1988.01.08 - Rock City News - Interview with Slash, Duff, Axl and Izzy

Many thanks to @troccoli for sharing with us the rare articles and interviews he has collected, as well as many other amazing GN'R memorabilia.
The original pictures of this interview can be found on his site here:
http://www.troccolitm.com/RockCityNews.html

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GUNS & ROSES CONQUER L.A.!!
 
INTERVIEW WITH DUFF & SLASH
 
Slash: Duff, Axl, Izzy & Steven. And he’ll be back on the 13^th of January.
 
Blue: What happened to Steve?
 
Duff: He drank 7 double kamikazis and punched a lightpost outside the bar.
 
Slash: He missed the glass part and hit the metal. Broke his hand in 14 places.

Blue: So you have Fred from Cinderella filling in?
 
Slash: Yeah, but don’t print that. Fred’s really cool, and he came and filled in at the last minute, and he knew all the songs and he really saved our necks.
 
Blue: You guys just got back from the tour. How did it go?
 
Slash: It was great. We went out with the Cult. Then we did a tour on the East Coast, headlining. Then we went out with Motley Crue, which was great. I mean, playing 15,000 seaters and stuff with bands like ourselves just fresh out of the clubs. It went over real well. Then we went out with Alice Cooper.
 
Duff: His show got cancelled because his Dad died and he had to leave to take care of the funeral.
 
Slash: We were the epitome of Red Dog surviving on the road. Plus we had to play in the corner of the stage because Alice’s stage set was so large. Then we came out and did the L.A. shows that I thought were really great.
 
Blue: Did you know you were gonna sell-out all four shows?
 
Slash: No. We only booked one, and then that sold out and then we tried another one. And then after 4 shows we were going to try for 5, but the people at the Rose Bowl wouldn’t let us. Can you imagine booking the Rose Bowl?
 
Blue: I guess you’re really on your way.
 
Duff: Yeah, but we have a lot of work to do. We have to keep our noses to the grindstone. But it’s great to realize that we’re on the right road.
 
Slash: We’ll be leaving here to go to Europe to do a couple of dates with Motley Crue, then we’ll be back here to do some theatre dates. And then we have an offer to go to Japan and do several shows.
 
Duff: 7 shows.
 
Slash: Is it seven? Yeah, 7 shows. Then, when we get back, we’re going to go on a nation-wide tour with a big name act which I won’t mention in case it doesn’t happen.
 
Blue: How do you like working with Geffen Records?
 
Slash: Great. Well, they’re happy. We’ll be going gold pretty soon. We sold 400,000 copies so far. The Motley thing was really the show to help us sell records; whereas [at] all the other gigs people showed up because they’d already bought the record. Playing 15,000 seaters, there is a good portion of these people who don’t have it. So when you get that much exposure – well, we sold 18,000 records from that one Motley gig.
 
Blue: What is the single off your album?
 
Slash: “Welcome to the Jungle”. “Appetite for Destruction” is the title of a picture that was on the front cover before it got banned.
 
Blue: It got banned?
 
Slash: Yeah. It had a picture of this chick flashin’ her panties at you.
 
Duff: The first cover got banned after 30,000 copies.
 
Slash: The next album should have someone giving the finger on it.
 
Blue: I noticed you did a dedication to Todd Crew on the...
 
Slash: I’ve really said all there is about that. We’ve been doing that since we’ve been on the road. You know, “Todd, rest in peace.”
 
Blue: Didn’t you get thrown out of the Cathouse recently?
 
Slash: I get thrown out all the time. It’s like home. Last week I got dragged out. Now they got a security guard that follows me around.
 
Blue: What’s your favorite pastime?
 
Slash: Drinking and playing guitar; and I think I drink more than I play guitar.
 
Duff: I drink when I play guitar.
 
Blue: Who writes most of the songs?
 
Slash: Axl writes most of the lyrics, and the rest of us write most of the music.
 
Blue: Are you guys on MTV yet?
 
Slash: No. We should be, we gave them the new video. We’ve been on with other ones in the past almost every weekend.
 
Duff: We went to the studio in New York to do a taping, and we got 30 seconds to trash their set.
 
