Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I want you to
take a second and just look at the calendar.
Today is February 6, 2026. Right. Now, if you
open up your news feed or check the concert listings
for the biggest stadiums in the world, you're
going to see a name that, by all rights, shouldn't
still be there. It honestly defies the laws of
physics, medicine, and... Probably gravity. We
were talking about Guns N' Roses. And the reason
we're doing this today is that they aren't just
a nostalgia act playing casinos. No, not at all.
They're active. They have a massive 2026 world
tour booked. They have two new songs, Nothing
and Atlas, which are slated to drop. in just
a couple of months and that context is so important
because if you were a betting person in say 1987
or 1994 or even 2002 forget about it and you
put money on guns and roses being a functioning
corporate touring entity in the year 2026 you
would have been laughed out of the room you would
have been institutionalized exactly i mean this
is a band that was branded the most dangerous
band in the world and usually when you hear that
marketing tag it's hype it's just pr it's a pr
team trying to make a boy band look edgy With
Guns N' Roses, the danger was a liability. It
was the defining feature of their entire existence.
So that is our mission for this deep dive. We
aren't just going to recite a biography. We're
going to try and unpack the chemistry of this
specific group of people. How did a band formed
from the absolute grit and, frankly, the squalor
of the L .A. club scene become a global phenomena,
then completely implode under the weight of its
own excess, and then somehow? find a way to glue
the pieces back together. It's a story of survival,
really. We've come through the biographies, the
tour writers, which are legendary in themselves.
Oh, I bet. The court documents, the studio logs.
And what you find is that this isn't just a story
about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, though there's
plenty of that. A lot of that. It's a story about
volatility. Cure, uncut volatility. We have so
much to get through. We're going to talk about
the Hell Tour, where they essentially became
hobo musicians. The truly defining moment. We're
going to talk about an album that cost $14 million
to produce. And, of course, we have to talk about
the riots. You cannot tell the story of Guns
N' Roses without the riots. The two are, I mean,
they're inextricably linked. So let's not get
ahead of ourselves. Let's go back to the dirt.
Let's go back to 1985, Los Angeles. The Sunset
Strip. Paint the picture for us. What does it
look like? What does it smell like? It smells
like hairspray and cheap whiskey. You have to
understand the moment. 1985 is this transition
period. The glam metal scene, the mutley crews,
the poisons. It's exploding. Right. The Sunset
Strip is the center of the universe for that
sound. It is. And it's very polished, very colorful.
Spandex, makeup, big hair. But underneath all
that, there's this desire for something grittier.
Something more real. And floating in this ecosystem,
you have these two struggling bands, Hollywood
Rose and L .A. Guns. Right. And the names are
obviously the key here. In Hollywood Rose, you
had a singer named Axl Rose and a guitarist named
Izzy Stradlin. The core songwriting duo, really.
Absolutely. And in L .A. Guns, you had a guitarist
named Tracy Guns. And the scene was incredibly
incestuous. I mean, musicians were swapping bands,
sleeping on each other's floors, stealing each
other's gear. It was a community born out of
pure desperation. So in March 1985, they decide
to merge these two entities. And the naming process
wasn't exactly a high -level corporate branding
strategy session. Not at all. They literally
just mash the names together. L .A. Guns plus
Hollywood Rose equals Guns N' Roses. It's functional.
It works. I was looking through the notes and
they didn't land on that immediately. There were
some rejected names that are. Frankly, hilarious.
Oh, they are terrible. Just awful. They considered
heads of Amazon. Which sounds like a bad prog
rock band from the 70s. Or an online retailer
from the future. But the other one, and I still
can't believe they seriously considered this,
was AIDS. AIDS. Yes. Can you imagine the announcer?
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage,
AIDS. It just shows you the headspace they were
in. They wanted to shock people from day one.
They wanted to be provocative. They wanted to
be shocking from the jump. But thankfully, sanity
prevailed and they went with guns and roses.
