An interview by Amir Ibrahim, Oriol Sibila and Cesar Martin for Popular 1 (Spain)

DUFF McKAGAN

"I love each and every member of Guns N' Roses - I would do anything for them"

I do not believe any introduction is needed. It's been almost 15 years that we keep on praising him from these pages. From Guns N' Roses to 10 Minute Warning, his solo projects or his work with Neurotic Outsiders, Duff McKagan has become one of those guys above good and evil. Because of his Gunner past, because of his future with Mark Lanegan or just for being one of the guys that has been closest, face to face with death, Duff deserved to be in these pages once again more than anybody else. After many months of trying, we finally managed to arrange a meeting with him in his Los Angeles house. Can you think of anything better than a sunny L.A. morning with Duff waiting for you at the recording studio he owns in his Mullholland Falls residence?

Half an hour before the appointment, Cesar, Amir and yours truly leave from Sunset Blv. for Duff's home in L.A., a beautiful mansion on the hills just above Hollywood, more specifically in Mullholland Falls, Studio City district. As songs like "Reckless Life", "Nice Boys" and "Patience" blast in our car, it feels strange weird to leave behind such emblematic places for Guns like the Rainbow or the Troubadour and head for some of L.A.'s finest, high-class areas. In no time you leave Hollywood's dirty streets to enter the elegant Studio City gardens, same as they once managed to change the small L.A. clubs for sold-out stadiums around the world. I'm not going to deny - Guns have been the most important band in my life, and for many a year Duff has been my favorite Gunner. So I guess it is only easy to imagine what one feels when heading for the home of one of your all-time idols. Thousands of images cross my mind seamless. Memories of how "Appetite" thrilled me, the blast of these five guys blowing away L.A. clubs, the mastery of the "Illusions", Duff dedicating "So Fine" to Johnny Thunders, the strength of "Believe In Me" and "Neurotic Outsiders". The whole cocktail of feelings come down to nothing as we ring the bell, the door opens and "Hi guys, I'm Duff. How are you?".

And sure enough, Duff is there. With very short hair and very skinny, Guns N' Fuckin' Roses bassist invites us into his place. It is actually not his regular home, since Duff uses to live in his hometown Seattle, but he keeps this L.A. house to use the studio or just to run away from Washington's capital city's stress. His best times he lived in the city of angels, and he knows a large piece of himself belongs here forever. As we enter the place, first thing you see is a large living room arranged to his own liking - no antiques, no distasteful pictures, no stupid porcelain figures. The main decoration is a huge drum kit, a piano, a couple of keyboards and several guitars and basses scattered around on the couches. The sight is amazing, oriented to a terrace from where you see the whole Hollywood at your feet. It's all good - sometimes life is fair with guys like Duff. When he feels like it, he can go out and watch from the heights all those clubs that in the late 80s helped him write one of the most wonderful pages in the history of rock and roll. Duff says we had better move down to the studio in the basement, since none others than Mark Lanegan and Mike Johnson are also home - they have been working until very late night, and Duff does not want to disturb them. Funny what life keeps in store for you and what a small world it is sometimes. Not long ago I tried to interview Lanegan over the phone, and all the answers I got were from an answering machine saying: "Yes, McKagan in L.A. We're not at home right now". Well damn me, this very same telephone is in front of me right now.

Duff cannot stop praising Lanegan as a person and as a musician. We absolutely agree that his voice is the deepest one can listen to nowadays, and he mentions how it is a pleasure working with him. Actually two talented guys have met, and it is thrilling to think what can become of their partnership. If there are right now two honest, true, music-loving guys will talent to spare, these are Mark and Duff. Anyway, talking about Lanegan we head for the studio, down a few stairs and into the recording facility itself. And right in our face we find one of the most emotional sights one can imagine: The famous picture of Guns with the Stones in L.A.

Coliseum's dressing room. Axl, Charlie, Keith, Mick, Duff, Izzy and Steven are always there. Duff says he found the pic by chance not long ago while messing with some old personal stuff, and he knew on the spot it was the picture to preside the room. That says a lot about Duff. We all know what happened to the original Guns, and for him it would be easy now to bitch about the past and be centered in his persona and his future, but that's not like Duff. He knows those were the high times of his life. The Stones were his idols, and Axl, Slash, Izzy and Steven were like brothers to him. He knows they made it real big, and he is never going to deny that, though he is no longer a part of Guns N' Roses. He was there and he is proud of that. He mentions he's been with Izzy in Japan, playing bass in most of his shows, which he considers an honor and a pleasure. He says Izzy is absolutely away from the mainstream, and everything he does is just for fun. Next he plays guitar and bass for us while we take some pictures, and he asks whether we can go do the interview in a bar and have a drink. So, no problem, after a few more pics we leave that Holy House and head for the typical postcard-like American road bar.

Cesar gets in Duff's car, a huge 4x4, and on the way they talk about the new project with Mark Lanegan, which Duff points is going to sound somewhat like Bad Company, and about his second solo album, "Beautiful Disease", of which he presents us with the copy that's playing in his CD, something real precious considering Geffen is never releasing it. We follow with Amir in our car, and I remember that moment as a real trip. "One In A Million" plays in our stereo while we are following one of the performers of this amazing song. And yes, for a few moments we feel more than ever "one in a million". Already in the bar, Duff orders a milkshake, we turn the recorder on and start the interview.

Can you tell us what are you currently up to?

Well, like I said before I'm in a new band. It's me, Mark Lanegan, Mike Johnson and a drummer from Seattle. We are going there tomorrow to do some playing. Mark, Mike and me are demoing stuff with a drum machine. He's the drummer in New American Shame. This is a project Mark and myself have been planning for a long time now, and it is the first time I tell anyone, because it's been quite secret. There was even a rumor in MTV News that we denied, because we wanted no one to know about it. When you are in the music business you need to keep some things surprising, so that people will say "Wow, this and this guy together!".

Though the truth is, the fact that we come from different bands does not affect us in any way. We knew each other already, because we actually come from the same place and we grew up listening to the same music - The Saints, Bad Company, Stranglers, and I could go on and on about our common influences. I wrote a record for Geffen, "Beautiful Disease", and when it was about to be released Geffen was absorbed and the priorities changed, so in the end it was never released, and never will. However Mark loved some of the songs. Maybe all this was bound to happen.

We're gonna record three cuts from that album, so now we're working on the songs. Like when the Neurotic Outsiders thing, which was not anything too serious for any of us. We never rehearsed the songs with Neurotic. We just wrote them in five minutes or Steve Jones had already done. We were not into in 24/7. This is what we are doing now.

Are you playing guitar or just bass in the new project?

I'm playing both guitar and bass in the current sessions. We're thinking of looking for a bassist, with me an Mark on the guitars, but who knows. I offered myself as the bassist, but Mark likes my guitar playing a lot so that's what it's gonna be.

Is there any record label interested in you?

No, but we have a good manager. We're gonna record a demo and play live like everybody else does. But we're going to record a demo that no one will be able to reject, so we'll choose whatever label we please. That's the plot, world domination and all the stuff! (laughs). I'm very happy to be working on something that's going to redefine me to the audience. Right now I know who I am in my private life, and I say this because I think it very important, since I didn't know for a long time. You are in that huge band Guns N' Roses and you don't really have the time to lose with yourself, and without it you end up lost. This may sound drama, but it's the truth. It's terrible, you know! The bottom line is drug addiction, alcohol and the rest of shit. That almost killed me. It's a serious matter! So I believe in these last years Neurotic Outsiders helped me out in my private life, because I had that way of escape that was real fun. But it didn't wholly define me in the end. I was playing with my idol and we played rock'n'roll! It turned me into a 32-33 year-old kid. I was the kid and it felt good. Great!

Can you describe what your new music sounds like?

Our goal is to sound as good as Pink Floyd in "The Wall". Is it going to sound like Pink Floyd's "The Wall"? No! Everybody knows what Mark Lanegan's voice sounds like and the darkness it hides. All that is going to be in there, but regarding the songwriting this is where Mike Johnson and I come in. The songs are oriented to places where Mark would be likely to feel attracted to. The common influences are the same, like Burt Bacharach, Badfinger and the list goes on.

