini was doing stuff straight to tape at the time. Like I'm sure that Nirvana stuff was not done digitally. I'm sure Metallica, well what all I know? But you think it was mixed with like vinyl? Mind though, that's a good question. Yeah, yeah, maybe not. I don't know. It's an interesting point because c d s would have been coming in I don't know. Anyway. Cover art, the original painting for this that was supposed to be on the cover of this is gross and messed up and weird. It depicts a robotic use another word for it, rapist in the immediate aftermath of a rape, with the woman on the ground next to it about to be punished caught, I don't know, by an even larger robot that's like flying this monster that's like flying over a fence. Anyway. That painting is based on a guy named Robert Williams. A painting by the same name, Appetite for Destruction. Um. Williams was one of these underground comic artists who produced ZAP comics, which popular underground publication along with guys like Our Crumb and had having a moment at the time. He referenced in the Red Hot Chili Peppers song Mellows Ship Slinky in B Major one of my least favorite songs of all time. Um, I maybe hate that song more than American Pie. That's the song where it's basically key to just talking about being arrested by a lady cop and then having sex with her. Um. And uh, this guy williams Art and his car what they called a rat rod, which comes from the kind of the rat fink California car culture thing. A rat rod is like an old ratty, beat up thirties or forties kind of gelopi thing that was featured in the music video for the song who Was in My Room Last Night from the Butthole Surfers record, Independent Worm Saloon. The Butthole Surfers Ladies and Gentlemen, Independent worm Worm Saloon. They have some truly great album titles. Have you ever gone down the list? Did you ever read? I mean their name is Butthole Surfers. Sure, do you ever read our bank would be your life. There's a chapter and butthole surfers on there. It is hilarious. Uh. They brought this art to the label, explaining, according to Geffen president Eddie Rosenblatt, that they saw the artwork as a symbolic social statement, with the robot representing the industrial system that's raping and polluting our environment. I don't believe that for a second. You're telling me that an otherwise a political band of dirt bags decided to make a conservation message that is unmitigated record label Horse. I heard another explanation from Tom's Utoe. You gave an interview with the l A Times where he said, Axel showed me a card but the Williams painting and said, you realize this is the future. Then he pointed to the woman, this is the victim. This is the media above them is the monster that the media creates. And he predicted in that we are going to live This is Tom Zute still speaking. Axel predicted we were going to live in a world of fake news where we feed on t magity. It depicted human nature and the ugly need we have for an appetite for destruction. Yeah. I don't know if I believe this either. Zuto is so fascinating to me. You mentioned he signed Molly Crue. I mean, this guy has spent his entire life advocating for this band, who I do not think speak to him anymore. Um, well, would you like to gingerly? Yeah, if I can talk around this. I when I was at page six, I was I wanted So this story came up h three years ago at this point that G and R had banned like the president of their fan club from their shows because he was trading in bootlegs. And I was doing a story about it, and it's sprawled out of my control because I interviewed this guy and he told me this story about um driving from like where he lived in I think Louisiana to like Virginia because someone had on the message boards found that there was old add At tape in a storage locker, and so he like gathered all the cash he could scrounge and drove to Virginia to buy this tape. The bootleg recording of G and R fans. The way that these guys trade these demos and bootlegs is really insane and it sounds like dead level. It's not I I really it is maybe the most fandom to the least recorded output that I can imagine. Like there's like what one and a half good Guns and Roses records, It's Appetite, and then parts of the next three that they did. But there are people who still this is like, oh, that's my favorite band of all time. I will I will take food out of my child's mouth to buy their demo tapes. I think what I found out was that this was an old storage space of zutos. And then I got him on the phone somehow, and he was talking about tape trading and like all the lengths that these guys go to, and I think they silenced him because he was talking about all of them, like or I mean I got him on the phone, he took him out. So what I read was that at some point Guns and Roses get their axel because the band dissolves in the mid nineties and it just becomes the Axl Rose show. When he's making Chinese Democracy, which is this album that took you know, fifteen years to make, and was it worth it? Whatever, I've already made enough enemies with this and maybe making more with this story. Anyway, what I was able to piece together is that at some point in the nineties Axel came under the sway of this Venezuelan gentleman, and if the rumors are to be believed, this guy's mother who exerted all of this undue pressure and undue influence on him and were semi responsible for him sort of sucking up into his own head and firing everyone and becoming this megalomaniac. They are also extraordinarily litigious, at typified by banning the president of their fan club from all of their shows. So Zuto's I get him on the phone and he's telling me all these wild stories about like Axel punching