OK, so the lineup at this exact moment, March
1985. It isn't the classic five yet, is it? No.
And this is crucial. The chemistry wasn't instant.
Tracy Guns, the guy who gave the band half its
name, actually leaves pretty quickly. He gets
into an argument with Axl. Which, spoiler alert,
is going to be a recurring theme in this story.
Yeah. Arguments with Axl. A very common theme,
yes. So Tracy leaves, and that opens the door
for a guy named Saul Hudson, better known to
the world as Slash. The man in the top hat. Exactly.
Now, Slash had been in a band called Road Crew
with two other guys who would eventually join
the circus. Duff McKagan and Steven Adler. So
it's like a puzzle snapping together piece by
piece. It really is. Duff comes in and replaces
Ole Beach on bass. Steven Adler eventually replaces
Rob Gardner on drums. And suddenly, on June 4th,
1985, you have the lineup. Axl, Slash, Izzy,
Duff, and Steven. And that's the magic combination.
And I want to pause here because we really need
to explain why this worked. On paper, these five
guys shouldn't make sense together at all. Right,
because they aren't all just straight -up metal
guys. Far from it. This is where the magic happens.
Let's look at Slash. He isn't a shredder in the
style of, say, Eddie Van Halen. He's a blues
player at his core. He grew up on Aerosmith,
The Stones. Exactly. Old blues records. He plays
with a lot of emotion, and he tends to play a
little behind the beat. It's lazy, you know,
in a good way. It's got swagger. And then you
have Duff McKagan on bass. Duff is a punk rocker.
100%. He's from Seattle. He idolized The Clash,
The Sex Pistols, Johnny Thunders. So he plays
with the pick, he plays hard, and he tends to
push the beat. He's driving the car forward.
So you have the guitar pulling back and the bass
pushing forward. That creates an inherent tension.
That's the word. It creates this push -pull dynamic
that makes the music feel unstable and incredibly
exciting. And then you have the secret weapon,
Steven Adler on drums. I feel like Adler gets
overlooked a lot because he wasn't some technical
wizard. He wasn't Neil Peart. He wasn't doing
complex math on the drum kit. But my God, he
had swing. Okay, let's unpack that term, swing.
For the listener who just taps their foot, what
does that actually mean in a hard rock context?
So most rock drummers in the 80s were trying
to be machines. They wanted to hit the grid perfectly,
very straight, very rigid, like a drum machine.
Adler played with a jazz sensibility. He would
hit the snare drum just a millisecond late. It
gave the beat this rolling, swaggering feel.
It made the music danceable. It's the reason
a song like Mr. Brownstone has that groove. That
groove is all Adler. It's loose. It breathes.
It feels alive. So you have this voluble musical
mixture, this perfect storm of personalities
and influence. Yeah. And what is the first thing
they decide to do? They decide to go on tour.
The legendary Hell Tour. This is the origin story.
This is the crucible. They decide to book a West
Coast run going from Sacramento up to Duff's
hometown of Seattle. They call it a tour, but
that's a very generous term. And transportation
was also a generous term for what they had. They
had two beat up vans and in true rock and roll
fashion, they get on the road and almost immediately
the flunked van breaks down. So they all pile
into the second van. And then maybe 100 miles
later, the second van breaks down. So now you
have five guys, hair teased up, wearing leather
tattoos, looking like absolute freaks to the
average person in 1985, stranded on the side
of the highway. What do they do? They leave the
gear. They grab their guitars, just the essentials,
what they can carry. And they stick their thumbs
out. They hitchhike. They hitchhiked all the
way to Seattle. They hitchhiked for hundreds
and hundreds of miles. And we aren't talking
about a fun road trip. This was brutal. They
were starving. There are stories of them finding
an onion field, stealing onions, and trying to
roast them over a fire just to have something,
anything to eat. That is insane. It sounds like
something out of a Steinbeck novel. It is. But
Duff McKagan later said this is the most defining
moment of their lives. He said that when you
are stripping down to nothing, starving on the
side of the road with four other guys, You either
kill each other or you become brothers. And they
became brothers. They missed most of the gigs.
