How did Exl Rose once got into a fight with David Bowie? A selection of interesting facts about the band Guns N 'Roses...
Table of Contents
California band Guns N 'Roses changed the face of rock music forever! And their album Appetite for Destruction instantly became not just a hit, but one of the best-selling debuts of all time... Called "the most dangerous band in the world" because of their trademark offensive behaviour, Guns N 'Roses is one of the most influential bands of the 1980s (if not the entire 20th century)!
We offer to recall the most interesting, and maybe a little scandalous facts about these "rock monsters"!
Guns N 'Roses nearly died in a car crash after their first tour...
Guns N Roses were returning to Los Angeles after their first tour when they were involved in a serious car accident. The whole band was in bassist Duff McKagan's Toyota Celica when another car travelling at 60mph hit them at an intersection! Fortunately, everything was all right. Drummer Steven Adler was the only one who was seriously injured: he came back from the accident with a broken ankle...
"Duff's car was wrecked, and we could have died too!" guitarist Slash recalled in his 2007 autobiography. "It would have been a painful twist of fate: the band almost died after having just been formed..."
Exl Rose went to jail for throwing a bottle of wine and a piece of chicken at his neighbour!
On October 30, 1990, lead singer Exl Rose was arrested for allegedly throwing an empty wine bottle and a piece of chicken at his roommate Gabriella Cantor! Rose spent 4 hours in jail before being released on $5,000 bail!
"I live next door to a psychopath!", Rose told a TV reporter after his release.
The case was eventually dismissed, but not for Rose... Subsequently, Exl denied any allegations. It went so far as to say in one of his interviews:
"If I was going to hit her with a bottle of wine, she wouldn't have got up by now!"
Izzy Stradlin arrested for 'a little hooliganism' on board a plane...
On a flight from Los Angeles to Indianapolis, the band's guitarist, Izzy Stradlin, had to go to the bathroom. The musician thought of nothing better than to make a piss right in the galley of the plane, using a bin....
"I was drunk, very drunk... I drank so much that I really wanted to go to the loo. But it was busy! Hell, it felt like I waited for an hour... That's why I used the bin..." - commented the perpetrator of the incident.
When the plane landed, Stradlin was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge.
"The next thing I remember is we landed, I get out and I see 10 police officers... I also remember thinking, 'Uh-oh! I think I screwed up again...'"
Slash once dragged his pet lion right into a hotel room!
In 1993, Slash moved into a new home in Los Angeles and began to fill it with an array of exotic animals, including snakes, lizards and a mountain lion named Curtis! However, in 1994, the Northridge earthquake forced the guitarist to leave his home. He couldn't take all of his pets with him. However, he decided that at all costs, he would not leave his favourite mountain lion behind....
Slash checked into the Four Seasons Hotel and secretly escorted Curtis to their new room... It's just amazing how such a large "pussy" managed to go unnoticed... But it's a fact that the guitarist himself has told more than once.
Sweet Child o' Mine was written in five minutes!
Sweet Child o' Mine is the band's calling card. At the moment, the number of views of its music video has passed 1.1 billion... And, we are sure, this is not the limit of success!
And then, in 1988, it was revealed that listed as one of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time," Sweet Child o' Mine was literally written in 5 minutes! Let's hear it for Duff McKagan:
"It's one of those songs that only has three chords. It was written in about five minutes... And at first we all thought: 'What kind of song is this? It's going to be nothing, it's going to be like filler scattered on a record... But it turned out to be the opposite!"
Duff McKagan took economics classes because he didn't realise the state of his finances ...
Duff McKagan is not only a talented bass player, but also an economic genius! In 1994, a high school dropout, he enrolled in finance courses at Santa Monica Community College. Then in 2000, the bassist enrolled at Seattle University to study business and economics.
In his 2011 interview, Duff explained what exactly inspired him to study the financial market:
"I couldn't understand the state of my finances... I didn't know how much we made or lost on tour. A 30-year-old millionaire... That's funny! How was I supposed to admit to someone that I didn't know what the hell I was doing?"
Even before Guns N 'Roses, Stradlin and Rose took part in a medical study in which they were paid... to smoke!
"One morning I was leafing through the newspaper and I see an advert: 'We pay smokers $10 an hour.' I said: "Gosh, that seems like an easy job! That's all we do every day anyway!" And we responded..." - Stradlin recalled.
Rose once got into a fight with David Bowie and vowed to "destroy" his...
As a young man, David Bowie had a reputation for "stalking" his friends' girlfriends. But he made a fool of himself when he tried to woo Rose's girlfriend Erin Everly.
An incident between Rose and Bowie occurred in 1989, when the former noticed the latter literally keeping an eye on his girlfriend... A fight ensued, during which Exl shouted: "I'll kill you!"
Eventually, the friends reconciled. In his interview, Rose told how he and Bowie smoothed out the conflict:
"David and I had our differences. But then we talked calmly, we went out to dinner together and then we went to a Chinese club and everything... I really liked him, yeah, definitely..."
Slash once ran naked and bleeding through a golf resort after a bad trip
In his 2007 autobiography, Slash described how once, while at a golf resort, he hallucinated that he was being chased by "predators" with "rubber dreadlocks"!
Slash undressed, broke through the glass door and left his room to escape the imaginary danger. He then proceeded to use the maid as a human shield before running through the lobby and hiding behind a lawnmower on the resort grounds...
