The Most Dangerous Band in the World: The Story of Guns N' Roses

This programme contains strong language from the start.

'Let's hear it for Guns N' fucking Roses.'

'The world's most dangerous band.'

Welcome to the fucking jungle, people.

It's going to be interesting.

You know, why not?

We were The Rolling Stones and Poison was The Beatles.

Things just happened.

This is not for kids.

The one thing that made Guns N' Roses dangerous

and drew everybody to them ultimately led to its demise.

The entire Sunset Strip experience, from The Rainbow, to the Roxy

to the Whisky a Go Go is like an adult fairytale.

MUSIC: Live And Let Die by Guns N' Roses

Sunset Strip was pretty amazing at this time.

A lot of people don't realise that there were thousands of kids there,

to the point where the sheriffs had to literally

block off Sunset Boulevard.

MUSIC: Live And Let Die by Guns N' Roses

BIRDS CAW

BIKE ENGINES RUMBLE

ALL SOUNDS MERGE

Hey!

MUSIC: Right Next Door To Hell by Guns N' Roses

# I'll take a nicotine, caffeine, sugar fix

# Jesus don't ya get tired of turning' tricks

# But when your innocence dies, you'll find the blues

# Seems all our heroes were born to lose

# Just walkin' through time you believe this heat

# Another empty house, another dead-end street

# Gonna rest my bones an' sit for a spell

# This side of heaven is close to hell... #

'If you were in a band and you wanted to be noticed by anybody,

'you tried to get into the Rainbow.'

Where am I?

It was a place to go to get drinks and chicks and drugs.

And I loved every minute of it.

All the bands, the bands that were big,

the bands that were not big,

you know, kids from Iowa with dreams...

Everybody hung out at the Rainbow.

A lot of dead rock stars used to come here.

Led Zeppelin came here, famously.

That was Slash's table.

It was Jimmy Page's table.

Led Zeppelin used to party here, and one day

I was walking through the dining room there

and I saw about four heels sticking out

because they had the long tablecloths there

and I always wondered what them girls were doing under there.

You can figure that out.

Me and Slash went there one night, and it was ladies' night

and he couldn't get in.

For some reason they didn't let him in, but I got in.

So he went home and had his mum dress him up like a woman.

He put a dress on and he went up there and he got in.

The real people, the wannabes, the dreamers, the schemers,

it was all at the Rainbow.

MUSIC: Welcome To The Jungle by Guns N' Roses

# Welcome to the jungle

# We got fun and games

# We got everything you want. How do we know the names?

# We are the people that can find whatever you may need

# If you got the money honey we got your disease

# In the jungle welcome to the jungle

# Watch it bring you to your n-n-n knees, knees

# I-I want to watch you bleed

# Welcome to the jungle

# We take it day by day

# If you want it you're gonna bleed but it's the price to pay

# And you're a very sexy girl that's very hard to please

# You can taste the bright lights... #

You know, you had Madame Wong's which was a Chinese restaurant.

The woman who owned it loved rock music.

There was Gazzari's which is where Van Halen were discovered.

A lot of bands played at the Starwood. Bands like London.

Nikki Sixx's band he was in before Motley Crue.

They all stood in line and mixed to get into the Rainbow and,

obviously, the rock stars got in there automatically,

they didn't even have to pay.

They let them in because Mario, who owns the Rainbow,

also owned the Whisky.

He did co-own even the Roxy next door.

# You'll take it eventually

# You can have anything you want

# But you better not take it from me

# In the jungle, welcome to the jungle

# Watch it bring you to your n-n-n-n-n knees, knees

# I'm gonna watch you bleed... #

I hit LA with a backpack,

a piece of steel in one hand and a can of mace in the other

and you guys were trying to sell me joints everywhere.

I come from England and these guys just played in England

and they told me a very nasty rumour that all you guys

in America are a much better audience than people in England.

And...

CHEERING

If you think you're a better audience, put your hands up.

Right, and if you do that all the time then you prove to me

that you're much better than the guys back in England, all right? OK.

Right, we'll be going very shortly. Thanks very much for waiting.

Isn't it fucking hot in this fucking place?

I'm looking around and I'm thinking, "This is good.

"These guys really click."

I began to videotape the shows to...

to basically capture what was happening.

# Welcome to the jungle... #

You know, there's always this term, the fifth Beatle.

So Slash introduced me to Marc Canter and said,

"If there were a fifth Beatle in Guns N' Roses -

"since there are five of us, I guess there'd be a sixth Beatle,

"it's Marc Canter."

Show everybody your Footloose haircut.

What Marc Canter was doing for Guns N' Roses

is what I would do for a new band that I found and signed.

The difference is that Marc was feeding the band

in his parents' deli

instead of using a record company expense account.

# Welcome to the jungle

# Feel my, my, my serpentine... #

The first time I videotaped the show - they watched it and then

they could learn from that because they could hear what they are doing,

and mistakes, if there's any,

they could see if there's something they want to change.

It was kind of helping them learn what they're doing,

but maybe they want to change about what they're doing.

# Welcome to the jungle it gets worse here every day

# Ya learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play

# If you hunger for what you see you'll take it eventually

# You can have anything you want, but... #

I'm sure they didn't need to look at every gig

because after one or two they got the idea of what they loved

and what was going on.

# Knees, knees... #

I took pictures, that kind of stuff.

I never stopped taking pictures because sometimes

I'd set the video on wide angle and just snap a few shots anyway.

They just knew that every time there was a gig I'd be there

and I'd be doing that.

# Down, down

# Down! #

I had Welcome To The Jungle on my answering machine

and it was the piece that goes, "You're gonna die!" BEEP!

# You know where you are?

# You're in the jungle, baby. #

And now LA bands are making it big.

LA bands kick ass.

What kind of people are they?!

# Welcome to the jungle...

I was in the midst of that whole

sort of rock and roll LA thing, you know?

And that was a lot of fun.

It was a really creative, really inspired time

and the people were really great. It was very cool.

MUSIC: Welcome To The Jungle, by Guns N' Roses

# It's gonna bring you down Huh! #

I'm dead on monitors.

Wow! It's so cool. I could do that.

I came from Stoke-on-Trent,

so it was that sort of small-town familiarity, you know?

It was really... I miss it because I moved to Los Angeles

and it was constant panic living in LA.

Everything is going a million miles a minute

I first met Slash in 1976 and I was at a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I had a motorbike and he was walking by and was thinking of taking it.

Then he looked inside, saw me and recognised me from school,

but we didn't know each other.

So, he decided to make friends with me rather than try to steal it.

That way, it would be a sure way of getting to ride it

without being in trouble.