They barely played any music on that tour, but
they learned how to survive as a unit. That trip
forged them. So they limp back to Los Angeles.
They are broke, but they are bonded. And they
move into a place that becomes known as the Hell
House. Which was, again, a very generous term
for what it was. It was a tiny one -room apartment
that was also their rehearsal space. No furniture,
just mattresses on the floor, empty bottles of
night train wine, pizza boxes, and five guys
living on top of each other. And amidst this
squalor... They are writing the songs that are
going to change the world. They're playing the
Troubadour, the Roxy, and the buzz is starting
to build. The industry is noticing. The labels
start sniffing around, and this is where we see
the band's integrity early on. They had a huge
offer from Chrysalis Records. It was the best
financial offer on the table by far. But they
turned it down. Why? Chrysalis wanted to change
them. They looked at Guns N' Roses and saw a
rough diamond that needed polishing. They wanted
to change the image, maybe tweak the sound to
be more radio -friendly. To make them more like
Bon Jovi or Poison. Exactly. And even though
they were literally starving, the band said no.
That takes a staggering amount of confidence.
Or delusion. A bit of both, probably. They eventually
signed with Geffen Records in March 1986. The
advance was smaller, only $75 ,000, which split
five ways and after paying debts isn't a fortune.
It's nothing. But Geffen offered them the one
thing they wanted more than money. Absolutely.
100 % creative control. They bet on themselves.
They knew that their danger, that grit we talked
about, was the product. If you polished it, you
ruined it. So they signed the deal. They need
to get some product out to keep the momentum
going while they record the debut album. So they
release an EP called Live. Like a suicide. A
brilliant bit of marketing, really. It sounds
incredibly raw. You hear the crowd screaming.
You hear the banter between songs. It established
them as this ferocious, must -see live act. But
there is a catch. A big catch. The catch is that
it wasn't live. Not even a little bit. It was
studio demos they had already recorded. They
just took those tapes and dubbed crowd noise
over the top. That is hilarious. It's literal.
Fake it till you make it. It was strategic. They
needed the world to think they were conquering
the club, so they just manufactured the sound
of a conquered club, and it worked. It bought
them the time they needed to enter the studio
for the main event. Appetite for Destruction.
July 1987, the album drops. And today, we look
at Appetite as this monolithic juggernaut. 30
million copies sold. The best -selling debut
album of all time. But when it first came out,
nothing. Crickets. I mean, dead in the water.
It debuted at number 182 on the Billboard 200.
It was a total flop. What was the problem? Was
the music just too aggressive for the time? The
music was aggressive, but the biggest hurdle
was the cover art. We have to talk about the
original cover. It was a painting by Robert Williams.
It wasn't the cross with the skulls that we all
know from the T -shirts. No. The original painting
depicted a robotic rapist who had just assaulted
a woman, and he was about to be attacked by this
metallic, vengeful monster. It was incredibly
graphic, disturbing, and deeply controversial.
And retailers just said, no way. Walmart, Kmart,
all the big record store chains, they refused
to stock it. So the band had to compromise. They
moved the controversial art to the inside sleeve
and put the now famous tattoo design, the Celtic
cross, with the five skulls on the cover. But
even with the new, less offensive cover, radio
wasn't touching it. MTV wasn't touching it. They
were just viewed as too dirty, too dangerous.
They were completely stuck. So the story goes
that David Geffen, the head of the label, decided
to call in a personal favor. He called the head
of programming at MTV and begged him. He said,
just play the video for Welcome to the Jungle
one time, just once, as a personal favor to me.
