One of the greatest rock n’ roll/ hard rock bands that ever existed. The rude boys singing about their lives full of alcohol, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. The band ruined by heroine and egos of the members. Today I’m going to take your time and write a story of them.

How the whole band started

The story of GN’R begins in Indiana. There lived two boys with one rock n’ roll dream: Bill Bailey (a.k.a Axl Rose), and Jeffrey Isbell (a.k.a Izzy Stradlin). They were best friends and they always wanted to start living in Hollywood. Izzy eloped first, cause Axl had problems with the local police. But soon young Mr. Rose arrived in the City Of Angel too. He found Izzy and started a hard rock band called Hollywood Rose. A young drummer, named Chris Webber joined them, but the band didn’t make a big success. They just had few songs. But in the same time, also in Los Angeles a band called L.A. Guns was rising up. The main three guys of that band were: Tracii Guns, Saul Hudson (Slash) and his friend, not much a talented drummer- Steven Adler. Somehow Slash and Steven met Axl and Izzy on a party and they decided to make a band. They were good mixing together, because of the variety of music tastes; Slash loved Metallica, Izzy looked up to Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones and Axl liked Elton John’s piano skills. Of course the band’s two main problems were, that they didn’t have a bass player and a name. They found a young bass player from Seattle, called Michael “Duff” McKagan, so the band was a complete unknown without a name. Izzy said that if the band came from a merger of L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose, then the band will be called Guns N’ Roses. They were famous in Hollywood because of the parties- an ideal mixture of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Soon, Guns N’ Roses published their first album- Appetite For Destruction. Nobody expected a big the success of this CD. It reached the top of popularity (it was the most wanted all over the world). And soon the world had it’s new rock n’ roll legend: a band with a crazy leader and a very characteristic lead guitarist.

Appetite For Destruction

As I said before, it was the first and really good album of GN’R. You could say it was album made from various kinds of songs. You could find there songs like “Welcome to the jungle”, “You’ re crazy”, “My way your way”, “Rocket Queen”, which are not really romantic songs. “Welcome to the jungle” tells the truth about Los Angeles, full of prostitution, drugs and alcohol, “My way your way” about sex on the streets of L.A., or “Rocket Queen”, which is written about one of Guns N’ Roses’ groupies. But you can also find “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, one of their most romantic songs ever. It was written ‘bout Erin Everly, the first Axl’s serious love. The song is full of metaphors, that describe the beauty of Erin. Each rock fan should have their first album with two epic singles in his or her collection.

Guns N’ Roses Lies

Appetite For Destruction was still on top, but Guns N’ Roses didn’t just stop working. They immediately started to record and they wanted to publish some stuff from their first E.P- Live @ Like A suicide?!. Tracks like “Nice boys”, “Move to the city” or the Aerosmith cover “Mama kin’” were put on this cd. But this one also had some epic ballads. The protest song full of contempt for niggers, gays and immigrants, called “One in a million” (I really like the text of this song” or the beautiful acoustic love song “Patience” were the two reasons why everyone wanted to have this album.

Band Members

The Guns’ stock changed many times. But Guns N’ Roses became famous because of these guys (look at the pictures).

In 1991 year Izzy Stradlin left his band because, as he said “they were too famous”. He was quickly replaced by Gilby Clarke (only for 4 years). Steven Adler was thrown out of the band because he couldn’t stop taking heroin and he was a real troublemaker for them. He was replaced by the former drummer of The Cult, Matt Sorum. One of the best things that Axl did for the band was that (thanks to Axl) a very talented keyboard player, named Dizzy Reed joined them.

In 1993, while the Use Your Illusion Tour was on, Axl started to do weird things with the band. Yes, the group was falling apart, and in 1993 Slash left the band. He did not have to wait too long for Duff. Duff left the band also in 1993. In 1994 Matt told Axl that he was fed up with Axl’s ideas and he also left the band. Axl in a rage fired Gilby Clarke. You could say, Guns N’ Roses didn’t exist anymore.

Today’s GN’R

Axl Rose didn’t give up. He decided to keep the band. But the stock was completely changed, which means that the sound was changed too. He started to record a new album with GN’R but he had serious problems with the lead guitar players. One day the lead guitarist in the band was Robin Finck (from Nine Inch Nails), another day Richard Fortus, and another day nobody. As the result of this mess with guitarists Chinese Democracy (their newest album) was being recorded for about 14 years and Axl invited about 14 guitar players to play. The stock of Guns N’ Roses looked like that:

Vocals: Axl Rose

Drums: Frank Ferrer

Bass: Tommy Stinson

Rhythm/ lead guitar: DJ Ashba, Richard Fortus

Keyboards: Dizzy Reed

Lead guitar: Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails also), Buckethead, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, many strange guys (not as strange as Buckethead, or Robin Finck, but not as talented as them either).

And What about the rest of the old stock? Slash, Duff and Matt started a new band called Velvet Revolver, but this band wasn’t meant to last long. Slash started solo carrier also, and this year he recorded his first cd, called just Slash. What is for sure - the old Guns N’ Roses’ members are all great personalities, but they’re nothing without each other. So the story of Guns N’ Roses is just a story of friendship that didn’t survive the fame and its “side effects”: sex, drugs, alcohol and money of course.