out JFK Jr. Over a woman, like all this really wild, unverifiable stuff. And I was like, holy crap, dude, can I call you back about this when I'm in like in a room by myself recording instead of just like taking this at a crowded desk in an open office. And he was like sure, man, like blah blah blah, and then he just ghosted me, and I think he went to run it by the lawyer, or the lawyer who I had talked to previously called him and was like you shut your damn mouth, Tom Zuto. It's wild Man the other thing that I remember from this time, and this is all on the record. This is in an Against Me. One of my favorite bands of all time have a record called Reinventing Axel Rose. They have a song called Reinventing Axel Rose, which is a screed against music industry, rock star excesses and call to arms for like d I y mentality. And in their one DVD, which is called We're Never Going Home, they are talking to a guy from the band alex Is on Fire or Alexis Is on Fire. I never knew how to pronounce that. This guy tells. A secondhand anecdote from someone who knew Axel said actual had gotten a copy of the Against Me record and was so incensed by it that he began making voodoo dolls of the members of Against Me and like sticking them in pins and stuff. And his interest in voodoo and santaya supposedly comes from this manager and his mom. So if either of us come down with mysterious physical maladies after this comes out, it's because of Axel's interest in voodoo. That is my whole sidebar on my brief time researching the guns and Roses tape tripe tape trading community and the lengths to which the band will go to suppress that. Anyway, the label must have known that this art was going to be an issue because they only printed up a hundred and thirty thousand copies of it with that art, which I don't know what they're going for on eBay. Let's take a quick quick sidebar. Yeah, that can be like the Beatles Butcher cover kind of thing. Yeah, the I just checked it on disc dogs a copy of Appetite on vinyl with the original art median price two hundred and thirty dollars, which is low highest five fifty was low to me anyway, It's not that old, and there's a couple in over a hundred thousand of them, so that yeah, I guess that's fair. Uh. Predictably, retailers refused to stock it, and so the label replaced it with a now iconic Celtic cross, which is a thin Lizzy reference. And uh all the little cartoons of the band as skulls that was originally designed as a tattoo for Axel by an artist named Billy White. Uh, and that pencil sketch for that art was sold at a Grammy auction in two thousand nine for, according to one person, seems low U with all that mind. Is important to note here that Axel's initie idea for the album art was the shot of the Challenger space shuttle exploding that appeared on the cover of Time in February of six, and then Beyonce borrowed the sound of Michion Control announcing the Challenger explosion at the start of her song XO on her Surprise Visual album. Apparently not the first person to sample that. I was just reading about that after you sbody that link. Still the first person of her notorized, yeah, I did. We I was never sure what the meeting was behind that, or if she spoke out about that. I think she issued some kind of an apology, but yeah, um. Anyway, given its stature at this point, it may surprise you to learn that Appetite didn't really light the world on fire when it was released in July, sold about two hundred thousand albums in six months, which is very respectable. But they just kind of thought it was like, Okay, there's your debut album out of the way. Let's you know, you did your tour, Geffen one of them off the road and just immediately working on the follow up, and the band's reputation had started to backfire on them. All these cable companies were putting pressure on MTV to tone down their programming or they were going to drop MTV from the lineup, and Guns and Roses were just too scary, and rightfully so, they were monsters. They Keptney from listening to their music for years because I was scared of them as a kid. Um and reviews were kind of mixed. They got a pan and metal hammer and they made the record made twenty six and the Village Voice Pass and Jop poll from eight, which is one of the most influential metrics at the time, is a poll of Voice did of all the top music critics in the country. Right, yeah, was that a christ Gal thing? I think so? Yeah. Uh So, Zuto goes to David Geffen and pressure's Geffen in turn to pressure Tom Freston, one of the creators of MTV. The band manager at the time as a guy named Alan Niven, and he helped. Uh. He said, there was an incredibly gorgeous girl who worked with us, and she promised she would dance naked on Freston's desk if they would play the video for Welcome to the Jungle. God these people, I know. The point is that they had shot the video and submitted it to MTV, and MTV was flatly like, no, we will not do this. So Geffen and his wheel and deal and manages to eke out the concession that they would play the video once on a Sunday at two am Eastern five AM Pacific. And Zucho understandably is like, what that's it? And Kevin said, look, don't be a schmuck. We could have gotten nothing out of that. I'm kind of surprised Keevin couldn't, you know, step on the throats of these MTV executives a little more at that time. I guess it just goes to show the power of MTV And nineteen eight. You know who directed the video for Welcome to the Jungle. Who's that? Nigel Dick, the guy who did Britney Spears. I hit me baby one more time. Oops, I did it again, as well as Drops of Jupiter by train and it's all coming back to me now by Selene Dion. Do they and do they know it's Christmas. Yes, that's