The Burnzo Diaries: AXL

Holy shit! I was as excited as anybody to hear the news. AXL Rose and (most) of the other original members of Guns N' Roses were getting back together to launch a reunion tour. God had finally gotten around to answering my prayers!

Nobody thought this was ever going to happen. Slash had said over and over again that it would likely NEVER happen, that the wounds in the band were just so deep that they would never heal enough for him to ever reconcile with AXL. But, somehow, they healed. Or maybe they haven't healed. Perhaps the money is just right. I mean, surely a reunion tour for GNR means big bucks. This was obviously going to be a big payday for the entire band. So maybe it's just all about the money, who knows...

But whether the band's wounds are healed or still oozing with puss, who really gives a shit? The important thing is that the band's back together. I mean, I couldn't believe my ears when I heard this news. In fact, I didn't believe my ears. I basically said, yeah, I've heard THAT one before!

I was in a state of disbelief until April 1st rolled around and a video started trending all over the Internet. The video actually showed AXL, Duff and Slash on stage together. They were back at one of the band's old haunts, the famous Troubadour rock club on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. At first, people thought it was an April Fool's joke, but—no—it was actually happening! GNR was playing together!

Well, sort of.

Technically, Duff, Slash and AXL were playing together. Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler remained MIA. But, still, this was really big news, especially the fact that Slash, Duff and AXL had somehow found it in their hearts to forgive each other. Well, I think it was mostly Slash and Duff who had to forgive AXL. See, towards the end of their time with GNR, AXL had supposedly become insufferable. The frontman's ego had taken over completely and he was just impossible to be in a band with anymore. During one concert, AXL refused to go onstage until Slash and Duff signed a contract giving AXL sole ownership of the band's name "Guns N' Roses". At the time, Slash and Duff just wanted to get AXL on stage and cut the bullshit. But later on they realized that they had been screwed over and they eventually quit the band. There was understandably bad blood between Slash, Duff and AXL for about 20 years. I still don't think the three of them are the tightest of buddies right now, but they're able to play together on the same stage and that's all that really matters for GNR fans, right?

Right.

Seeing the old "band" performing on the Troubadour stage (via YouTube video) sent me on a trip down memory lane. I traced my love affair with GNR all the way back to 1987 or 1988, right around the time when the singles "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Welcome to the Jungle" were released. This was back in the heyday of music videos and, since I had older siblings, MTV was always on in my house. My parents were pretty lax when it came to censoring what I watched (I think I still turned out all right) and I was basically able to watch Guns N' Roses videos without any problem, despite the fact that I was only six or seven years old.

Now, I was exposed to A LOT of music videos when I was young, but there was something about Guns N' Roses videos that left a bigger impression, mostly the video for "Welcome to the Jungle". I was absolutely fascinated with what I was watching and listening to. AXL Rose in the "Welcome to the Jungle" video looked so...what's the word...striking? His hair was all teased out and his makeup made him look like some sort of wild animal from the—yes, you got it—jungle.

I have vivid memories of hopping on my little mini indoor trampoline that we had in our newly-finished basement. MTV was on and "Welcome to the Jungle" was howling out of the TV's monaural speaker. I held a hairbrush in my hand and pretended it was a microphone. At this point, I knew most of the lyrics to the song by heart:

"Welcome to the jungle, we've got fun and games, we got anything you want, baby you know the names...."

These trampoline sessions became rehearsals for upcoming family parties where my AXL Rose impressions quickly became a huge hit. My older cousins got a big kick out of making me perform "Welcome to the Jungle" for them in a secret living room or den that was located away from the main party. No grown-ups were allowed.

One time, after I had finished howling out my performance, my cousins dared me to run up to my grandmother in the other room and scream, "Nanny! Do you know where you are?!" Being only seven-years-old at the time, all I wanted to do was please my older and much cooler cousins. So I took them up on their dare:

"Nanny, do YOU know where you are?! You in the jungle, baby!"

I didn't say the "you're gonna die" part, but poor Nanny was shocked out of her wits. My cousins thought it was hilarious while my mom told me I was too hyper and needed to settle down before I threw up my dinner (something that was known to happen).

Unfortunately, my knowledge of Guns N' Roses didn't really extend beyond what I saw on the MTV. My parents amazingly did allow me to buy a Guns N' Roses cassette single at the local "Record Town" music store (or was it called "Good Vibrations" then?), but it was the "Patience" single and they knew the song was pretty soft, whispery and appropriate for younger ears. What they didn't know, however, was that there was a Side B and on this Side B was a song that was completely IN-appropriate for young ears.

