Guns n’ Roses

Growing Up Then Growing Old with Guns N’ Roses

by Brian Huba

I’m about to turn forty-seven. I can feel myself starting to decline. It’s a slow decline. But it’s happening. Even science says so. Studies show that men my age lose muscle mass every year. It’s a fact. And an often-painful one. I’m always pulling something or straining something. Last month I landed in the ER for back spasms. I should mention I was driven to that ER in an ambulance. Society calls my age group middle-aged. But it’s not. The average male in America lives about 76.5 years, which technically puts me closer to two-thirds aged. I never thought about things like that. Now I do.

On July 26th, I saw my first Guns N’ Roses show. They played Saratoga Performing Arts Center, known locally in upstate New York as SPAC. I went with my two old friends, Patrick and Andrew. I met Andrew in grad school, back when we were training to be English teachers. And I’ve worked with Pat, who’s a social studies teacher, for eighteen years.

We got caught in traffic and couldn’t find an open lot in time, so we gave some guy forty bucks to park on his lawn. I didn’t think GNR could turn out this sized crowd generations past its prime, but there they were, that classic circle-disc logo everywhere. A couple diehards rocked Slash wigs. One guy wore an Axl kilt. It was every stripe of person. The lifers. College kids. Retired people. Families. Blacks. Hispanics. MAGA. Liberal. You name it. If GNR didn’t sell out SPAC that night, they came damn close.

As Public Enemy played out their opening set, the bassy boom of “Bring the Noise,” seeping through the wall of evergreens that frame the amphitheater, my friends and I posed for a photo in front of the merch truck, then crossed over the footbridge, having no idea what we were about to witness.

I discovered Guns N’ Roses the way most people did: their “Welcome to the Jungle” video, the second single off 1987’s Appetite for Destruction. (“It’s So Easy” was the lead single, but the music video for that song never aired.) The first time we see Axl Rose on screen, he’s stepping off a bus, suitcase in hand, baby-faced, donning a flannel shirt and backwards hat, before morphing into a wild, leather-clad rocker strapped in a straitjacket. You’re in the jungle, baby, you’re gonna dieeeee…

When Guns N’ Roses erupted onto MTV, the glam-band(s) movement that defined rock in the early-to-mid 80s was over.

Being a lifelong lover of stories, I felt the novelic-ness of GNR’s videos. There was a plot, or a semblance of one, a protagonist; metaphor, symbolism. And the efforts only grew more literary for Use Your Illusion, the album(s) that gave us “Don’t Cry,” which told a graphic story about Axl Rose and his on-screen girlfriend, played by his actual girlfriend, Stephanie Seymour. After “Don’t Cry,” came the most-literary video ever, “November Rain,” inspired by Del James’ short story “Without You.” For “November Rain,” Seymour portrayed Axl’s bride who unexpectedly – and mysteriously – dies after a sudden rainstorm ruins the wedding. Though I didn’t make this connection when the video first aired – I was twelve years old in 1992 – in retrospect it’s easy to see “November Rain” as an allegory of Axl’s real-life relationship with Seymour.

Both Use Your Illusion(s) were gargantuan in scale, and I already told my wife if “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” doesn’t play at my funeral, I’m not coming. But neither LP came close to surpassing Appetite For Destruction, as Axl hoped. “I just want to bury Appetite,” Rose famously said, multiple times, in the late 80s.

Appetite For Destruction is the best rock album ever. Zeppelin and the Stones are considered the top two rock bands. Neither made anything better than Appetite. It’s a relentless masterpiece. Even the B sides are bangers. Axl Rose was five singers in one. High to low. Slow to fast. Range for days. Then came Slash on lead guitar. While Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin, and Steven Adler were all top musicians, (Duff might still be the best bassist in the game), it was the dynamic between Axl and Slash that drove it home. Wherever Slash went with a riff, Axl would meet him with a high note.

I was nine-years-old the first time I heard Appetite, and back then I had no idea what the lyrics meant. A Nightrain must’ve been a train that drove at night. Mr. Brownstone seemed like an annoying neighbor who danced. What did Axl mean, turn around, bitch, I got a use for you…? The second verse of “My Michelle,” yesterday was Tuesday, maybe Thursday you can sleep, but school starts much too early… Was Axl alluding to the public school calendar, how the fall term often starts on a Wednesday after Labor Day? Later on – maybe too much later – I learned “My Michelle” had nothing to do with school.

