← DISGRACELAND
DISGRACELAND
Guns N’ Roses Pt. 1: Brawling with Bowie, Juvenile Delinquency, Dealing Dope and Death at Donington
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- [00:00]
Jake Brennan
Foreign Elvis. It's hot guys. Summer is here in full force down in the part of the country where I'm at. I'm emptying out my closet. I'm reorganizing and donating a bunch of clothes I don't wear anymore. What do I wear? What? What am I constantly going back to my Quince short sleeve T shirts. Quince's base layer T shirts are gonna great. They're lightweight and they look good if I'm going out to dinner or if I'm just chilling at home working throughout the day. I rock the black, I rock the green, I rock the navy. These are high quality T shirts like everything else at Quint, high quality and reasonably priced. Quint works directly with top artisans to cut out the middlemen and give us luxury pieces without the markups. I've even turned my wife onto quint. Quint has 100% European linen shorts and dresses for $30, luxe swimwear, Italian leather plat sandals and so much more. And again, the best part, everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands. Give your summer closet an upgrade with quints. Go to quints.com Disgraceland for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Disgraceland to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com Disgraceland for decades he was untouchable, a mogul, a visionary, a king of hip hop. Sean Diddy Combs built an empire from the ground up. But now it is all coming undone. Jesse Weber hosts Law and Crimes the Rise and Fall of Diddy the Federal Trial A front row seat to the biggest trial in entertainment history. Sex trafficking, racketeering, prostitution, allegations by federal prosecutors that span decades and witnesses who are finally speaking out each week. Law and crime is breaking down the courtroom drama as it happens. From explosive testimony to behind the scenes legal strategy to the questions on everyone's mind. How far will he fall or will he walk free? But with a reputation in ruins, the spotlight is harsher, the stakes are higher. And for Diddy, there may be no second chances. You can listen to the Rise and Fall of Diddy the Federal Trial exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Right now, Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The story is about Guns N Roses are insane. They brawled with cops, dealt drugs, robbed unsuspecting friends, fans and one night stands. Singer Axl Rose once slept with drummer Steven Adler's girlfriend and recorded her orgasm for an overdub in one of their songs. Their music and the attitude that propelled it was so authentic and so compelling that it instigated riots on multiple occasions. Guns N Roses was the real deal. Violent, aggressive, of the street and for the street. A product of 1980s Los Angeles, as bipolar as GnR's, notoriously short tempered and moody frontman. Hard and hedonistic all at once. And they made great music. That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my melotron called Castro McQueen's Last Call MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Roll with it by Steve Winwood. And why would I play you that specific slice of Divorce Rock Cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on August 20, 1988. And that was the day Guns N Roses took the stage at Castle Donington, kicking off one of the deadliest days in rock and roll. On this, the first of a special two part episode to commence season five, Castro McQueen's Last Call, Divorce Rock Cheese 2 Dead at Donington and Guns N Roses. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. David Bowie simply did not care who her boyfriend was. He had to have her. She was too much. Too much for the eyes, his mysteriously colored eyes. Too much for the camera, too much for the crew on the video set. Too much and clearly too much for her infamous lover who was off somewhere else at the moment, most likely pissed off about something. Except for the fishnets she was wearing, all leather, leather bra, thong, knee high boots, bondage, ball gag, handcuffs, total S and M, total vamp. Chips, dips, chains, whips, you know, your basic heavy metal orgy type of thing. And she was drawing all of the attention on set, even from her boyfriend's bandmates, who, despite the fact that they were accompanied by their own smoke show girlfriends, couldn't avoid sneaking peeks at the video vamp whenever she walked by or took tour blocking