We became good friends.

At some point, we started riding BMX bicycles together.

He got good pretty quick. It also showed in his artwork.

CHEERING

The first time I met him I was riding my skateboard

over at Laurel Elementary School

just down the street from my grandmother's - where I lived.

I fell off the ramp and right on my head.

He was walking down the street and said, "Hey, dude, are you OK?"

There was an incident where...

Slash always liked reptiles - so he had a snake.

I bought the snake, but we kept it at his house.

I remember one time I gave him a dollar,

or whatever it was at that time, for a mouse to feed the snake.

And he bought cigarettes with it. So the snake died and I blamed him

for selling out the snake to a pack of cigarettes.

When I was a kid, my best friend, his dad used to call me Slash,

he said, basically, because I was always hustling

and I never had time to talk - so I was always in passing.

So, he started calling me Slash.

I brought him to my grandmother's house.

And he had a cheap stereo and a cheap little, like,

Sears electric guitar and an amp that went with it.

We'd ditch school and go to his house

and he'd just crank the stereo all the way up.

I think it was Kiss Alive,

and jump up and down on the bed with the electric guitar

and just bang on it with the amp turned all the way up.

And that turned me on.

Within a couple of days, he had that guitar and within a week

his grandmother bought him an acoustic guitar.

Literally, within two weeks, he was playing it.

Within three weeks, he actually wrote his first song.

I didn't have any defined heroes,

but I definitely had bands that I liked.

I liked Zeppelin, I liked David Bowie and I liked, you know,

the Stones and The Beatles and everything that was going.

Other stuff. Stevie Wonder. A really wide range of music that I liked.

He told me that he was in a band and I should come check it out.

So I came to the rehearsal and it was Tidus Sloan at that time.

Right away, I saw the same talents I saw from his drawing,

and his bike riding - into his music.

A lot hadn't happened since the punk thing in London.

The Stray Cats, of course, had been a happening thing, which was great.

But then... After that, it was the post-punk period.

It wound up from what you've just said to more or less rock and roll

and then you've got glam rock and so many different types of music.

A lot of it good, a lot of it was nothing...

I came to LA and I saw all these people trying to be Eddie Van Halen

and it took five years to find somebody

who could play more from the heart

rather than trying to be the fastest and this and that,

to be a big rock star.

I kept on seeing these guys walk up the hill with black hair

and a blond one.

During that time period, it was 81, punk rock was huge in LA.

Here were these long-haired freaks and it turned out to be Motley Crue.

It wasn't unusual to walk out and see two girls in the hallway

passed out naked with broken bottles and pizza boxes,

and Tommy is like having sex with some girl

that just, you know, just threw up.

You know, it was just like that.

Motley Crue explodes,

and then the next thing you know there are ten bands

that all have teased hair and hairspray

and look like the boys-next-door version of boys dressed like girls.

You know, something becomes successful

and then there's all the copycat bands.

But it was getting a bit boring and monotonous

because, you know, hair bands were becoming kind of a generic term.

So many bands that came up with big hair and posing

and partying and sex, drugs, rock and roll cliche.

Everybody was kind of doing the same shtick.

Bands that played their hairspray cans better than their instruments.

People were actually getting kind of tired of it.

The garage bands that Slash was in

basically played their covers and a few originals

and they hung out with other bands that were doing similar things

but none of the other bands became famous,

other than Tracii Guns... Ended up eventually in LA Guns.

Road Crew was another one of Slash's bands.

I grew up playing drums and learning how to play drums

playing with Slash.

Steven saw Slash was in that band Road Crew

and, right away, he wanted in.

So he auditioned for Slash

and, right away, Slash was blown away by his double bass drum skills.

London was a band that everybody had passed through.

This is like the training school for rock stars.

We get somebody in the band and as soon as they leave

they become rock stars.

So, who else was in the band?

Couple of dudes from Guns N' Roses,

a dude from WASP and Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue.

Steven and Slash were in it somewhere in 1984.

Before that, they were in bands that were just basically garage bands.

You know, they never really played the Sunset Strip

and London was a band that was on the Sunset Strip.

At that point, Slash went through an audition for Poison.

Slash didn't really want to do it

because they were kind of bubblegum-ish

and the whole silly string... And it was just like "Ah..."

I thought a lot of it was very sappy.

There was a lot of stuff about the image

that I wasn't necessarily into.

The whole band having the same haircuts.

I liked all the harder-edged stuff.

Back then, they'd hang out at the Rainbow.

At the Rainbow, you would meet different musicians

and, you know, if you were looking for a bass player

you might find one at the Rainbow,

just because it was a revolving door of musicians.

Duff - me and Slash put an ad in a Recycler paper

for a bass player and he was the first person to come meet us.

Duff brought this sort of punk reckless abandon-ness spirit

and attitude to the band.

You know, he's the Slash of bass players.

Slash said to me, "Me and Steven are going to go up

"to this band called Rose. There's this really cool guy.

"He's supposed to be a good singer named Bill, and this guy Izzy,

"and they're supposed to be cool. They're from Indiana."

That day, Bill changed his name to Axl, literally.

Because we thought he was Bill but then, when we met him,

he said his name was Axl so I never really ever called him Bill.

It was... From the very first day, he was Axl to me.

At that time, they were looking for a guitar player

and Slash was looking for a singer.

We ran an ad for a heavy metal punk glam guitarist.

Slash was thinking, you know, to get Axl and Izzy in his band Road Crew,

and Axl and Izzy... Or Axl, at least, was looking

to get a guitar player in Hollywood Rose.

And Slash showed up and we said, "Nah,"

but he kept popping up everywhere we were at

and, all of a sudden, we started working together.

Slash ended up joining, and Steven, Hollywood Rose.

And Izzy ended up quitting immediately and then joining London,

a band that Slash and Steven had just left.

Izzy was just running around

learning about every fad that there was.

When we were watching him perform, I said,

"We get that guitar player and that singer and get Duff in here,

"we're going to have the greatest band ever."

They did about five gigs, couple of rehearsals,

maybe a couple of parties at rehearsal studio

and then it fell apart.

They had differences.

Not necessarily musical differences, I don't think.

They just didn't get along or whatever.

Axl joined up with Tracii right around that same time and said,

"Let's put the band together but this time

"we're going to change the name.

"We're Hollywood Rose, you're LA Guns, let's do Guns N' Roses."

That's why they changed it to Guns N' Roses.

# Whoa, baby

# Pretty baby

# Wild woman... #

Axl called me when I was a booking agent at Silver Lining Entertainment

and he said, "You come highly recommended.

"We'd like you to book some shows for us."

I said, "Cool, send me a tape."

