taylor dahlin

Mick Wall on Axl Rose, Wired Magazine, 2008.

MW: No, I don’t believe that for a second. Having said that, he does believe in some crazy stuff — past lives, crystals — don’t get me wrong, I believe in karma, I believe that there is a world beyond the five senses, I do believe in energies you can give out, positive and negative, but Axl goes beyond that. He told Erin [Everly, his ex-wife] that in a previous life they’d lived as native Americans on an Indian camp. There was a personal assistant that his guru told him had lived 50 thousand previous lives in which he tried to kill him [Axl], so he fired her. I mean he’s into some really crazy shit. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was an insane reason why those days are chosen.

But in the real world, my understanding — I have no factual evidence I can give you on this — my understanding… is that he needs the money. When Irving Azoff and Andy Gould took over as managers, these are guys, as I’m sure you know, that have very impressive track records. Super-duper veterans of the rock industry. They are not going to get involved with a crazy man who’s not going to release his album. My understanding is they came in, and the deal was done, and monies were advanced in exchange for bits of paper being signed that essentially gave them enough power to ensure they could release this record this year. And to me, that makes a lot of sense, because I know from lots of other sources that he has been hurting for money for a while.

There is a lot of other royalties coming in, but the guy spends money like water. On one day on the 2006 tour in Italy, he spent $200,000 clothes shopping, which he tried to charge back to the record company and they refused to pay the bill. As far back as 2005, Interscope pulled the plug on paying for the album, and sent him a letter that the New York Times reported, telling him, “It’s over. Unless you deliver this album, there is no more money. It’s finished. From now on, if you need to continue working on this, you pay the studio bill. And we’re talking about a monthly bill that at times was hitting $150,000 a month. So it’s a lot of money continually going out the door. And I don’t think releasing a record for money is a bad reason — I think it’s a good reason.

But my understanding is it came down to something as prosaic and as pragmatic as that: the dude needs the dough. And there is no more dough until this album is in the stores.