under the lights. It was a hyper sex charged situation. Steven Adler, drummer in the band, did his best to mask his lust, but there was almost no use in trying. However, this was his singer's and best friend's girl. But holy shit, she was something else. She was rock and roll royalty. Born to one half of the greatest harmony singing duo of all time, Don Everly of the Everly Brothers. Aaron Everly, dark hair, big eyes, oozing sex appeal, was in 1989, half of rock's current Royal couple having hooked up with Axl Rose, singer of what was fast becoming the biggest band on the planet, the notorious Guns N Roses. But David Bowie, Mr. Well hung in snow white tan, could care less. He had to have her give her the royal wham, bam, thank you ma' am treatment. And Bowie at the time was enjoying yet another career reinvention, this time as part of the fantastic and indefinable rock group Tin Machine and making waves on stage and on mtv. And he was of course already by this point, legend. He was also a sort of Uncle Slash, cool stepdad to Guns N Roses, lead guitarist whose mom was a costume designer back in the 70s. And that's how she linked up with Bowie, designing his clothes during his manic coke fueled thin White Duke days. Their working relationship eventually turned sexual and Bowie took a shine to his costume designer's young son, Saul Hudson, who would go on to become the one and only Slash. And as fate would have it, by the time the 80s was coming to a close, Slash was in a bigger band than Bowie at the time. Which was how David Bowie found himself on set for the Guns N Roses video shooting, checking in on Slash and seeing what he and his band were all about. And that was the motivation anyway. The leather eye candy ruling the day with her dime spot sexuality was the bonus sweet child of whoever she was. It didn't matter. And it all happened so fast. One minute Bowie was ogling Aaron, next her short tempered boyfriend Axel was chasing him off the set down La Cienega Boulevard, screaming, I'm gonna kill you, Tin Man. Supposedly a punch was thrown and landed, but nobody really knows what happened except for Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton. A few days after the dust up, Mick and Eric cornered Axl backstage at a show, demanding to hear about the heavily rumored fight with their old mate David Bowie. Axl quickly told them the story and none of it seemed far fetched to Jagger and Clapton. Bowie had been moving in on their women for years and the two went on back and forth to each other about the time Bowie did this, the time Bowie did that. Axl wasn't even sure he was in the conversation anymore, as he just stood there listening to two of his childhood heroes go on in a spirited and highly comical conversation about the dude who was hitting on his girlfriend days earlier. A dude he still wanted to pummel into oblivion. A dude who also just happened to be none other than David fucking Bowie. Axel couldn't help but think, what in the hell had he done to end up with this insane life? Lafayette, Indiana, his hometown was a long way off in the rearview mirror. Axel had to squint to see it with his mind's eye. But the trauma and the shame of those days were always burbling just beneath the surface. Surveying his daily routine, his habits, his interactions, any and all events that would provide an opportunity to explode his emotions ran the show Volatile artist doesn't even begin to explain the complexity and behavior of Axl Rose. There were constant physical altercations with fans, friends, cops, neighbors, thin white dukes, and, according to Aaron Everly, with her as well. Axl Rose, from a young age, had been scraping, clawing, fighting his way away from something, something welling up inside, something horrific and indescribable. It was a feeling he couldn't shake, and a feeling that would drive him to create one of the most explosive albums of all time.
- [10:11]
David Spade
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- [10:46]
Jake Brennan
Hey, what's up Flies? This is David Spade. Dana Carvey. Look at I know we never actually left, but I'll just say it. We are back with another season of Fly on the Wall. Every episode, including ones with guests, will now be on video. Every Thursday you'll hear us and see us chatting with big name celebrities. And every Monday, you're stuck with just me and Dana. We react to news, what's trending, viral clips follow and listen to Fly on the Wall everywhere you get your podcasts.