The song was called "Rocket Queen".

I—pardon my Chinese—fucking LOVED "Rocket Queen". I had bought the cassette single because I thought I liked "Patience", but I ended up listening to "Rocket Queen" on Side B way, way more. At the time, I didn't think much about what the song was about (i.e. a junkie prostitute) because I was so young and innocent. I also didn't think much about the female moaning sounds featured in the bridge of the song. I just thought the moans were a cool vocal effect. Little did I know that they were the sounds of a girl actually having sex with AXL in the recording studio. Yes, if you're not aware of that little story, AXL got Steven Adler's ex-girlfriend (Adriana Smith) to have sex with him in the vocal booth and they recorded the actual sounds for the sex session. Then they cut the sounds into the song. How fucking rock and roll is that?!

I still have the cassette single and it's in great shape.

But, no, aside from "Rocket Queen", I was pretty much unaware of most of the songs on "Appetite for Destruction" that hadn't been made into MTV music videos. I wanted to go out and buy the "Appetite" album with my tooth fairy money, but it had a reputation of being very, very bad because there were some really bad swears on it. We're talking hard-core F-bombs here, not just soft-core shit. Not only would my parents forbid me to own such an album, but—to tell you the truth—I was actually kind of scared of the album anyway. It had such a bad reputation and I was literally intimidated by it. I mean, just the mere cover art of the album scared me. There was a crucifix with a bunch of freaky skulls on it!

I think my brother—who was five years older than me—eventually bought the album on cassette, but, for a while, the only person I knew who owned "Appetite" was the bad-ass who lived up the street and around the corner. His name was James and it wasn't surprising that his parents allowed him to have the album. He had everything else bad-ass, including his very own TV, VCR and even a "scrambler" (i.e. illegal black box) that allowed him to get every single channel in existence, including—yes, you guessed it—the Spice Channel. Ooh là là.

Bad-ass James would walk around the neighborhood with his denim jacket, singing "Mr. Brownstone" because he just didn't give a shit. It was via bad-ass James that I first heard "Mr. Brownstone". The song not only had an F-bomb in it, but it actually had a mother-F-bomb. James wasn't shy about singing this part of the song. He was so damn bad!

So, yes, "Appetite" had a bad reputation. But, of course, if you compare the album to the music of today—what with your "artists" like Chris Brown and Tyga talking about "F'ng bitches three ways"—listening to "Appetite" is practically tantamount to listening to a Josh Groban Christmas album. But back then in the late 80's having F-bombs in songs was a bigger deal. Record companies really didn't allow much cussing into the albums they were producing. In their eyes, swearing actually got in the way of an album selling well (imagine that!). For these reasons, "Appetite" was even more bad-ass. "Appetite" had F-bombs, man. It was rebellious.

As the 1980's came to a close and the grunge bands started to come out of the woodwork in the early 90's, I (temporarily) grew out of my Guns N' Roses phase and started getting into bands like the Beastie Boys and, well, mostly the Beastie Boys. My love affair with the Beastie Boys is a whole other story I won't get into right now, but it was borderline unhealthy.

As the 90's progressed, however, my musical horizons started to expand even more and I started getting into all sorts of bands and genres, even going so far as to have a reasonably long "techno" phase. When I say techno, I'm talking about the good, jungle, acid-house shit that you heard at raves. I'm talking Rabbit in the Moon and Orb and The Crystal Method and all the stuff Astralwerks was putting out at the time. I was even into more mainstream techno like The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim and Paul Oakenfold. That was all damn good stuff.

Then along came the millennium. I started college that same year and I entered a punk phase, The Misfits probably being my favorite band around that time. There was also The Ramones, though, and more obscure bands like Boston-based band The Unseen. I went to punk shows in Boston here and there. I saw The Misfits a couple times. I actually played the drums in a punk band of my own. Blah blah blah. Yada yada yada...