Tuesday, July 28th, I received a message from a former student, who’s nineteen now. She wrote, Hi Mr. Huba, I hope your summers going good. So, I was at the guns and roses at SPAC sunday night and i remember you said in class how guns and roses is the most talented band ever. Well i’m saying youre half right. Slash was AMAZING. The drums were GREAT. And WELCOME to the JUNGLE was a good idea for first song. We was all amped!! But Axel is UMM…you can tell his voice is reaching the end. He still did like four wardrobe changes. Ha!! Overall amazing experience!!

The consensus seems to be that Axl Rose can no longer sing. After seeing the show myself, I must admit that’s not too far off. As the concert progressed, it became apparent that Rose, once the most-dangerous frontman in music, no longer had the pipes to match Slash’s signature guitar work. For long stretches, he looked lost in the action, swallowed by the sound, a beat or two or three behind.

Here’s the craziest thing. No one cared. We rallied around our rock god. And why wouldn’t we? Axl’s singing might’ve been uneven and mousy, but it was honest. No fancy enhancers. No backups to bail him out. During “You Could Be Mine,” Andrew said, “Guy’s sixty-four, givin’ us every-fuckin-thing he’s got.”

It’s incredible that Guns N’ Roses’ catalog is sourced off the only two-and-a-halfish studio albums the band made. (Is Lies a studio album? It gave us “Patience,” so maybe.) If you think I forgot Chinese Democracy, I didn’t. For GNR apologists, Democracy is like Michael Jordan’s Washington Wizards season. We just pretend it didn’t happen. What if GNR had cut nine albums like Zeppelin? Or thirty-two like the Stones? That concert would’ve gone all night and into the next morning.

The sun set after “Estranged.” Patrick said, “Let’s go up,” and we twisted our way through an abyss of bodies, close enough to clearly see the stage. On cue, Slash bent himself into the iconic opening riff of “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” and just like that, it was 1988, and I was nine years old, doing the Axl dance near the living room TV, a Nintendo controller for a microphone. All through “Sweet Child,” I felt a kinship with every man and woman in that crowd who was like me and had witnessed Guns N’ Roses in real time. Those of us who watched “Sweet Child” reach number one on Billboard, GNR’s only number one, which now seems absurd…we wanted Axl to nail that note, we needed Axl to nail that.. now, now, now, now, now, now, now Sweet Chiiiiiiiiiiii… So, did he nail it, you ask? Did he meet Slash? If you were at SPAC on July 26th at 10:00PM, you know the answer. If you weren’t, ask anyone who was. I’m pretty sure every iPhone in the place was recording.

A day after the show, Axl Rose stopped off at a gelato shop in Saratoga. Per a July 27 article on loudwire.com, the server didn’t recognize Rose. A series of surveillance photos shared on Instagram by the server’s mother show Rose taste-testing a gelato flavor, then eating some from a cone. The photos’ caption read, “Just a sweet child of mine serving gelato to Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses.”

The server described Rose as “a really nice guy.”

Age humbles us all. Even Axl Rose.

In 1991, Guns N’ Roses hit the road in support of Use Your Illusion, marking the first time the group had headlined its own tour. Steven Adler was gone, fired for drug abuse, and Izzy would soon be gone, back to the club scene. Those that remained had evolved from metal heads to the most decadent act in rock. Stories of excess around the Illusion tour are the stuff of legend, and include lux private planes with plush seating, staterooms, full bars, and elaborate living quarters; million-dollar parties for the band and its entourage; superfluous horn sections, backup singers, and keyboardists; Axl Rose getting his neck realigned on an airport runway; an event with Elvis impersonators.

That Illusion run delivered 192 shows across twenty-seven countries, before mercifully wrapping on July 17, 1993 in Buenos Aires. Along the way, it was met with an almost surreal amount of controversy. Mainly, the riots in Saint Louis and Montreal, both sparked by Axl’s diva antics. The band routinely arrived late to concerts, inexplicably stormed off stage mid-set. Gigs were cancelled, the core lineup kept changing. It was reported that Slash had come close to death in a San Francisco hotel.

