Classic Rock Magazine,  Izzy Stradlin Interview 2001

He blows off about a lot of things in this interview, Axl bearing the brunt of a lot of things.

"   
     The lowest point was the notorious riot that ensued halfway through a show in St. Louis in 1991, after Axl first dived into the crowd and then refused to continue the show because someone in the audience had taken a picture. Possibly the most unsavory incident in the band's crazed, incident-driven career, as Izzy says now: "When something like that happens, you can't help but think bac to Donington [in 1988, when two fans were trampled to death in the rush for the stage at the start of GN'R's set]. What's to stop us from having some more people trampled - because the singer doesn't like something? Like, what's the point? What are we getting at here?"

     Travelling in his own trailer-truck from gig to gig while the others flew - no longer able merely to lose himself in the illusion - Izzy knew it was only a matter of time before he bailed out completely. Steven had already gone - hypocritically bumped out of the band for failing to deal with his own drug problems. Things just weren't the same anymore. "The music had taken a back seat, there was nothing new coming from us. We didn't sit around and play accoustic guitars anymore. It was like, oh, time to go on - where's the singer? The singer walked off? Now what do we do?"

   
     Izzy's decision to leave Guns N' Roses was announced officially in November 1991. Looking back at the cuttings, it seems like nobody made much fuss about it. The downsizing of GN'R to the Axl & Slash Show had begun long before that."

"Musically, at first he found it hard not having the rest of the band to bounce off of. "In Guns N' Roses I'd write a bunch of songs and I'd play them for Axl and he'd go 'Oh, that sounds like Thin Lizzy's 'Jailbreak'. Or 'That sounds like Queen!' He would always pick this shit apart and sometimes it was annoying. But suddenly I'm in this new thing and I don't have somebody [like that]."

     On the plus side, unlike Slash, who would eventually have to find a new frontman for his songs, singing was not a problem for Izzy. "It felt pretty natural. Axl was never usually there for rehearsals, so I'd be the guy singing a fucked-up version of 'Paradise City' or whatever. It became a matter of, well, now I always have to sing them."

"He says his last face-to-face contact was six years ago. "I'd moved back out to LA. I bought this old Norton Commando 850 and was riding around one day and I thought, fuck it, I'll go by his house. Bastard, he lives up in the hills, in this big house. I'll go and see what he's up to, what he's doing, you know?

     "And I go up and he's got security gates, cameras, walls, all this shit, you know. So I'm ringing the buzzers, and eventually somebody comes and takes me up and there he is. He's like, ''Hey, man! Glad to see you!' Gives me a big hug and shows me round his house. It was great.

     "Then, I don't know, probably a month later, one night he calls me [and] we got into the issue of me leaving Guns N' Roses. I told him how it was on my side. Told him exactly how I felt about it and why I left. And man, that's the last time I've talked to the guy!

     "But, I mean he had a fucking notepad. I could hear him [turning the pages] going, 'Well, ah, you said in 1982... blah, blah, blah...' And I'm like, what the fuck - 1982? He was bringing up a lot of really weird old shit. I'm like, whatever, man. But that's the last time I talked to him.

     "Every two or three years I'll put a call in to the office and say, 'Hey, tell Axl gimme a call if he wants to'. But I mean... the weirdness of his life. To me, I live pretty normal. I can go anywhere. In 2001, I don't think people really give a shit. But for Axl, I knew for the longest time, because his face was all over the television, and stuff. I don't think he could really go anywhere or do anything.

     "And I think because of that he kind of got himself in a little hole up there in the hills. He kind of dug in deeper and deeper and now I think he's gone so fucking deep he's just... I mean, I could be completely wrong. But I know he doesn't drive [unheard of in LA] and he doesn't... he doesn't do anything. I've never, never seen him in town. Isolation can be a bad thing, but Axl's been at it for a long time now. you know, he always stays up at night..." He drifts off, not even trying to find the words this time.

  The key to Axl's personality, reckons Izzy, still lies back in Lafayette. "In high school, you know, Axl, he had long, red hair, he was a little guy and he got a lot of shit [because of it]. I think he never got laid, too, in school. I hate to bring this up cos this is getting nasty," he laughs. "But he never got no pussy at school, Axl. So now the guy's a big fucking rock star, he's got the chicks lined up, he's got money and he's got people... and the power went to this guy's head. I mean, he was a fucking monster! Nuts! Crazy!

     "And I never saw it coming. I mean, this is my side of it, he'd probably say I'm completely fucking crazy, but I think he went power mad. Suddenly he was trying to control everything. Did you ever see those fucked up contracts for the journalists to sign?" he asks, referring to notorious 'consent forms' that Axl foolishly tried to foist on the media in 1991.

     "The control issue just became worse and worse and eventually it filtered down to the band. He was trying to draw up contracts for everybody! And this guy, he's not a Harvard graduate, Axl. He's just a guy, just a little guy, who sings, is talented. But man, he turned into this fucking maniac. And I did, too, but it was a different kind of maniac. I was paranoid about the business aspect - I was the one freaking out going, 'Where's all the money?'"

     "For [Axl] the money wasn't as big a deal. But he had this power thing where he wanted complete control. And you can say, well, it goes back to your fucked up childhood where his dad used to smack him around, you know, and he had no control, so now he's getting it back. But it's like, it's still kooky, you know? You don't have to have everybody signing stuff."

     When Axl finally gave his old school friend a contract to sign, it was the final straw. "This is right before I left - demoting me to some lower position. They were gonna cut my percentage of royalties down. I was like 'Fuck you! I've been there from day one, why should I do that? Fuck you. I'll go play the Whiskey'. That's what happened. It was utterly insane."

     "Well, you know what? It's funny cos like me, Duff and Slash - we could go in and make a Guns N' Roses record in a week. basic tracks. [But] vocals and leads [instrumentation] could take God knows how long..."

The full interview is here:

http://www.chopaway.com/viewtopic.php?id=542

I've got the magazine, remember the interview well, its a good read.

Twat. I'll be voting that till its gone, one of the worst on the album for me.

What about the bass on this record? I can only really notice Tommy on the outro of TWAT. He is either drowned out or just absent on almost the entire album.