Just like, "Can I, like, bring you a tape?"

And I was like, "Well, I don't really have a stereo here,

"so can you send it?"

He's like, "Oh, it's OK.

"I'll bring a ghetto blaster and play it for you."

Two hours later, he and Izzy show up, ghetto blaster in hand,

and, you know, they played me songs

that were on Appetite For Destruction.

And I was, like, blown out.

I was, like... I booked them sight unseen.

We wouldn't be successful if it wasn't for her.

She was the one who shopped us around, she did all the work,

we just played music.

They had Tracii Guns and Rob Gardner as the drummer

and Izzy had made it back into the band.

He'd joined back with Axl and they hired Duff, coincidentally.

So Duff's now in the band for a gig or two

and Slash just joins Black Sheep.

And they had a gig at the Wolf & Rissmiller country club in Reseda.

Slash's first gig with them.

Who shows up at the gig? Axl and Izzy.

Because why? Tracii quits and Rob Gardner quits,

so they're missing a guitar player and they're missing a drummer.

They've got a gig in four days, five days, at the Troubadour

and Duff has booked a tour to Seattle.

So they said, "Look, Tracii and Rob are out. How about you and Steven?"

So, of course, Slash quits Black Sheep, he joins Guns N' Roses.

It's really funny because none of us are from Los Angeles

and everybody tries to label us an LA band.

We just all happen to have met there

and there was nobody else in LA we could have played with

so it was inevitable that the five of us would get together.

Then they took off to Seattle

and on the way up there the car broke down

and that became what was known now as Hell Tour.

And they had to hitchhike and they didn't have any money

and they had to steal vegetables from farms to eat.

Went out as far as we could up to, I think, Portland.

Portland, Oregon, we're on the freeway hitchhiking.

Had the guitars and stick bags.

And we got a couple of rides with some hippy girls,

a Mexican guy and his kid...

And then finally, Duff's friend from Seattle drove down.

You know, they went through hell to get there and now they get there

they have another good gig.

We did the show.

I'm sure it was terrible.

We went back to Duff's friend's house.

I smoked a lot of weed and ate spaghetti

and we went home the next day.

They get back to Los Angeles

and now they're more than just a band of musicians that fit.

They're kind of blood brothers,

because they suffered a little bit on the road

and, you know, they had each other's backs now.

It was the greatest time because we did it together

and we figured, if we can hitchhike to Seattle in a day,

we can do anything.

So now it's the middle of June

and they have a gig booked in a couple of weeks.

They need photos for flyers and they're hungry.

So they come to Canter's, I feed them their first good meal

they've had in, you know, two weeks.

Me and Slash and the other GNR guys,

I think we were the only people to ever eat for free at Canter's.

We do a bunch of photos with Jack Lucas. Jack knew what he was doing.

MUSIC: Welcome To The Jungle by Guns N' Roses

People are going ape shit.

Like, "Fuck! Fuck!"

I could hear them shouting as I was filming! "Yes!" You know?

They were a perfect fit.

Axl was the rock and roll, Rolling Stones, Hanoi Rocks kind of a thing

and Duff was the punk.

Slash was hard rock and blues.

Appetite was written under no pressure at all.

They were living behind Guitar Center in a little garage studio.

It was meant for rehearsing.

It was like a shoebox, really.

While they were there, Izzy said, "Check out what I wrote."

And he'd show a riff and Slash would hear that and he would funk it out.

Like My Michelle, you know, it went...

HE HUMS

That's all it did and Slash was like, "Uh-uh."

HE HUMS

The place we lived was disgusting.

It smelt, it had no toilet, no sink.

Thank God we had a lot of girlfriends, you know,

from strip clubs or biker girls.

And we were going to their places and taking showers

and they would bring us food. But it made us stronger

and even being in that little shithole,

we were able to create magic.

And it was a shithole, trust me.

They were sleeping in it and stuff

and Axl got in trouble with the law.

The story is that he had sex with this girl and threw her out

and then she said that he raped her.

So then the cops started looking for him.

And Slash called me and said, "Can Axl sleep on your couch?"

Only for a couple of days, but what was supposed to be a couple of days

ended up being six months

and shortly after Axl moved in,

they all moved in except for Duff, who lived with his girlfriend.

I would barricade the bedroom door

so they couldn't get in.

She let us live with her. She let us destroy her apartment.

I guarantee she didn't get her deposit back on that one.

I introduced them to Ray Brown,

who was a pretty famous designer at that point in time.

He made Axl that snakeskin belt

that you see in all the early Appetite stuff.

Vicky Hamilton was like Mama Kin.

She nurtured them

but she also knew that they were drawing a crowd

and she knew the music was good

and she had experience with getting them to the next level.

I was kind of like a den mother for them and drove them to rehearsals.

VINYL SCRATCHES

Steven started doing some bad drugs. He was freebasing.

Slash was doing dope.

He wasn't hiding the alcohol but he was hiding the dope.

Izzy's girlfriend Desi, she got them all hooked on it,

or not all of them but a lot of them.

Eventually, I found out about it and I was really pissed about it

and I stopped buying them food.

They'd call me and say, "Let's go to Tommy's," you know,

and I'd go, "No," I said, "Because, if I take you to Tommy's

"and buy you food, then, when you do get money

"you're just going to buy some heroin. This way, fuck you."

I tried to keep them sober

but they were going up on the roof and doing the drugs and stuff,

that I wouldn't see them. And at that point in time

I was kind of a mess too.

I smoked a lot of pot and I drank the Jack Daniel's with them as well,

so...

I remember when Guns N' Roses first got together

and Slash and Steven joined,

Izzy's girlfriend Desi was the first one to come out and...

Not strip but she was wearing next to nothing.

She would do that for every time they played a gig.

She'd come out just for that one song, for Jumpin' Jack Flash.

MUSIC: Jumpin' Jack Flash by Guns N' Roses

# I was born

# In a cross-fire hurricane

# And I howled at my ma in the pouring rain... #

That went on for, you know, about eight or nine months

and then, at some point, they got Pam Jackson to do it

and she was really a stripper

and she was a good stripper and she really took it to the next level.

I mean, she didn't get naked

but she knew how to really, you know, move it around.

Desi was more of a dancer and Pam was more of the stripper.

And then after that, they were hanging around strippers constantly

because strippers liked the band

and they always had money and the band didn't.

So the strippers would buy the booze,

they'd buy them some food, they could sleep in their apartment,

have sex with them. Basically, the strippers were heaven.

The strippers coming up on stage was simply going to make the show better

because sex sells and sex is...

Everyone likes to see a stripper.

So now the music's good and there's a stripper so...