And MTV agreed. Reluctantly, they agreed to play
it one time at 4 a .m. on a Sunday morning. The
graveyard slot. The slot where music videos go
to die. Exactly. They thought nobody would see
it. But here's the thing about the Guns N' Roses
demographic. The misfits, the rockers, the night
owls, the bad kids, they were awake at 4 a .m.
on a Sunday. And what happened? The switchboards
at MTV lit up like a Christmas tree. Kids were
calling in, just flooding the line, saying, What
was that? Who was that guy with the teased hair
screaming at the bus? Play it again. It was a
grassroots explosion fueled by insomnia. Within
days, it became the most requested video on the
entire channel. That's an incredible story. And
that song, Welcome to the Jungle, it captures
such a specific anxiety. It does. And the lyrics
are basically a documentary. Axl wrote them after
a specific encounter he had when he first visited
New York City. This is a true story. According
to Axl, yes. He was hitchhiking, got dropped
off in Queens or the Bronx, and a homeless man
came up to him and yelled at him. He shouted,
you know where you are. You're in the jungle,
baby. You're going to die. He literally quoted
the man in the song. Verbatim. He took that pure
terror of the big city, the predator versus prey
dynamic, and he bottled it. He turned it into
an anthem. Then, on the complete opposite end
of the spectrum, you have Sweet Child of Mine.
This is their biggest hit, their only number
one single in the U .S., and yet Slash hated
it. He despised it. He thought it was a joke.
He was sitting in a rehearsal, just goofing around,
trying to play this ridiculous circus melody
to annoy Steven Adler. He was making a face,
playing this high -pitched winding riff. And
Axl was in the other room. Axl heard it through
the wall and came running in. He said, hold on,
what is that? That's amazing. And Slash was like,
no, it's stupid. I'm just messing around. But
Axl insisted they keep playing it. And the lyrics
were very personal for Axl. Yeah, it was a poem
he had written for his girlfriend at the time,
Erin Everly. It was vulnerable. It was sincere.
And that clashed completely with Slash's tough
guy, blues rock image. In fact, Slash actually
tried to sabotage the song during the recording.
How'd he do that? You know that guitar solo in
the middle, the really dramatic soaring one?
Slash recorded that in one take because he just
wanted to get it over with and leave the studio.
He thought, I'll just shred over this stupid
ballad and ruin it. Instead, he accidentally
laid down one of the most iconic guitar solos
in rock history. It's just so ironic that the
song he hated the most is the one that probably
bought him his house. It's always the way, isn't
it? The pop hit pays the bills. So Appetite eventually
goes supernova. They are the biggest band on
the planet. But as their fame grows, the controversy
starts to mutate. It stops being fun danger and
starts becoming ugly danger. And that brings
us to 1988. They released the EP GNR Lies, and
we have to stop and talk about the song One in
a Million. This is the elephant in the room.
For listeners who don't know, this is an acoustic
track where Axl uses racial slurs, homophobic
slurs, and anti -immigrant rhetoric. It is shocking
to listen to, even now, especially now. It was
shocking then, too. It caused an absolute firestorm.
Why did he write it? What was the defense? What
was he thinking? Axel's defense at the time was
that he was writing from a persona. He claimed
he wasn't expressing his own views, but rather
the viewpoint of a naive, angry white kid from
Indiana who gets off a bus in downtown LA and
feels threatened by the diversity and the chaos
around him. So he was trying to channel a character,
sort of like an Archie Bunker. That was the claim.
He called it immersive journalism or satire.
He said, I'm not saying I hate these people.
I'm saying this character is ignorant and afraid.
But the problem, obviously, is that the song
doesn't really frame it as satire. It just sounds
like pure venom. And the rest of the band, Slash
is half black. His mother was a famous African
-American costume designer. That must have been
an incredibly difficult position for him to be
in. it was awful for him slash has spoken about
this in interviews he was visibly uncomfortable
he fought against the song being on the record
he told axel this is a bad idea this is hurtful
But by this point in 1988, the power dynamic
in the band had shifted. It was becoming Axl's
band. It was becoming Axl's dictatorship. If
Axl wanted it on the record, it went on the record.
End of discussion. And the consequences were
real, weren't they? Oh, absolutely. They were
kicked off the bill for an ACT -UP benefit concert,
which was a major AIDS charity. Later, at the
Freddie Mercury tribute concert, Freddie was
obviously a gay icon. There were protests outside.