right. The band aid song. That is the common thread the videos for all of them. Wow, he did Deaf Leopards. Yeah, but he was a rock yeah. Wow, that's I was going to say he was a rock guy, but he was not. He did he was everything? Yeah, Boom Down Rats, Madness Third Way a second wave SKA band. Madness. Did he do Our House One Better Day? I don't know that. Madness did Tears for Fears? Dr Doctor Hook? Doctor Hook were still banned in the eighties. Wasn't that the band that did? I want to be on the cover of Rolling Stone? Yeah? Wow, all right, Radel Dick everyone uh. People saw this thing and the proverbial switchboards lit up with requests. Zuto said. They went from two thousand and sales to a million practically overnight. And then the sweet Shot of Mine video makes a teen idol out of Rose, which was arguably a bad idea for everyone involved, and we're off to the races. Appetite eventually becomes the seventh best selling album of all time in the US, as well as the best selling debut album ever, thirty million copies sold worldwide, one of the best selling records of all time, a tremendous quote from drummer Steven Adler. We became everything we dreamed about, but cooler. Just a tremendous quote that he says, except for Aerosmith. I thought Aerosmith was cooler. I love how much of these people who seem to hate most things love aeros love Aerosmith. I just love. We became everything we dreamed about but cooler. And they opened for Aerosmith on a post appetite tour, which is hilarious because Tim Collins, Aerosmiths then managers said by the end of the tour, Guns and Roses were huge. They basically exploded. We were all pissed that Rolling Stone showed up to do a story on Aerosmith, but Guns and Roses ended up on the cover instead. I guess at the final show of that tour, Aerosmith road crew dressed in guerrilla costumes and messed her out on stage when Guns and Roses did Welcome to the Jungle, which is medium funny. Yeah, but yeah, as much as I'm not the world's biggest Aerosmith fan, uh, it sounds like they sort of took like a responsible older brother role on that tour. Aerosmiths set ground rules early on for this tour, no drugs in their presence because they had been the rehab and could also see guns and Roses heading down that same path. Uh, they didn't really preach to them because they knew that, you know, these people just had to learn from themselves and make their own mistakes. But Aerosmith did give them t shirts, you know, look like a tour T shirt, but instead of tour dates, it listed all the rehab centers they've been through. Um, which was there sort of not so silent comment. Yeah, I mean for me, hell is Steven Tyler and Axel Rose covering American Pie and Margarite phil Can you imagine those two? Now I've come around on Margarite Villa songs? Fine, can you imagine Steven Tyler and Axel Rose in the studio together the most annoying voices in the world. They must have due edit at some point on that tour or sometimes well you know who guested with G and R. At one point, Don Henley, Ladies and gentlemen, that what a what a trifecta of Don Henley of the Eagles played drums for the band during the n A M. A American Music Awards show well, Steven Adler was in rehab. This is because Axel had added vocals to Don Henley's night song I Will Not Go Quietly, which of course you wouldn't Don Henley never done anything quietly in your life. Henley was returning the favor, and this sadly was on Patients, which is their big acoustic ballad. So regrettably he didn't pick up the sticks for something like Welcome to the Jungle or Paradise City, which could have I would have had a begrudging respect for Don Henley had we done that. Anyway, we've danced around this for longer. That's finally, folks, thanks for hanging with us. We're finally getting to the real meat of the episode, which is the time when Gen r has co starred alongside Jim Carrey and Liam Neeson in the fifth and final Dirty Harry film, The Deadpool from Warner Brothers. Had decided to get some of this, uh, this wild heavy metal that the kids are listening to these days to the really a shot in the arm of the old Dirty Harry franchise, now on its fifth legs. I had no idea that there was more than two Yeah, and indeed, Jim Carrey plays a murdered rock star in his first dramatic role, and Liam Neeson role period I would imagine was before and Living Color. I think that's true. He was in Peggy sou Got Married there you go, wow, Okay, that was eighty five, all right, I stand corrected. Um, yeah, and so guns Versus plays a band in there and uh they Welcome to the Jungle. Was a sink in there? They play it and slash at an interview at a time, Eastwood came up to us on the set and the guys like nine ft tall. He's very intimidating. He walked up to us and said great album, shook our hands and walked off. I didn't really know what to think of it. Do we think that Clintices would actually listen to appitepe for Destruction? I mean he was tight with Dennis Hopper after Hang Them High, after doing Hanging High with him, So maybe maybe he had advanced taste in music. I just like the idea he plays and then he just goes squints off into the distance. Uh. The only scene in which the band appears together in the film is a funeral scene for Carrie's character and This was because of a very guns and roses reason at her again the quote machine. When we did this movie, The Deadpool with Clean Eastwood, the scene in the cemetery, there's five of us seen, he says, an interview, and then the next scene you see slashing Iszzy and Duff shooting a harpoon through a window of this boat, which is true. Well, the reason me and Axel weren't there was because I met some stripper that night and she put this brown