Thank you and good fucking night!

Thank our lovely dancers!

Hello, guys. How are you?

It was only a matter of time before somebody

was going to find them and sign them

and get them out there to the world.

Music Connection did an article, a cover story on Guns N' Roses

and that kind of wound it up into high gear.

Tom Zutaut had already heard about them from this guy

that works at a little record store here at Melrose, Vinyl Fetish.

They go, "You know, you're the guy that found Motley Crue,

"you'll love this. You need to check it out."

And I said, "Well, what's the name of the band?"

And Joseph said, "They're called Guns N' Roses.

"Isn't that a cool name?"

During the time period on the Sunset Strip,

it was like every record label had a hair band.

That was like a glam rock band.

Guns N' Roses was different than the other bands in the pack

because there was something slightly dangerous about them

and it was a little more guitar-laden.

Slash had drawn a poster that was hanging at Fairfax in Sunset,

of the pistols and the roses.

I saw that poster, I pulled my Jeep over, I ripped it down.

This is the coolest poster I think I'd ever seen.

At the time, I had no idea that Slash drew it.

I found out what time they were going on and I went to the gig.

Well, I missed Guns N' Roses because, earlier in that evening,

Axl had traded slots with Shark Island.

So I watched Shark Island's set, Axl comes out, does and encore with them

and I'm like, "Holy shit. This guy is incredible."

Whatever that animal magnetism, that stare, whatever it is, he's got.

So then he went to see them at the Troubadour a month later.

Whenever I would go to see a band, word would get out

and bidding wars would start just because I was there...

Because of all the rock bands I'd already had success with.

I had 16 A&R people at that show.

Really, I don't even need to see the band.

If the band is halfway competent... This guy has got something

that I've never seen before. Lightning in a bottle.

That was the best show we ever played.

I went and talked to the band

and, you know, I gave them my phone number,

I got their phone numbers and I said, "Guys,"

I said, "I want you to come to my office."

It was literally the loudest show I had ever heard.

It was so loud that I saw people

pulling out their packs of cigarettes,

putting, you know, butts in their ears.

People like this.

It was ear-splitting, damage-your-brain loud.

But it was explosive.

I'd never seen anything like it

and everyone else in the band was equally as powerful as Axl

and I was just like...

"This is going to be the biggest band in the world." I knew it.

Slash's guitar playing was phenomenal.

Every generation needs its own guitar hero

and I really felt that he would be

the next Jimmy Page, Clapton, Beck or Hendrix.

After a couple of songs, he saw right away that he wanted them

but he sort of ducked out of there

because he saw other A&R people there looking,

and they all looked up to him.

And they saw him leaving and he was like...

"Yeah, they were loud, they sucked." Because he wanted to bluff them.

So Tom ended up signing them.

They sign the deal, they get the cheque...

And that is the story of how the band got signed.

That was the last gig that they did that was, you know,

the end of what they were doing before they got signed.

When they got their advance money from Geffen,

a lot of that went to tattoos.

They got, immediately, a lot more tattoos.

I got this, the cross tattoo here.

And then Geffen liked it so much, we decided to use it for a cover.

You see, Slash wanted straight hair so we gave him straight hair.

-I didn't ask for straight hair.

-Yes, you did. You totally did.

Because I told Bill... I told Bill... I said,

"You're never going to be able to draw curly hair right."

You know, it took almost two years

to get the band, you know, to the point

where Appetite was a record.

Tom Zutaut said to me, "We will have to get the band major management."

Because in their minds I wasn't major management material.

No-one would manage them. Everybody turned it down.

So finally I called Alan and I said,

"Alan, you have to manage this band

"or I can't even get this record put out."

This song is called Rocket Queen.

Rocket Queen was just a song

that Axl wrote about his friend, Barbie.

We were actually mixing the record, and Axl looks at me

and he's like, "We can't mix this song yet, it's not done."

Axl had always wanted to record a sex act

and incorporate it somehow.

Steven hadn't shown up, but his girlfriend, Adriana, was there.

Adriana Smith was one of the strippers.

And Axl's like, "How would you like to be a part of

"rock and roll history?"

And she goes, "What do I got to do?"

He goes, "You've just to fuck my brains out for as long as you can."

She wanted to help them, but she wasn't sure if she should do it.

And Alan Niven put down a big bottle of Jack Daniels and said,

"How about now?"

And I was like, "For the band! Sure, no problem.

"For the band. And a bottle of Jack Daniel's."

I was kind of surprised because it was Steven's girlfriend.

There was no girlfriend in my life.

My girlfriend was rock and roll.

They mic'd the floor of this vocal booth

and dimmed the lights, and we just got busy.

They just start having outrageous sex and we're rolling tape.

It concludes, Axl comes in, he listens back and goes,

"Yeah, this will work.

"Let's edit this cos we only want to use it here, here and here."

Anybody can go hear Rocket Queen and they can hear

the best 36 seconds of it,

but there's about an hour and a half of it altogether.

MOANING OVER GUITAR SOLO

I thought it sounded great. I was like, "Good job, guys."

Now that you know, next time you hear it, you'll hear it.

It's for the good of art. It's rock and roll.

They had enough songs to make a record, they just...

Tom was just looking for...

He knew what he wanted. He wanted something else.

MUSIC: Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses

When they wrote Sweet Child O' Mine,

Marc Canter called me and he said,

"They've got this new song, you're going to love it.

"It's exactly what they need."

As soon as he heard Sweet Child he said,

"OK, now you're done. Let's go into preproduction."

We were almost finished with Appetite and we put an EP out

through independent distribution. It was called Live Like A Suicide.

Geffen funded it, but I was able to carve that money out

and use it to bring the band to play that marquee show.

-AXL ROSE:

-The marquee, huh?

How the fuck are you doing?

We did it and the band exploded. Like, the press went crazy.

Welcome to the fucking jungle, people.

I believe that that particular marquee show

is one of the best shows they ever played,

but nobody in America wanted to know about them.

People wanted them to just disappear.

We put Appetite out.

Radio stations won't play it, they refused to play it.

Maybe heavy metal stations like KNAC might have played it, but...

MTV were pushing really hard that they were never going to play

Guns N' Roses because John Malone said if we play this band,

he's going to drop us off his cable systems.

John Malone deemed them to be a threat to good Christians.

The only reason why they had sold 200,000 records in a year

was because they were on tour with The Cult, Alice Cooper, Motley Crue.

And during that time they would play at arenas, say of 10,000 people,

and the next day maybe 100 or 200 people

would go out and buy their record.

So 200,000 units, and I get a call from Ed Rosenblatt, and he said,

"Tom, this record's over. We're walking away from this record."