What's your opinion about "Believe In Me" when you listen to it today?

I think it was a private record. I think it was me trying to fix my private life, and was not really a whole album. It was more like a diary. I don't know if you knew already, but while we were touring I was writing songs and one thing led to another.

When you were touring with Guns N' Roses.

Yeah, one thing led to another and one guy in Geffen suggested to make a record. It was a big step to take, because those were really private songs. I think it was a good picture of my life at the time. Would I release that record now? No way! But I'm proud of it for what it is, for several reasons. It was my Johnny Thunders record.

After you left Guns N' Roses you joined Steve Jones to set up Neurotic Outsiders. How did the idea build up?

I was still in Guns when the idea started to take shape, but we were idle. I used to go to our practice place, me and Matt would play for a while, but no one else used to show up. Slash was having trouble with Axl and, well, you know the story already. Axl would finally show up like at 4 a.m., oh well, fuck it! I realized I didn't want to wait until 4 in the morning to practice anymore. My life had changed. I'm not going to talk shit about anyone. Everybody does things for their own reasons. I've grown more reasonable, and I think I've always been, but now I do stick to it. I do as I say, and say as I think. I was not going to go "Ok, it's fine man, I'll swallow it again". No. I faced it and said no way, this is not fair. if it happens three more times I'm out.

Well, it did happen. So Jonesy (Steve Jones) and I had been practicing and playing some gigs, because Guns were doing nothing. We were playing the Viper Room every Monday night. It was awesome! We did it for charity. Afterwards we got a record deal. Of course our interest was not beyond that, but as soon as you try to keep something quiet record companies start to pop up everywhere, all of a sudden. We didn't want to make a record, but we finally said "Fuck Maverick, make us a good offer!" They said "Hey, you don't have to tour, we realize you each have your own stuff to do". So we said it was OK and did the record. I love that record! I was going to work with Steve Jones and he's my friend. We wanted to play some gigs, which is something I hope I'll be able to do for a long time. I think the band fans realized what the whole thing was about. It was something we did once and for a certain time, so there was no pressure involved at all.

You had some health problems in 1994. What happened exactly?

I had laid off the drugs and joined my band for a European tour. I didn't do drugs anymore, but was drinking like crazy. I always needed a cocktail by the bed when I woke up in the middle of the night, because else I'd feel awful. I wanted to stop the whole thing but I couldn't. After Europe I went to Japan and then back home. I had bought this house in Seattle, the place were I was raised. I was laying at home when I felt this pungent pain. At the moment I thought it was weird, though to be honest I was in pain all the time, I was real fucked!

But this time the pain began to extend and became so severe, and lasted so long that I couldn't even move. Not even wake up to call 911. Luckily a friend of mine dropped by, and I heard him down the stairs crying "Hey, were are you?" when he entered the door. I couldn't even shout I was upstairs, but he came into my room, found me and took me to the hospital. My pancreas had exploded and a shitload of toxins were running around my stomach. When this kind of thing fucks up a lot of people die, but I did not. I could go on telling you the experience in the hospital, but you don't want to hear the details.

I guess it must have had you reconsider a lot of things.

Well it had to happen. It's the only way you will stop. I saw myself in the hospital with all those tubes and shit. It changed my life completely. It was like "Hey, you can be proud for being here, you haven't died. You've done a lot of crazy stuff, and you ain't dead. It was the end you were heading for, but it did not happen. You are here for a reason". Now I'm enjoying a second life. Well, I think the record we are putting up is also a good reason to keep alive.

When you were real sick, did anyone in Guns N' Roses or your other friends try to help you out?

Slash. Yeah, Slash, my friends in Seattle and my family were there.

You had a group of people supporting you, didn't you.

Yeah, I'm the youngest of eight brothers, so I had my family by me in the hospital. It was very nice that Slash was there as well. He and me, we've shared some stuff together. We're like brothers.

So today you are sober and keep clean.

Oh yeah. I've quit smoking and I'm sick that things are turning out so well. That's bullshit! No, seriously, I'm very happy. Like last night, we were working until late night, and sometimes I can sleep barely four hours and feel good when I wake up. If I were drinking or whatever, I couldn't. I probably wouldn't have gone to sleep at all. I wouldn't think I had an interview at 12 noon, I'd just say "Fuck it!" and keep myself up all night. I couldn't have driven here for the interview. It all keeps adding up. I wouldn't be able to do a lot of things, like you taking some pictures.

You even went back to school to enter the University.

I'm really overwhelmed by it! I'm going back to school. I took one year-and-a-half course in business management. We sold a lot of records and made a lot of money, but no one in Guns got their school degree. I didn't know what bonds or the stock market was about, or another financial terms. It all was part of rebuilding my life again and finding out the direction I should take. So I'm back to school and I'm a brilliant student, nothing but A's. It's really fun! If you are in your 30s, you better get an A o else what the fuck are you there for. I'm growing thanks to school.

You got a degree?

Nope, I have no degrees. I stopped because of my record "Beautiful Disease" for Geffen, which was supposed to be released, and I was practicing with the band so we could tour. Then it all ended.

But you gained a lot of knowledge.

Quite so. Yes.

What school did you go to?

Santa Monica College. Very impressing. I went to the evening class. Eighteen year olds were freaked to see me around. Everybody said, "We ain't telling no one you're here!" It was great, a wonderful experience.

You're now between Seattle and L.A. Do you miss Los Angeles night life when in Seattle?

I'm not very interested in night life anymore. I've had as much nightlife as several hundreds together. My night life is narrowed to my gigs, that's night enough for me. Now and again I go out to check out a band, like the Screaming Trees when they played the Viper Room. When a friend is playing, I'll usually drop by.

A lot of people say the weather in Seattle is very depressing, because it rains a lot, and that combined with the use of drugs influenced the music of bands like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains or Nirvana.

I don't think so. There's a huge music scene there, and the reason is very simple. Since it rains a lot you have to practice in this dark basements and you spend a lot of time playing because you can't hang out or get some suntan, or go to the beach or go play tennis or golf or whatever. So you just play. Amps sound different in a high humidity environment. Everything sounds different. Besides, in Seattle you don't feel the "pop" pressure like in L.A., things like "we need to write a hit so that we get a record deal". There's no recording companies in Seattle. So people basically write for themselves. They just play and people go and see the bands, and that's how they influence each other. It's a world apart. I love to be there. It doesn't seem depressing at all to me. Chris Cornell loves Seattle.

Your career started way before all those bands ever existed. How did you took a different way by moving to L.A. and joining a band like Guns N' Roses?

Soundgarden, those guys were already around. There was a lot of heroin in Seattle when I was playing in punk rock bands from 1979 to 1984. Heroin flowed just like that and everybody was a junkie. There were no clubs for playing, no nothing! It was one of those times in life when you have to make a choice. I had to choose between staying in Seattle or moving to Hollywood for a chance. And that's what I did. I moved into an apartment, and Izzy lived just across the street.

Boom! We set up our band. Then it all begun. It was weird for me, cause when I met Steven Adler he was listening to W.A.S.P. and I had never heard them. He was freaked, he thought "wow! This music is awesome!". I knew other bands like Mötley Crüe and Ratt. I didn't just listen to punk rock, I also listened to Prince and all kinds of music. Izzy was more like me, listening to Thunders, Hanoi Rocks, Aerosmith or whatever. Steve and Slash were more into metal. Axl was into Nazareth. But they all were crazy about W.A.S.P., they loved that record '(Animal) Fuck Like A Beast'! They [Guns] were real rockers.

When we played, I thought "Hey, this is true rock!". We set up the band, but the influences were so diverse. Our first show with the whole line up was in Seattle, opening for The Fastbacks. At first we regarded ourselves more like a punk rock band and all our gigs were opening for bands like Tex and the Horseheads, The Dickies, Social Distortion and the Chili Peppers. That's how things changed. If I had stayed in Seattle, who knows what would have happened. Maybe I would have ended in Soundgarden. You never know.