Of that July 1992 report, Slash said, “Did you ever see Casino with Sharon Stone? Remember that part where she’s, like, with the James Woods’ character, Robert De Niro’s taken off and she’s in the hotel and she’s coming down the hall, and she starts to collapse, she dies. That was me, exactly that.”

I tried to pinpoint the time in my life when I felt my best. If I could clearly track my decline, I should be able to identify where and when it began. Was I at the summit in my twenties, when I could rock all night, party every day? My thirties, when my career was rolling, and I got married, and we bought our first house, then built a family? Was it four years ago? Two years ago? I can’t quite suss it out. And I think I know why. Our whole lives we’re told to embrace every second, suck the marrow out of it. But I’m not sure humans are wired for that. The best time(s) probably happen without us even realizing. When we’re on top, we think it’ll never end, so why bother thinking about it at all?

September 9, 1992, the night rock’s two highest-profile stars collided at the MTV Video Music Awards. Hours before the show began, rumors flew about a near-scuffle in the backstage area between Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain The first Moonman – I mean Moonperson – went for Best New Artist to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” a harbinger of things to come, despite the event being billed as a love letter to Guns N’ Roses. Axl and that night’s GNR roster were slated to receive MTV’s most-prestigious Person: the Video Vanguard, then drop the curtain with a “historic” performance of “November Rain,” featuring Elton John. But Nirvana kept blowing up MTV’s plan, most problematically during its grunge-raw rendition of “Lithium” (that began with a tease of “Rape Me,” which MTV exes forbade Cobain to play), then ended with the trio trashing its own equipment.

While Cobain battered amplifiers and kicked over cymbals, and Krist Novoselic stumbled woozily about after drilling himself in the head with his own guitar, and fans climbed on stage then belly-flopped back into the crowd, Dave Grohl kept yelling, “Hi, Axl,” and you could feel the earth shift. I’d only felt that shift thing once before, when I was nine years old, seeing “Welcome to the Jungle” for the first time.

Host Dana Carvey introduced the “November Rain” finale by saying in part, “...time for the biggest production in the history of the Video Music Awards…,” and Guns N’ Roses never sounded – or looked – better than that night. Axl was soul-crushingly perfect, …when I look into your eyes I can see a love restrained… Slash was simply epic. It was so good, as a viewer, you forgot Elton John – one of the most famous men alive – was up there. It was only Axl. It was only Slash. It was only Guns N’ Roses.

I’ve watched that performance on YouTube a hundred times. The tape is grainy now, and the audio goes in and out, but it still looks – and sounds – like a coronation. Axl was smiling the whole time. He knew they were absolutely crushing. But it wasn’t a coronation. It was Guns’ Roses’ last night on top.

Then it’s thirty-four-years later. We sing, Lovers always come and lovers always go, and no one’s really sure who’s lettin’ go today… “November Rain” is more than an ambitious ballad that boasts the most-beautiful guitar riff in rock. It’s a piece of art. A Sistine Chapel of music. Its video is a ten-minute time capsule of my childhood. Your childhood. All of our childhoods. And right then and there, at that concert, in front of those people, I came close to crying, for all that was and would never be again.

Once upon a time, five starving artists found each other on LA’s Sunset Strip, then built their reputation as a high octane act in the Hollywood scene, playing venues like The Roxy and The Whisky a Go Go, while penning what would become Appetite for Destruction, which still stands as the highest-selling debut album ever, four decades past its release. They scored their initial break when Aerosmith asked them to open on its 1988 Permanent Vacation Tour, and by the final date(s), GNR was the draw.

As Axl struggled to keep pace with “Paradise City,” omitting whole lines of lyrics, …living under the street…I’m your charity case…take it to the end of the line… and the crowd made its way to the exits, and employees emptied trash bins, I received a text from my wife; a picture of our daughter toasting s’mores over the backyard firepit, and I wanted to be with them, because I always want to be with them. But not yet. First, I needed to stand there, on that berm of dirt and dead grass, until the final song was sung and the stage lights went dark. I had to see this thing through. I think all three of us had to.

