W.AXL.ROSE


W.A.R

I'm a small town white boy Just tryin' to make ends meet


Born on February 6, 1962. W. Axl Rose

was raised as William, or Bill, Bailey, son of L. Stephen and Sharon Bailey in Lafayette, Indiana. Axl's natural father abandoned his wife Sharon and her brood. When Sharon remarried, the children's surnames changed accordingly. Altough he considered L. Stephen Bailey his "real dad", when Axl discovered his hidden past he decided to adopt his genetic father's last name and was briefly known as W. Rose. "Axl" came from his old Indiana groups, and his friends suggested he incornporate it into his new moniker. Later on, Bill Bailey legally became W. Axl Rose. (W.A.R.)
The Bailey household was strictly religious. The family attended a "holy roller" Pentecos-tal country church. Despite his upbringing and his initial religious faith, Axl laments,
"...Nothing ever happened to me. I watched my father speak in tongues and people interpret it. I watched him sing in perfect Japanese - and my dad doesn't know Japanese - and sing every note right on key with his eyes closed, driving 100 miles an hour down the free way and not hitting a car. I don't know how that happened. I've seen people with no eyes read. It was very strange, but nothing ever happened (to me). I always won all the Bible contests. I taught Sunday school. I played piano. I knew more gospel songs than anybody I knew." In spite of his elevated spirtual aspirations, the big pay-off somehow eluded him. "I always thought I was cursed or something. Now I just feel pissed off. If there's somebody up there, I don't know. I just don't have a clue about it."
It didn't take long for Axl's non-conformist side to emerge, albeit in a harmless fashion. As a choirboy, he confused his teacher by singing high vocal parts, though he was supposed to be second baritone. "My teacher had ears like a bat, so in order to get away with singing someone else's part, you'd really have to get it down. He used to wonder how come he's hearing a soprano in the bass section."
By Axl's own account, in high school he was an athlete, a real jock. Nonetheless, he found himself continually warring with school authorities concerning what were, in his opinion, ridiculos, inconsequential orders and rules. After a few years, the rebel in Axl emerged in earnest; he grew his hair long, smoked pot, and decided that since he already perpetually in the the dog house, he might as well give "them" a good reason to bust his nuts. Axl gradually bloomed into a full-fledged juvenile delinquent, and by the age of 16 was exiled from his parents home.
"I remember when I was in junior high and they talked about finding a goal - Yeah, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that- all just trying to impress the teachers to get a grade. If they get a good grade, they get an allowance. I was like, No. I wanna be in a band and I wanna do great things. So I got an F for thinking grandiose thoughts."
Despite his choral training, when the idea of joining a band first struck Axl, he didn't envision himself as a vocalist. He was willing to do anything to be a part of a group; he tried his hand at the keyboards and then changed over to bass. But by and by, Axl ended up "on the mike" out of necessity, because he was the only guy who could hit more than one note a week.
Before managing to escape his homestate, the aspiring singer was chucked in jail "over 20 times" by his own estimate, spending up to three months inside. Serving as his own lawyer (can you picture that?) "cause I didn't trust the public defenders for sh*t", he admits his
guilt on five of those occasions, for "public consumption" -ie, drinking while underage; the other arrests, he insists, were motivated solely by the animosity between him and local law.
Nothing above average IQ, a psychiatrist once assessed Axl's behaviour as evidence of psychosis, and Rolling Stone Magazine revealed that Axl has been prescribed lithium to combat a manic-depressive disorder; but Axl remains dubious about the diagnosis and treatment he's recieved: "I'm very sensitive and emotional and things upset me and make me feel like not functioning or dealing with people... I went to a clinic, thinking it would help my moods. The only thing I did was to take one 500 question test - ya know, filling in the little black dots. All of a sudden I'm diagnosed manic-depressive. Let's put Axl on medication. Well, the only thing it does is help keep people off my back because they figure I'm on medication."
One of exitable Axl's best teenhood buds was Jeff Isabelle, nicknamed Izzy. Like Axl, guitarist Izzy Stradlin' was a Lafayette native. Izzy remebers that Axl was like a serious lunatic when he met him. He was just really f@*!ing bent on fighting and destroying things. "Somebody'd look at him wrong, and he'd just, like start a fight."
Before he met the other guys and started Guns N' Roses in 1985, he n' Izzy where in a band called Hollywood Rose. But one day he left Hollywood Rose and joined L.A Guns (the band Slash, Steve Adler, and Duff were playin' in)... In the meantime there where some problems in these two bands, the problems created opportunities for the beginning of a new band... and Guns N' Roses was born (6th June 1985). Mr. Rose became the singer of GN'R, and after 2 days of rehearsal he played his debut gig with the band on a Thursday night at L.A.'s Troubadour.
Axl has written many of Guns world famous hits, just to mention some of them, we've got: November Rain, Estranged, *Don't Cry, *You could be Mine, **Civil War, etc. (* together with Stradlin', ** together with McKagan n' Slash).
Except for the Guns N' Roses records, Axl appears on Gilby Clarke's record "Pawn shop guitars" (He's singing n' playing the piano on track # 8, the Rolling Stone cover -Dead Flowers), he has also recorded together with Don Henley and is doing the background vocals at The Outpatience (West Arkeen's band) song "Anxious Decease".
Today Axl is the owner of Guns N' Roses, since he has bought the rights to the name.