A couple of years back you recorded an album with 10 Minute Warning, your band before you joined Guns N' Roses. How did you come to join them back?

I'll tell you what happened. Stone Gossard came to my place in L.A. at the time I was involved in the Neurotic thing. A lot of people say 10 Minute Warning influenced their guitar playing. The guys in Soundgarden, for example. Kim Thayil says 10 Minute Warning were his biggest influence. We were some sort of "kings of trash" back in 1983. Stone said he wouldn't have started playing guitar if he hadn't seen me. We're the same age and all that. So Stone said "Would you make a record? I'm paying for it." It was a different story, I had just left Guns and was in Neurotic, so I said I'd call him. And I did, the band went there and we recorded a demo. But our singer was in a federal penitentiary at the time, and he wasn't going to be out for a long time, so we needed to look for a different singer.

Why was he in prison?

Bank robbery. Not just one, but several. So we found this guy, Christopher, and then Sub Pop got involved. We recorded for Sub Pop. We all got in the same room and the guys were like "C'mon, let's play". A lot of years had gone by, like 12 of something, and it was a lot of fun. It was like a fun thing again without so much of a trace of bitterness. I loved to do it. And so did the people at Sub Pop!

A week ago you were in Japan, playing with Izzy. Did you play any Guns N' Roses songs, or just Izzy's material?

We played 'Attitude', which is not a Guns N' Roses song, but we made it popular. "Made popular by Guns N' Roses" (says in a joking tone).

How did it feel playing with your old mate Izzy?

Awesome! We are real fast friends. By the way, when my pancreas fucked Izzy phoned too. We've always been friends and our friendship has gone beyond music. We've been through a lot of things together. I play in his records, which usually takes no more than two days. It's like "Here's the song, play, thank you". For this last record he wanted to go away and play some shows with me. We were rehearsing in Hollywood for a week and then we wanted to play some shows, which were really fun. It was so easy! In Japan everybody was around us freaked, seeing the two of us together. It was exciting.

We are recording a new album in two weeks time. Rick [Richards, guitar] is coming from Atlanta and Taz [Bentley, drums] will come from Dallas. The same guys that were in Japan. It's nothing but that - things are pretty easy with Izzy. The songs are not very hard actually, they are based in good old rock roots. That's what I like about Izzy. I think he's keeping something essential - rock roots. They are slowly being lost and no one seems to do what he's doing. He's mixing country and rock and roll, and he's good at it.

When Izzy left Guns N' Roses, he supposedly did so by the same reasons you did - because Guns were turned into a big money-making machine. Is that right? (Duff nods). Can you give us something about that and why Guns N' Roses became this money-making thing?

If you give too much to someone like Axl. Let's put it this way. If everyone around you is answering "yes" for years, if everything is reduced to "yes, yes, yes", then in your relation with other people, when someone says "no" you think that person is wrong. You're gonna tell him to fuck off! You're in this band from the start, and then suddenly everything turns autocratic, just because one person is surrounded by people saying yes to everything. It's not autocracy legally, but there is just one person thinking that's his band. Well then, keep your damned band! One can't stand it anymore. I love each and every member of Guns N' Roses, and that feeling is not going to fade away. I would do anything for them, no question. But people change. I have changed. I've got a larger goal in life now. So, what could I do? Be pissed and make a lot of money? To me, making music is not oriented to making money. If you're in it for the money, then you're in it for the wrong reason. You'll never make any good music, I tell you.

When you left the band, how did it all happen? You said you were out, you said you needed to talk?

Yeah, just talk, sit down and talk. I told them I had changed. I said if they needed help, they could just call me. I told Axl this was his band, he had ignored everyone and had hired his best friend for the band. I couldn't play with him. Paul Huge, that was the guy! He's a friend of Axl, he's a 'yes man'.

Why couldn't you play with him?

Man, you can't be in Guns N' Roses just like that. That was a real band. Do you play guitar?

No.

Well, imagine you and I grow up together and you're my best friend. OK, I'm in Guns N' Roses and I tell the rest you're going to join the band. "OK, Slash, Axl, Matt, guys, this guy is in the band". "Duff, you got a minute?" "No, he's in the band" "Well, no. Everyone in the band has to vote it, Duff, so no way!" "Fuck you, this guy is in the band! I'm not doing anything unless this guy is in the band" "OK, you know what? We'll try and play with him, since you're that much interested in it. Hey Duff, the guy can't play" "I don't care" "Well that's not very reasonable." "I don't care" At that point, what would you do? I came to a point where I couldn't even look at him (Paul Huge). If I were in such a situation, if I were the friend joining the band, I'd say "Hey guys, you've done very good yourselves alone, I'm not going any further. Hey, Duff, thanks for the offer, but I'm breaking your band." But he didn't say it.

So far, when you were working on the new stuff, how did it sound like?

There was no sound. There was no nothing. We didn't play. We tried. Matt and I did play. It was cool when Slash joined for a week. Even when Zakk Wylde and Slash played together, there were a couple of songs in which there was a natural progression and they were very rocking. You can imagine, they were really hard songs. As hard as I like them, yeah! But I can't tell you what they sounded like, there was not a definite sound.

How was it like working with Zakk Wylde for that brief time?

I liked it a lot. He's a good guy. He's the funniest guy I know! You can't help but liking him. I worked with him and the guy is a genius. When he sits at the piano and starts playing, he can bring tears to your eyes. When he was 18 he was like the champion of his state playing the piano.

Do you keep in touch with Steven Adler? No one seems to know what he's been up to lately.

Very little. Steven damaged himself a lot. The only thing you can do for the guy is cry for him. It's hard to talk to him sometimes. He's still the same guy, but there's a lot of things that have changed him forever.

Has he been doing anything musically?

No.

What do you feel when you listen to "Use Your Illusion" today?

I think they are amazing records, and it was an honor to perform in such records like those, because of the very different styles those songs covered. I like to have been part of that.

That tour was truly unique, because in its first leg the band was touring in stadiums playing songs that no one had heard before. How was all that?

It was strange. I all started because Axl or someone said "hey, we're going to play songs from the new record that's out in a month or two. How's that?" And we all said "Cool!". People was thankful about that too, because it was like "hey, we're the first to listen to these songs". So I think it was all good. We were just a band playing.

What's your opinion about "Get In The Ring"?

You know what, I wrote part of that song. The title was "Why do you look at me when you hate me", and it was about the press writing shit about us. Well, why do you write about us if you actually hate us? I could give you the names of those that hated us. Why didn't the press hire another people to write about us, instead of bashing us? Why did they have to write about us? I was very idealistic and I thought the world had changed. You need a lot of negative energy within to write so much about someone you actually hate.

Izzy said he didn't understand why Axl came to the point of mentioning in the songs the journos he hated.

The song was sort of a joke, and it all started with that song. Then Axl took it very personal. He thought it a good idea. But definitely, if there's some filthy people that need to be treated like filth, who cares? Fuck 'em!

At that time the band released some very elaborated video-clips of songs like "Estranged" and "November Rain" that some of the old fans hated, because on them the wild essence of Guns was lost.

I think they took our music to the redneck America, as we say here.

During that time, did you enjoy making those videos? Or were they more Axl's or the record company's ideas?

They were all Axl's ideas, but there are five guys in a band and everyone's got an opinion. At the time, I think the record company was afraid of telling us not to do them. They saw what was happening too, but when you are generating such big money no one's telling you what you have to do. Oh well, it's done and my take is, if it were for me we would never have done those videos. But it was not in my hands.

Especially you, coming from a punk background.

Yeah, all that shit about the limousine and that. C'mon man, don't show your fucking house and the limousine! You're going to alienate all your fans! The fans of our first record were rednecks, punks, and rockers. We were in this street level and suddenly everyone was bringing their parents to our shows. Like in "November Rain". I love the song, but the video. Beautiful people, we became beautiful people.