Slash: And we did a good job, it blew up real well.
 
Blue: What kind of girls do you like?
 
Slash: Fat with big tits. That’s my pet peeve. Oh, and blondes.
 
Blue: How’s it feel to live in a hotel now and have your own cigarettes?
 
Slash: We don’t. That was only when we were playing.
 
Duff: I would deliberately not drink so much vodka at the gig so I could bring some home.
 
Slash: All I want is a bottle of Jack and a constant supply of cigarettes. That’s not so much to ask.
 
Blue: The Weekly had a great review of you guys (yuk, yuk).
 
Duff: The Weekly said we were the epitome of “too much, too soon”. Glam-type, non-talented, non-cool  rock & roll bands, which was bucked and it makes me feel bitter.
 
Blue: What kind of records do you guys listen to?
 
Slash: I listen to all kinds of shit, Metallica, Cameo, Fear, AC/DC, Stones, etc.
 
Blue: What’s your New Year’s resolution?
 
Slash: I don’t have one. I won’t stop drinking. I won’t stop smoking. I’ll probably be a fat, fucking scum-sucking pig by the time I reach fifty.
 
Duff: I want to find Quaaludes on this next tour.
 
INTERVIEW WITH AXL & IZZY
 
BLUE: OK, so I have to think of some questions I didn’t ask those guys (Slash & Duff). How did you come up with the name Guns & Roses?
 
AXL: That was from working with Tracii Guns from LA Guns. We got together, and we were going to change the name or something - and I was always going to do some solo stuff with Tracii anyway. And I said we’ll call it Guns & Roses. So we just decided to call the band that. And then, when Tracii and I quit working together, I just kept the name cause I thought of it and it was really working for us; plus we really dug the hell out of the name. Simple.
 
BLUE: And Tracii now is in LA Guns?
 
AXL: Yeah, I kind of like the fact that it’s still, you know, Guns & Roses, cause I worked a lot with Tracii on a lot of different things and stuff. I still have really good feelings about all that.
 
BLUE: What did you do before Guns & Roses? Were you ever in any other bands?
 
AXL: No, before LA Guns?
 
BLUE: Before Guns & Roses...
 
AXL: Right, I was singing “Shot of Your Love” [sic, apparently he said “Shadow of Your Love”] and “Anything Goes”, and “Don’t Cry”, and stuff in LA Guns and Hollywood Rose. Hollywood Rose was, at that time, right before Guns & Roses was. Izzy booked this show at the Waters Club (in San Pedro) with no band, right? He goes, “Dude, I got a gig.” I go, “Great man, I’ll come down.” He goes, “Yeah, you want to sing?” And then we tried to get Slash, but Slash had to work that night. So we got Chris Weber from the original Rose family and we had Rob Gardner, the original drummer for LA Guns, and Steve Darrow who played in a version of Hollywood Rose with Slash and I. We did that show, and before that I was in Hollywood Rose with Slash and Steve and different bass players. The main one was this guy Steve Darrow. Before that, Izzy and I had a band called Rose. And before we had Rose it was called “Axl”, and that was before I was Axl. This guy goes, “Man, you eat, sleep and walk like Axl, why don’t you just be Axl?” And I said, “Bitching’ alright.”
 
BLUE: How was the tour?
 
AXL: Well, the tour’s been real interesting, cause of touring with all the different types of tours. You know, it’s like, for a month and a half with the Cult in Hockey Arenas and things, and that’s what you tour in Canada, you know; and then some theaters going down the coast, and then the Long Beach Arena. But after the Cult, we did a headlining thing in Europe doing small clubs, like in Germany and Holland, and then like 2000 seat theaters in England, like 5 shows there. After that, we did a club thing. We had Faster Pussycat opening over there. We did a club thing through New York, Boston, Philly and stuff like that for about two and a half weeks with EZO opening, cause they’re on Geffen and made it really easy just to do quickly. Then being with the Crue for a month was getting to the big areas and you learned a lot about professionalism from that. Fuckin’ a lot. And then the Alice Cooper thing, man, that was scary shit.
 
BLUE: What was it like touring with Alice Cooper?
 
