There was a time, not too long ago, when the most important band in the world hailed from the seediest slums of Hollywood, not the Tampa Bay chapter of the Mickey Mouse Club. Fueled by hatred and heroin, but mostly the latter, the brutally raw Guns N’ Roses, whose face was a wiry, acid-tongued youth from Indiana named W. Axl Rose, first took the world by storm in the mid-80s.
However, good things never last, and disintegration of G N’ R, which began even before the explosively successful Use Your Illusion albums were released, fizzled its last by the mid-90s, when each member at the core of the group, unwilling or unable to help reinvent the band, left in a tizzy. Of course, the least expendable Gunner was always Slash, and although his presence will be missed, everyone outside of the Guitar Center employees of America knows that the band, for better or worse, is Axl.
Since the release of 1993’s poorly received cover album, The Spaghetti Incident?!, Rose has been holed up in a secret Los Angeles studio, recording every midnight into the wee hours of the morn to accommodate his nocturnal lifestyle. His agenda, which includes learning to play guitar, has been to create a recording that satiates his obsessive perfectionism, whether it will see the light of day anytime soon is anybody’s guess. In the process, Rose has gone through guitarists like tissues—from NIN’s Robin Finck to Dave Navarro—and is costing Geffen/Interscope a rumored $6 million.
The result of his painstaking efforts is to be called Chinese Democracy, purportedly a marriage of programmed beats, ear-splitting guitars, and Rose’s best instrument, himself, that should if nothing else make Limp Bizkit feel deeply ashamed, and hopefully will reinvent music as we know it. However, delays have constantly plagued the release, which at one time was scheduled for Summer 2000, delays stemming from, you guessed it, Rose himself.
So why should people still be interested in Rose? Why does he continue to pop up in the pages of Rolling Stone and on the covers of Spin? Even MTV deigns to track him down from time to time.
The simple answer is that Rose is interesting. In the words of the people he has crushed, “Axl truly doesn’t give a fuck.” He starts riots at arena concerts by diving into the crowd and punching out his fans. He gladly goes to prison rather than dealing with annoying airport personnel. Rose, unlike such embarrassing poseurs as Vince Neil and Bret Michaels (who hated him so much back when they weren’t nobodies) is both a compelling, charismatic figure and a martyr for creative freedom and expressive individualism, and as such remains relevant to the world at large.
Everything about him sparks curiosity. For instance, his emersion in regression therapy that has supplied him with conscious memories from before he was born, to say nothing of being sexually abused by his father at age two. Let’s not forget the fact that he is perpetually in litigation, fighting former bandmates, ex-wives, and complete strangers to boot.
So, will Rose ever finally roll back the stone and reemerge? News of his commitment to unveil the new Guns N’ Roses at this January’s Rock In Rio festival is encouraging, but for the time being, we’re just going to need a little patience.
By Casey Lombardo
Long Beach Union
Originally printed 11.13.00
Back