Activists wanted GNR removed from the show. It
created this duality where millions of people
loved the music, but the cultural baggage was
becoming incredibly heavy. And that heaviness
starts to crack the foundation. We move into
the Use Your Illusion era. 1990, the first domino
falls. Steven Adler. This is the beginning of
the end for that classic sound. Steven was struggling
heavily with heroin addiction. The band was in
the studio trying to record the song Civil War,
which is a fantastic track. But the sessions
were a complete disaster. They were a nightmare.
They did nearly 30 takes of the song. Steven
was so out of it, nodding off, losing focus,
that he just couldn't keep time. He couldn't
find that pocket, that swing we talked about.
So they fired him. But the way they did it was
legally very strange. It was desperate. Before
they fired him, they actually made him sign a
contract. The contract stated that he was still
in the band, but he would be fined $2 ,000 every
single time he used heroin. They were trying
to find him into sobriety. It was a clumsy, misguided
attempt to help him, I think. But obviously,
addiction doesn't work like that. He couldn't
stop. So he was fired, and he immediately sued
them. And in comes Matt Sorum from the cult and
Dizzy Reed on keyboards. And this is where the
music fundamentally changes. We talked about
Adler's swing earlier, that loose, jazzy, behind
-the -beat feel. Matt Sorum was a completely
different drummer. He was a machine. A powerhouse.
A powerhouse. Very precise, very heavy, very
on the grid. He played like a metronome. So the
band got tighter, but they lost the groove. That's
exactly it. Izzy Stradlin said that when Adler
left, the swing left the band. They transformed
from a gritty street... rock band into a heavy,
epic stadium rock band. Which fit the ambition
for Use Your Illusion. I mean, releasing two
double albums on the same day, September 1991.
Use Your Illusion, I and 2. That is pure hubris.
It's never been done before or since on that
scale. It was Axl attempting to be Elton John,
Queen, and the Rolling Stones all at once. And
commercially, it worked. They debuted at number
one and number two on the Billboard charts. They
were literally competing with themselves for
the top spot. And the videos became these massive
cinematic events. November Rain. The epic. It
was nearly nine minutes long. At the time, it
was the longest song to ever reach the top ten,
and the video cost a fortune. They built a chapel
in the middle of the desert specifically so they
could burn it down for a scene. You're kidding.
No. They had helicopter shots, a full orchestra,
a wedding, a funeral. Axl wanted to show the
world that they were high art now. But while
the videos were polished and cinematic, the tour...
The Use Your Illusion Tour is legendary for being
a traveling disaster zone. It was the tour of
chaos. It lasted 28 months. They played 192 dates,
and it was defined by two things, lateness and
riots. We have to zoom in on St. Louis, July
1991, the Riverport Riot. Walk us through this
night, because it plays out like a movie scene.
Okay, so the atmosphere is already tense. It's
hot. The band takes the stage late, as usual.
They're in the middle of playing Rocket Queen,
a fan favorite. Now, Axl has a strict policy.
No unauthorized filming. And you have to remember,
in 1991, this means huge, bulky camcorders, not
stealthy iPhones. So it's hard to miss someone
filming. Right. Axel spots a guy in the front
row, a biker type, holding a camera. Axel stops
singing mid -lyric. He points. He yells at security,
take that, get that guy, take that. And security
doesn't move. They hesitate. Maybe they didn't
see who he was pointing at. Maybe they were intimidated
by the biker. But that split -second hesitation
was all it took. Axel snaps. He yells into the
mic, I'll take it, goddammit. And he dives. He
executes a perfect swan dive off the stage, right
into the crowd. This isn't a friendly stage dive
to be caught by fans. This is an attack. It's
an assault. He lands on the guy, punches are
thrown. Axl grabs the camera. His security team
has to literally grab him by his legs and drag
him back onto the stage like a sack of potatoes.