I said, "This record's going to sell millions and it's only at 200,000.

So I went upstairs, I saw David, and he's like,

"Well, what can I do?"

And I said, "Well, you could call your friends that run MTV

"and get them to play this video we made.

"This video is fantastic. Tell them to play it."

"All right," he goes, "I'll take care of it."

About an hour later David calls me up. I go up and he says,

"They're kind of hoping that no-one that knows John Malone

"will be watching the channel at 4am in New York, 1am in LA,

"but they're going to play the video one time."

And he goes, "That's the best I could do."

So that's it, they're going to play it once.

So I had to deliver this horrific news to the band,

and they were like,

"Well, let's just have a big party."

And one of the funniest things about this party is that, you know,

some of the band were shooting heroin in the kitchen.

The rest of the band was sort of drinking beer and whatever, whiskey.

I went out and got bucket-loads of cookies and milk.

You know, people who drink and do drugs still like cookies and milk.

So before the video comes on. maybe like 11 at night,

there's a knock on the door and it's the LA County sheriffs,

and they want to...

"We've had some complaints about noise."

And I let them in and I definitely

gave warning that I was going to let them in.

And some people were in the toilet flushing things, whatever,

you know, scrambling.

So the sheriffs come in, and they see, like,

some really hot chicks and the guys in the band.

They're all sitting there with milk-lips and milk-chins

eating cookies watching MTV.

And so the sheriffs are like,

"We have no idea why your neighbours are complaining.

"You know, you just look like a bunch of kids watching TV

"and having milk and cookies."

And they left, and that was the end of it.

Finally, I wake up around three, and I've got all these messages.

So I call into the office, and my assistant's like,

"We think you need to come in."

I said, "Who made the most phone calls looking for me?"

And they go, "Al Coury, the head of promotions."

So I go and see him and he's like...

SHOUTING GIBBERISH

You know, he sound like a gremlin on steroids or something.

Basically he says the MTV switchboard blew up last night.

Too many phone calls came in, it sparked the thing and it melted.

MTV's never had so many calls,

and they continue to be bombarded with phone calls today.

Every kid in America is calling them requesting this video,

and they know there's no way we could have paid

that many people to do it.

So they're going to add the video.

The minute MTV started playing Welcome To The Jungle,

everything changed.

They were selling a couple of hundred thousand records a week.

# Welcome to the jungle

We got funs and games

# We got everything you want

# Honey, we know the names

# We are the people that can find

# Whatever you may need

# If you got the money, honey

# We got your disease

# In the jungle

# Welcome to the jungle

# Watch it bring you to your... #

We bought actual news footage that had been shown on television

from NBC and CBS and ABC.

We've worked really hard to get on MTV...

By our...

Without really compromising, by doing what we wanted to do.

Appetite For Destruction

is one of the greatest rock and roll records ever.

And those type of records that have

the swearing in it and controversial topics don't get that big.

They're not supposed to, because that's not vanilla.

But they did.

As the hot young band on the bill, Guns N' Roses were, of course,

the object of much fond speculation among their elders.

It's real easy for a band to go out and buy the image

and watch other bands performing and mimic it and pick it up,

but they seem to have it right down to the bone.

What in the world is this?

This here from the inner sleeve.

I love the picture, but I kind of submitted it as a joke

because it was so outrageous to the band and the manager,

and everybody loved it.

And I was like, "You mean you want to use this?

"This is great." So then we just went for it.

People thought we were promoting rape or something,

which is ridiculous,

but everybody interprets a painting in different ways.

It just exploded.

And then I brought up this Sweet Child O' Mine

and said, "We should shoot a video for this song."

And it became a number one record at seven minutes long, regardless.

MUSIC: Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses

Erin Everly understood Axl better than most

because she had her own difficult childhood.

They had this great love affair, this great romance

and passion for each other,

and Sweet Child O' Mine is written about her.

But I think that she truly did and does love Axl

in a way that almost nobody else probably has,

and I think she helped him a lot.

She wanted to see him achieve his dreams

and she what knew his dreams were, because they were together.

Sweet Child became, like, a number one single,

and that was it getting played on pop stations,

which put them into a whole different ballpark.

TV PRESENTER: They ripped it up at the Castle Donington show

in England, where things got so out of hand

that two people were fatally injured during the set.

Guns N' Roses released an eight song EP in December

which included the four tracks from their first indie record in 1986,

plus, to surprise, some acoustic stuff, too.

Yeah, the subtitle is,

the sex, drugs, the violence, the shocking truth.

Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan provided some

of the liveliest moments on Monday's American Music Awards Show,

when they got up on stage and Slash started talking the way

rock and roll people sometimes actually talk.

All right, listen. Tom Zutaut for finding us.

-Alan Niven

-BLEEP

-for getting us there.

They were getting into trouble.

Come on, get real.

I remember one time where Izzy peed on a plane.

I guess he was impatient, and whoever was in the bathroom

didn't come out and he just went in the corner

and peed, and got arrested.

And that made news flashes across the country.

No.

Sometimes you'll sell records when you make the news.

Some of the lyrics,

according to an influential group of American mothers,

should not be falling on youthful ears.

The more stickers they put on records, the more records we sell.

Yeah.

People are saying that you guys are blowing away the headlining act,

and a lot of bands don't want you guys on the tour with them.

They think we drink a lot, they think we slam a lot of drugs,

they think this, they think that.

-It's this big

-BLEEP

-media thing, right?

It's all you guys' fault.

Alice Cooper didn't know who they were

at a gig in Santa Barbara, but that was a

little bit of a disaster

and the band kind of wrecked the backstage area.

I'm sure Alice Cooper probably wished that that band

was never put on the gig.

You can only be bad boys during nonworking hours.

Yeah, I'm psychotic.

Axl was one of the most intense people I've ever met in my life.

He was a bad ass, without a doubt.

He was a guy that I've seen get in street fights.

Geffen recording artist - Guns N' Roses. Yeah!

Axl stopped doing dope around probably July of '86.

How you fucking people doing tonight?

Cos he saw Izzy and Slash were just going down the drain.

And Steven.

Looks like we've got a fucking rowdy turnout.

Duff wouldn't touch it

because his girlfriend died in his arms when he was 15.

So Duff might have done coke or booze or whatever,

but he wasn't going to touch heroin.

This next song...

And that's when Mr Brownstone got written.

..is a song about doing too much heroin.

I know. But sometimes things go a little too far.

A song called Dancing With Mr Brownstone.

Izzy had written on a pizza box...

Just, you know, some lyrics.

And Axl brought it to Izzy and they end up finishing the song

and making Mr Brownstone.

