#mick wall

Duff: Hear this? Hear this? Hear this? [Duff grabs the sides of the table and bangs his head with an audible thump against it.]

Slash [disdainfully]: What was that?

Duff: Oh, you do it, too? Okay, together… one, two, three, four! [both lean over and, as one, head-butt the table together, making an even more audible THUMP on the tape.]

Mick Wall [desperately trying to wrap it up now]: You heard it live and exclusive on Capital Radio… I’d like to thank Slash and Duff for joining me this evening… [Much braying of laughter in the background.]

Mick Wall: Last of the Giants: The True Story of Guns n' Roses (2016)

Marc Canter (w/ Jason Porath & Jack Lue): Reckless Road: Guns n' Roses and the Making of 'Appetite for Destruction' (2008)

So much has been written about the 'Most Dangerous Band in the World' that even those of us who lived through Guns n' Roses' incredible heyday can only cherry pick the books and autobiographies least likely to blur reality with bitter, one-sided memories and cheap sensationalism.

You know, the ones otherwise known as GnR Lies.

But seriously, when it comes to band histories (as opposed to band member bios), I'd personally recommend Mick Wall's Last of the Giants -- if for no other reason than because he was one of the rock critics Axl Rose infamously invited by name to "Get in the Ring"!

Much to my surprise, Wall barely addressed the subject (let alone gloated about how Axl inadvertently granted him instant immortality) but, with nothing left to lose after falling out of favor, he was free to pen a balanced and comprehensive band history with his customary, uncompromising fearlessness.

That being said, there's an obvious difference between the book's first half, in which Mick relies on an enviable personal archive of exclusive interviews, and the second half's more distant, straight-up reporting, after he'd been -- forgive the pun -- "boxed out."

Then again, who wasn’t exiled during the nearly two decades between GnR albums by a deeply paranoid Axl: rock's own Howard Hughes, who surrounded himself with yes-men and -women (managers, musicians, masseuses, psychics!), while allegedly pining for his lost love, Stephanie Seymour, and paralyzed by creative uncertainty.

Wall also covers Velvet Revolver's brief and turbulent run (sadly, robotically, rather than in his typically sharp and spicy style) until Axl tentatively reunited with Slash, Duff, and other assorted former Guns for the period of relative peace and productivity (on stage, if not in the studio) we know today.

So, imperfect as Wall's attempt may be, I'm not aware of anything better and I honestly doubt we'll ever get to the bottom of the enigma that is Axl Rose, unless the man himself decides to spill the beans someday, and maybe not even then.

And that means further reading ...

Although a love of reading isn't required for those who a pick up Marc Canter's Reckless Road: Guns n' Roses and the Making of 'Appetite for Destruction', which provides a fly-on-the-wall oral history of the group's gory/glory days, as remembered by those who shared Sunset Boulevard gutters with Axl, Slash, Izzy, Duff, and Steven Adler.

Very, VERY poorly written and edited (with Jason Porath) by Slash's childhood pal Marc Canter, scion of the famous Canter's Deli family, this is essentially a personal scrapbook packed with spelling errors, lapsed continuity, and repetitive set-lists and stage banter.

But it also boasts an incredible collection of over 1,000 photographs snapped by Canter and Jack Lue (plus flyers, posters, etc.) that capture the gritty, chaotic, decadent, violent, and lighthearted evidence of GnR's combustible formative years through 1987.

In other words, this isn't a book you'll want to read, but one you won't be able to take your eyes off of, making it a perfect addition to your rock 'n' roll coffee table.

So there you have it: just two of countless Gun n' Roses books for you to choose from (I'm personally salivating for ex-manager Alan Niven's forthcoming addition to the pile), or, as W.Axl Rose might put it, for you to "Get in the ring, motherfuckers!"