What's your memory of the St. Louis incident, when Axl got into a fight with some Hell's Angels during a show, left the stage and the place was turned into a battlefield?

That was something stupid. I won't comment on that because I don't want to be negative. It happened and it was ridiculous. There was people injured and that pissed me off a lot. I can't enjoy people being hurt in a show. That was bullshit! It was one of the worse nights, like the Donington show were those kids died. That was horrible.

After you left Guns N' Roses, did you take some time off?

I was working on my record, "Beautiful Disease", every day, six days a week. That's what I did. I left in August and worked on the record from August to January. It was supposed to be released on February 12th that year. The people in the band, who were going to be out with me on the road, after the record was not released said "Fuck it, let's tour anyway". We did the tour under the name Loaded, and it was like a punk tour, always in punk clubs, and it was a lot of fun, something I really needed to do. I got married by the end of August. Then I started with 10 Minute Warning before working with Mark. We've written some 30 songs and so we come to present. So I never thought of stopping working and say "Hey, I'm going to take some months off" because I can't. I can't just sit at home.

You even played with Slash in the Slam Dance Festival. How was that?

Very fun. Matt worked on the soundtrack for a movie and he arranged all the songs and musicians. I sang a song and Slash played guitar. I don't know if you've seen the movie, it's a low-budget, independent movie that was accepted in Sundance Festival. So we went and played at the movie party. It was just us letting loose, playing and having fun.

Do you like Slash's band, Slash's Snakepit?

Yeah, it's Slash, you know. He's fun. He drummer is very good. I haven't listened to the record. He won't let me hear it. I think he's afraid of showing it to me. He won't show it to Matt neither. I don't have a clue what the whole thing's about. I asked him whether it was crap or something. He said no. He was afraid of what we might say about it.

Since you left Guns N' Roses, have you been in touch with Axl?

A couple of times.

Is you relationship good?

I don't know if it is for him. I don't know. I think Axl is really pissed at me now. I think he's getting more and more pissed. First time I saw him, everything seemed to work out fine, but it looks like things have changed.

Axl is like today's Greta Garbo. There's a lot of mystery around him, no one has seen a picture of him in years, except for that mugshot when we was arrested in Phoenix. No one knows anything about the music he's doing and there's a lot of mystery around his persona. What's your take on this?

Weird things happen when you become famous. There's no school to teach you how to be famous. It happens and people are affected in different ways. I don't have an answer for you. I've got a lot of opinions and I know a lot of things about this matter, but I'm not explaining them. I will not. He's there to answer. If he puts out a record and it is good, he's gonna be alright. He's very scared about this. I believe in this situation you have to leave home a bit to see what's happening. Go away, live. Or do what you have to do, but be sure about it. That's how I think. If you keep fooling yourself and keep doing the same things, you're going to be fucked. Guns were never like that. We did what we had to do, and we didn't have a name for it. It's only rock'n'roll, let's go! Let others put you in a category.

After several years away, do you think there is any chance that Guns N' Roses' original members reunite someday for an album or a tour? Would you do it if you were offered it?

If it's something democratic between the five of us, that's something I would love to do. Not long ago we were offered several shows to begin the new Millennium in Australia. But there's no way it could be like the old days. Things have changed.

What kind of music do you listen to nowadays?

I like Bush's new record. It's not really new, it's been out for two months now. Foo Fighters. I can listen from The Hellacopters to Dr. Dre.

So you,re open-minded in your tastes.

Certainly, very open minded. I mean, I even like Christina Aguilera. I think she's a surprising singer! Kid Rock is a lot of fun. He's a really cool guy.

What about Buckcherry?

They're okay. I was expecting more from that record. I gave it a chance, I really did. I think the singer is not bad at all and Keith, the guitarist, is huge. But there's something to the record that I don't like. I don't really dig it. I like the band, but I think they can make a better record. The thing is, this record was put out like it was rock and roll salvation! That's what I had in mind when I bought it. I played it and I didn't really dig it. I think Foo Fighters or similar bands are closer to be the rock and roll salvation. Maybe Buckcherry regard themselves as the "rock and roll-with-tattoos" salvation, I don't know. I wish they were better. I like them, but I don't love them, though I'd like to.

So if they are ever reading this, go put hands to work on your next record! Who am I to judge anybody anyway? I don't know. I listen to Christina Aguilera, who the fuck am I to judge? (laughs) Seriously, she's great, man, she's great. I was home for a week when I gave up smoking, seven weeks ago, watching The Box. They played like the ten or twenty most voted singles. Man, I was really into it. Almost everything was hip hop. You know another band I like? Slipknot. I think they're very funny. And I also like a lot of underground bands. I like music in general.

Finally, could you tell us which were your favorite songs from Guns?

I don't know, there's a load of songs I like. For many a year "My Michelle" was the song I loved to play the most, but towards the end of the Illusions tour my favorite was "Pretty Tied Up".

No doubt another great song in the Illusions is "So Fine", which Duff wrote in memory of Johnny Thunders. In it he said "It's the story of a man / who works as hard as he can / just to be a man who stands on his own". Maybe someday another band will write a song for Duff, and they sure could use those very same words. Because that's the story of Duff McKagan, a man that reached the top, lived on the edge and came back all the tougher. A story in which, fortunately, there is much yet to tell.

What Happened To Axl Rose - The inside story of rock's most famous recluse
Rolling Stone, May 11th 2000
Peter Wilkinson

The story is told of a birthday party that took place two Februarys ago at a Mexican restaurant in Santa Monica. A few long-haired musicians mingled with some concert promoters in suits, eating mediocre guacamole and drinking Cuervo margaritas. The gifts piled up and the crowd of about forty sampled birthday cake, but the guest of honor, Axl Rose, who was turning thirty-seven, never showed up. Axl's manager, Doug Goldstein, quieted the room. "Axl's not going to be coming, " Goldstein said. "But order whatever you want and have a good time."

This story is told not because it is considered an example of eccentric or rude behaviour on Rose's part. Rather, it is considered emblematic of the way the singer conducts his life - just another night in the off-kilter existence of a man who used to be one of the biggest rock stars in the world. "Not the least bit unusual," says a friend who was at the restaurant,laughing in there-he-goes-again style. "Typical Axl."

Except for a couple of interviews last winter, timed to the release of a Guns N' Roses live album, and a 1998 Phoenix arrest, Rose has remained out of public view since 1994, when G N' R coughed and spat to a halt. For six years he has been working on the next G N' R record, tentatively titled Chinese Democracy. None of the original band members plays on it. Most of them hardly speak with Rose anymore. Rose spends most of his time in Los Angeles recording studios behind the gate of his secluded estate atop a hill in the Latigo Canyon section of Malibu. His housekeeper, Beta Lebeis, does most of the shopping and driving. Axl reads, works out, kickboxes, plays pinball, teaches himself guitar and computers and tries to write lyrics.

Meanwhile, GN'R's debut record, Appetite For Destruction, released in 1987, marches on. The second biggest debut album in rock history (15 million copies at the last count), Appetite thirteen years later still sells a remarkable 5,000 to 6,000 copies per week - more than 200,000 units annually. G N' R caught a feeling in 1987, a raw vibe of anger and authenticity, somewhere between metal and punk, that still appeals to rock music fans today. Even in the new millennium, Appetite probably cranks inside more turbocharged Chevys than any rock record ever made.

One can divide the public Axl into two separate periods: before 1993, when the original band was together and post-1993 after the group's final recording, The Spaghetti Incident?, an unremarkable collection of mostly punk covers. Wherever he went during those years of his fame, Axl left frustrated, angry people behind. He became buried in litigation. Shelves in the clerks' offices as Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles and in Santa Monica bow under the weight of thousands of pages of legal papers concerning G N' R and Axl that have accumulated over the years, actions involving claims totalling millions of dollars. This is not to mention band- or Rose-related legal matters in Nevada, Arizona, Missouri, New York, Spain, England and Canada.

