☆ハナ☆

☆ハナです。☆

I've been watching more, reading more... I adore all the original line up, but some things... I don't know, because there was this break. Like, before the shows with the Stones, there was this break of them, and that's what drove them down. If they'd continued, just as they were... Steven probably wouldn't have been kicked out, Slash and Axl would probably be okay, everyone would probably be content with it. Even Izzy, I think.

He didn't want the band to be a worldly giant monster machine, but the reason he left the band wasn't just that. When the drugs tore them down, in this break, he and Slash and Steven were just so fucked up, and Duff was so drunk all the time, and Axl wasn't opened to other thoughts so his radical view of reality was just too big there... Steven couldn't get out of his drug addiction. Sometimes, I hate how much I understand that guy. He couldn't play because of it, but he'd lie to them. To continue there, to keep on playing... trying.

It wasn't the fact that they kicked him out that hit him so bad, I think... because he did everything he could to try and kill himself once he was out of the band. He just was betrayed, and the way it was announced, it just made that feeling grow. I know how that shit is, the difference of someone telling you you're out and then announcing it or just leaving it quiet, and of someone just getting in front of thirty eight thousand people and saying you're out and why you're out. Sure, I haven't been in front of all that people, but it's the same as if you were in front of five people. It just worsens it that they were famous, at their top.

And being sober, then Steven being kicked out... I don't think Izzy really accepted Matt as a GnR member, I have to read more on that, still, but Steven leaving was another thing that made him take his decision to leave. That, his freedom, and the fact he was sober around a bunch of still-drunk-n-high guys.

And then it all seemed to crumble...

But Axl hadn't told the others how he'd announce Steven's leave, you know... he just, I think by impulse or by feeling that was when he could do it, or maybe to see if that made Steven stop... he just got there and said it. I love Axl and I understand a lot of shit has happened, but that doesn't mean there aren't times when he fucked up. Sometimes, I want to do exactly what Steven said he wanted to... heh...

As much as there is obviously some scrapped reason, thrown off the map, there's also the point where Axl just got consumed by the fame. Join two and two, and you have a big fall. I have nothing against Matt, but also, Axl had announced that if someone -Slash- who had serious problems didn't stop, the band was over (in the first show out of the four they opened for the Stones). That made Slash hate him, in Slash's own words... He was pretty fucked up at the time, but that surely made him pissed at Axl...

And I remember it took Axl announcing Steven's leave that way for Steven's mother to realize he did have a problem, unfortunately it seemed to be too late to help. He was truly saved by a miracle, I just wonder for what purpose. I have lots of them in mind.

Though, while watching this interview, one line made me smile. That was by Matt, that he said "What's with the piano?"

As much as I like the thought that Axl's talent wouldn't go to waste, and I like the songs with the piano, I kind of understand him, too. It's like, the band didn't just have a change in members. Axl had decided to change the whole direction of the band, he wanted to do something different... and well, that just drove 'em all apart in a way, even more, but I'm not complaining about anything else that came from it. The problem is that as the beggining Guns they were fine, they were Guns N' Roses, and suddenly it started to change and they didn't agree. It's like, in a way, the Beatles.

Okay, weird thing to say.

Anyway, Slash wanted one thing, Matt felt out of place, and Axl was trying to drive a machine that had long since lost it's breaks, while Izzy was practically jumping out of the car so he wouldn't die... Duff, I just can't tell in which seat he was by the time this thing crashed.

Then well, there was the shit when Axl made them sign over the rights. He didn't fucking buy the rights to the name Guns N' Roses, he made them sign over for free.. it's almost as if he were stealing the band rights for himself. I mean, it was that or he left. Guns N' Roses was Steven, Axl, Slash, Duff and Izzy. Then, it was minus Steven but plus Matt, but damn, the other three and even Steven, they had their share in it. But even so, Guns wouldn't be the same without Axl's voice... it's like, I stopped listening to songs from after Izzy left, not from just after Slash left. One change is enough, and well, I just didn't feel right.

The base guitar, it seems so little, but it supports the whole song and it glues it together, and then he left...

Yeah, they handed over the rights because it wouldn't be GnR without Axl... Well, all in all, he wanted to make sure Guns N' Roses survived, even if one or another version fell down. I have nothing against the new versions of GnR as a band, but it just isn't the same band, it shouldn't have the same name.

Then there was the concert in St. Louis, where Axl tried to grab a camera from a fan and well, he ended up throwing the mic down in anger... it broke, and well, soon it was all chaos. Slash admitted he was scared of it, imagine, tens of thousands of people just out of control and you need to run... then they escaped, but that was... I'm even scared of hearing it, imagine living it.

And well, then there were times when Axl would walk off stage or not show up... and the times the show was awesome and you wouldn't forget it if it killed you... so it was all unexpected shit.

By the time Use Your Illusion was out, I guess they were so divided... yeah...

