The interviewer comes off as a dick and I think Reid really just doesn't understand Axl at all.
http://www.examiner.com/x-19141-Hollywood-Concerts-Examiner~y2009m9d22-Living-Colour-to-play-Key-Club-in-Los-AngelesYou had done an interview on KROQ in 1989, in response to Guns N Roses. You were in town to play four dates with The Rolling Stones (October 18, 19, 20 and 21), here at The Coliseum. Having seen your dates with them in other cities on the tour, and other reasons, I knew these would be the only shows you were ever going to play with GNR. Backstage, I said to you, "What do you call a Guns N Roses fan with an I.Q. of 125?" And you said, "I don't know." And I said, "A stadium show."
That's funny! Wow. Oh, that's funny. I even laughed at the time, too. (Laughs.) That's crazy.
You remember this, right?
I do remember it, because it was so tense backstage.
Oh, yeah.
And when you said that, I laughed because, it was so...because there was this whole thing about keeping the bands separated, you know, keeping like me away from Axl (Rose), and keeping Axl away from me. Because we had had these words and all. So it was really uptight, and it was the first day, and I was like, you know what? I didn't want to say anything. I was like, it was sort of already getting to be ridiculous, and then what happens is Axl went on stage, and he went into a whole thing. I was like, I was going to go on stage, we were going to play, and I'm just going to let it go. And then he went off.
Yeah.
And the next day, I was like, I had to say something, because it was just wack. It was very tense.
I remember the tension backstage.
I remember saying that night, "There are different camps back here."
Bands are on tour, they take on the feelings of their people. And our crew, the guys on our crew had tension with the Guns And Roses crew, and then all the people in The Rolling Stones' crew were trying to keep everything cool. So it was like a whole thing.
Then there was that whole separate sad soap opera, what Slash had to tolerate with that Axl was doing on stage during his other dramatic rant, and Axl stomping off stage, saying, "I'm never going to play with you again." So there was all of that madness, too.
He went into that whole thing, and I don't know if he was talking so much Izzy (Stradlin), but he going into this whole thing about, "Some of these guys have to get their shit together;" he explained it in terms envisioning "Mr. Brownstone."
Yeah, it was a drug reference.
So he was kind of in that, so he was hollering about the whole "One In A Million" thing, and then he had this whole thing with drug use in his band, and it was crazy, it was a completely chaotic thing.
It was almost as if he was using that soap opera of saying he wasn't going to play with the band again, and the timing of it,, in part, as a way to deflect people from talking or thinking about the "One In A Million" issue, because now there was this whole new controversy/cliffhanger now, about would he come back on stage again with his band or not. So there was this whole other controversy now.
I don't know. I think it was all over the place. The main thing about it, right? Part of it, my upset with him was, and using the "N" word or whatever, one thing I was upset with, is he thinks is there are no African American fans. Like he literally doesn't think there are black people that actually listen to his music. That's the thing that was kind of crazy. I was a huge GNR fan. I thought, "Wow, this is a cool band." And then I heard rumors that Slash was black, and this, that and the other thing. I thought, 'Dude, why are you hiding? And when you see him without the hat, you see it, you see it clearly. And the whole thing to wear his top hat to hide his features was like, what's that about? But I never had an issue or a thing with Slash. I always really thought he was really, really cool.
Slash went through a lot, dealing with Axl.
He frankly went through a lot of ill, and probably a lot of racist ass shit, went through a lot of ill shit. And he's a major dude. I have a great deal of affection for Slash. His name would come up, and I'd say, "You know what? I did a thing with him at the White House, and I really had a riot." I would love to hook up with him, do something with him at some point, but maybe that'll happen, whatever. But that was a crazy time period. It was crazy.
I think when Dave Marsh and I wrote the Village Voice article exposing the F.B.I. letter that was sent to N.W.A., we mentioned that Tipper Gore and the PMRC had never said a word about that GNR song. Like the PMRC didn't have a problem with that song. I think Dave and I were the only music journalists to come out in print, and describe the song as racist or bigoted.
Axl kind of took the stand of the embattled white man. It's a very weird thing, cops and niggers get out of my way. How do you even equate the two, and where are you coming from? But you know, this is the kind of thing, he has this very self-dramatic, you hear it in Chinese Democracy. All the ballads are kind of crazily self-pitying...
He is a victim.
Yeah. Like he's the victim who can spend twenty million dollars on an album saying he's a victim. It's kind of a crazy thing. But that's part of why he is truly a great American. Because we all are with our hypocrisy. He's as crazy as a bed bug. There's part of me that knows it's bullshit. There's part of what he says without reflection. When he did "One In A Million," I don't think there was any heat there. It's the kind of bullshit cats say that doesn't mean anything. It's bad because the context of it is racist. It's momentary, not really focused, it's wack, it's a bunch of crap. But he's not challenged on it, and that's the problem. When no one says, "That's a problem what you said," that's when it becomes a problem. There's this kind of sputtering self-pitying and self-defense. There's no ideology.
It's more of a psychological thing. People who claim to be victims of things, but who really identify with the aggressors. It's ironic and convoluted. But it's part of the psychology of it.
It's like a kind of off-the-cuff kind of thing people say, and when they get caught on it, they say, "I'm not racial, I'm not this, I'm not that." Yeah, okay, right. I'm not mad at Axl. I think he's a talented dude. I think Chinese Democracy is not a bad record at all. I think it's completely overwrought, I think it's completely crazy that he did it that way. But I ain't spending no energy being mad at him.
