Guns 'n' Roses

Axl Rose put Guns N' Roses together in Los Angeles after hitch-hiking from Indiana with old school friend Izzy Stradlin'. Slash, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler from LA band Road Crew completed the line-up.

The mini-album they first released on their own Uzi Suicide label, Live?!*@ Like A Suicide, was re-released at the start of 1987 by Geffen, the label that won the battle to sign them. The band then scored the opening slot on Iron Maiden's US tour, but had to leave half way through when Axl lost his voice and guitarist Slash was packed off to Hawaii to sort out his drug problem.

In May, pugnacious Axl got into a fight with members of the Los Angeles Police Department. He didn't win and was taken to hospital, recovering just in time for the band's headline appearance at the Marquee Club in London in June. On the plane trip over, Slash almost set himself on fire when he fell asleep and dropped his cigarette on the seat. When the band received a bad write-up in a magazine, macho Axl demanded directions to their offices so he could piss on the journalists desk.

In August their debut album Appetite For Destruction was released. The rock press raved. Feminist groups protested about the 'robot rape' sleeve, the picture of a battered young woman with her underwear around her ankles. Several stores refused to stock the album. It promptly went to the top of the US and UK charts.

With their single Welcome To The Jungle picking up airplay fast, the band toured the US, this time with Mötley Crüe. The tour had to be cancelled when Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx collapsed from a massive heroin overdose, and G'N'R flew back to England for their own headlining tour with Fred Coury of Cinderella sitting in for drummer Steven Adler who had broken his hand in a bar-room brawl.

In 1988 the band appeared at the Castle Donington Festival in England. There were problems as the crowd of 107,000 pushed towards the stage. The band had to stop their set three times and play slower songs to calm things down. When Axl left the stage with the words "Don't kill yourselves", he had no idea that two fans had actually been crushed to death during their set . . .

In October 1989, while opening for The Rolling Stones at the LA Coliseum, Axl Rose fired the rest of the band onstage for "dancing with Mr Brownstone" - meaning they had been messing around with some serious drugs. He announced "this may be my last gig with Guns N' Roses".