powder in my beer, And next thing I know, I woke up in a hospital, charcoal coming out of every hole in my body, and Axel was holding my hand crying. Just what a like a painter with words, He sketches this Vindette losing charcoal from your orifice and a weeping Axel Rose like the Madonna and child anyway, carry Jim Carrey's sidebar and Jim Carrey's love for heavy music. This is such such a funny I diddle deep digging in this because I was, like, you know, were remembering Cannibal corpses in ace Ventura when he goes into he goes into the metal club. Yeah, so some people are like, oh, Jim Carrey is a big fan of heavy metal. Some people aren't. Apparently Jim Carrey's son in law was in a metal band. But if you go back and do the look at these interviews, Jim Carrey is on our senio talking about Napalm Death, pioneering British death metal grindcore band Napalm Death um friend of the friend of the po Napalm Death. He's talked about Pantera before in an interview and he apparently having Cannibal Corps in ace Ventura was his He pushed for that and their drummer, who was a guy named Paul Mazerkowitz. I think told Noisy that Carry came up to them on the set of that movie and he just started rattling off Cannibal Corpse lyrics and he was like, I want you to play the song Hammer Smashed Face, and then also recited the lyrics to Rancid Amputation, which was on the previous record. So Jim Carrey familiar with not one, but two Cannibal Corps albums, and Carry was in attendance at the G and R reunion in so Jim Carrey fan of metal. My favorite guns and Roses in cinema story is when producers for the two thousand one movie Black Hawk Down wanted to use Welcome to the Jungle in the soundtrack, but, according to slash Axel refused unless he could re record it with the current members of Guns and Roses so that the classic lineup who was no longer in the band would not get the royalties. I don't think it ended up happening. Yeah, he's a vindictive guy. Oh man, I gotta tell my bucketheads store. Well, it's not my buckethead surge. You ever here about Buckethead in the studio recording Chinese Democracy. No Buckethead ladies and gentlemen, the Incredibles first appearance. Um, yeah, so Buckethead is probably snown to Shredder wonks. He is a tremendously virtuosic guitarist. There's this amazing He grew up in l A. I think l I grew up in California, just a total like reclusive guitar shut in, and at some point he hit up on the idea of wearing this corrifying blank mask with a bucket of KFC chicken empty overturned on his head, hence the nickname Buckethead. And by all accounts he's this very sweet guy. He's a very he's a funny parlor interest for me. I've got YouTube a lot of videos. There's a video of him at like nineteen on the back patio of someone's porch, just ripping through all this guitar stuff he does, I think in the course of five minutes. He plays obviously all this metal shredding, but then he does a two handed tapping version of the Halloween theme song. He plays incredibly moving composition just called I Love My Parents. Uh, and then he does a whole Chicken Pickens segment where he takes the distortion off and just plays this insanely fast Nashville country stuff. There are also videos that you can see of him where he just stops playing music at his concerts to pop and lock on stage with a set of nunchucks. Anyway, Buckethead was brought into the studio to help record guitar parts for Chinese Democracy, and apparently in the studio I'm just reading about these sessions, Shack came by. At one point Buckethead requested a chicken coop be built for him in the studio, and uh, here's Tom Zuto again talking to Classic Rock. In two thousand and eight. There's a chair in there, there's a rubber chicken hanging from the ceiling, and a bunch of body parts and apparently a lot of porn. Now when you say body parts, not real body parts, bucketheads, other things, more movies. He's like a big horn movie dork. So he would have all these like fake severed limbs and stuff hanging in the human sized chicken coope inside of a top of the line recording studio. Again, I can't stress that enough. And apparently he was watching hardcore porn DVDs in the coupe. I guess he had a monitor or VCR, you know, laptop or something in there to get inspired. And Axel did not like this, and shades of his early very religious upbringing when his stepdad through the TV out type of not liking this perhaps or maybe just sus Maddie didn't think of it himself. Anyway, Axel choose buckethead out and buckethead leaves for days because he just thought he wanted to defend his right to watch porn in a chicken cool chicken coop. Anyway, buckethead ladies and gentlemen, uh outro I say, and this is where we end our journey with guns and roses. Yeah. I think I've been listening to these episodes, and I always end these by going, what more is there to say? Because we truly have over at every angle of this maybe except for the drum sounds, which, sorry, Stephen, your quote some more interesting than You're gated snare. Yeah, man, one of the best sound records of all time, one of the greatest dirt bag magnum opus is or whatever else I said in the intro, I got nothing else. Who folks, thank you for listening. This has been too much destruction, appetite for information, Axel drafting lawsuits against me as we speak. It's been nice knowing you. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan front Talk. We'll catch you next time if Axel doesn't stop us first. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalg and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum on the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, Please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.