But then along came the year 2006 when I rediscovered GNR. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I became absolutely obsessed with the "Appetite for Destruction" album around this time. I was, of course, old enough at this point to buy the album and listen to it without my parents caring (though I did, um, have to do it discretely). This was the first time in my life that I had ever valued an album as a piece of art. I mean, up until that point, I was interested in singles or groups of songs here and there, but I never really appreciated an album as an artistic entity unto itself. I listened to "Appetite" from track one—"Welcome to the Jungle"—all the way to track 12—"Rocket Queen". I did this over and over again. And over again. Over again. I tried to hide the fact that I was doing this so I didn't look weird, but my family knew full-well what I was up to. My parents kept on finding the "Appetite" CD in their sweet, state-of-the-art Bosé CD player. They found it kind of odd and I think they wondered if I had turned autistic overnight. No offense, but it WAS very Asperger-y behavior, I admit. Because that's all I listened to. And I listened to it over and over again.

Unlike people suffering from Asperger’s, though, I was well-aware of how odd my behavior was. The question was WHY I was so obsessed with the "Appetite" album? What was it about this album—and only this album—that spoke to me? I liked a lot of the other songs from the "Use Your Illusion" albums, but, to me, "Appetite" was what Guns N' Roses were put on earth for. I mean, "November Rain" is a great song. So isn't "You Could Be Mine". Ain't nothing wrong with a little "Civil War" either. But there's something really special about the songs on the "Appetite" album, more special than anything else GNR ever did.

The reasons, of course, probably aren't all that mysterious. "Appetite" is the only album where the very original GNR band was fully intact. Even when Steven Adler got kicked out, GNR was never the same. Their band was a very special five-sided pentagon...or pentagram? Something like that. Steven Adler was not the greatest drummer in the world and—objectively speaking—Matt Sorum (who replaced him) was a much better drummer. But Steven Adler's drumming was the right fit for the band, a perfect piece to fit into the puzzle that was GNR. In other words, Adler was an integral part of the band and, when he left, GNR already started to crumble. And it crumbled more when Izzy Stradlin left. And then there was Slash and Duff...

Once it was just AXL remaining it wasn't even Guns N' Roses anymore, even though he secured the rights to using the name. It was more like the "AXL Rose show". You went to see him live, but it was basically only like a novelty act. It was like seeing Barry Williams (Greg) from "The Brady Bunch" do a spoken word show at UMASS Amherst. Or something like that. I think you hear me barking, dog. What I'm trying to say is that it wasn't the whole GNR "bunch", not even remotely close.

Anyway, yes, in 2006 I basically listened to nothing but the "Appetite" album, over and over again. In hindsight, I think part of the reason for this was because I was in the middle of writing a screenplay called JOHNNY CRUISE that was about Hollywood and Los Angeles. The project was basically about the dark side of the American Dream and I thought that "Appetite" was essentially about that very thing. I mean, if you listen to "Welcome to the Jungle", it's basically a song welcoming people to an American nightmare. Then there's songs like "Mr. Brownstone" about heroin addiction and, of course "Rocket Queen" about a junkie prostitute and then there's a song like "Out Ta Get me" about, well, people out to get you. The album as a whole perfectly captured the dark side of Hollywood, Los Angeles and, more generally speaking, America. I think this was why I couldn't stop listening to it.

Regardless of what the reasons were, the fact of the matter was that I was obsessed with "Appetite". And this obsession ended up awakening the seven-year-old in me. I suddenly had a burning desire to start doing my AXL Rose impersonation all over again. The problem was that my family parties no longer provided an appropriate venue and audience for me. No, I realized that the only socially-acceptable place to perform the song "Welcome to the Jungle" was at...eureka!...

A karaoke bar.

This "karaoke bar" was a place called “Nappertandy's” in Norwood, Massachusetts. I went there with friends one night and we all had the intention of having some fun and getting a bit wacky with some karaoke. Little did my friends know that I wasn't there to have fun. I meant serious business. I may have acted all nonchalant when I got there, but I knew EXACTLY what song I was going to perform that night. With the help of a few beers in my blood for liquid courage, I told the Karaoke MC what I needed him to do:

"Hey, Charlie, I'm going to do a little intro before the song. So wait for me to point to you, and then start the song. Ya feel me?"

Karaoke MC Charlie had no problem with my request, though he did raise his eyebrows at me, just a tad. You could tell he thought I was a little strange if not very drunk. He still handed me the microphone, though, and that was when I gave the mic a tap. Then I said testing-one-two. And then I began my intro:

About 25 years ago, I came out of my mother's womb, right down the street at the Norwood Hospital. True story, that ain't no lie. Now, a lotta people can't remember their birthday, but I do. I remember my mom holding me in her arms and she had this menacing grin on her face. I looked up to her confused as to my surroundings and then she says to me she says:

You know where you are?!!!!!!!

