Mr. Brownstone

The following text is an excerpt from the book ‘Welcome to My Jungle,’ written by Craig Duswalt who was Axl’s former assistant. This is one of my favorite GNR stories and I thought that I should share it with you guys!

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“One afternoon a moth got into the house. An uninvited, very rude moth. Obviously this moth was a huge fan of Axl’s because it would not leave no matter how many times we asked it to. Robert was there, too, and he and I tried and tried, but the moth ignored us and kept flying around Axl’s dining room chandelier.

Well, at some point Axl had had enough. He was absolutely determined to get rid of that pesky moth. Most people at this point would get a ladder or a chair and a flyswatter and go to work.

Most people.

But not a rock star.

And especially not Axl Rose.

Axl instructed me to keep a close eye on it,and he ran upstairs. So, there I was, watching a moth and worrying about how pissed Axl would have been if I had let it out of my sight. If someone could have taped me tracking that moth from room to room, I would have won $100,000 on America’s Funniest Home Videos, no contest.

When Axl finally came back, he wasn’t carrying a flyswatter. He was carrying a gun. Not a pistol, but a long gun. A rifle maybe, or even a shotgun.

Now, I’m not a gun expert. In fact, this may be hard to believe for some, but I have never shot a gun in my life. And what might be harder to believe is that I’ve never even held a gun in my entire life. I’ve shot BB guns before, but that’s it. So when I say I’m not an expert in guns I truly mean it.

My first thought was, Thank God I know where that moth is, otherwise Axl would probably shoot me. But at that point it was obvious that the gun wasn’t for me---it was for the rude moth.

Axl was on a mission.

Rockstars do everything bigger and better.

It wasn’t enough for Axl to just shoot the moth. No, he insisted on setting up a barrier so that just in case he missed (though how could you miss anything with a shotgun at a range of less than ten feet I don’t know), he would be safe behind his own personal wall. You know, in case the moth chose to attack or something.

Axl said, “Get me a chair.”

I brought over a dining room chair (a really nice chair---it was Axl’s house.)

Axl positioned himself under the chair, lying on his back, using the seat of the chair as cover from the potential killer attack moth.

“Okay, dude, make him go into the corner,” instructed Axl.

“Do what?” I said.

“Get the moth to come out from the chandelier, into the corner so I can shoot it. I don’t want to hit the light.”

Right.

As I stood on another (really nice) dining room chair, I thought, If I do, miraculously, get the moth to go into the corner, how will it stay there so Axl can shoot it? Does Axl want me to stay close to the moth so it doesn’t fly back into the light? Does Axl want me to stay there while he shoots the moth?

I was getting paid very well at that tine, but the thought of standing between Axl and a moth, with Axl holding a gun, was very stressful. But dealing with stress was a key part of the job, and I was used to doing what I was told, so I stood there.

Today I’m much older and don’t have a death wish, and would never do that, but at the time I just trusted that Axl was a good shot, and I stayed right there, making sure the moth was cornered until Axl could shoot. Thankfully, I didn’t know much about shooting guns at the time, either. 

“If you hand me a flyswatter, I think I could get him,” I begged.

“Not going to happen,” Axl said with a laugh

So with the moth hovering in the corner of Axl’s dining room ceiling, and me waving my hands frantically to make sure it stayed in the corner of the ceiling, Axl pulled the trigger, and...

Boom!

I checked my chest,my arms, and my legs to see if I’d been hit, and again, amazingly, I walked away unscathed.

The moth, of course, was obliterated. I didn’t see more than a little dust come from the ceiling after the shot. But the moth was indeed gone.

After a victory yell by all of us in the room, Axl calmly got to his feet and walked off into the sunset, victorious. (Actually he walked back upstairs to his bedroom to put the gun away.)

Now, I don’t know why there wasn’t a gigantic hole in the wall. My best guess is that Axl just happened to have a shotgun around that he had preloaded with rock salt or something, because there were lots of little holes in the area where the moth breathed its last breath (if moths even breathe). It could have been a BB gun that shot out lots of little BBs or pellets. But I don’t give a rat’s ass what kind of gun it was all I know is that the moth was defeated.