Featured Records:

Guns n' Roses: Appetite for Destruction (1987)

Hollywood Rose: The Roots of Guns n’ Roses (2004)

“When I was writing the book, I interviewed apsychologist who told me that the worst thing you can give a control freak, which is what Axl appears to be, is give them total control. Because it induces a kind of stasis in them where they literally will never finish anything, because it will never be quite right. And I think that is a huge part of what’s been going on here. If Guns N’ Roses were still Guns N’ Roses — in other words, if it were still five guys that started out equal in the band, this album so would have been released years and years ago, and then they’d have gone on and made another one, and another one. It isn’t Guns N’ Roses; it’s in effect an Axl Rose solo album, Axl and a bunch of hired hands — very talented hired hands, but guys who have been hired to do what he tells them to do. Otherwise he’d still be with the real band, who weren’t so easy to tell what to do.

He’s had it all his own way for years and years. And the result is, listening to it, it’s incredibly overproduced, overreaching, almost self-pitying, a lot of the tracks, but also an album that seems to try to deal with a lot of questions to do with the past, and provide a certain amount of rationale behind why he is who he is, and no one ever really understands, and all this kind of stuff. As a solo album, it’s a really interesting piece of work. But if you need to look at it as a Guns N’ Roses album — and we have to because that’s how they’re selling it — I don’t know. I don’t think people got into Guns N’ Roses so they could listen to an album like this. I think they loved Appetite for Destruction because there was something in it (that) reminded them of Led Zeppelin, reminded them of The Stooges, reminded them of wild, out-there music that kind of broke all the rules.

And I think on Use Your Illusion [it was] the same thing. Even though the whole EltonJohn/Queen influence that Axl has made itself more apparent on the UseYour Illusion albums, it was still Guns N’ Roses. You still had somefantastic guitar playing from Slash, and real cohesive band performances — it sounded like a group still. And I don’t think this does. It’s very hard for me to truly view [Chinese Democracy] as a Guns N’ Roses album when there’s really only one guy from Guns N’ Roses on it.

(…)

Come the nineties, he was very, very freaked out by the whole Nirvana grunge thing. Nirvana and grunge did to Guns N’ Roses what they [GNR] did to the Poisons and the Motley Crues: they made them look silly. And they were in their silliest phase, let’s be fair. The video for “November Rain” just makes me cringe.

(…)

Awful, awful. And that of course was all Axl’s doing. And I think in his heart he knows that, and he took it very bad. He was really into Nine Inch Nails, he was really into Ice-T, and I think he really wanted to show the world that Guns N’ Roses had all that kind ofstuff in their locker — they weren’t just Motley Crue. Which, in manyways, is to be applauded.

But I don’t think the way to do it is to kill the band, throw the baby out with the bathwater, and completely try to build the whole thing from the ground up purely with your own vision. Because if it were down to Axl, there are a lot of Guns N’ Roses songs that would never have made the record. Similarly, if it was purely down to Slash, and you hear this on Velvet Revolver albums, there were songslike “Sweet Child of Mine” that if it hadn’t have been for Axl, would never have made the record. I think those guys — it’s a yin and yang. What made them so interesting was how they worked it out between themas a band. Izzy was very important, Duff with his punk thing, evenSteven with his not-terribly-good-drumming sometimes, was that L.A. kid who summed up their whole Hollywood era. To take that away and say I’m going to make Guns N’ Roses more interesting, more creative, just better, without any of the other guys, is just so wrongheaded. It’s starting out from completely the wrong place.

(…)

I had the only weekly rock show on TV and radio over here, and I was the only person playing “Welcome to the Jungle” on video and playing the album despite all the cuss words. Shortly after, I spent most of my time in LA, ’88, ’89, ’90, I became very close to them. And I witnessed a lot of things that to this day, I’ve never written about, never discussed, because they were private things. They were very personal things, troubled things, and I felt that I was a guy they could trust. They gave me a gold record for GNR Live because of all the help I’d given them.