The documents tell part of the story of how G N' R succeeded and failed, and they give a picture of Axl himself. The image that emerges is one of a complicated man who can be sensitive and funny but who is also controlling and obsessive and troubled, a man changed by fame and wracked by childhood trauma who faces a lonely future surrounded by a small circle of family members and childhood friends. "His world is very insular," says Doug Goldstein. "He doesn't like very many people."

Axl is a man struggling with demons and taking radical measures to overcome them. He became deeply involved with past-life regression, a brand of psychotherapy that exists on the new age fringe. "Axl," a friend says, "is looking for anything that'll give him happiness."

As successful and wealthy as he became, friends contend, Axl still feels like a victim, unfulfilled, somewhat lost. "He seemed emotionally reserved and a little bit suspicious," says the techno whiz Moby, who spent some time with Axl in California in 1997. "He seemed a little bit like a beaten dog." And Rose, according to those who know him, remains hung up on one old girlfriend: the model Stephanie Seymour, now married to the polo-playing financier Peter Brant. Seymour and Axl's ex-wife, Erin Everly, have both accused Axl of beating them, a charge he denies.

Whether Axl's emotional and legal troubles contributed to the demise of the original GN'R is open to interpretation. There is little dispute, however, about one thing they did cause: a massive delay in finishing Chinese Democracy, which is in reality an Axl Rose solo record. This work has been six years, a roomful of studio musicians and a rumoured $6 million worth of Interscope/Geffen's money in the making. It is still not finished and probably won't be anytime soon. "So many times, I have come down to the studio, and I had no idea that I was going to be able to," Rose told Rolling Stone last November as he played twelve new tracks. "If you are working with issues that depressed the crap out of you, how do you know you can express it?"

People who have heard the new music say it sounds fantastic. "The tracks reminded me of the best moments of Seventies Pink Floyd or later Led Zeppelin", says Jim Barber, a former Geffen A&R executive who worked on the project. "There's nothing out there right now that has that kind of scope. Axl hasn't spent the last several years struggling to write Use Your Illusion over again." In the estimation of guitarist Zakk Wylde, who sat in with the new band a few times, "Axl is one fucking smart guy."

In recent months, though, guitarist Robin Finck and drummer Josh Freese both left the project, as did computer engineer Billy Howerdel. Queen guitarist Brian May spent a week recording with Axl and returned to England. Avant guitarist Bckethead, known for wearing an upside-down Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket on his noggin, came on the scene. But as of now, it seems, there is no "new" GN'R.

"I'll punch your lights out right here and right now. I don't give a fuck who you are. You are all little people on a power trip." These are not lyrics to a bitter new GN'R track about lawyers, perhaps reminiscent of Axl's old rants on CD and from the stage against reporters and photographers and anybody else who failed to do his precise bidding. These words, the Phoenix Police Department reports, are what Axl shouted at security personnel at Sky Harbor International Airport in February 1998 after a screener asked to search his hand luggage. Threatened with arrest, Axl, travelling in jeans, a red sweat shirt and a gray stocking cap, rejoined, "I don't give a fuck. Just put me in fuckin' jail." He spent a couple of hours behind bars. The matter was resolved on February 18th 19999 when Rose, via telephone, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanour charge of disturbing the peace and paid a $500 fine.

Lost in the minor hoopla over the arrest was the matter of what, exactly, Axl was doing at the Phoenix airport. Was Axl coming back from a place where he often goes - Sedona, the New Age bastion in the red-rock canyons 115 miles north of Phoenix, where he sees one of the most important people in his world, a psychic known derisively in the GN'R camp as Yoda?

Though nobody knows precisely how he got involved, people who know him say Axl started visiting Sedona in the early nineties, sometimes travelling with Beta, his housekeeper, or Earl, his bodyguard. Many believers in past lives, channelling, UFOs and the predictive power of crystals pass through Sedona. The town is so tuned in, vibewise that certain canyons are understood to be vortexes for masculine energy and others for feminine forces. In the produce aisles of Sedona supermarkets, shoppers dangle crystals over the pints of strawberries.

For close to a decade, Rose has been a powerful, almost evangelical believer in homeopathic medicine. The world, in Axl's view, is a perilous place, populated by greedy doctors affiliated with the American Medical Association who prescribed dangerous synthetic medicines. When GN'R toured, homeopathic elixirs for Axl's throat were always on hand. He introduced Echinacea and protein shakes to a GN'R more accustomed to vodka and heroin.

Axl's childhood woes are well documented; he does not come, as Axl himself might say, from a healthy place. In 1992, in this magazine, Axl talked about learning at the age of seventeen that the man he thought was his real father was in fact his stepfather. Axl's biological father, William Rose, abandoned the family when Axl was two and is believed to be dead. Through therapy, Axl said, he recovered memories of being beaten and sexually abused as a child. It is these traumas, primarily, that Axl wrestles with, and it is these experiences that may, in part, be blamed for his hostile attitude toward women and his consuming need for control. A friend says "All that baggage, as he was being constructed, it all comes to bear. It's not an external issue. It's really core to his makeup."

Yoda's real name is Sharon Maynard. A rather plain Asian woman of middle age, Maynard stands about five feet five and has a medium build and dark, curly hair. Since 1978 she has run a not-for-profit business in Sedona called Arcos Cielos Corp., which loosely translated from the Spanish means "sky arcs." The company, with assets of $241,602 in 1998, lists itself as an "educational" enterprise. Aricos Cielos operates out of Maynard's rural home in Sedona, which she shares with her husband, Elliott, a gently gray-haired man. "Dr. Elliott and Sharon Maynard" are both thanked in the Use Your Illusion liner notes.

Sharon Maynards keeps a low profile in town. "She is way under, low-key," says a local business man with ties to the psychic community. None of the New Age booksellers or silversmiths I talked to knew her, and she wasn't listed in the phone book or with the Center for the New Age, where a tick three-ring binder full of psychics and past-life therapists is available for perusal - and many of those listed are available for immediate consultation in booths upstairs. This is not surprising. Much of the more high-end psychic work in Sedona is done b quiet figures like Yoda who work out of private homes.

While it is customary for tour employees to submit a photograph for a laminated pass, with Axl other things seemed to come into play. Doug Goldstein is said to gather photos at the singer's instruction for psychic assessment. In Sedona, some think, Yoda would examine these photos. What does so-and-so want out of Axl? Does this person have his best interests in mind? What kind of energy do they emit?

Submitting a photo to Axl for evaluation by Yoda, some say, coincided with employment in the GN'R world. Band members, crew members, record-company executives - everybody did it. The procedure still goes on. Recalls one current employee, "I sent my picture in. Everybody gets a photo made for a pass. People made jokes about auras being read. What's this for? Nobody really knew. But I don't know anybody who got canned for anything other than not doing a good job." On occasion, according to a music-industry figure Axl recently worked with, Yoda even requests photographs of the sons and daughters of people in Axl's world.

In February 1998 in Arizona, Axl was carrying some presents he'd recently received - "going to the psychic for review," in the words of one knowledgeable source. One item in Axl's bag was a large hand-blown glass sphere. Axl was apparently worried that the security personnel at the airport might break it, and that led to his outburst and arrest.

How important is Yoda to Axl? One associate says Yoda's influence, while important, is tempered by the force of Axl's personality; "He wasn't turning his life over to somebody with a candle and a crystal. I say that with every confidence. It's just not consistent with who he is. He makes his own decisions."

Still, Yoda showed up on tour. "She came with some of her pals," a crew member recalls. "Funny dudes: Southwestern people with funny shoes. Their look didn't fit in: they were like aliens."

During a 1992 GN'R swing through the US with Metallica, Yoda apparently became concerned about energy fields around Minneapolis and ordered that a date contemplated for the city not be booked. It was later rescheduled for a different Minneapolis venue. "Axl had trouble," a tour regular says, "in areas of the country that had a strong magnetic field concentration."

Before some dates in Japan, presumably at Yoda's urging, information about atomic power sources in the country and power sources for the Tokyo dome had to be collected. A source involved in this mission says he never understood precisely what this data was used for. "It was something about the magnetic forces that exist in the universe and where those things are in comparison to where Axl would be spending his time."