I texted back, almost over, be home soon

Following the ’92 VMA’s, Seattle became the epicenter of music. It was Nirvana’s time to be number one. Cobain had this way of making Axl Rose a Biff Tannen in the culture, except not a Biff you respected or even feared, a Biff you laughed at, because Biff’s lame. It’s obvious why Cobain took aim at Axl. Nirvana viewed Guns N’ Roses as the alpha to be exorcised. It was the same play GNR ran on the glam bands four years before.

Kurt Cobain was a genius. The Godfather of Grunge. But he went out on top. He never had to deal with what came next. He never had to age. Then there’s Axl Rose. Still here. Still doing it. I’m not talking about music. I’m talking about life.

So here it is, the moral: when something we love ends, we wish it could’ve lasted forever. But that’s not real. Even if it was real, we wouldn’t want it to be. The only way to love anything is to accept that it ends. There can’t be one without the other. I think that’s at the core of why turning forty-seven scares me. It’s knowing I’m closer to the end than the beginning. Knowing one day I’ll have to leave my wife and daughter. And no matter when that happens, it’ll be too soon. Perhaps, I can delay the end with life choices and some luck, but I can’t stop it. This doesn’t last forever. I don’t last forever.

On second thought, maybe the essential question is: why am I wasting what time I may – or may not – have worrying about this, using age as an excuse to live in fear? What if growing old isn’t always worse? What if it’s just different? Axl Rose with no voice wasn’t a worse Axl. He was a different Axl, a more measured Axl. And Lord knows a more measured Axl would’ve been a very good thing back in 1991.

On third – and final – thought, I’m not sure why any of this comes as a surprise, when it really shouldn’t. For years, actually decades, Guns N’ Roses has been telling us, Nothing lasts forever… Well, you know the rest..

I had to be convinced to see Guns N’ Roses that July night. I’d heard what people were saying about Axl’s singing. I knew every core member of the band was in their sixties. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. But in the end, I went, and the concert was so much more, and so much less, than I could’ve imagined.

I knew there was a story here.

I spent a week drafting and redrafting what I thought the story was. Never getting it quite right. I’d snap out of bed at 2:00 a.m., race downstairs to the laptop and rework a sentence, then change it back to the way it was before. This story, whatever it was, had become my master. I thought of nothing else. I was obsessed.

As it turned out, we’d booked a trip to the West Coast from August 8th-14th. We planned to spend three nights in L.A. then three nights in Huntington Beach. I was very excited – and very nervous – to see California for the first time. Moreso, I was driven to finish this essay before we left. Departure day came, and the story still wasn’t done. Yes, it was fully written, all 3,000 words. But it wasn’t done, because it wasn’t right. Now I’d have to wait a full week to get back at it.

We landed in Burbank and went straight to the Griffith Observatory, with all the other first-time tourists, then drove out of the Hills and into L.A., to our hotel: The Andaz West Hollywood on the Sunset Strip. We hit the rooftop pool then ordered pizzas to the room. My wife and daughter soon fell asleep, both exhausted from the long flight and the time change. But I was wide awake. I sat by the window and stared out at the lights of L.A., and that’s when it hit me, like magic. Just like that. I knew what the story was.

I fished my laptop from the bottom of a suitcase, opened the essay and deleted every word, all 3,000 of them. I started rewriting and didn’t stop until the sun came up. What I produced in that frenzy of furious typing, as darkness became dawn, is pretty much what you just read.

The challenge with this essay was finding the balance between Brian’s evolution (which he at first sees as “decline”) and Axl Rose’s. The opening paragraph about my fear of turning forty-seven came to me while I was still at the GNR concert. I always knew that’s where the story started. What I didn’t know, until my all-nighter on the Sunset Strip, was this: if I wanted to get this story right, I’d have to be where it all began for Axl Rose. I’d have to see it, and feel it, firsthand.

A few days later, we traveled south to Huntington Beach, where we took our daughter to an AJR concert, her first “real” concert (I’ll assume Kidz Bop back in 2022 doesn’t count as a “real” concert.). After the show, I asked what she thought of AJR, and she said, “I never saw anything better.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I said.