- [11:15]
David Spade
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- [11:47]
Jake Brennan
Axl Rose felt at home on St Mark's Place in Manhattan's East Village. He could feel the inspiration that drove his heroes, the Ramones and the New York Dolls, to create some of the most dangerous music he'd ever heard. Music that to this day, February 2, 1988, still spoke to the angry young man in him. Squalor, crime and grime. Punk rockers, skinheads and hippies hanging on for dear life. Homeless people, drag queens, junkies and tourists. St. Mark's was a low key bohemian bazaar of countercultures clashing up against one another in the form of hard to find books, harder to find records and and imported porn. Studded belts, Dr. Martin's boots, leather for days and other edgy, irreverent fashion items unavailable to the rest of America. Like that Charlie Don't Surf T shirt hanging in the window of trash in vaudeville. The one with Manson's 1969 mugshot, big and intense, emblazoned across the front. Axl thought it was killer, so he popped into the store and had the dude with the peroxide hair and Iggy Pop tattoo behind the counter grab it for him. Axl wouldn't wear it on stage that night, though. No, he had his Thin Lizzie shirt teed up for that. The show later that evening at the Ritz a couple blocks north of St. Mark's, was being broadcast live on mtv, and Axl's band, Guns N Roses, was wired tight for maximum rock and roll. America took notice when it aired. The show was watched by a relatively small audience of American teenagers up way past their bedtimes. But the show was recorded on dusty VHS tapes and passed around high school corridors repeatedly over the coming months until the ferocity of Guns N Roses was recognized and salivated over en masse by high school kids everywhere. Axl Rose came to life on screen as a real life version of the Breakfast Club's Johnny Bender. He was the high school burnout who we all knew growing up. The one who doubled down on shop electives and wore ripped jeans out of necessity, not out of a sense of fashion. The guy who sported self imposed cigarette burns on his muscular forearms and was rumored to have a Bud man tattoo on his ass. This was the same dude who sat in the back of the classroom and simultaneously frightened and attracted the cheerleaders, those same cheerleaders who wouldn't give you the time of day. You saw this dude standing alone, quiet at the edge of the keg party up off at the train tracks. You left him alone because you heard the story about the time he busted the bottle of Michelob across the jock with the big mouth's face. But inside you burned to know more about him. What made him tick, what made him so pissed and what made him so fucking cool. Just like that kid, Axl was filled with contempt and untapped confidence. On stage at the Ritz, you could feel his anger. It was something that had been building up inside since birth. It was coming out one way or another, likely through violent rage or petty crime or both. But rock and roll saves. Otherwise Axl Rose would likely have been in jail on that night instead of blowing the minds of all in attendance as well as everyone watching at home on television and later on Memorex. On stage, Axl looked a little older than the millions of high school burnouts who would soon come to worship him and his band. He was essentially the same angry young man he was growing up back in Lafayette, Indiana. But at the Ritz it was clear that his time had come and he'd arrived with a murderous row of bandmates. Slash, the bronzed Mad Hatter, Adonis, Izzy Stradlin with his Ronnie Wood via Johnny Thunder's cool Duff McKagan, 11ft tall and oozing punk rock sex and excitement. And last, the wide eyed ball of heavy metal puppy dog charisma. Stephen Adler. A band that you could immediately tell never had a to give. And their live show was flawless. Even with the flaws, it was flawless. Songs like the diddly ask Mr. Brownstone, the jet fueled Night Train and the Showstopper Rocket Queen veer from brilliant to train wreck and back again in the time it takes to suck a Marlboro red, from first flame down to toxic filter. GNR was from the street, in for the street. And their lyrics represented a band living a hand to mouth life of rock and roll debauchery and all too willing to let themselves die in the pursuit of it. You couldn't tell if they were creatively brave, risking it all in the service of making totally authentic rock and roll, or if they were just too stupid to know any better. And through it all, the band was impossibly cool. Every shot, every pose, every note, even the out of tune ones from Slash, every vocal, even the ones from Axl that run out of breath all combined to somehow make them seem even cooler. And if you tried, you couldn't have created a more representative version of a rock and roll band than the one Axl Rose took to the stage on February 2, 1988. You wouldn't know it from watching them, but that band and the fuck all attitude that propelled it, and more specifically its singer, have been a long time in the making. The crack from the back of the hand to his mouth came quick. It was unexpected, and it stung like a motherfucker. Young Axel could taste his blood bubbling up from his lip. The damage could have been worse, but luckily Axl's dad didn't wear rings. Jewelry was too ostentatious. Ostentatious for Pentecostal. So was Barry Manilow in his number one hit, Mandy, which was what put Axl on the receiving end of another blow to the grill. Axl