Appetite For Distortion with Brando

04/26/2025

Not counting a new one, what deep track do you want to hear Guns N' Roses play live this year?

(Photo via Getty Images)

04/26/2025

Happy 2nd Birthday to my favorite cohost, Harrison Rex aka Baby Brownstone aka There Was a Toddler 👶🏼

Teaching my son about the 40th Birthday of Guns N’ Roses. We’ll be interviewing author Martin Popoff soon.

04/26/2025

: April 26th, 1988 - Guns N' Roses rock the Burlington Memorial Auditorium in Burlington, Iowa. Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction and U.D.O. were the opening acts.

"It’s amazing playing these small towns. There’s not a whole lot to do. It’s like these people are starved for this type of thing. And the people are so friendly. We left our door (at our hotel) cracked and people just kept walking into the room unannounced. I didn’t know what they were doing, but I am getting used to it." - Slash via the Journal and Courier

04/26/2025

Most UNDERRATED song from "Ain't Life Grand" is...

1. Been There Lately
2. Just Like Anything
3. Shine
4. Mean Bone
5. Back To The Moment
6. Life's Sweet Drug
7. Serial Killer
8. The Truth
9. Landslide
10. Ain't Life Grand
11. Speed Parade
12. The Alien

04/25/2025

: Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal spoke to us about his musical journey. From passing out cookies to fans on his first Guns N' Roses tour, the need to work with different artists, and why the wait between solo albums

Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal talks his musical journey. From passing out cookies to fans on his first GN'R tour, the need to work with different artists, and why th...

04/25/2025

Thanks Ultimate Guitar!

ICYMI from my interview with Doug Aldrich...

'I think Coverdale heard it and was, like, 'Douglas, tell him you're busy.''

04/25/2025

: April 25th, 1988 - via Metal Hammer...

GUNS N' ROSES
DOUBLE TROUBLE

ALICE COOPER and GUNS N’ ROSES, two names to set the blood racing and the pulse pounding. If ever they should join forces . . . What’s that? They have! A new version of the Cooper classic ‘Under My Wheels’, you say? Set to appear in a movie, you say? Shouldn’t the authorities be informed?! Shouldn’t Gunner IZZY STRADLIN be interviewed by Metal Hammer? Of course . . .

THE EUROPEAN lour got cancelled, you heard the stories - Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx turning blue. I mean exhausted, after partying with support band Guns n' Roses and, heck, the days are gone when techni-colour overdoses, stains on the carpet and doctors calling in the early hours were par for the course -so everything’s off and the Gunners didn't come.

They're pi**ed off, I'm pi**ed off, and any lover of firebreathing rock's pi**ed off; so many moments of pleasure lost. As anyone who had their heart skewered at last year's Marquee or Faster Pussycat doublesleaze-dates will affirm, this band is preposterously good. And I personally don't care if they come back with Crue or riding a chariot on the rays shining out of Bon Jovi's bottom so long as they come.

As things stand at the moment, there's a good chance they might. Right now they're in LA waiting for their six week stint on the Iron Maiden US tour to start (May 16), and after that there's talk of them joining the Castle Donington bill and following it up with a possible Autumn visit with Metallica.

Still in the talking stages, though; meanwhile, they’ve been holed up in a grungy studio in Redondo Beach, California, working on songs for the next album and a possible acoustic mini-album, and making a video. They've just done a track with Alice Cooper for an upcoming movie, they’ve been watching their debut album shoot past America's Tupperware leather brats and into the Top 20 and - if those rumours are to be believed - trying to stop their band from coming apart at the seams. Hell, let rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin tell you.

"We've been off for six weeks now," he moans down the phone, "and it's f“ked. Touring is quite different from living in one place and it takes a lot of adjusting to. We’ve been writing a lot of music, though - pretty much a collaboration, someone comes in with an idea and we all fill in bits and pieces and by the time it gets worked out it's a whole band song. We're working on the next album right now. We're down in the studio - just a little garage studio, state-of-the-garage, you know - hashing out some new tunes, riffs and arrangements.

"We've got about nine that are really strong - and that’s just the hard rock songs, not including any of the ballads that we do that we haven’t had a chance to put out; there'll probably be a ballad or two on this next record. Overall, it’ll probably be a little louder than the last album, but with the same kind of grooves - very varied, because all our songs take on their own personalities, and you never really know what it's going to sound like until it's all done."