Axl also sometimes took a psychotherapist from Los Angeles, a Victoria Principal look-alike named Suzzy London on the road. London maintained an area backstage for herself and Axl. He cast her as his therapist, wearing a black miniskirt, in the video for "Don't Cry."

Members of the band and its entourage took different views of Axl's various counsellors. Some showed them healthy respect. Others scorned them. "They had to accompany him to Japan to make sure that the bad-energy waves didn't capture him there," a former employee recalls. "If it was any exotic, wonderful place around the world, the advisers generally had to be flown in at some point. But if it was Kansas City, everything was really fine. I mean it was St. Louis where the riot happened." Were they with him in St. Louis? Angry at a fan with a camera at a July 2nd 1992 show at the Riverport Amphitheatre, Rose launched himself into the crowd, touching off a riot that injured more than fifty people and caused more than $200,000 in damage.

Axl has spoken in the past about his experiences with past-life-regression therapy. A typical past life regression sessions begins with hypnosis. During traditional psychotherapy, a patient placed in a trance may be able to recall traumatic events that have been repressed and that may lie at the root of current emotional problems. Freudian theory holds that recognizing and understanding such traumas, which often occur in childhood, can promote healing.

Under hypnosis by a past-life expert, the playing field expands. A patient may be able to remember back even further, to a life or lives that were lived hundreds if not thousands of years ago, and discover traumas that occurred then. Some patients may speak in the voice or the language of that long-dead being, whether it be a Roman ruler or a Southern plantation slave.

Past-life adherents tend to believe that one lives one's life with different incarnations of the same group of people. Axl, according to a confidant, believes he and Stephanie Seymour were together in fifteen or sixteen past lives.

After a shouting match with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love backstage at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards at UCLA's Pauley Pavillion, Axl told a friend that Love was trying to possess him. "He believes people are always trying to find a window through to control his energy," a friend says. How does Axl combat this? "By controlling the people who have access to him."

After he and Seymour broke up, in 1992, the model began dating Peter Brant. Axl, according to one friend, ordered subordinates to obtain a photograph of Brant's wife, Sandra. Axl intended to take it to Yoda for a specific purpose, according to a former Geffen employee: "Axl wanted to cast a spell around Sandra to protect her from Peter, because he felt that she, too, had been cuckolded as he had been, and he had a great deal of sympathy for her." Seymour, then 26, and Brant, 48, married in Paris in 1995.

Even by loose New Age standards, Axl has received some bizarre advice over the years. After Axl's ex-wife, Erin Everly, the daughter of singer Don Everly, and the inspiration for the GN'R hit "Sweet Child o'Mine" sued Axl in 1994, charging assault and sexual battery, Everly sat for a deposition. She testified that Axl believed that she and Seymour were sisters in a past life and were "trying to kill him." As far as her own relationship with Axl went, Everly said, "Axl had told met that in a past life we were Indians and that I killed our children, and that's why he was so mean to me in this life."

Everly was asked, "Had Axl ever told you that he was possessed?

"Yes," she said.

"What did he say he was possessed by?"

"John Bonham."

Bonham, the rambunctious Led Zeppelin drummer died in his sleep after a bender in 1980. Rose denies ever saying he was possessed by Bonham.

"They're the ultimate controlled relationships," a friend says of Axl's various therapy sessions. "Starts at a certain time, ends at a certain time, you pay for it, you can stop paying for it and stop going. And as long as you want somebody to listen to you, as long as you want somebody to say the things that you want to hear, you can pay them to do it."

Once in a while, in a New Age community that embraces a certain number of charlatans, Axl got taken to the cleaners. During his marriage to Everly, Axl went for an exorcism. The exorcism apparently didn't involved the priests and crosses that viewers of prime-time television have come to expect. "Mainly it involved getting some kind of herbal wrap," Axl testified during the Everly case, some "work on my skin." The man who performed this procedure charged $72,000. Even Axl admitted, "I ended up getting ripped off for a lot of money in the long run."

Through a series of hairpin turns and steep grades, Latigo Canyon Road winds a couple of thousand feet up to the top of an arid hill near the Point Dume section of Malibu. The sun skims and slants and shimmers off the Pacific Ocean and the celebrity homes that crowd the beach below. Axl lives in a Mediterranean style compound that was valued last year at $3.8 million, a price tag fairly typical for the neighbourhood. He moved into the canyon in 1992, paying a mortgage of about $15,000 a month. Latigo was going to be the place he and Stephanie Seymour would live together as man and wife and raise their children.

Gardeners assiduously tend Axl's four acres, which are hidden from public view by trees and a fence. A lighted star on the side of Axl's house can be seen for miles by drivers on the Pacific Coast Highway. Axl's neighbours on the hill include the beach-volleyball star Gabrielle Reece.

The sound of falling water soothes the grounds, which also contain a tennis court and a pool. When Axl throws a party, the court doubles as a parking lot. The house itself is stocked with religious artefacts from Latin America, including Axl's vast collection of crucifixes. Axl plays pinball on the machines in his game room. Since the demise of GN'R he has shared the Latigo Canyon estate with tanks full of snakes and lizards, and with various friends, family members and live-in help. Axl's sister Amy Bailey, who used to run the GN'R fan club, and half-brother Stuart Bailey have stayed in the house at one time or another. Beta, who formerly worked as a nanny for Seymour, taking care of her son Dylan, doubles as chauffeur. She also travels with Axl; it was she by his side during the contretemps at the Phoenix airport in '98. "Beta moms him," a friend says. "She's as close as she's ever had to a real mother."

David Lank, a running buddy of Axl's from Indiana and an occasional Guns N' Roses collaborator (he co-write "Don't Damn Me" on Use Your Illusion I), bunked at Axl's place in Latigo Canyon for a while. Sabrina Okamoto, a masseuse, also stayed a time on the property. A striking woman in her early thirties, Okamoto met the members of GN'R during their 1991 tour with Skid Row; she became the GN'R tour masseuse, then worked for Axl after Guns split. "When his friends were in need, he was there to bail them out," a former associate says.

Axl throws a costume party every Halloween for friends and their families. Enormous pumpkins ring the swimming pool, and spider webs hang in the trees. Specially built mazes and forts rattle with squealing children. Almost as excited as a child, Axl himself has been known to dash around and toy with every attraction. One past guest gets the impression that Axl is trying to re-create his own childhood, albeit one better than his actually was. The Halloween scene in the past few years hasn't been what it once was. "His parties have been getting smaller and smaller," recalls one recent guest. "The ever-shrinking universe."

Last Halloween, Axl appeared outfitted as a pig, scaring a few of the children in attendance. Guests helped themselves to past and barbecued chicken; loud rock 'n' roll making made conversation difficult.

Axl usually sleeps during the day and works at night. Beta or her son drives Axl to Rumbo recorders in the San Fernando Valley, where sessions for the GN'R follow-up to Spaghetti Inicident? Have been going on for years. More and more lately, Axl conducts most of his other business over the telephone.

Much of Axl's non-music and non-spiritual business concerns legal strategy. Besides his dispute with Everly, other matters have dragged on: he has ended up in court against Seymour; the band's original drummer, Steven Adler; the replacement guitarist Gilby Clarke; and various companies that did business with the band. Lately Axl has been using threats of legal action to limit what people say about him. A few days after I talked with Alan Niven, GN'R's former manager, who was fired in 1991, Doug Goldstein called me, threatening to sue Niven for allegedly breaching a confidentiality agreement. Niven later received a letter from Axl' personal lawyer in Los Angeles, demanding he contact Rolling Stone and attempt to withdraw his comments. Failure to do so, Axl's lawyer warned would result in "swift and sure legal action."

In the early nineties, Axl demanded and was granted sole control of the Guns N' Roses name. As to precisely where and when this happened, memories are fuzzy and contradictory, perhaps lost in the mists of rock & roll tour memory. Axl, backstage somewhere is said to have basically issued an ultimatum: He'd get the name of the band or he wouldn't perform. Papers memorializing this transfer were drawn up and guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan signed them.