made the mistake of absentmindedly singing along to the song's chorus with its lyrics that his dad somehow considered sexually suggestive. What? Axl seriously did not understand how he was related to this dude, his old man, this abusive, religious nutbag. But that was because Axe Axl wasn't actually related to him. He just didn't know it yet. And then again, young Axl Rose didn't know much beyond Led Zeppelin rifts, Elton John melodies and pent up rage for the man he thought was his father. Soon young Axl would learn that his father was really his stepfather and that his real father was never to be brought up. It was a discovery that did little to endear Axel to his stepdad. And thus the violence continued. It wasn't reserved for just Axel either. His stepdad threw his fists around to keep Axel's mom in line as well. Axel saw it all as a little boy and a teenager. The beatings and the mental anguish. And by the time he was 16, rock and roll was his only salvation. That and his new friend Izzy. And they vibed on the Stones, acdc, Aerosmith, and the new onslaught of British punk bands invading America. The Sex Pistols, Generation X in the Clash. And they also bonded over beer, grass and pills. And of course, the two of them, especially Axel, took every opportunity possible to fuck with the local authorities. Axl had a real hatred for the small town, conservative, square jawed local cops. To him, they were just an extension of the repression and bullshit rules imposed by his stepdad. Except out on the street. He could talk back and let loose the inner rage he carried. An arrest for disturbing the peace was worth it. He could never let loose on his stepdad like he could on the cops. Plus, the cops would have to catch him first. So Axel mouthed off to Lafayette's finest every chance he got. And the cops in turn found a special kind of satisfaction whenever they could bust his ass and throw him in jail. And the result was a long string of juvenile arrests for petty crimes, public drunkenness, loitering, etc. Fucking with the cops was always fun, but music was becoming the main focus for Axel and for Izzy, and they put a little band together and played when they could, but mostly they studied and listened to the masters whenever they got the chance. Their latest obsession was the soundtrack album for the film over the Edge, an adolescent crime drama set in the fictional suburb of Granada, where the town's kids, bored and tired of being neglected by their parents and other authority figures, finally rebel, setting about to destroy and terrorize their town through a fiery crime spree. He could relate to the teenage wasteland anti authority vibe it portrayed. Just like the kids in Granada, Axl felt neglected, ignored and oppressed and was compelled to vent his unhappiness through violence. Plus, the movie's soundtrack was the Shit Cheap Trick, Van Halen, the Cars, Jimi Hendrix, and even that ballad at the end, the one by Valerie Carter that played while the kids were bused off to juvenile hall. It was all right up Axl's alley, but Axel wouldn't be shipped off to juvie. He'd soon be on a bus headed for a different kind of jungle altogether. Los Angeles, California we'll be right back after this Word, word, word.
- [20:42]
David Spade
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- [22:18]
Jake Brennan
Joe Perry needed to score. His band Aerosmith was indeed one of the biggest in the world at the time. But that didn't change anything. He was supposedly sober, clean off the junk. And that was true, sure, some of the time. But then there were the days where he just needed the familiarity of a comforting buzz. The heroine would take it all away. The pressure, the pain, the reality of dealing with his frenetic high wire act of a frontman, Steven Tyler, who had his own addiction, drug dragons to slay. In procuring the dope, discretion was of utmost importance. He couldn't go to any of the known dealers. Word might get out that he was off the wagon, back on the horse, back in the saddle. But not in a good way. So he decided to try out a new dealer he'd heard of, a guitarist in one of the newer Aerosmith clone bands playing down on the strip in the mid-1980s. On the side of Los Angeles, where a mile and a half stretch of Sunset Boulevard curls through West Hollywood and is known as the Strip or Sunset Strip, a new kind of heavy metal was doing everything it could to put LA on the musical glam metal. Glam metal took its musical cues from British glam rock. The sounds of bands like Sweet Slate, T. Rex and Matt the Hoople traded on big crunchy guitar riffs, deep pocket grooves, sex laden vocals and hedonistic lyrics. British glam rock was a sophisticated kind of cool that owed much to David Bowie and Queen. But its American offshoot, glam metal kept one foot planted in the concrete jungles of Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper while peacocking through the glitz streets of Los Angeles. Fashion threaded the two styles together, but the US version was more masculine, tougher and a touch violent. LA glam bands like Motley Crue would meld the androgyny of Mark Bowman with the apocalyptic look of Mad Max. The result was something wildly unique and somehow representative of the violence tearing through the streets of Los Angeles at the time. In 1985, violent crime in LA exploded to unprecedented levels due to the city's heavy trafficking of crack cocaine. You couldn't avoid the headlines if you tried, but glam metalheads did their best to ignore