# Well, the show usually starts around seven

# And we go on stage at nine

# And we get on the bus about 11... #

Axl got blamed for being this,

"Guns N' Roses are just a bunch of drug addicts," whatever.

Axl was not a drug addict after August of 1986.

Yet Slash, Steven and Izzy were.

It appeared to me that the band was a wreck.

Everyone had some form of substance abuse.

Izzy didn't clean up until '89.

And Slash until, what, five or six years ago.

That's just something you can't really help right now, you know?

You use the drugs,

but once the drugs start using you,

then you're in trouble.

Axl was really starting to get deeply worried that

the band was going to implode around him from drugs.

I mean, certain members of the band had serious substance abuses,

and they were mixing different things. Any of which could kill you.

So he made a public statement about it,

onstage, at the LA Coliseum, opening for The Stones.

I hate to do this on stage,

but I've tried every other fucking way.

And unless certain people in this band get their shit together

these will be the last Guns N' Roses shows

that you will fucking ever see.

Because I am tired of too many people in this organisation

dancing with Mr goddamn Brownstone.

When they looked at Axl and Slash,

Jagger and Richards saw themselves back in the '60s and '70s.

You know, "We've been the bad boys of rock since the '60s,

"and now we're not the most dangerous band in the world,

"so I want that band to open for us."

It was great playing with them, it was a definite dream.

I mean, it was something that we told people we were going to do,

and people were going, "No, they're broke up."

I don't care. We're going to open for The Stones. You wait.

We're going to do this. I don't know how, but we're going to do this.

So then I told Keith Richards that and he was like,

-IMITATES RICHARDS:

-"Well, you made it, mate. Let me have a cigarette."

# Stuck it in the middle

# And I shot it in the middle

# And it drove me out of my mind

# And it drove me out of my mind

# Said I wish I never met her... #

How come Steven left the band at this critical juncture?

Steven was fired. He couldn't leave his drugs.

All right, we've got some assholes out here.

I just got hit with a fucking bottle.

I'd like to thank the people in the front row

who got a little crazy with the water.

You dumped water on the electrical cables.

The show's over.

And you, fuck you.

Well, when Steven Adler lost his job in Guns N' Roses

it was a dark time for him,

and they were getting ready to record Use Your Illusions,

and he just wasn't there,

and if he was there, he wasn't capable of keeping time.

They didn't just fire, the brought in Matt to work a little bit

and they thought, OK, Matt will do a little bit

and then we'll bring Steven back.

We gave him every ultimatum.

We tried working with other drummers.

We had Steven sign a contract

saying if he went back to drugs then he was out.

Slash and Duff saw me play drums, I thought I'd be a good fit,

and they were already thinking about making the move on drummers,

so, yeah.

They kicked me out the band because I was doing drugs WITH THEM,

and then they just brought Matt in

to do drugs with them too.

It wasn't like Matt was sober, he was doing drugs with them.

Excuse us, please.

Axl, were you surprised that Steven quit and filed a lawsuit?

Axl?

That was such a terrible time in my life.

Man, just like being in a courtroom, and you've got these lawyers

and they're saying this shit, your bandmates,

the people you grew up with are saying shit about you.

And then you have to say this about them.

It was just so hard.

I would bring heroin on a foil to court with me.

Every chance I get, I go in a bathroom and smoke.

I go, "I can't do this any more."

I mean, I think I cried for a year straight.

You knew, however, that the possibility existed

that he might not be able to get off drugs,

and that if he didn't he was going to flunk out and be gone, correct?

Well, if he didn't meet the requirements of the probation,

-it was going to remove him from Guns N' Roses.

-OK.

Hey, take that. Take that.

Get that guy and take that.

I'll take it, goddammit.

If he sees something in the crowd he doesn't like

he's going to act on it.

After that he didn't want to play the show any more

and they tore the place up.

There would have been no destroying of the place if I was there.

Cos if Axl left and they started getting crazy

I would have started playing my drums,

and I would have got them excited.

I would have done something to stop that.

We were all headed out and there was a lot of violence,

there was the riot squad coming in, helicopters, tear gas,

the whole thing. It was a full-on riot.

It was pretty serious.

We knew we were either going to be arrested for the situation or...

Inciting a riot.

We were, like, running from the law.

It was pretty awesome. So we went in this van.

I'll never forget it, cos we were going through the crowd

and people were banging on the van, and Slash and his top hat on.

I remember reaching over and going, "Take your hat off.

"It's obvious that it's you," you know?

We stopped at a waffle house. Axl was still in his skirt.

It was like...

We went in, people just looked over... "Holy shit." You know?

We got up to Chicago and... Everything was on the news.

These riots, huge fires and 600 people injured.

Holy shit, right?

Record sales are going through the roof. It was...amazing.

So the next day it comes on the news that they're going to extradite Axl.

They're going to arrest him for inciting a riot.

We sent two decoys out of the hotel.

We dressed them like Axl, and we had this other guy named Ronnie that

worked for Slash. He had really curly hair like Slash.

So we dressed him up like Slash.

And the cops were coming in the front,

and Axl went out the kitchen.

And they arrested those guys, thinking they were Axl and Slash.

The plaintiff's case has been about dirty, nasty vulgar language...

You jumped out at Billy...

..you attacked Billy...

and Billy was injured.

They have both compromised

and they have both reached an agreement between each other.

Steven suffered back, knee and ear injuries,

which should be at least partly soothed

by the undisclosed cash settlement.

We originally asked for 2.8 million

and we settled at a very minimal figure.

GLASS SHATTERING

POLICE SIREN BLARES

The band was on top of the world, you know?

I remember when it came time to do the jet, to rent the jet.

So we rented the 727, the MGM Grand, and it had four bedrooms.

We had a bar in the middle of the plane

and we were able to pick our own stewardesses.

There was a lot of drinking going on,

and obviously we were in South America,

where you could score grams of cocaine for 3.

You know? I'll take 10!

We are totally sold out.

If you don't have tickets,

please move aside on the street, or down the block!

You know, we did four or five laps around the world.

Devoted fans lined up to buy the new Guns N' Roses albums

just after midnight, Tuesday, in various cities,

where stores remained open to accommodate the demand.

We want to go home tonight and listen to everything

and be the first ones to hear it. It's awesome.

The band's two new albums, both called Use Your Illusion

and featuring two songs sung by guitarist Izzy Stradlin,

a tune called You Could Be Mine,

the soundtrack to the upcoming Terminator 2.

-We hung out with Arnold! Yeah...

-What's he like?

-He's great, man.

He comes after us in his Terminator gear.