What would it matter really? Axl, Slash and Duff would always be, it seemed, the inseparable three. Money was everywhere. Guns N' Roses grossed $57.9 million right out of the gate in the four years from 1988 to 1992, according to documents produced during the Adler litigation. Overhead was enormous - expensive video shoots, first class everything on the road, all the clichéd rock-star excess - but a $57.9 million gross in that time span for a relatively new band is almost unheard of in rock 'n' roll history. The Rolling Stones didn't make this kind of money until years deep into their career. David Bowie raised $55 million in 1997 selling bonds tied to the earnings his first twenty-five albums. The Grateful Dead earned $40 million to $50 million a year touring, but not until the 1990s, after they'd been together for more than twenty years.

After a 17.5 percent commission to management, Axl and his band mates divvied up the money according to a specific formula, which Axl described once in court. During pre-production for Appetite, Axl said, "Slash devised a system of figuring out who wrote what parts of a song or part of a song. There were four categories, I believe. There was lyrics, melody, music - meaning guitars, bass and drums - and accompaniment and arrangement. And we split each one of those into twenty-five percent. When we had finished, I had forty-one percent, and other people had different amounts."

Axl, with Slash, had always controlled most of the band's affairs. By this time Axl has full control. GN'R began work on a new album of original material, drawing from a Geffen advance thought to be around $10 million - Madonna kind of money.

GN'R released their fifth record, The Spaghetti Incident? In November 1993. It sold well, but nothing like Appetite or the Illusion records. The band began to unravel as Axl spent more time in court. He and Seymour argued violently at home in Malibu and broke up. Axl was devastated; he had wanted to marry her. "The split had an enormous effect on him," a friend says. "That was the first time in his life had stability. And then he had nothing."

Lawsuits flew back and forth. Seymour was charged that Axl had beaten her. Axl alleged it was she who had attacked him. According to Seymour's version of events, after an argument in their kitchen Axl shattered some bottles on the floor, grabbed Seymour by the throat, put her in a headlock and then dragged her barefoot through the broken glass "while repeatedly hitting her about the head and upper body and kicking her in abdomen." Axl's story was that Seymour grabbed his balls and he was just defending himself.

Erin Everly, long gone from Axl's life soon joined the fray, filing a suit of her own in 1994. In a deposition, Everly's roommate, Meegan Hodges-Knight, Slash's former girlfriend, recalled some disturbing encounters with Axl.

"I'd wake up to Erin saying, 'Please stop. Don't hurt me, don't hurt me,' and Axl screaming at her," Hodges-Knight said. "And then all of a sudden he' d come out and he'd like, break all of her really precious antiques, and she would be, 'Please don't break them, please.' And trying to get them back from him. And he'd push her and he'd break everything he could get his hands on.

"I remember sleeping and waking up to crystal flying over my head, shattering on the floor."

Sometimes, Slash was there when Axl went off on Erin.

"I remember asking Slash to do something, or I was going to do something," Hodges-Knight remembered. "I said, 'I have to do something' or something like that. And he said "No, you're going to make it worse.'"

Hodges-Knight testified that Axl kicked Everly with his cowboy boots, and dragged her around by the hair one night while she was wearing a see-through tank top and panties, threw a television set at her (it missed) and spit on her. "That pig," she said. "He spit on her."

Everly herself claimed Axl sexually assaulted her. She described a day when Axl ordered her to take off a bathing suit she was wearing, after which he tied her hands to her ankles from behind, put masking tape over her mouth and a bandana around her eyes, and led her, naked into a closet, where she remained for several hours while Axl talked to a friend of hers in the living room.

Later, according to Everly, Axl untied her, picked her up and tied her, face down, to a convertible bed. And then, "he forced himself on me anally really hard. Really hard."

"Were you screaming?" she was asked.

"Yes."

"How long did that last?"

"I don't remember."

"What happened when it was over?"

"He took it out and stuck it in my mouth."

An unreleased version of the video for GN'R song "It's So Easy", directed by Englishman Nigel Dick features Everly in bondage gear, with a red ball in her mouth as Axl screams, "See me hit you! You fall down!" The singer, according to a former associate, went to some lengths to gather up the few existing copies of the tape after Everly went to court against him.

Both cases were eventually settled. Seymour's lawyer, Michael Plonsker won't comment except to say that the suit was resolved "amicably". Despite their claims of injury and abuse, neither Erin Everly nor Stephanie Seymour ever filed criminal charges against Axl Rose in connection with the events described.

Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin's replacement, Gilby Clarke, meanwhile left the band. And rejoined. And left again. "As you are aware, Gilby has been fired at least three times by the band in the past month and has been rehired at least two times," Clarke's lawyer Jeffrey Light wrote in an April 14th, 1994 letter to GN'R lawyer Laurie Soriano. After failing to receive royalties he claimed were due him, Clarke sued the band in 1995. Clarke says he didn't want to go to court but nobody in the GN'R camp would call him back. G'n'R countersued. The matter was settled with an undisclosed payment to Clarke.

Unsure of Axl's intentions, Slash and Duff drifted into other projects. Slash, Duff and drummer Matt Sorum participated in numerous sessions for the new record. Complementing this ensemble were the loyal GN'R keyboard player, Dizzuy Reed, and Axl's old friend from Indiana, guitarist Paul Huge. Paul is part of the Axl and David Lank crew. Slash and Duff didn't click with him. "Nice enough guy," says a friend of the three musicians. "But they 're Guns N' Roses for God's sake - great band, great players. He's not that good. Doesn't have the chops." In 1996 Slash walked away. Sorum was fired. Duff hung on until the end of 1997 then quit in disgust. "The record wasn't going anywhere," says a GN'R source. "Duff reached a point where he said 'I don't need this in my life anymore. This is too insane. This is rock 'n' roll. It's supposed to be fun."

Slash is angry, now, about giving up rights to the GN'R name. "I was blindsided by it, more or less a legal faux pas," he complained to the Internet news service Addicted to Noise in January 1997. "I'd be lying to say I wasn't a little bit peeved at that. It'd be one thing if I'd quit altogether. But I haven't, and the fact that he can actually go and record a new GN'R record without the consent of the other members of the band."

Slash continued, "Axl's whole visionary style, as far as his input in Guns N' Roses is completely different from mine. I just like to play guitar, write a good riff, go out there and play as opposed to presenting an image."

The relationship between Axl and Slash, the cornerstone of the band, remains deeply fractured, though Slash has never closed the door on getting back together. The two men have not spoken to each other in four years. When work was under way last year on a long-overdue live GN'R double album, Live Era '87-'93, Axl and Slash interacted only through their respective managers, Goldstein and Tom Maher. "It was all very odd." Says a source. "Slash and Duff would get together and work on it, and Axl would be sent CDs. He never came to the studio when they were there. It was done in shifts."

It seems that beyond a connection Axl has with Beta, Yoda and Bert Deixler, his lawyer, Axl's relationship with Doug Goldstein is one of the few that the singer has gone out of his way to maintain. A former security guard for Air Supply, Goldstein joined the G N' R camp as tour manager in 1987 and eventually took over management of the band upon Niven's 1991 firing. Goldstein operates Big F.D. Entertainment in Newport Beach, California. Besides Axl, BFD's clients include Chris Perez, Selena's widower, and the metal band Jack Off Jill. Mostly, Goldstein concentrates on Axl. "If Axl says, `Jump,' he says, `Fine,' " says a music-industry source. "If he's in the air, he says, `How much higher?"' Finally released last November after long delays, Live Era was not the blockbuster everyone had hoped it would be. Sales have been under­whelming: 403,000 units as of early April. Promotion of the record was limited to television and print advertising. There was barely a peep from any of the old band members -- following, some believe, an Axl decree.For the new G N' R studio record, Axl hired a legion of talented players from across the popular-music spectrum: Tommy Stinson, the former Replacement; Dave Abbruzzese, Pearl Jam's former drummer; Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails; Dave Navarro, former Jane's Addiction guitarist; Josh Freese of the Vandals; and Zakk Wylde from Ozzy Osbourne's band. They jammed at the Complex in Los Angeles and at Rumbo Recorders for weeks and months at a time, usually at night. Axl brought in a showroom full of guitars and effects. "It's a musical-instrument convention," one observer says. "He has more knobs and keyboards and strings and wire and wood in there than you could possibly imagine could even be manufactured." Of Axl's guitar setup, Abbruzzese recalls, "You could hunt buffalo with his rig. It had a lot of lights, a lot of blinking lights, a lot of things that you stepped on. It sounded like a freight train that was somehow playable."