the harsh reality enveloping their city by setting up their own bacchanalia on Sunset, where every night they drank, drugged and fucked away their worries to the sounds of the Strip's hottest bands. At the Wasp Rat Poison and the aforementioned Motley Crue. And there was no mistaking what L. A s new music scene was all debauchery and their fans loved it. They showed up every night en masse, packing clubs like the Starwood and the Whiskey A Go Go to get a glimpse of the hedonism up close and personal. Glam music was an escape from reality, unlike the music being made on the other end of town. Down in South Central Los Angeles, where the effects of the crack epidemic were being felt most severely, rap music up until that point, mostly an east coast export, was taking on a new identity, one that mirrored the harsh circumstances of Los Angeles street life. It would come to be known as gangster rap. And where LA's glam rock ran from reality, L.A. s gangster rap ran straight toward it and smacked it in its mouth with the butt of a clock. The beats these LA rappers made were bigger than anything from the east coast. And the lyrics they spat out were more direct, honest and profane than anything anyone had heard in music before anywhere. And Axl Rose loved it. It, all of it. Mid 80s LA music was as fraught with tension and manic energy as he was. It was bipolar. On one end, a low down slap of unforgiving reality, a gut punch to authority, and on the other end, a high flying endless party distraction via debauchery. He could appreciate the scene up on Sunset, but in his heart he knew that there wasn't one band among them who could fuck with what he and his new bandmates were about to bring to the party. Once Axl Rose arrived in Hollywood from Lafayette, Indiana, the transformation from small town delinquent to street walking cheetah was quick. After a few false starts and along with his hometown bud Izzy, Axl formed Guns N Roses. Out on the streets and in the clubs, the band quickly developed a reputation as the nastiest hard rock and roll band on the Sunset Strip. Let those other LA bands call themselves Glam Guns or GNR was going to stand out in the scene by separating themselves from the scene. They weren't glam, they were hard and they weren't metal. They were rock hard rock. A simple but novel distinction to bring to the stage on the Strip and offstage, Axl, Izzy and their new bandmates Slash, Duff and Steven lived the life authentically. They drank and drugged harder than Motley Crue. They fucked more strippers than Poison. They got into it with the LA County Sheriff's Department whenever they could and were quick to brawl with posers, yuppies, squares or whoever else got in their faces. They were the real deal and their songs were great, totally authentic, and as such, the band's appeal was undeniable. They packed them in at the Troubadour, the Starwood, and the whiskey. In 1986, Gnr signed to Geffen Records despite fears from executives that the band would be dead before the record was even released. The thinking among Geffen employees was that if the drink and drugs didn't get them, then they'd self destruct via Axl's wild temper. The band was generally a mess. They were basically homeless. Guns n Roses Spirit squatted in the rehearsal space, a one car sized storage unit off of Sunset Boulevard behind the Sunset Grill, and they slept among their gear. There was no kitchen and no bathroom, but there was a constant party when not rehearsing, which they did all the time. They'd get high and get drunk on Night Train with the Horrors from down on Hollywood Boulevard and party with members of Faster Pussycat, Red Cross and Thelonious Monster, bands who liked to mix it up together but likely never shared space on anyone's mixtape. Soon young kids from the Valley started showing up to listen to the band rehearse. Stephen and Slash would play nice for a bit and scam them out of their money under the guise of procuring drugs for them. Axl didn't have time for such pretenses. He would just roll them for whatever cash he could get. Young women, Valley girls and prostitutes alike were subject to to a get naked or leave policy, and the fucking would spill out into the alley. And while little suburban Valley boys realized their fantasies and got with the professionals from Hollywood and Vine, the guys in the band would empty their pants pockets for their cash and clean out the purses of the less suspecting prostitutes. Word on the Strip spread. There was a party going on and it was wild, and Joe Perry couldn't believe his eyes. Broad daylight fucking in the streets. He saw his man, short dude, greasy black hair, aviators, sitting on the hood of a car in the alley, restringing his Les Paul. To Joe, the Kid reminded him of someone himself, wired to the action surrounding him, but despite it all, in constant touch with his true love, his guitar. Joe approached. The kid looked up, immediately recognized his guitar God hero. He also took note of the desperation in his eyes. The Jones Joe Perry started talking. If there was any doubt before of who he was, it was immediately erased by his thick Boston accent. Joe asked the kid, I'm looking for something. Are you my man? The kid looked up from his guitar and deadpanned hey, man, I'm just Izzy, but what can I get for you? On July 21, 1987, Guns N Roses debut album, Appetite for Destruction, was released. Their star started to slowly rise. But growing fame didn't curtail the band's behavior. It only intensified it. Newfound