They had security on us with fucking walkie-talkies and shit.

We found a way around it. We had those guys. We had...

Matt's asleep, you know, I've got...

HE MIMICS RADIO STATIC I'd hear that outside my door

and then I'd go out the fucking balcony, over the next balcony...

In Texas one time, I got in a cab and I paid the cab.

She said, "Oh, great show tonight." I said, "You didn't see me."

"I'm not in this car." I said, "Take me to the closest hotel."

I made sure it was a hotel with a minibar,

so I went up there and I drank, passed out on the bed.

Woke up with Doug and John standing in front of my bed.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"How did you find me?"

"We paid them more than you paid them."

And I'm like, "Holy fuck."

I mean, it was all the way across Dallas, Texas.

Guns N' Roses was apparently too controversial for the Kmart

and Walmart chains.

The two new albums, titled Use Your Illusion 1 and 2,

will not be sold in those stores due to objectionable lyrics.

But other retailers have ordered a record four million copies.

In Los Angeles, customers parted with their money

in a more orderly fashion than in New York City.

Not everyone here was a fan of Guns N' Roses.

I hope that album fails,

because I'm just so sick of his attitude, you know?

And he acts like a jerk.

Thanks to the lame-ass security, I'm going home!

It was very frustrating for the other members, to watch these riots

happen, because of sound problems because Axl wasn't at sound check.

BOOING

'This isn't working for me any more.'

# If I could see tomorrow

# What are your plans? #

Hi, I'm Izzy.

'In 1990-91, I had three years of sobriety

'three years of still being in Guns N' Roses,

'we were doing Use Your Illusions.

'We'd go out on the road completely sober.

'There was a point in '91 when I was just like...

'You know, it's time to change, man.

'I'm pulling out of this thing.'

You know, why not?

'I'd had enough. It was absolutely out of control.'

Izzy quit cos he didn't want to spend the money on the videos.

They had spent some money.

He was paranoid about the riots and lawsuits coming,

so he just didn't want to... He just, like, took off.

Am I going to carry on like this, or am I not? You know, I said I'm not.

Plus, he's a bit flaky to begin with.

That was shocking, because Izzy and Axl were childhood friends.

I think that Izzy was probably the most underrated person in that band.

He's a great songwriter,

and I think that he was sort of the guy that kept things together.

But when it eventually came time to write, there was no Izzy,

and Izzy was the neutral figure between Slash and Axl.

He was the missing piece of the puzzle.

Ladies and gentlemen...

Mr Izzy Stradlin.

# She loved him yesterday

# Yesterday's over

# I said OK

# That's all right

# Time moves on That's the way

# We live in hope... #

The beginning of the end for him was that he was starting to get

ticked off about Axl being late for shows.

He started realising that Axl's tardiness

was costing the band millions of dollars.

Izzy got cleaned up and got his own bus

and he didn't want to, like, be anywhere near us.

He wanted to ride away from the band.

Duff was a train wreck with his drinking

and Slash was, you know, Slash his dope buddy,

and Slash was still doing that,

so he didn't want to be near Slash.

And then, you know, Axl wasn't ready to go on or whatever

and they'd be backstage getting drunk all night.

And Izzy just couldn't take it.

Over time, Izzy just had had it in every possible way.

I would see him and he had his dog.

You know, he had a chef on the bus and they were eating really well.

He rode his motorcycle. He had a couple of motorcycles.

Izzy called me up, he called Duff and everybody

and said he was quitting the band.

I said, "Well, can you at least finish the tour?

"We've only got one more gig. It's Wembley Stadium.

"It's sold out, 17,000 people."

And Izzy played and then he... That was it. He left.

We flew back to America, got back to LA and within two weeks,

we were back on the road with Gilby Clark.

# Knock, knock, knocking on Heaven's door... #

I think that any of the members of Guns N' Roses,

if anyone asked them what one of the greatest concerts

they've played at, they would bring up the Freddie Mercury tribute.

It was sort of like a crowning moment for Guns N' Roses,

to be accepted by their peers,

of the most successful rock bands in the world.

# Buddy, you're a boy Make a big noise

# Playing in the street Gonna be a big man some day

# You got mud on yo' face

# Big disgrace

# Kickin' your can all over the place

# Singin' we will, we will rock you! We will, we will rock you... #

Sing it!

AUDIENCE: # We will, we will rock you! #

We played Santiago.

And I remember we played it where they had Amnesty International.

During the military coup in 1985,

about 20,000 people were murdered in that stadium.

We're playing to that same stadium

where those people are actually buried in and around that stadium...

In the ground there.

So no-one had told Axl that piece of information,

and I remember him going, "I don't want to fucking play here."

And then the military... There was security there.

The chief of police, or whoever he was, said "We will use force

"if you don't do the show." We said, "What kind of force?"

"We will have to shoot and kill the singer."

He said it in Spanish. Maybe he fucked up the way it came out.

Got to play the show, finish the show.

And he did a great show that night. It was fucking perfect.

I said, "Doug, you need to tell Axl that part,

"because he needs to know."

Yeah...

# Say live and let die

# Live and let die

# Oh-oh-oh-oh, yeah! #

Guns N' Roses and Metallica were co-headlining a tour

of the Canadian provincial capital of Montreal last Saturday night

for a show that ended in a riot

after Metallica frontman James Hetfield

was sent to hospital with pyrotechnic injuries.

When Guns N' Roses took the stage,

about two hours and 15 minutes later,

the band played about six songs before Axl Rose told the audience,

quote, "We got it together in Europe only to have it come apart here.

"In case anyone is interested,

"this is going to be our last show for a long time."

Axl's taking a lot of heat for being late on stage,

and it's not his intention to keep people waiting.

Axl is someone who has no real perception of time sometimes

when he's, you know, in his creative mode, or finding his mojo

to get up on stage and do that amazing thing that he does.

People who bring us great art,

they are not the most organised people in the world

and they are not always obsessive-compulsively on time.

The only thing that started cutting down the late times

was when I realised it was really being hard on the crew.

The band didn't care about me, so my head wasn't about them.

During the making of Use Your Illusions, you know,

they'd been after Axl for a really long time

to do another cover story and...

We're doing some vocals and I went to studio.

Axl was sort of, you know,

sitting on the floor eating some hamburgers and stuff,

and he looked at me just out of the blue when I got there and said,

"I know I said no, but I wanted to do this Rolling Stone interview.

"I want to expose my stepfather for the monster that he is and was."

# Some of them want to abuse you... #

And he said, you know, "He used to take me to an air force museum

"and rape me in the toilets there. In the toilet stalls."

And he said, "You know, my mom wouldn't believe me

"and I used to get beaten for making up lies."

