The Axl They Saw

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"After each line he is gazing at the crowd with those strangely startled yet fearless eyes, as though we had just surprised him in his den, tearing into some carrion..."
- John Jeremiah Sullivan on Axl Rose

Here's something that started off as something else, but turned out as it is.

May 12th, 2006 - Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City.

First Guns show since the sold-out Madison Square Garden show in 2002.
First show with Ron.
First performance of Better.

Axl fucks up early on, going into a verse too early.
He motions the band to cover up and they save his ass without missing a beat.

Axl struggles on.
As he gets to the line about 'determination', he snarls the word like an angry dog.
He pulls back, again, as the song is structured that way. He's waiting the moment.

Then he gets to scream the breakdown verse. And scream he does.
Better is a great song for Axl, because it utilizes his range in clever ways.
The big screams are where he comes alive.

You can tell he's absorbing the mood the second he stops singing.

"The outcome will determine whether tonight [May 15th, third Hammestein show] was badass or "Sort of sad, but it's Axl, y'all." What happened? Well, call me a twisted fanboy, but I thought he won. His voice is back, for starters. He was inhabiting the notes. And his dancing — I don't quite know how to say this. It has matured." (- CQ Magazine)

A man who took as his legal name and made into a household word the name of a band—Axl—that [Lafayette musician Dana] Gregory was once in, on bass, and that Bill was never even in.

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[In late 2010], the legendary rocker was looking for a New York apartment to rent. He thought it might be time to move from Malibu and wanted to test out New York.

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Though Rose, who lives on the West Coast, has been in New York on and off in the last couple years, night-life insiders say he hasn’t hit the town this hard since 2006.

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[In 2006,] Four years after disappearing from public view, Axl Rose is back on the scene, looking like a wax figure of himself, absorbing the crushing blows of Tommy Hilfiger, biting the legs of security guards, and gyrating, shrieking, and storming off stages across the land.

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Local lafayette morning rock deejay Jeff Strange, on Axl's... fisticuffs with... Tommy Hilfiger; actually, "fisticuffs" is strong—accounts suggest that the fight consisted mostly of Hilfiger slapping Axl on the arm many times, and photos show Axl staring at Hilfiger with an improbable fifty-fifty mixture of rage and amused disbelief, like, 'Should I hurt it?':

"Man, I saw that, and I thought, That is straight Lafayette."

==

We were repeatedly told by his very nice assistants, a mother and son team, that he was definitely planning a move to New York, which we were informed he’d fallen in love with. (He might even want to buy our place.)... Axl was in a hurry to get into the place, we were told.

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He expressed an interest in buying a house in the metropolitan area — possibly in Connecticut, an [insider] said.

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[During the Rock in Rio 3 show in 01/15/01,] Rose has rented an entire floor of the five-star Intercontinental Hotel for his entourage, and is paying for it out of his own pocket.

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He is from nowhere. I realize that sounds coyly rhetorical—in this day and age, it's even a boast, right? Socioeconomic code for I went to a second-tier school and had no connections and made all this money myself.

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Since he arrived in [New York] city for his Fashion Week concert on [02/11/10], he’s gone out nearly every night (and continued on till the morning), usually crashing afterward at his $1,550-a-night suite in the Essex House Hotel.

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[During RIR3,] Axl himself will be staying in the [$1,500]-a-night Presidential Suite, which measures 185 square metres, faces the sea and has a huge Jacuzzi.

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[Axl] snorted at people who like spaces "bathed in light," as the Realtors say... We learned that he had been to New York, though, renting a roomy suite at a fancy hotel with a balcony and, well, lots of light.

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By the time he inspected my apartment, he was almost 50 years old and getting the belly to prove it.

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[Axl Rose is] having this contraption installed in [his mansion in May, 2001]. It's a gym machine which promises that, in four minutes, you can achieve the same results as if you were to jog for 45 minutes, weight train for another 45 minutes and stretch for 15.

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[In 2010,] The middle-aged rocker has put on at least 15 pounds since his heyday and doesn’t appear to have a strict eating and drinking regimen to keep him in tip-top shape.

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Axl Rose was working out at [a Seattle gym at the time of the Tacoma show in 11/08/02]... Axl reportedly caused quite a giddy stir amongst the mostly gay male thirtysomething crowd at the gym (AKA everyone)... He replied with a polite, very un-rock-star-ish "Thank you" when wished well.

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People who know him say his hard partying is simply a balance to his tough road schedule.

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The members of GNR and their road crew were going to celebrate Thanksgiving [11/28/02] in Toronto... Axl smoked cigars, drank, and chatted with the locals until 5am. Not too bad considering he had a sold out concert at the Air Canada Centre the next day.

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[On 02/14/10], Guns N’ Roses played a late-night gig at Rose Bar to a crowd of 150... “Are you as hung-over as I am?” [Axl] snarled.”

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While I cannot say he is dancing as well [in 2006] as he used to, that so fluidly are his heels gliding out and away from his center they look each to have been tapped with a wand that absolved them of resistance and weight, and although he does at particular moments remind one of one's wasted uncle trying to "do his Axl Rose" after a Super Bowl party, he is nevertheless acquitting himself honorably.

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[During the 2014 Vegas shows,] his voice is strong, wide-open, hitting the highs, and his energy level is still prime, never showing signs of being out of breath, as he was in great shape physically... Yes, there are times when his voice has a bit of a different tonality but the majority of the time he’s spot on.

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Take a second look next time you’re out at a show. Is this really what passes for a rockstar these days? Identikit tattoos, scripted stage patter and a watch-the-clock attitude from a band desperate to get home in time to cosy up with Netflix before bed?