It seemed like that's when Axl stole the scene and fame was over his head for real, he was the focus, he was the videos and he seemed to be the band, in his head. I know he needed to survive, there was the part of trust only in yourself and throw other shit out the damn window, but still... what's the point of being in a band if you're the only focus? Or if you guys are on each other's nerves so bad you can't stay in the same room? It just... yeah.

I'm not putting all the blame on Axl, hell, I could make and probably will make another entry with the side blames, but this is to point out that he wasn't a fucking angel, nor was he the devil. He was someone who had an ugly past, learned how to not trust, had problems in lots of stuff and had this bad temper, this unstable, thin line in both his trust life, his love life, and his emotions. He was also overcome by fame, and he was also just... "When you're high, you never wanna come down"... I guess that sums it... He lived for Guns, but still, that ended up not being Guns in the end. In the end, he didn't want to let go, it's like... it's like when you seem to lose everything and the last important person to you is dying, you want to cling onto them and believe they're alive, even when the body is just empty.

That was one more item for Izzy to leave... he knew Axl since HS, back in Indiana, but when you add that band pressure and Axl's iron fist on the band, he didn't stand it. He left, November '91... I understand all of them, in a way, and Izzy, Steven and Axl are always plaguing my mind with that stuff, and Duff and Slash add onto it... I can say things to defend and condemn all of them, so don't put me in court or I'll contradict myself in this side. XDD It's like putting angel wings on Angus Young, when he deserves them, but at the same time crown him with the devil horns. They're both.

And then again, they were bound to break up or die or whatever, from the very beggining... that's what made them, that's what broke them. If Axl's past hadn't fucked him up, if Steven and Slash weren't that high, if Duff weren't that drunk, if Izzy weren't that... Izzy... they wouldn't be the most dangerous band in the world. Axl could just be the Axl we know because he let go and he would destroy everything around him, with his voice, and face his demons that way. The tour kept Steven and Slash and Izzy less high, Duff less drunk, because they already had what to keep them going.

After Iz left, they weren't exactly a band... and Matt said that. "Let's be a band, man".

And then there was Axl walking off stage more, no contact with him out of tour, and all shit was phoned... and Slash passed out in front of the elevator at the hotel... He almost died then. He dodged the bullet, it seems. But Duffy... *sigh*

He was so drunk, so bad in shape, he couldn't even speak well. He was killing himself. Matt said he'd hear something on stage, and look to see Duff passed out.

Then in '92, they joined Metallica for a tour. But fuck, the pyrothecnics must have let something off because in one of the shows, James was burnt badly on stage. Guns N' Roses had to deal with the crowd, then. Axl's voice was fucked up, so he couldn't save the day then.

Hell, that was chaos again. And then... Argentina, when it all ended. Fuck, a band ain't a bunch of guys hating each other, it's supposed to be a family. They were the most dysfunctional family in history, I guess. They still are, in a way.

On the road, they would, in a fucked up way, show it. But then they didn't want to get home, because it's like... it's all going to end as soon as we step off the tour.

They released the cover album, but then there was the new orginal album. Axl had to have the power in his hands because well, he felt dominant. It's like, I've felt it before. If I let go in the slightest, I'm going to die, and it's all over. Kind of like that.

It's like a marriage bound for divorce. Sympathy for the Devil, that was their eding track, the farewell, credits of the movie.

It was in '96, Slash quit... and Duff and Matt followed, of course. That was the end, for everyone. Minus Axl.

That guy, he really couldn't let go. Disappeared off the face of the earth for five years, to come back with an all-new badn under the same fucking name. THAT wasn't Guns. That was a completely different band, it's like saying "this band is a new GnR because it has one of it's originals in it". It just kept the name. Axl's voice was long gone, it wasn't the same... I'm not saying his voice is crap, I'm saying it changed, as everyone who abused drugs, alcohol, temper and vocal chords' voice is bound to change.

He changed, everyone changed.

So many years... Chinese Democracy, so many years to make it, so many years that Axl had been clinging onto the damn name of the band. Maybe if it weren't under the name Guns N' Roses, the album would be seen with better eyes. I don't have the courage to listen to something under the name of Guns N' Roses that has only one original member. I can listen to Velvet Revolver, I can listen to Sebastian Bach's Angel Down album with participations from Axl, I can listen to them in other shit, but not that way. Not under Guns N' Roses, as much as I hold respect for their members and Axl himself.

It ain't the same band.

In Velvet, Scott seemed to be more Axl-like. It may have been pressure, it may have been the need to be that, but he became too much like Axl for the others to stand. Until now, they're vocalist-less.

It's never going to be the same, even if they did happen to return. It's not the same, even if they came back to being a working and not-so-fucked-up family, but... you know, Guns N' Roses is still a family, that fucked up original line up is somehow, still a big, fucked up dysfunctional family that's going to live on, and well, it's never going to die. Axl can keep clinging to the name, but man, the name is gone to the history books for the '80s and early '90s, it ain't going to be the same machine again.

Shit, I should stop before I rant again XDDDD