He gets back up. He's breathless. His hair is
a mess. He grabs the mic. And he delivers the
line that ends the night. Well, thanks to the
lame -ass security, I'm going home. He slams
the microphone onto the stage. A huge boom echoes
through the arena and he storms off. And the
crowd. What do they do? The crowd is confused
at first. Slash plays a weird questioning chord
on his guitar like, oh, what just happened? But
then the house lights come on and 20 ,000 people
realize they have just been ripped off. And that
is a dangerous realization for a crowd to have.
It turned into a war zone. They tore the seats
out of the concrete floor. They smashed the PA
system. They stole the band's gear. It caused
millions of dollars in damage. Axl actually had
a warrant out for his arrest for inciting a riot.
He couldn't enter the state of Missouri. for
a year, they had to hide him in the tour bus
while they crossed state lines. And as if that
wasn't enough, you have Montreal in 1992. This
is the co -headlining tour with Metallica, the
biggest ticket of the decade. This should have
been the greatest night in rock history, but
it was cursed from the start. Metallica plays
first. Their frontman, James Hetfield, accidentally
walks into a pyrotechnics blast. He suffers second
and third degree burns all over his body. His
skin is literally melting. Metallica has to stop
the show immediately so he can be rushed to the
hospital. So the crowd is already traumatized
and restless. But they're thinking, at least
we still have guns and roses. And they wait.
And they wait and they wait. It takes hours for
GNR to set up their stage. When they finally
come out, Axl is clearly in a mood. He complains
about the sound monitors. He says his throat
hurts. And after a very short set, he just says
goodnight and walks off. Two headliners. Basically
no show. The city of Montreal erupted. We are
talking about overturned police cars, fires in
the streets, looting stores. It was absolute
anarchy. And amidst all of this madness, the
riots, the late start times, the drugs, you have
Izzy Stradlin. The quiet one, the rhythm guitarist,
the soul of the band in many ways. He was crucial
to the songwriting, right? He and Axl. He was
the glue. Axl was the voice, Slash was the soul,
but Izzy was the architect of the songs. And
Izzy had recently gotten sober. He was traveling
in a separate van because he just couldn't be
around the heroin and the alcohol on the main
tour bus anymore. And looking at St. Louis, looking
at the chaos in Europe, he just decided he was
done. He looked at the circus and said, I'm not
going to die for this. He quit in November 1991.
And that was the moment the band truly broke,
even if they kept touring for another two years.
Without Izzy, the balance of power shifted 100
% to Axl. And that shift leads us into the slow,
painful disintegration of the mid -90s. The tour
finally ends in 1993. They're exhausted. They
release the spaghetti incident. which is a covers
album. It was supposed to be a fun, back -to
-roots punk covers album, something to clear
their heads. The title itself came from a drug
lawsuit involving Steven Adler. He used to refer
to his stash as spaghetti when he kept it in
the fridge. Even this fun covers album managed
to have a major scandal. The hidden track, Look
at Your Game Girl. A song written by Charles
Manson. The cult leader. The murderer. Axl included
a cover of a Charles Manson song as an unlisted
hidden track. He thought it was dark, ironic
humor. He thought it was edgy. The public did
not think it was funny. No, not at all. Victim
rights groups were outraged. It was a PR nightmare.
The label had to agree to donate all the royalties
from that specific song to the son of one of
Manson's victims. It was just another example
of Axl's judgment drifting further and further
away from reality. And the internal fracture
finally snaps during the recording of Sympathy
for the Devil. This is 1994. A Rolling Stones
cover for the Interview with the Vampire soundtrack.