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Listen, these guys aren't fake-booking, like happened on MTV. Everything's note for note. And although we could get into the whole problem of virtuosity as it applies to popular music — namely, that for some reason people who can play anything will, nine times out of ten, when asked to make something up, play something terrible — still, if you mean to replace your entire band one instrument at a time and tell them, "Do it like this," you'll be wanting to find some monster players.

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One thing is certain, by the time GNR went onstage [in Toronto on 11/29/02] all of the beer [at the venue] had been sold and drank... An unofficial rumor going around is that a new building record for merchandise as well as a record for the amount beer sold was set.

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Axl is the greatest rockstar in the world for the simple reason that he believes he is. Because he walks, talks and breathes with the arrogance of a man who is [the rock star], and has [been] since day one, when he hitchhiked to West Hollywood from his small hometown in Indiana with a chip on his shoulder and a point to prove.

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Central Indiana? That's like, "Where are you?" "I'm nowhere."

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M. Sheidler stated that Bailey was also arguing with Sheidler and that he was using the "F" word in front of her kids. M. Sheidler stated that she went up to Bailey and pointed her finger at Bailey and told him not to use the "F" word in front of her kids... Bill Bailey himself then goes on to say that he "struck M. SHEIDLER in the FACE with... the hand without the SPLINT."

Once again, this only after "MARLEEN SHEIDLER struck him in the face" (though seconds earlier, by his own admission, he'd told her "to keep her fucking brats at home"). The story ends with a strangely affecting suddenness: "BAILEY stated SHEIDLER then jumped at him and fell on his face, he then left and went home..." ("The Scheidler Incident")

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Another person who’s partied with Rose says he’s working on a new album... and has something to prove.

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After each line he is gazing at the crowd with those strangely startled yet fearless eyes, as though we had just surprised him in his den, tearing into some carrion.

==

I don’t think he’s even conscious of what he does, or how angry he gets... I always thought that there was something chemical that happened to him when he was angry. That image of him sitting in that electric chair in that video ‘Welcome to the jungle’, looking crazed, says it all. That’s what he looks like when he’s pissed off. And when you see that coming at you from across a room, coming near you, it’s frightening as hell.

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"I lived with him during that period of ‘Bill’ to ‘Bill Axl’ to ‘Axl’. It was the strangest thing, because some days he’d be Bill, some days he’d be Axl, some days I didn’t know who the hell he was. I didn’t know what to do, because I didn’t know what person he was. For a long time he tried to dispel the fact that he had ever lived in the Midwest. He was trying to build an image, and a persona of a musician he thought he wanted to be. And sometimes I find it ironic that that thing which he tried most to get away from is what he’s trying most to go back to."

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So far, no one knows when the party — or his existential crisis — will end. As Rose prepared to leave one club, The Post cornered him and asked how late he generally stays out. Rose just smirked. “As long as it takes,” he said.

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When it came time to renew for a third year, negotiations began, but then rationality — his management’s — prevailed. Axl's ghost rental ended in the beginning of 2013, at the two-year mark.

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"He is extremely intelligent", insists Gina [Siler]. "That was one of the things that attracted me to him. He is just a nit-picky perfectionist and when things don’t go smoothly and to his liking he just loses it. He blows up. I’ve seen him do it on many occasions, smashing things and breaking things and yelling and screaming - holes through walls. Seen him do it one too many times."

Maybe he finally got around to finishing the next album.

One thing's for sure, he's proud of his band. It's the solid yessir unit, that can self-regulate as long as the paychecks keep coming. He can live out the rock star dream through it, only that he always teeters at an arm's length of the self-destruct button. That's what makes it dangerous, to his fans, at least. They rest on the verge of another disappointment.

Then Axl Rose the person takes it into heart, and retreats to his mansion, maybe firing a few people on the way. We're all looking at a few years of 'Ahem.' Call it minute perfectionism, or a spoiled brat, the outcome is the same for the rest of us. But, if an album comes, and only the hardcores care about it, Guns can always tour with the strong songs, together with AFD. The 1991 money is not around, but there's a payback with his name on it... If he gets to it.

May 31st, 2014 - The Joint, Las Vegas.

Duff's first show in Guns since the UYI tour wrapped in 1993.

Axl still has the voice.
He moves less now, and he does, he barely jogs, let alone sprints.
The snake dance... wait, did he do it?

There are no quarantees.

"The outcome will determine whether tonight was badass or "Sort of sad, but it's Axl, y'all." What happened? Well, call me a twisted fanboy, but I thought he won. His voice is back, for starters. He was inhabiting the notes. And his dancing — I don't quite know how to say this. It has..." (- CQ Magazine)

http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/arti … rticleid=7
http://www.kerrang.com/16019/axl-rose-s … tar-world/
http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/what-hap … tment.html
http://nypost.com/2010/03/02/new-yorks- … party-boy/

polluxlm

It's like he is both conscious and unconscious of who he is. Wanting an image, wanting certain things in the performance. But when he gets on stage he IS that image. He's not playing wild or on the edge, he is so.

Sometimes it's curious how him and Slash differentiate in the way they carry themselves. When one looks back he is almost always regretful, the perfectionist, while the other only remembers the good times, the "casualist". Both want to be rock stars but one wants a legacy, one wants to fulfill expectations, the other just wants to play what he likes right here and right now. MJ, Black Street, GN'R...doesn't matter. Slash left his band when it became something he didn't like, the other is the band. He'll never leave it. Axl is a creator, and he sticks with his creations. He lives in them.

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