At this point, I pointed at Maestro Charlie and the initial tasty licks for "Welcome to the Jungle" started echoing out of the PA speakers. Then I said, "Ooh myyy God" and began to howl like AXL Rose. Unfortunately, I hadn't quite gotten the howl down yet so I sounded more like the corny ghost moans you hear in those Halloween sound FX tapes.

My very first "Welcome to the Jungle" karaoke performance caught on tape:

To make up for my lack of singing talent, I integrated a lot of AXL-like dance moves into my performance. And when it came time to say "My...my...my serpentine" I did a lot of suggestive moaning and crotch-grabbing, which people found to be funny. Funny, yes, but maybe they were laughing AT me, not with me. I probably should have stuffed my crotch with a sock first to make things, you know, more visually interesting.

Well, the song eventually came to an end and everybody woo-hoo'd and applauded. I must say I was pretty surprised by how cathartic the whole performance was. I don't think I was really consciously aware of how badly I wanted to perform the song "Welcome to the Jungle" in front of a sizable audience. I felt like I had finally itched a scratch that was torturing me for years and years! It felt so damn good.

But I hadn't had enough.

My ultimate plan was to become known at the karaoke bar as "the guy who does 'Welcome to the Jungle'". This meant that I would go to do karaoke, almost every week, and only perform "Welcome to the Jungle". My friends weren't particularly fond of going to the karaoke bar every week, but, as luck would have it, I made two new friends one night while I was at the bar. They had seen my "Welcome to the Jungle" performance and they were girls and they were very sexy. They thought I was fun and they loved to do karaoke so, from that point on, I had two female buddies that I went to go do karaoke with for the next several months.

The more I did "Welcome to the Jungle" the better I became at it. I got AXL's voice down pretty well and I timed all my dance moves with the song almost perfectly. In fact, my routine became so good that I actually won a karaoke contest one night at the bar and then moved onto a larger karaoke contest that took place at another bar called Waxy O' Connors. I did not win this latter contest. I didn't even come close. Some girl won it. She actually had a good singing voice, but did she have an entertaining routine like I did? Nah, she just stood in place and sang Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” like a beautiful bird. Booooooooring.

Anyway, things did eventually get to a point where my heart was really no longer "in it" anymore. I was just going through the motions. I was a novelty act. A one-trick pony. I became known as the "guy who did welcome to the jungle" so I had accomplished what I set out to do, but, once I got the fame, I didn't want it anymore. Y'all could have it back, man.

Wait, what?

Okay, so I eventually retired "Welcome to the Jungle" and, to this day, I haven't yet resurrected the song or my routine, though lately I've been feeling the itch again. I've been feeling the itch because I've been listening to a lot of GNR lately. And I've been listening to a lot of GNR lately because...well, because the band's getting back together. Correction: they ARE back together. Currently. And they've even had a few concerts so far.

I would say I've never been happier that GNR is now currently touring, but, well, actually I have been happier. GNR getting back together isn't really that huge of a deal to me, especially seeing that they're still missing Izzy and Steven Adler. If the entire original line-up got back together—meaning the original five and nobody else—and they did an "Appetite" reunion tour with maybe some "Patience" thrown in there as well, and, okay, maybe even a few songs from "Use Your Illusion", THEN I would be pretty friggin' excited. That would make me very happy.

Who knows, maybe someday the original five will get back together, though I'm not sure Steven Adler is even fit to play the drums due to his coke-induced stroke. I think he is, though. I saw him on that "Celebrity Rehab" show. He was in a jam-band. He played decent drums. Yeah, he'd be OK onstage with the rest.

But, yes, almost 30 years have gone by and my relationship with GNR and "Appetite" has evolved on all sorts of levels. I must have heard the song "Welcome to the Jungle" about a zillion times, but it never gets old. Each time I listen to it, I'm taken back to the days where I was bouncing away on my trampoline—hairbrush in hand—singing along to the video on the MTV, all so I could nail my AXL Rose impression at the next family party.

"Hey, Nanny! You know where you are???!!!"

…

MATT BURNS is the author of several novels, including Weird Monster, Supermarket Zombies!, The Woman and the Dragon and Johnny Cruise. He’s also written numerous memoirs, including GARAGE MOVIE: My Adventures Making Weird Films, My Raging Case of Beastie Fever, Jungle F’ng Fever: My 30-Year Love Affair with Guns N’ Roses and I Turned into a Misfit! Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.