And he said, "I want to use Rolling Stone,

"because they have been bugging me to do this article for so long,

"but I don't want them to, you know, put a whitewash on the story.

"I want it to come out."

As ugly and harsh as it is,

because it was happening to his sister as well.

So if even one kid will read this interview

and it spares them this pain, I want to help 'em.

Axl had fired Alan Niven.

They think it had something to do with Alan booking

the Use Your Illusion tour

before the record was actually ready.

Axl doesn't know that the tour is booked,

even though everyone believes he knows.

He was also telling me that if Slash dies of heroin or whatever,

it's my fault, and Slash pushing me,

and I should not have agreed to that tour

but I didn't know how to get out of it after it was booked.

And Doug Goldstein, who was the Jedi of this all,

he was their road manager and he was just on top of everything.

If somebody eight miles away had a camera with a telephoto lens

he would snap...he would grab you.

I mean, Doug was... If someone threw a bottle on the stage

he'd be the roadie that ran out and grabbed the bottle.

He was an ace at what he did.

So I guess Axl just figured, if he's an ace there,

might as well make him manager.

But eventually that helped tear the band apart,

because he was...yessing Axl,

and Slash and Duff sort of got the raw end of that stick

and got tricked into signing things they probably shouldn't have signed.

Basically Axl issued an ultimatum.

That whole concept was dreamed up by Peter Paterno,

who's still the band's attorney.

And it was written in a way

where no-one ever thought the band would break up,

because if the band broke up Axl would keep the name,

but Axl would lose his say-so

on the board of directors of original Guns N' Roses Incorporated.

Peter Paterno told me he wrote it that way

because he thought it would keep the band from ever breaking up,

because he never believed that Axl would give up control

of anything to do with Guns N' Roses

and it would keep the band together.

But in spite of that, the band broke up anyway.

REPORTER: Being on the road for the past year hasn't stopped the members

of Guns N' Roses from turning their talents towards outside projects.

# I took my baby on a Saturday date

# "Boy, is that girl with you?" Yes, we're one and the same... #

If Axl would take his greatest press visibility of his career

and he would use that to try and save one child's life

from sexual abuse,

how do you think he would feel about his guitar player

playing with a guy who admitted in court documents

that he drove to some ten-year-old boy's house

and slept with him in the ten-year-old's bed

in the room next door to the mom for 168 days in a row?

Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only...Slash!

SLASH PLAYS 'SWEET CHILD O' MINE'

-REPORTER:

-Duff has recorded a solo album

with some help from his bandmates, Lenny Kravitz

and Skid Row's Sebastian Bach and Dave "the Snake" Sabo.

On the upcoming album he shows that he's more than just a bass player.

I played drums on most of the tracks.

Matt played on one of the tracks,

and I played bass, obviously, and I played guitar.

Axl was looking for something, you know,

way above what they already did, he was looking to take a leap.

Slash was almost heading back towards Appetite.

HE PLAYS BLUESY LICK

He thought he could do it on his own.

He didn't just quit and do Snakepit.

He did Snakepit while he was still in the band.

Slash was done with what he considered the bullshit.

He had had it with what he thought were compromises to keep Axl happy.

He wasn't willing to conform, so he eventually just quit.

-SLASH:

-I left the band in 1996, so we're talking...

-When was the last time you actually spoke, you two?

-It was 1996.

-Do you remember the last words?

-Basically it was just that I...

-You know, "I'm done." I think that was...

-Who said that?

-I did.

And it really... It wasn't even me necessarily leaving the band,

it was not continuing on with the new band that Axl put together

that he was now at the helm of.

REPORTER: Singer Axl Rose announced that guitarist Slash

is out of the group and has been since the end of last year.

What we've got here is failure to communicate.

In a statement sent to MTV News on Wednesday, Slash said, quote,

"Axl and I have not been capable of seeing eye to eye

"on Guns N' Roses for some time."

I got my first sort of insight on the mind of Axl Rose.

He was talking about he was really into buying an army in Guatemala.

He wanted to fund...

-an army.

-HE LAUGHS

If you ask Slash the ten things why he's upset with Axl

and you ask Axl the ten things, they're not even going to match.

They're not even going to be on the same list,

they're mad at each other for different things.

I don't know that anyone can point to any one incident, you know,

when you're dealing with a person

who rides the fine line between genius and insanity.

MUSIC: Mean Bone by Slash's Snakepit

-WOMAN:

-Hey, baby.

It just got to be nasty.

It was just like a bad divorce

and things were said and "he said, she said",

and it just became this horrible thing that I thought

would only last for a year or two.

MUSIC: November Rain by Guns N' Roses

You know, the whole thing was crashing down and Slash was gone

and Duff had his very own difficult journey, you know.

I mean, drugs and alcohol... nearly killed him.

I think that he just got to a place where, you know,

his personal growth was more important

than this disintegrating, imploding band

where none of the original members were left.

And then Matt was fired from the band

and he and Duff both left around the same time.

Slash is doin' fine on his own.

Axl's got his...the Guns N' Roses name and he's got the band.

As far as them working together, like I said, it would have to be...

..a counsellor in between,

getting them to realise that their differences aren't that...that much.

-REPORTER:

-It's August 2002.

In seven years after the implosion of the world's most dangerous band,

the reclusive Axl Rose finally emerges with Guns N' Roses

at the MTV Video Music Awards.

The band's name was familiar but the faces were not.

A lot of people think it's almost sacrilege!

-You know, to do it that way. But he doesn't give a hot

-BLEEP.

# It's gonna bring you down! #

-Duff McKagan, welcome to HARDtalk.

-Thanks for having me here.

Now, tell us about that moment -

and I suppose it was the moment that in a sense saved you -

when your pancreas just gave up.

It expanded and burst.

I knew about the warm effects of opiates,

and when they had the morphine in me

and the pain didn't go away, that's when I knew I was in real trouble,

and that's when I asked, I said, "just kill me,"

the pain was so bad, the morphine was doing nothing for me.

I tried to kill myself every day for 25 years.

You moved onto wine, ten bottles of wine a day.

I went from a gallon of vodka, you know, a day

to, "I'll go to wine, I'll try to taper off."

But I was drinking, yeah, ten bottles of wine a day.

And this is all during the time you're in Guns N' Roses.

I felt hopeless, I was doing, er, drugs that were depressants,

I was doing alcohol, which is a depressant.

How much were you drinking when this problem came on?

It was a good half-gallon of vodka a day plus...

-Half-gallon of vodka a DAY?

-That was at home. Then I would go out.

-Uh-huh.

-And this went on for about ten years.