The whole thing with Axl came from an interview. He called me late at night, demanded I go to his apartment. Vince Neil had been saying some stuff about him and he wanted to set the record straight. There’salways a vendetta going on somewhere with Axl. And I got there at like 1 am, and I left at like 5 am, and we did an extraordinarily long interview all about how he wanted to duke it out with Vince, and he was going to kill that motherfucker, and all the rest of it. A few weeks later, as I’m writing the story, I realize how heavy this looks, so I call him on the phone. I taped that conversation also, and I said to him, “let me read you this, because to me this sounds heavy, and I just want to make sure this is how you still feel, and you still want to do this.” I read it to him, he laughed, and then he said, “I stand by every single word, motherfucker, go ahead and print it.” So I did. And literally within a week or two of the story appearing, as far as he was concerned, I’d made the whole thing up. I was a dirty rotten limey journalist who can’t be trusted, and had lied about what went on, and misquoted him.

(…)

He’s still thinking about this, he’s still warning people off me, record company people — grown men in their 40s who to this day are nervous about speaking to me, because it will harm their relationship with Axl or possible future relationship with Axl. The whole thing is so, so nuts. But on the other hand, it’s a great story, and stories are what I deal in. If there was no story, there would be no fun to be had. So I thank him in many ways, because it is a great story. I just feel for him as a human, I really do. This isn’t like”Ozzy Osborne is crazy,” or “Alice Cooper, he’s crazy.” I don’t think it’s like that. I think the guy genuinely has personal issues, which, on a completely human level, I totally wish him really all the best with and hope that pain goes away for him one day.”

“With that being said, there is just something so infuriating about speaking to an idiot who doesn’t know that they are an idiot.[1] However, one of the few things in life that’s even more aggravating, is speaking to a smart person who thinks that they’re smarter than they really are.[2] These are the people that think intelligence is absolute, instead of the sliding gradient that it is. They equate anything above the average intellect to be something akin to genius, a pinnacle that they sit atop alone and unchallenged by the rest of the world. This is a theory that I’ve stumbled upon by virtue of Guns N Roses being my favorite band of all time. In honor (or chidingly) of frontman Axl Rose, patient zero, I give you Axl Rose Syndrome.

Obviously we all know at least four people in our lives who think that they’re smarter than they really are. More often than not however, this is either a ploy, or a sense of overcompensation for either not being cool enough in high school, or a lack of perceived recognition for being smart in the first place, so they have to remind everyone within shouting distance of just how smart they are. Axl Rose Syndrome is a case where someone sincerely and whole heartedly believes themselves to either be the smartest person in the world, or have the capacity and ability to become the smartest person in the world. What separates those with Axl Rose Syndrome from your typical spiteful and insecurely arrogant prick, is how the afflicted came to the conclusion of their intellect.

Axl Rose was born and raised in Lafayette Indiana, aka Fucksville U.S.A. To say that he grew up amongst the stupidest people in the western hemisphere is no stretch of the imagination. Contrary to popular belief, Axl Rose is not a stupid man; yes he does stupid things like imagine slights and release albums 15 years too late, but he is a smart guy. He’s no intellect, but he does possess an above average IQ. Depending on who you ask the average IQ is between 90-100; Axl’s is a purported 115. But the reason for much of Axl’s megalomania and self-deprecating sense of egotism comes from the fact that he grew up in the middle of nowhere surrounded by idiots at every turn.

Axl Rose Syndrome is the misguided notion that one is the smartest person in all of creation, concluded from their place of upbringing, typically being surrounded by lesser minds. People with the affliction may very well be one of the smarter people in their community, but they then use that small sample size as a general paradigm for the entire universe. They rationalize that since they are the smartest person in their limited environment they must therefore be the smartest person in existence. They extrapolate their misguided observations and then generalize it to apply to the world at large.[3] In short, Axl Rose Syndrome is the belief in one’s own intellectual superiority based on the environment in which they were raised, wherein they were surrounded almost exclusively by stupider people.”