ROB GARDNER Hollywood Rose’s drummer used to go MIA. They wouldn’t know where he was. So I used to fill in with them all the time. Because I just knew the songs. But I wasn’t a permanent drummer for them, because I had my thing with Tracii.
TRACII GUNS Okay. So the next step was changing the name of the band from Pyrrhus to L.A. Guns. I loved the name Hollywood Rose, you know? And I had this girlfriend, Dina, who would call me Mr. Guns all the time. And then my friends started calling me Mr. Guns. And so I became Tracii Guns.
And then one day Izzy and I were at my mom’s, and I took a black vinyl album cover and used a stencil to draw up an L.A. Guns logo. And I showed it to Izzy. I go, “Hey man, is this cool?” And he looked at it, like, “L.A. Guns?” I said, “Yeah. I wanna change the name of my band to L.A. Guns. Like Hollywood Rose.” And he goes, “That’s awesome!” That was, like, a two-minute conversation. And L.A. Guns was born that day in my mom’s living room.
CHRIS WEBER Hollywood Rose played the regular Hollywood places. There was the Orphanage, which was our first gig [in January 1984], there was the Troubadour, there was Madame Wong’s West …
TRACII GUNS Izzy said, “Do you guys want to play with us at Madame Wong’s West?” I was like, “Sure, let’s do a gig together.” And so we were down there during the day, pulling our crap in for soundcheck, and there’s Axl by himself at the microphone, just wailing. I’m like, “Holy shit, that guy can sing!” That’s when I wanted to be close to Axl, when I saw him sing like that.
CHRIS WEBER Then Hollywood Rose played a show with Stryper at the Music Machine. The way I remember it is something happened onstage, I think I swung around and hit Axl with the top of my guitar. My memory was that he was pissed off. And I wouldn’t be the first person to say that Axl’s got a relatively unique ego. It could be easily damaged and easily inflated at the same time. Anyway, nobody got fired, but we kind of disbanded.
TRACII GUNS Somehow Chris Weber was out of the band and then Slash was in the band. And it was funny because nobody knew that we were friends. But they decided Slash was playing guitar for Hollywood Rose. And, you know, cool-looking man, obviously. So that happened.
STEVEN ADLER (drummer, Road Crew, Hollywood Rose, Guns N’ Roses) Me and Slash, we were walking down Sunset Boulevard and we saw this one flyer and it just stood out … The singer and guitar player, they just looked so cool. It was Rose. Hollywood Rose. It was Axl and Izzy. And we went into Gazzarri’s and we watched them.
MARC CANTER Slash and Steven had known each other for years. He was his friend from Bancroft Middle School. They lost touch for a few years after that but then Steven eventually wound up playing drums in Road Crew. And then Duff was in Road Crew for, like, a week, when he first got into town from Seattle.
DUFF MCKAGAN (bassist, Road Crew, Guns N’ Roses) I moved down to L.A. in September of ’84. As a punk kid from Seattle, it was total culture shock. Of course I knew about, like, Eddie Van Halen and that kind of guitar playing. And I knew that first Mötley record they had put out themselves. But moving here and seeing all the flyers on the telephone poles and shit … it was a lot of bands, a lot of long hair, a lot of outfits, you know what I mean?
MARC CANTER Somehow he answered Slash’s ad in the Recycler and they started jamming.
DUFF MCKAGAN He had this ad that said, “Influences: Fear, Aerosmith, early Alice Cooper.” And his name was Slash. So I thought he was a punk rock guy like me. I called him up, we talked on the phone, totally cool guy. Then I went to meet him and Steven at Canter’s Deli. He said, “We’ll be in the left booth at the end.” So I look in the left booth and there’s, you know, basically all this fucking hair! But also, I was wearing like this long red-and-black, like, super-fly pimp jacket with an anarchy A on the back of it, and I had short blue hair. So I’m sure they’re looking at me and going, “Huh?” Slash’s girlfriend at the time, she was a very out-front kind of girl, and she goes, “Are you gay?” I’m like, “No, I’m not gay.” She goes, “Okay, well, maybe we can find you a girlfriend.”
We ended up that night going back to Slash’s mom’s house. We’re hanging out in his room in the basement and drinking vodka and he starts playing guitar. And I’d never been in a room with a guy my age who played guitar like that. But the Road Crew thing, there was no singer, and they’re like, “Maybe you can sing…” But I had already moved away from home, I was ready for the next step. I wasn’t going to play with some guys who just got out of high school the year before and had a bunch of riffs. Even if they had a fucking guitar player like Slash.
MARC CANTER Slash could never find a singer that was good enough to start playing real gigs at the Troubadour and stuff like that. So he realized he was going to have to pluck one out of a band that was already established. And Rose was already playing gigs, or Hollywood Rose—I guess it kind of went back and forth between the names. So I went with Slash and Steven to Gazzarri’s. I think it was a battle of the bands, it was like a dollar to get in and Rose only played three songs. All I remember is Axl was good and Izzy was good.
STEVEN ADLER I said, “If we get that singer and that guitar player and a great bass player, we will have the greatest fucking band ever.”
MARC CANTER Right after that Rose gig at Gazzarri’s Slash joined up with Axl. And then they got Steven Adler in the band, and this guy Steve Darrow to play bass.
STEVE DARROW (bassist, Hollywood Rose) I had been playing with a band called Kery Doll, and I remember hearing Hollywood Rose had another gig booked for later in the month, probably at the Troubadour. So I saw Izzy one day and I said, “How’s it goin’? I heard you got another gig booked.” He goes, “What are you talking about? You’re playing it! You wanna play bass for us?” So I basically faded out of Kery Doll and faded into Hollywood Rose.