A COUPLE of song titles that have been wafting around are 'Could Be Mine', "there's a line from the song on the innersleeve of the last record, it says ‘With your bitch slap rapping and your co***ne tongue'; that's a line out of a song which we'd been working on for the first album but we just never got around to putting it all together". And there's one called 'Patience' - "I just found the original words to that last week - I wrote it in New York, and then when the time came to record it acoustically last time we were recording, I lost the words so I had to make them up on the spot, and the last half of the song is completely different from the one I originally wrote!"

If it doesn’t make it onto the album, it’s up for the acoustic EP I mentioned earlier, along with an Izzy song called 'I Used To Love Her But I Had To Kill Her', "a kind of a laugh song, a funny song.

"There was talk of releasing the 'Live ?!’ 'Like A Su***de' EP on one side and then doing acoustic tracks on the other - but I'm hoping we can get it all acoustic tracks, because I’d rather put out something new for people to listen to."

All the touring they did since the last album has made them stronger as a band, stronger as writers, he tells me, "because touring you find yourself sitting backstage a lot with your guitar, and you'll sit there and pick around ideas and notes and chords, and when everybody's together in the middle of nowhere or in some big city, you just end up running around together and having a good time, whereas at home in LA it’s a little more scattered, everybody's spread out and you just see each other at clubs. But touring helps a band become strong, you get to know each other real well. You know when you're going to find Stevie (Adler - drums) lying face-down on the f**king bus naked, drunk - because he starts drinking right after a show, so you give him an hour and go pick him up!

"For us, touring works good. I've heard stories of other bands that just seem to fall apart on the road but it just seems to be such a healthy thing for us. Our band seems to tatter when we get stuck in LA for too long."

Funnily enough, we heard rumours that the Gunners had fallen apart in the middle of Phoenix. Arizona: Axl refused to go onstage, they said, got kicked out of the band, and only Izzy's intervention got him his job back! Isn't that true?

“No, not exactly. What happened was he showed up for the show but he was late. By the time he got there the show had already been cancelled.” So he wasn't kicked out? "Oh no. The next day I went and talked to him and that was it, nothing happened, we didn't throw in the towel or anything."

Anyway, what’s all this about Motley Crue cancelling a whole Euro tour because Guns n' Roses led them astray?

Izzy laughs. "If you look at it rationally, who has the money to lead who astray? Know what I mean? I can't get into detail on that because it’s a touchy situation but it's like if someone has one beer and someone goes out and buys five cases of beer, you know? Just leave it at that!"

HOW DID this Alice Cooper movie thing come about?

"Alice called Axl and wanted Axl to do a duet with him on this live-in-the-studio version of 'Under My Wheels' (the old Cooper classic) and Axl went and did it and he called and said 'hey, come on out, you and Slash, and lay down some guitar tracks'. So we did and it came out great. Axl went in in the afternoon and sang harmony on some of the verses and then other parts he sang bouncing off Alice - Alice’d sing a line and then he’d sing a line - and we came in later in the evening.

"We toured with him for two weeks and we seemed to get along pretty well. He doesn’t really hang out with anybody when he tours, and the only time I would see him was when he would walk onstage from his bus and walk back offstage into his bus and disappear, and it was like that for two weeks, and then on the last two or three nights he started coming backstage and he seemed to like us."

Izzy doesn’t know anything about the movie it'll appear in. All I know is it's supposed to be a full-length documentary called ‘The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II - The Metal Years', by cult director Penelope Spheeris who made the original ‘Decline Of Western Civilization' LA punk movie.

The band’s about to start work on a new video, ' Sweet Child Of Mine’. MTV, who censored the 'Welcome To The Jungle' video because of "some footage of an airport in Europe that was blown up a while back - too controversial" and because Steven is featured licking a girl's shoulder, will be pleased to hear that this one not only has no airports but Steven's not licking anything female at all. It's a performance video this time, "a couple of clips from the live stuff here and there, I don’t think it'll have any storyline. This is pretty much just a live band, and we like to focus on that."

04/25/2025

Just ☝️ week until Guns N' Roses' 2025 "Because What You Want & What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things Tour" kicks off in Incheon, South Korea.

