“We definitely did. We were the best of friends. And then things got weird, but our vision was identical,” Guns explained.
“Then we brought Izzy [Stradlin] back into the mix. He was just my roommate, and we never played together per se, but we never stopped talking about what was cool.”
He opened up on Rose’s vocal influences and their musical direction during that period.
“It was all about being cool. I found that Axl was a very empathetic person when it comes to the vocal style he admires — like Dan McCafferty from Nazareth, and obviously Bon Scott and Brian Johnson. He loved Blackie Lawless,” he said.
“I was always forcing Robert Plant down Axl’s throat. He didn’t grow up a big Zeppelin fan, but he knew I was a big Zep head. When Axl was in L.A. Guns, we were a metal band. We were straight-up metal.”
The guitarist also talked abobut Guns N’ Roses’ distinctive identity development. “Guns N’ Roses is what broke us all away from Mötley Crüe and Ratt… stuff we didn’t want to be lumped with in.”
These insights about the band’s early metal direction illuminate the formation and evolution of both L.A. Guns and Guns N’ Roses.