We started playing, and Slash at that point was kind of a shredder. He had the B.C. Rich with the tremolo bar and he was doing a lot of dive bombs. But then he could also play the Joe Perry stuff and that kind of bluesy rock. And Steven had his double bass kit. He was really flashy and showy and had a lot of cymbals, a lot of drums. But at the same time Axl would be like, “We worked out a version of ‘Honky Tonk Women’…” trying to get more of that sort of rock ’n’ roll into the metal stuff.
SLASH There was Izzy and Axl, and then there was Steven and I. And then there was us in different combinations. We weren’t ready, though, and it didn’t last long.
MARC CANTER And then Izzy kind of walked away from it. Maybe he made it to one rehearsal and then he was gone. He left and joined the band London.
STEVE DARROW It was one of those weird things where Izzy was there and the next time he wasn’t. And then Axl was a little bit more involved in the way things were going than the way things were before. And then it also was the beginning of Izzy’s drug time. He started hanging out with different people and his priorities were more in that unfortunately. So anybody who wasn’t really directly involved in either making him a rock star or buying drugs was sort of low priority in his life.
MARC CANTER Izzy … I was less than thrilled with Izzy. For that reason only.
CHRIS WEBER I don’t think I even remember Axl or Izzy getting drunk when I was in the band. I don’t think they could afford it, to be honest with you.
TRACII GUNS I mean, I guess Izzy was always really curious about heroin. He had a girlfriend at one point that was doing junk. But it was very mysterious to him. One time my mom found some books at the house that Izzy had gotten from the library about heroin. She brought it up to me and I went, “Ah, he’s a smart guy, he’s just checking something out…”
MARC CANTER After Izzy left it was almost like a new band. I think they actually changed the name from Hollywood Rose to the New Hollywood Rose. Because it was just Axl from the band, and then Slash and Steven came in together and they found a new bass player. But that version of Hollywood Rose only lasted for about three months. They had like four or five gigs, a couple of rehearsal parties, and then it kind of fell apart. And then Axl went ahead and joined Tracii in L.A. Guns.
TRACII GUNS My manager, this guy Raz, fired Mike Jagosz because he was being a dummy or something. And then I just hit up Axl. “Hey, you wanna be in L.A. Guns for a while?” And he said, “Yeah.” We did that for a solid nine, ten months before we finally did the gig with London.
MARC CANTER I went to see L.A. Guns when they were opening up for London at the Troubadour. And Axl was upset that London somehow screwed them over.
TRACII GUNS Axl swore he saw Nadir [London singer Nadir D’Priest] detune my guitars before we went on and all this shit. Which makes sense because when I went onstage all my Les Pauls were completely out of tune. Like, four notes down on every string. So he made a big stink about that.
LIZZIE GREY Axl hated Nadir.
MARC CANTER He vented about it during the gig. And then he tore up a London poster onstage. But that’s Axl. Axl will say what’s on his mind.
DUFF MCKAGAN I saw that show at the Troubadour. Slash took me. And the thing about Axl, I’d seen so many shows by this time. My old band, 10 Minute Warning, we opened for Black Flag when it was Henry Rollins’ first show with them in Seattle. And Henry was the most intense dude I’d seen. I saw him before the show, like, stretching out in his little short dolphin shorts, not talking to anybody, super intense. Ready to fight. And when Axl came out onstage at the L.A. Guns thing I saw that same intensity, but kind of more fucking unhinged. It was real. And the guy was hitting these notes … I’d never seen anything like Axl.
TRACII GUNS Izzy quit London after the Troubadour show. Because he didn’t want to be associated with that.
MARC CANTER Then Izzy booked a New Year’s Eve show at a club called Dancing Waters in San Pedro. They were going to put Hollywood Rose back together.
STEVE DARROW That was one of Izzy’s “book a gig, get a band together later,” kind of moves. He asked me to do it and I said, “Sure.” And he had asked Axl and he actually said no at one point, because he was still in L.A. Guns. But then he convinced him later on and he said yes. And then they asked Slash.
CHRIS WEBER If I remember right, Slash was working at Tower Video or something like that and couldn’t get off for the show. So they called me to fill in.
STEVE DARROW Slash had a job at Tower Video, and Axl had worked there, too, around the same time, behind the counter. And Slash couldn’t get the night off. Even though it was New Year’s Eve he had to work until midnight. He was a responsible employee, I guess. So Izzy reverted back to Chris Weber. And then I don’t know how Rob Gardner came into it, probably because he was playing with Axl in L.A. Guns at that point.
MARC CANTER So Hollywood Rose did that gig, which was a one-off. And I guess they wanted to continue with it but they just couldn’t figure it out exactly. And maybe they didn’t want Chris Weber. I’m not sure what happened. But the next thing I knew Axl had put together a band with Tracii.
TRACII GUNS Axl had actually been fired from L.A. Guns by our manager, Raz. He was just like, “I’m not going to deal with you anymore.” And so then we got Mike Jagosz back for a second, which is probably when that Hollywood Rose reunion happened.
But at that time, Axl and I were attached at the hip. So we decided we were going to continue playing together, we just had to figure out in what configuration. And then I was like, “Well, Izzy’s not doing anything, why don’t we just add him to the band?”
The initial idea with Axl was “Hey, let’s just write and record and we’ll go out and play new songs.” And somehow we came up with the name Guns and Rose, which was just his last name and my last name. And then within five minutes Axl’s like, “Nah, man, Guns and Roses.” And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s a great band name.”