celebrity and notoriety started to create a sense of isolation for Axl Rose. Wherever he went, he believed most people were trying to keep him down. Just like the authority figures back home. Nowadays, the cops, the record label, the promoters, and increasingly the press were all trying to bleed out of him what it was that made him special in the first place. To get him to tone it down, to conform to their bullshit, to watch him bleed. It made no sense. His sense of self was what was propelling his artistry and thus his band's popularity and, of course, his behavior. But now he was supposed to, what, become someone else just because he now had a little fame? It was making him paranoid and causing very dramatic mood swings. The mood swings were always there, but when the band was starting out, they'd derail a rehearsal or a party, maybe a show. But as the band grew, so did the stakes. Mood swings at this stage of Axl's career were much harder for everyone to deal with. In February 1988, just after their triumphant show at the Ritz in New York City, Guns N Roses embarked on their first headlining tour. It was a big deal, and Axl was a big mess. He was jankier than usual and emotionally volatile. On February 12, for unspecified reasons, Axl blew off one of the band's first headlining shows in Phoenix, Arizona. He went missing, and no one knew where he was. The second show in Phoenix, the next night, was also canceled. Axl's bandmates were incensed. You don't pull a no show, not in the music business. It's a death sentence. A career killer. And they contemplated kicking Axel out of the band. For the offense. He had little contrition and less in the way of an excuse. He simply didn't show. And he simply didn't care. If they wanted to kick him out of the band, go ahead, he told them. Who are you going to get to replace me? And he knew his place in the band was secure, but not without one major concession. Axl had to agree with his band management and label to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Straight jacket metal head brace strapped down on a steel chair. Some sort of post World War II torture chamber type technique. When people think of Axl Rose being psychologically evaluated by a team of UCLA doctors, this is what they think. Of because this is the imagery in the famous Guns n Roses music video for welcome to the Jungle. When the song breaks down toward the end, we see the serpentine singer strapped in Clockwork oranged opposite a wall of violent TV imagery. He looks insane, or at the very least is being treated as such. It's art imitating life in a way. For Axl Rose, the real life evaluation was much scarier. What he saw the brief glimpse into his past while being mentally poked and prodded by doctors. It was truly traumatic. And despite Axl's penchant to follow GG Allen's lead and to fuck authority, Axl knew the authority figures were finally onto something. With the diagnosis bipolar. Whatever that even was, it sure explained a lot. The mood swings, the violence, the intense irritability. At least now there was some sort of reason and something to treat or at the very least unpack to rationalize things. And it was agreed by everyone Axl would seek treatment and he'd be allowed back in the band. But the mood swings didn't just all of a sudden stop. Axl and the rest of the Guns N Roses camp might have had a loose explanation for what their volatile singer felt inside, but it didn't just make the rage go away. And on August 20, 1988, Axl Rose was thinking of none of this as he took the stage. Castle Donington, England Monsters of Rock Festival on the bill, headliners Iron Maiden Direct support, Kiss below them solo David Lee Roth and Megadeth. On the undercard, Guns N Roses and openers Halloween. Aside from Halloween, the other acts were well established favorites, but Guns N Roses were fresh meat, the new sensation. Their single Sweet Child of Mine, released a month earlier, was everywhere, a monster hit, and as such, GNR were outperforming their positioning on the bottom of the bill. Given their explosion of popularity at the time and the excitement surrounding their unique brand of American hard rock, Guns N Roses could very well have headlined Monsters of Rock and nobody would have gone home upset. Axl looked out into the crowd, an ocean of leather, long hair and denim, 110,000 strong. It had been raining for a week, and the festival grounds were muddy, messy, kind of like his band. The sky was dark, moody, just like him. The crowd was pitched with excitement, ready to embrace him but also ready to bite back. A lot like those Axel loved and feared at the same time, those closest to him. Don't get too close. Don't get too close. Axl could feel it. The whole band could. This was a different type of crowd, a different type of vibe than anything they'd encountered before. There were homemade Guns n Roses banners rising up from the crowd. A chant started burbling up from the back. Thunder in the distance ran a Projectiles were being hurled around from impatient fans. A squawk of feedback from Slash's Les Paul as he checked his hand. Two quick hits on the snare from Steven as he took his seat. The chant grew louder. Axel, from behind the drum kit, nearly backstage, looked over at Izzy, already on the stage, standing in front of his amp, facing Axl, avoiding eye contact, dealing with the tension, the anticipation in his own way. His guitar slung over him, lighting a cigarette. And to his right, bassist Duff McKagan, all 22ft