AXL: Everybody in the band on the Alice Cooper tour was really cool to us, they dug it. They’d be walking down the halls going, “Welcome to the Jungle”, you know. And we hung out with Alice and was like, you know, this is a great band and stuff, and we did photos with him.
 
IZZY: The last night of the tour he was getting off the stage, and me and Axl were hanging out on the side, and he goes by and says, “Hey man, thanks for everything.”
 
BLUE: Who writes most of the songs? You write the lyrics?
 
AXL: It’s really co-written. A lot of times, I’ll come up with a whole song lyrically or something, and Slash and Izzy come up with a lot of guitar things. But then there’s like, I’ll come up with a guitar part or a basic idea for a whole song on guitar, and Izzy will have all the words and Slash will have a riff. And, like, with Duff, you don’t have to tell him what to play on bass. He just plays, if he digs the song he’s got a bass line for it already. Everybody in this band basically plays what they want and it happens to fit together real well.
 
BLUE: What are most of the lyrics about?
 
AXL: Well, it’s really strange. I kind of write, like, with a mentality of our club days here and the people that would come to those shows which are basically over 21. All of a sudden, you’re on a Motley Crue tour and there’s these 13 year old kids; and all of a sudden, you’re singing about this 25 year old girl who’s into cocaine. It’s kind of strange, cause you didn’t necessarily plan it. I’m glad that we’re getting all audiences, but we weren’t just aiming at the young audience, we were just writing about our lives.
 
BLUE: So it’s basically about your lives?!
 
AXL: Yeah, and you just put it in a song the best that you can. Sometimes it’s a little abstract, it just depends on the song and how it feels best to put it out. I look at every song we do as a kind of painting, and the only common things are that it’s us five, and we like wild guitars.
 
BLUE: Ok, thanks Axl and Izzy, tell Steve hello. Good-bye and we’ll watch you guys rocket in 1988. Bye!!

I was just transcribing this interview!! https://www.a-4-d.com/t3114-1988-01-dd-rock-city-news-guns-roses-conquer-l-a#12136



I was literally working on it when you posted it. Well, you saved me some work there

Oh, sorry, I should have told you that I had started transcribing it.
At least I hope I got you when you had just started it and saved you from most of the work

I somehow had missed the thread you had started. Sorry

Haha, no worried! I was bored transcribing the interview and then you saved me. Now I can instead use the transcribed interview to update the History section, which is a lot funnier.

Soulmonster wrote:Haha, no worried! I was bored transcribing the interview and then you saved me. Now I can instead use the transcribed interview to update the History section, which is a lot funnier.

That's good to know

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It's funny that Izzy talks only once in the Axl/Izzy part of the interview. At least he said more than "No" in this one

Hehe, right.

What do you think is the reason Steven did so few interviews? Izzy was active in discussions in the beginning, Slash did lots of interview even if he didn't like it, Axl loved talking and did plenty in the beginning, Duff was usually there for band interviews and occasionally with Slash...but Steven only participated now and then, either on band interviews or on a few ones with Slash and or Duff. And it is not like he was an introvert and shy. He rarely contributed much in the interviews where he was featured, but he didn't seem reluctant to should out some smart-ass comments. Was he not asked to come for the interviews? Did he prefer to do something else?

This is an interesting question. I hadn't thought about it.
Steven participated mostly in early interviews with all the band or the 4/5 of it. Maybe in those interviews he felt he'd better let the others do most of the talking?
And later, considering that he said in his autobiography that Slash and Duff started avoiding him and leaving him out of the loop (Axl didn't have much to do with him in the first place and Izzy was aloof), maybe they didn't take him in the interviews they did?
I wonder if Steven had done any interviews on his own, with a magazine about drums, for example, that we don't know about. He would have normally been asked for an interview like that when the band became successful.

Based on this:

Blue: The Weekly had a great review of you guys (yuk, yuk).

Duff: The Weekly said we were the epitome of “too much, too soon”. Glam-type, non-talented, non-cool rock & roll bands, which was bucked and it makes me feel bitter.

There must be a not-so-positive L.A. Weekly article from 1987 that we don't have.