What's your excitement level? Expectations? (Photo by Helle Arensbak via Getty Images)

04/24/2025

Blue Oyster Cult co-founder Joe Bouchard told us the only thing that bothered him about the 80s rock scene...but still found Guns N' Roses "pretty darn cool." 😎

Full interview available wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Video on YouTube.

04/24/2025

Holy trinity of cool. Bo Diddley, Dimebag Darrell and Slash...
..what is an epic photo, photobombed 🤦‍♂️🤘

04/24/2025

: April 24th, 1995 - via the Detroit Free Press...

INTO THE PIT: A vacationing Slash tries to unwind while on road with snakes

Slash has just checked into his hotel room in St. Petersburg, Fla., but his thoughts are still at the previous night’s show in Miami.

"As silly as it might sound, and as much a musician as I’d like to think I am, I really get off on a crowd that just loses their ... minds," says the 29-year-old guitarist, who’s in the midst of a vacation from Guns N’ Roses to tour with his solo band, Slash’s Snakepit.

"Last night, one guy reached up and deliberately untuned my guitar. I kicked him in the head ... but afterwards I thought ‘Ah, I shouldn’t have done that.’ But there were just a bunch of stupid people being crazy—jumping over monitors, jumping onstage, dancing with us. “I totally got off on the energy.” That’s one of the reasons Slash is indulging in this solo sanctuary these days. Left to his own devices, he says, time off Guns N’ Roses could lead him down a path of drugs and alcohol; his abuses in the past — including a he**in addiction — are legendary, and there was one overdose that left him clinically dead for eight minutes.

So, he says, it’s better to be working. And after Guns N’ Roses’ assorted swings through the biggest stadiums and arenas in the world, Slash — who was born Saul Hudson to rock ’n’ roll industry parents in England — had an itch to work at a more intimate level.

As he puts it, "I haven't played in front of a mosh pit for ages. Guns N’ Roses got too big to play that close to people.

"I needed to get down to street-level again. This doesn’t have any sort of big, rock star status behind it. We just have to prove we’re a good band. That’s a big, huge difference."

You can say Slash has traded one Snakepit for another. Since the conclusion of its two-year "Appetite for Destruction" world tour, there’s been quite a bit of hissing in the Guns camp — particularly between Slash and singer Axl Rose.

Rose caused a furor when he stuck a Charles Manson song on Guns’ 1993 cover album "The Spaghetti Incident.” Then the singer politicked to kick out guitarist Gilby Clarke, who Slash liked enough to make a part of the Snakepit.

Rose also irked Slash when the band recorded a new version of the Rolling Stones’ "Sympathy for the Devil" for the film “Interview with the Vampire.” The guitarist agreed to do the song "as a vehicle to get the band together and working again." But he wound up recording an instrumental track with bassist Duff McKagen and drummer Matt Sorum, and Rose came in later — with another guitarist — and, according to Slash, "ruined what I thought was going to be a cool version of the song."

There were other arguments — over whether Guns should do a club tour to promote “The Spaghetti Incident" (Slash yes, Rose no), over the b***y rock songs that made it onto Snakepit’s album "It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere" (Rose didn’t like them).

No wonder the deposed Clarke says Guns “isn't an easy group to be part of." And no wonder Slash felt it was time "to get away for a minute, before Guns turns into something it shouldn’t.”

But, he says, this is no declaration of Guns’ imminent demise.

“Guns will be around forever, trust me,” he says. "They know how I feel. They know I'm not going anywhere. I don’t have the inclination to quit Guns and think I’m cool.

“There are just too many personalities in this band to just go ‘OK, let’s do this. To get everybody in sync is not an easy thing to do. But when we do, we’re the best ... band in the world.”

Clarke calls Slash the “center” for Guns, but the guitarist certainly appears guileless in that role. For instance, he asked drummer Sorum not to be part of the Snakepit tour so that he would be available for Guns rehearsals while Slash was away.

"If Matt went with me, the whole band would be dormant, and I didn’t want that,” Slash explains.

Nor does Slash mind apologizing for the band’s quirks.

"The original guys in the band, Duff and Axl and I, haven’t changed that much,” he says. "Axl is just a bigger version of what he always was. Axl’s difficult in some ways, brilliant in other ways. Axl’s Axl. I accept that.”

