CHINESE DEMOCRACY
In the early nineties, Axl demanded and was granted sole control of the Guns n' Roses name. As to precisely where and when this happend , 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 Mc Kagan 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 cliched rock star excess - but a $57.9 million gross in that time span for a relatively new band is almost unheard of in rock & 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 of his first twenty five albums. The Grateful Dead earned $40 million to $50 million a year touring, but not until the 1990's after they'd been together more than twenty years.
After a 17.5 percent commission to maanagement, 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 were 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 had full control. G n'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.
G n'R released their fith record, The Spagehetti 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 he had stability. And then he had nothing."
Lawsuits flew back and forth. Seymour 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 shatterd 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 the 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 ther," Hodges-Knight said. "And then all of a sudden he'd 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 that 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 rememberd. "I said,"I have to do something, or something like that. And he said,"No, you'r 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-throuh 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 had sexually assulted her. She described a day when Axl orderd 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 bandannaa 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 happend when it was over?"
"He took it out and stuck it in my mouth."
An unreleased version of the video for the 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, wont 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 Clark, meanwhile, left the band."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,"Clarks 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, Clark sued the band in 1995. Clark says he didn't want to go to court but decided he had to because 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, Dizzy Reed,and Axl's old friend 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 Gods 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 G n'R source. "Duff reached a point where he said, " I don't need this in my life nymore. This is to insane. This is rock & roll. It's supposed to be fun."
Slash is angry, now, about giving up rights to the G n 'R name. "I was blindslided 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 iI quit altogether. But I haven't, and the fact that he can actually go and [record a new G n'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 play the 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 spoke 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, Goldstine and Tom Maher. "It was all very odd," says a sorce."Slash and Duff would get together and work on it, and Axl would be sent CD's. 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 the singer has gone out of his way to maintaine. A former security guard for Air Supply, Goldstein joined the Gn'R camp as tour manager in 1987 and eventually took over the management of the band upon Niven's 1991 firing. Goldstine 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, Goldstine 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 under - whelming, 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 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 Replacements, Dave Abbruzzese, Pearl Jam's former drummer, Robin Fink of Nine Inch Nails, Dave Navarro former Jane's Addiction guitarist, Josh Freese of the Vandals, and Zakk Wilde fron Ozzy Osbourne's band. They jammed at the complex in Los Angeles and Rumbo Records 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 ever be manufactured." Of Axl's guitar set up, Abbruzzese recalls, "You could hunt Buffalo with his rigg. 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 distrcted by events tragic, potentially tragic, and strange. His mother, Sharon Bailey, died in May 1996 at the age of fifty - one. Wildfires nipped the edge 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 the 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 Wilde 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 musci Wilde heard during a period of several months sounded like "Guns on steroids." Wilde felt sorry for Axl. "The poor fuckin guy's got every fuckin, @#%$ trying to sue his ass," Wulde 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." Wilde 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 band vibe," says former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna, who came in for a few sessions in the Spring of 1997 when late night jams ( 10pm to 6am) were still taking place at the complex. Vrenna turned down a drumming spot in Gn'R to work on a record of his own. "It was going to be a long comitment," 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 a song yet."
Producers came and went like Pizza deliverymen. Youth, Moby, Mike Clink and Sean Beven. Axl's legal troubles continued to distract him. Finally, a way full of tapes, hours and hours of scraps of music, riffs, ideas, stacked up. Some of the music reportedly sounded like U2 during the Actung Baby period, powerful melodic. Some gave off a whiff of Nine Inch Nails or Nivana. 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 defensive when i asked him aabout 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'v 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 towards 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 rumours about it being a tecno record. It's what Guns n' Roses have 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 is a sort of ruthlessness about pushing Guns n' Roses to grow, and develop 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 aand probably will have also ended any hope of getting the original band back together. But there is such a thing as having to much control.
"One of the aspects of being megalomaniac is the descovery that sometimes being in a decisive situation is not so appealing as you thought it was," says a sorce."When you have a support system and decisions are made communally and quickly, things move. Theres energy.It becomes alive, it becomes real. Once you're on you'r 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 orderd 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 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 humane 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 fantssy world, a parallel universe. He's selfcentered, like a child, but not so naive. When he calls, all he want's to talk about is his record and how Interscope can't fix things for him."
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 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 cretainty 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.
Davis Bowie exiled himself to Berlin in the 1970's , 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, langushing near it's 1993 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 looked inward. He went home, retreating to an airless room from which he has yet to emerge.