Axl was distracted by events tragic, potentially tragic and strange. His mother, Sharon Bailey, died in May 1996 at the age of fifty-one. Wildfires nipped at the edges of Axl's Latigo Canyon property the same year. The following May, Axl's old friend and songwriting partner West Arkeen died from a drug overdose at the age of thirty-six. A frequent visitor to the studio says. "When Stephanie Seymour's birthday came around. Axl seemed to shut down for weeks. A lot of this record is about Stephanie: She was his perfect woman, at least his im­age of what she should be."

Though plenty of nights passed when little was accomplished, Axl was usually all business in the studio. Excessive use of drugs or alcohol was frowned upon. Axl composed at the piano. The other musicians contributed ideas and riffs, but Axl was clearly in charge.When Zakk Wylde arrived at the Complex, where Axl was rehearsing, he was slightly surprised. "There were never any melodies," Wylde recalls. "There were never any lyrics." The music Wylde heard during a period of several months sounded like "Guns on steroids." Wylde felt sorry for Axl. "The poor fuckin' guy's got every fuckin' cunt trying to sue his ass," Wylde says. "I'd be on the phone with him. He'd be telling me about all these strategic moves his lawyers were making. I was listening to him playing Axis and Allies on the fuckin' phone." Wylde left to record with his new band, Black Label Society."They were trying to get ideas together, see who was compatible with who as far as a band vibe," says former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna, who came in for a few sessions in the spring of 1997 when late­night jams (10 P.M. to 6 A.M.) were still taking place at the Complex. Vrenna turned down a drumming spot in G N' R to work on a record of his own. "It was going to be a long commitment," Vrenna says. "There was no firm lineup. Axl had a definite direction he ultimately wanted to head toward, but at the time there wasn't even a song yet."

Producers came and went like pizza deliverymen: Youth, Moby, Mike Clink and Sean Beaven. Axl's legal troubles continued to distract him. Finally, a wall full of tapes, hours and hours of scraps of music, riffs, ideas, stacked up. Some of the music reportedly sounded like U2 during their Achtung Baby period, powerful and melod­ic. Some gave off a whiff of Nine Inch Nails or Nirvana. Touring was on the horizon. All the new songs, Axl announced, would have to work live.

"I found it difficult to chart a linear development of the songs that they were working on," recalls Moby. "They would work on something, it would be a sketch for a while, and then they'd put it aside and go back to it a year, six months later.

"He became a little bit defensive when I asked him about the vocals. He just said that he was going to get to them eventually," Moby continues. "I wouldn't be surprised if the record never came out, they've been working on it for such a long time."

I asked Moby whether Axl seemed at peace. Moby thought carefully. "He seemed like he had an idea of what be­ing at peace would be like, and he was working toward that." Axl's record would address the issue of domestic violence. So went the industry gossip. "It's Guns N' Roses music," Goldstein says. "There's rumors about it being a techno record. It's what Guns N' Roses has always been: diversified." Jim Barber, the former Geffen executive, recalls, "An artist [like Axl] who's had as much success with Guns N' Roses as he has gets to a point in his career where he can settle into one sound and do it over and over again, usually with diminishing returns. Axl is determined not to do that. There's a sort of ruthlessness about pushing Guns N' Roses to grow, and to find some depth in their music, and to evolve." A new single, "Oh My God," was released last November as part of the End of Days soundtrack. Even though it was the first new material from the band to be released in nearly six years, the song disappeared without a trace. Musically, at least, Axl seems to have what he wants: complete control. If the new G N' R record becomes a spectacular hit, the six-year delay in making it and the millions spent on it won't matter. Axl will have proved his doubters wrong and probably will have also ended any hope of getting the original band back together. But there is such a thing as having too much control."One of the aspects of being a mega­lomaniac is the discovery that some times being in a decisive situation is not so appealing as you thought it was," says a source. "When you have a support system and decisions are made communally and quickly, things move. There's energy. It becomes alive, it becomes real. Once you're on your own, you drive it yourself, you make all the decisions yourself. You sit and worry about it." In August, guitarist Robin Finck abruptly quit G N' R to return to Nine Inch Nails. Axl ordered some of Finck's parts erased. In March, drummer Josh Freese departed to concentrate on other projects, including a solo record, due in July, and a tour with A Perfect Circle in support of Nine Inch Nails.

Neither Finck nor Freese will discuss what happened.

Whether Chinese Democracy comes out or not, Axl himself, friends say, seems healthier, less angry - and still a maze of contradictions. He likes to think he makes all the decisions in his life, yet he listens carefully to New Age counselors. He feels like the world revolves around him, but he refuses most requests to speak publicly about himself. He believes in justice, but he doesn't believe he has to be fair. He can be an incisive observer of human weakness in his songs, yet when it comes to his own conduct, he has little perspective. "Axl's really easy to hate, and he doesn't understand why," a friend observes. "He lives in a fantasy world, a parallel universe. He's self­centered, like a child, but not so naive. When he calls, all he wants to talk about is his record and how Interscope can't fix things for him."

"A family is what Axl wants more than anything in life," another friend says. "He wants to find within himself the ability to show affection. He's really, really incapable of showing gratitude and affection."

As long as he remains on his mountain, behind his fence, rumors swirl and the appetite for his return grows.

Or does it? How much of a G N' R audience is really left? Who wants to watch a G N' R show that will probably include only one founding member: Mr. Rose himself?

On September 22nd, Axl issued a statement, his first in years. The document was by turns bitter (Axl referred to Matt Sorum as a "former employee"), funny ("Power to the people, peace out and blame Canada," he signed off) and incomprehensible. Its stilted phrasing and syntax sounded like just the sort of thing you'd expect from a man too long immersed in self­help books and too long isolated from the world. Axl announced, "OH MY GOD etc. deals with the societal repression of deep and often agonizing emotions - some of which may be willingly accepted for one reason or which (one that promotes a healing, release and a positive resolve) is often discouraged and many times denied." Whatever that means. "The appropriate expression and vehicle for such emotions and concepts is not some­thing taken for granted." Axl, in recent months, promised, through his manager, to take time from his recording schedule and pen exclusively for ROLLING STONE his version of how and why Guns N' Roses broke up. Months went by, and this missive never materialized. Then, days before this story went to press, Doug Goldstein proclaimed, "Good news!" Axl was ready to hand over a 10,000-word-plus essay. A day later, Goldstein withdrew that promise and ended all communication with ROLLING STONE.

Axl may not yet know who he is. That search continues. He knows enough to still be in charge. Ultimately, that may be his victory and his curse. There is only one certainty in Axl's world now. When, and if, his new record comes out, he will have to take complete responsibility for it. Nobody else will get the credit or the blame. David Bowie exiled himself to Berlin in the 1970s, and Berlin motivated him. Working with Brian Eno, Bowie made three of his best records, Low, "Heroes" and Lodger. After the Doors tour of 1970, Jim Morrison re­treated to Paris to try and dry out, write poetry, walk the streets and consider new challenges. For Axl Rose, the arc of his fame remains stuck, languishing near its 1993 high point. Self ­imposed exile seems to have failed him. Unlike Bowie or Morrison, Axl Rose did not seek a new environment for inspiration or salvation. He only looked inward. He went home, retreating to an airless room from which he has yet to emerge.