Ironically, Rose was supportive of the Snakepit album — at least until he realized it meant Slash would be taking some time off from Guns N’ Roses. "When I finally made a record," Slash recalls, "He was like ‘I like this song and this song and that song.’ I said ‘Yeah? You hated it when I wrote it.’

"The problems between Axl and I... that’s a psychological thing between us. I don’t think I’ve ever not been there for Guns before. I’ve always been there for every tiny thing. For to just disappear all of a sudden — ‘Look, I’m gone, I’ll be back on such-and-such a date’ — threw him for a loop, I think."

No matter what it did for Rose or the other Guns members, the Snakepit project is clearly refreshing Slash. He still insists the album was "an accident,” born out of jamming at his studio in the Hollywood Hills house where Slash lived with is wife, Renee, and a menagerie that includes some 300 dogs, cats, snakes and other reptiles.

It was destroyed in last year's earthquake, and Slash, Renee and “the kids” have relocated to Beverly Hills.

Besides Sorum and Clarke, the recorded version of Snakepit included Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez, who had to return to Seattle to record his band’s next album. For the tour, they’ve been replaced by the rhythm section from the band Pride & Glory, whose leader — guitarist Zakk Wylde — was jamming with Guns for a time as a possible replacement for Clarke.

Slash’s reverie was also interrupted by the AIDS death of rapper Eazy-E, with whom he'd once recorded.

"That really blindsided everybody," he says. “This whole business is geared towards avoiding reality. We knew all about AIDS and everything... and we’d still be out there pushing needles (having s*x with) anyone we could. I’ve given up a lot of that stuff, but I hope this wakes up some more people.”

In the meantime, Slash will keep his Snakepit on the road through August. Then he plans to go home, hopefully to find a Guns N’ Roses that's focused, cohesive and ready to make music again.

"I can’t tell you when the next record will be out or when we’ll be touring,” he says. "I have no idea at this moment as to where Axl’s head is at.

"In my heart of hearts, I’m hoping that while I’m gone they maintain a more or less simple rock ’n’ roll band kind of mentality. I’d be thrilled if that’s what I found when I got back."

04/23/2025

NEW! Ep. 504 - Joe Bouchard, Blue Öyster Cult: Prescription for More Cowbell

We're joined by Joe Bouchard, co-founder of the legendary Blue Oyster Cult. We highlight the Raven Drum Foundation, "Godzilla" with Matt Sorum, thoughts on Appetite, embracing cowbell "fever" and more!

We're joined by Joe Bouchard, co-founder of the legendary Blue Öyster Cult. We highlight the Raven Drum Foundation, "Godzilla" with Matt Sorum, embracing cow...

04/23/2025

: April 23, 1995 - via The Virginian-Pilot...

Cutting loose: Slash takes a leave from GNR to play his own music

■ But Guns N’ Roses expects to get together to begin recording original material soon

Slash has seen concert-ending riots incited by his band’s lead singer, the infamous Axl Rose. He’s looked on as Guns N’ Roses went through various other over-the-top scenes - court cases, drug abuse and recovery from same, brouha-has over lyrics and cover songs -during its rock ’n’ roll reign.

But one thing literally hit home: last year’s L.A. earthquake.

“That was one of the most violent things I’ve been through,” said Slash, born Saul Hudson and currently on tour with his side project, Slash’s Snakepit.

The friendly, even mellow, guitarist told the story by phone from California - his status as a rocker betrayed only by liberal usage of four-letter words. He was working on “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere,” his first solo album, in a small home studio.

“One night I went in and recorded three songs and mixed them that night, which I never would normally do,” he said. “I usually write the stuff, listen to it the next day, maybe change a couple things around or something, but mix it the next day. And this one night I was just on a roll. I mixed everything and 3:30 in the morning I take the DAT tape and I go downstairs and I get in bed. And all of a sudden... the house was shaking.”

The house took the brunt of the punishment.

“You can see through it,” he said, laughing. “When all was said and done and the dust had cleared, the whole house was totaled, everything that was material of mine was pretty much wasted. But the studio was more or less still intact. My wife was fine, I was fine, the snakes were fine, the cats were fine. My cousin Greg, who was visiting from Chicago, who’s never been to L.A. before, he was fine.

“And I realized that none of the (“stuff’) really mattered in the first place, so we just left.