This is the breaking point for Slash. He goes
into the studio, records his guitar parts, lays
down his solo, he thinks they're done. Then,
without telling Slash, Axl brings in his childhood
friend, a guitarist named Paul Tobias, sometimes
referred to as Paul Huge. And what does Axl have
Paul do? He has Paul record his own guitar playing,
doubling and playing over Slash's parts. That
is the ultimate betrayal for a musician, especially
a lead guitarist. It is the ultimate sign of
disrespect. Slash hears the final mix and realizes
his signature sound has been erased and replaced
by Axl's buddy. Slash's quote about that moment
was simply, there was no democracy there. And
that was it. Slash quits in October 1996. Then
Matt Sorum gets fired in 1997 after getting into
an argument with Axl about, you guessed it, Paul
Tobias. And Duff McKagan. Poor Duff. He was the
last original member standing besides Axl. And
he resigns in August 1997. He had just become
a father for the first time. He wanted stability.
He looked at Guns N' Roses and saw nothing but
chaos and Axl's whims. So he walked away. So
by 1998, it's just Axl. He legally owns the name
Guns N' Roses. And we enter what I like to call
the wilderness years. A decade of silence interrupted
only by extreme weirdness. The revolving door
of band members during this time is insane. You
have Robin Fink from Nine Inch Nails. You have
Tommy Stinson from The Replacements. And then
you have Buckethead. We have to talk about Buckethead.
Please, let's. Buckethead is a guitarist who
is, by all accounts, a virtuoso. He can play
anything. But his stage persona is unique. He
wears a white Michael Myers style mask and he
wears a KFC bucket on his head. A literal. Fast
food fried chicken bucket. Yes, and sometimes
orange rubber raincoats. And he speaks through
a hand puppet named Herbie. And Axl Rose, the
guy who wrote Welcome to the Jungle, looked at
this and said, yes, this is my new lead guitarist.
It gets weirder. During the recording of the
new album, Buckethead requested that a chicken
coop be built for him inside the recording studio.
A coop, like with wire mesh and straw and everything?
Yes. A dedicated enclosed space for him to play
his guitar parts in so he would feel comfortable.
And Axl, because he was so deep into this project,
allowed it. They built the coop. This is where
the $14 million was going. Chicken coops in the
studio. Exactly. This brings us to Chinese democracy.
The album. The myth. It took over a decade to
make. It reportedly cost somewhere between $13
and $14 million. The most expensive rock album
ever produced. It became a running joke in the
music industry. Axl was hiring and firing producers
like he was changing socks. He was renting out
major recording studios for $2 ,000 a day and
then just not showing up for weeks on end. And
the world started to mock them. Do you remember
the Dr. Pepper bet? Oh, I do. This was the peak
of the absurdity. In 2008, the soda company Dr.
Pepper put out a press release. They promised
that if Chinese democracy actually dropped before
the end of that year, they would give a free
can of soda to everyone in America. Everyone
in America except Slash and Buckethead. That
was the official stipulation. It was a corporate
troll job. Axel actually responded on his website
saying he would share his Dr. Pepper with Buckethead,
but not Slash. And then miraculously... In November
2008, the album actually came out. It did. It
was a Best Buy exclusive. And it was fine. That's
the tragedy, isn't it? After all that time and
money, it wasn't a masterpiece, but it wasn't
terrible. It wasn't bad. There's some great songs
on it. Better is a fantastic song. But it wasn't
the second coming of Christ. It was a dense,
overproduced, industrial rock album. It lacked
that raw chemistry we talked about at the beginning.
It lacked the friction of Slash and Duff and
Izzy. So for years, Axl tours this new version
of the band. People assume the classic lineup
is dead and buried forever. In 2012, an interviewer
asked Axl if the original lineup would ever reunite.
Do you remember what he said? Oh, vividly. He
said, not in this lifetime. Not in this lifetime.
Which brings us to 2016. The impossible happens.
Money has a way of healing wounds. Or at least,
bandaging them for a very lucrative tour. Slash
and Duff officially rejoin the band. It was the
reunion nobody thought they would ever see. And
in a stroke of marketing genius, they named the
tour the Not In This Lifetime Tour. They owned
the quote. Leaned right into it. And the revenue.
My God. It became the second or third highest
grossing tour of all time. We are talking over
$580 million. But of course, it's Guns N' Roses.