of him standing straight, facing the crowd, his bass slung low nearly, it seemed, to his ankles, ready to take the storm head on. Axel looked Steven in the eye. It was time. Steven knew what to do. He went at his toms with a fury. It was a pickup, a signal to the crowd. Shit was about to go off, but not quite yet. The crowd nearly lost it at the first hint of real music from the stage. And they could see the band. Everyone but Axl, who was mostly hidden behind the kit, and they screamed and they chanted. Izzy rolled the volume knob on his Les Paul to 10, gave his strings a quick swap to test his weapon, and turned and nodded at the Duff, who began beating his bass with the opening downstroke line for it's so easy. With this, the crowd began, began screaming even louder. The drums and both guitars clanged down onto Duff's bassline. Steven picked up with the rolling snare, building the tension. The intro swelled. The band hammered down into the song's opening riff and Axl sprinted out from backstage with mike in hand. And the crowd lost its collective. The crowd saw nothing. They were blind with excitement. From the stage, the audience looked so big and so energized that it seemed like it was all one giant mass of humanity. It surged as one a big scary lurch. All of the band members took notice. This wasn't normal. There was no crowd organization, no seating, barely any effective security holding the crowd in place. The band hit the chorus. Another giant surge. Bottles were now raining down onto the crowd and the stage. Big 32 ounce beer bottles that were purchased, emptied and then pissed into by the crowd to avoid the bathroom lines. The little piss bombs exploded onto the stage. Slash exploded into the solo. The song soon wrapped. The band looked at each other with trepidation. Something clearly wasn't right. They eased into their next song, hesitating instinctively afraid of what might happen, of what this crowd, this giant, unhinged, unsecured, manic crowd that was unlike anything any of them had ever seen before might do. Their hesitancy didn't matter. Seconds into the next song, the crowd went apeshit. It lurched forward again in one giant wave. And then a hole in the middle of the crowd opened up. Within seconds, bodies were sucked into an undertow of humanity. A massive mosh pit began. Most in the audience were powerless to the will of the collective crowd. It moved as one. Fans feet were lifted up off the ground and their bodies swept up on top of the crowd, where they were passed over and over again until they'd eventually land back on their feet in an entirely different part of the festival grounds. The violent collective movement of the audience was so intense that it. Izzy stopped playing. The rest of the band quickly followed suit. Axl tried his best from the front of the stage to chill the crowd out. Bodies began being pulled out of the muddy melee, injured and in need of medical attention, but alive. Order, it seemed, had been restored. The band kicked back into their set with Paradise City. And then. Shit. The moshi. Ultra violent, relentless. Tens of thousands of people worked into a fit, slamming wildly into each other to the sounds of what was now clearly the most dangerous band on the planet. In front of them, off of the center of the stage, the crowd collapsed into itself. 30 to 50 people sank down onto and into the muddy ground. And when they did, a wave of more fans washed over them. Most tripped. Some fell. Swarms of bodies passed overhead, trampling others under their feet. The crowd continued to sway uncontrollably as one, and with a single false move, it seemed to the band that it could collapse in on itself again at any moment, or perhaps even overtake the stage. The band was frightened. They tried cooling things down with a new acoustic number, patience, and then gave it one more shot with Sweet Child of Mine. But it was no use. The crowd was too intense, too terrifying. After the tune, the band bailed. Axel's temper once again got the better of him, and he spat into the mic before leaving the stage. Have a great fucking day and try not to kill yourselves. Little did he know, two of his fans in the crowd were already dead, stomped to death during his band's short set. Both bodies were so mangled, they needed to be identified by the tattoos on their arms. When the band learned of the deaths, they were devastated, shocked and saddened. When they learned that the press was blaming the band for the deaths, they were pissed. The newspapers and the magazines neglected to report that Guns N Roses had stopped the show multiple times or that they had cut their short set due to the violence. The press's categorization of the event, of the dead kids at the concert, that it was all somehow the fault of the dangerous rockers from hedonistic Los Angeles, was total bullshit. The band knew it and the press, if they were being honest with themselves, knew it too. But the truth doesn't necessarily sell. And so began Axl Rose's long term war with the media. It seemed to him that the press had no appetite for the truth, only an appetite for his personal destruction. It was a complete disgrace I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening, as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgraceland. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com membership for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook @Disgracelandpod and on YouTube at YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man.