“And we had a bottle of Jack that didn’t break.”

It’s been that kind of charmed life that’s seen Slash from one adventure to another since the release of GNR’s 13 million-selling “Appetite for Destruction” in 1987.

He**in addiction, onstage Rose tirades, controversy surrounding everything from lyrics to the simple fact of the band’s existence have marked his iconic tenure. He speaks good-humoredly of a recent radio-promotion tour for "Five O'Clock,” seemingly unconcerned that the record has slipped down the charts rapidly.

“We had a good time just tripping around, you know,” he said, “playing in these different situations and, you know, meeting these different people and just hanging out here and there, and you know, it’s just sort of like seeing the world again sort of through the window of a van.”

He likes playing the smaller venues that Snakepit’s low-rent panache has made possible.

Slash said the basic tracks for "Five O’Clock’’ were done in a week, with lyrics being written (often by singer Eric Dover, formerly of Jellyfish) the day vocals were to be cut. A bit of a switch from the stone-cutting method perfected by Guns N’ Roses under the direction of Mr. Rose.

“Guns is just one of those long, drawn-out processes, you know, and that’s probably another reason why I’m doing things the way that I’m doing them, just to get back to where you’re desperate,” he said with a laugh. “You know, Guns can sit around and make up ideas till the cows come home.”

Slash is voluble about GNR, which plans to begin work on its first album of original material since the 1991 release of the twin “Use Your Illusion” sets. An apparent slip about guitarist Gilby Clarke, now a Snakepit denizen, being ousted from the band gives a glimpse into the mad, mad, mad world of the Gunners.

“He didn’t really get fired,” amended Slash. “It’s just that something between Axl and him wasn’t working.”

But for Axl’s arty tastes, some of the Snakepit material might have been on the planned GNR disc.

“When I started writing all this stuff, you know, and I played him some of it, he was like, that wasn’t the direction musically he wanted to go in, because it’s basic hard-rock stuff. And at the time, I think Pearl Jam was like what he was into, and" - laughing - “I said, ‘Oh, wait a second, OK. I won’t have anything to do with that.’ And so once I got this going, it just happened so quickly, he all of a sudden decided he did like the material, and um ... I was like, ‘Dude, the record’s finished.’ ”

The road anthems and ex-user’s warnings about drugs became “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere.”

“I think I’m just doing this as a release for me,” Slash said. “But I can’t knock what Guns does, outside of, you know, going onstage three hours late. But you know, you know, I just adapt.”

04/23/2025

: April 23, 2014 - At the Revolver Golden Gods Awards, Axl Rose received the Ronnie James Dio Lifetime Achievement Award from Nicolas Cage.

Plus, Duff McKagan filled in for Tommy Stinson as Guns N' Roses performed at Club Nokia in Los Angeles.

Setlist:
It's So Easy
Welcome to the Jungle
Better
This I Love
You Could Be Mine
Sweet Child O' Mine
November Rain
Knockin' on Heaven's Door
Paradise City

(Photos by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

04/23/2025

: April 23, 2016 - Guns N' Roses performs weekend 2, day 2 at Coachella in Indio, California. The show was dedicated to Prince, who died 2 days prior.

Setlist:
01. It's So Easy
02. Mr. Brownstone
03. Chinese Democracy
04. Welcome to the Jungle
05. Double Talkin' Jive
06. Estranged
07. Live and Let Die
08. Rocket Queen
09. You Could Be Mine
10. New Rose
11. This I Love
12. Coma
13. Speak Softly Love (Love Theme From The Godfather)
14. Sweet Child O' Mine
15. Civil War
16. Better
17. Wish You Were Here
18. November Rain
19. Out Ta Get Me
20. Knockin' on Heaven's Door
21. Nightrain

Encore:
22. Don't Cry
23. Used to Love Her
24. The Seeker
25. Paradise City

(Photos by Kevin Winters/Getty Images)

04/23/2025

AXL POV

What did you say (or do) to get this reaction? 😲

04/22/2025

Rest in Peace. His work on Chinese Democracy will always go as underrated.

Roy Thomas Baker worked with Queen, Free, Journey, The Cars, Yes, Ozzy Osbourne, Smashing Pumpkins and many more

04/22/2025

Seen in LA 😆

Anyone been? Any good? 🍔 🌭