It couldn't start perfectly. There had to be
some chaos. Of course not. The very first warm
-up gig at the Troubadour back where it all started
in 1985. Axl slips on a wet spot on stage. And
breaks his foot? He shatters a bone in his foot.
So for the kickoff of the biggest rock reunion
in history, the frontman is in a cast. So what
did he do? He called Dave Grohl. Right. Dave
Roll from the Foo Fighters had broken his leg
a year prior and had this ridiculous, giant,
illuminated guitar throne built so he could sit
and play shows. So Axl borrowed the throne. It's
such a bizarre image. The most dangerous singer
in rock sitting on a borrowed throne like a king
on Game of Thrones, screaming his lungs out.
But it worked. And more importantly, on that
tour, they showed up on time. That was the big
change, wasn't it? The chaos was managed. The
production was slick. It was a well -oiled professional
machine. And since... then they've kept that
machine running. They released the appetite locked
and loaded box set. They started releasing new
singles. Yeah, they went back into the vault.
Songs like Absurd and Hard School came out in
2021. These were actually reworked tracks from
the Chinese Democracy Sessions that didn't make
the original album. Absurd definitely has that
industrial Nine Inch Nails vibe. It does. It's
aggressive. It shows they are trying to bridge
the gap between the old sound and Axl's newer,
more industrial vision. But it hasn't been entirely
without hiccups. Glastonbury 2023. Yeah, that
was a rough patch. They headlined the festival,
but the reviews were scathing. Fans and critics
complained about the sound mix. They said Axl's
vocals were cutting in and out or that he sounded
weak. The band blamed the BBC, right? They blamed
the broadcast mix. But it was a reminder that
these guys are getting older. Axl isn't 25 anymore.
Maintaining that voice, which is an incredibly
difficult and punishing way to sing, is a challenge.
And the lineup continues to evolve, even now.
We're looking at this from our vantage point
in February 2026, just last year in March 2025,
Frank Ferrer, and he had been their drummer for
nearly 20 years. And Isaac Carpenter join. So
they're still injecting new blood into the rhythm
section. They aren't afraid to make changes to
keep the engine running smoothly. And looking
at the calendar right now, February 6th, 2026,
they are fully operational. They did the tour
with the incredibly long name last year. Because
what you want and what you get are two completely
different things to it. That is a classic axle
title right there. And now a 2026 world tour
is on the books. And we're waiting for Nothing
and Atlas, these two new songs. It proves that
they aren't just a museum piece. They are still
creating, still moving forward. So let's wrap
this up. What does this all mean? When you look
at the 100 million records sold. the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame induction, which, strictly
speaking, Assel refused to attend. Oh, he famously
sent a letter declining the induction and banning
them from using his likeness. The crowd actually
booed his name during the ceremony. He is consistent.
I will give him that. He is. But when you look
at the whole journey, from eating onions on the
side of the road on the Hell Tour, to sharing
a single room in the Hell House, to selling out
stadiums in 2026, what is the legacy? It's the
survivor spirit, but more than that, it's the
power of tension. Guns N' Roses was never about
harmony. It was about conflict. The friction
between Axl and Slash, between the punk attitude
and the piano ballads, between the street and
the stadium, that friction created the sparks.
And now? Now, they seem to have professionalized
the friction. They are a massive, smooth -running
corporate touring machine. Slash and Duff were
back. The checks are clearing. But the question
remains, have they tamed the jungle? Or is the
danger just sleeping? Yeah, it is the question.
The multi -million dollar question. Because with
this band, even in 2026, you always get the sense
that the wheels could come off at any moment.
And let's be honest, that is why we still buy
the tickets. We want to see if the car crashes.
Well, if you haven't listened to Appetite for
Destruction in a while, I encourage you to go
back and do it. But don't just put it on in the
background. Listen with fresh ears. Listen for
the hunger. Listen for the desperation. Because
that... Absolutely. The DNA is all in that first
record. Thanks for diving in with us. We'll catch
on the next one. See you then.