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FEATURE: Guns N' Roses Fun Facts & Trivia Ahead Of Their 2026 Australian Tour
Last year when thrash lords Metallica were gearing up to perform down under as part of their record-breaking M72 World Tour, I did what any normal person would do: research, compile and cull-down some lesser known trivia and/or fun facts about the band and wrote what essentially became a mini-novel to snapshot some Metallica lore and trivia. 25 facts for 2025, and a monster Metallica read living right here.
Cut to 2026: Australian fans are once again getting spoiled rotten with tours, and I have spontaneously decided that I hadn't exhausted my brain or keyboard enough, so I'm bringing back this trivia feature again with a +1 for 2026, focused on a group headed our way this November and December. The Sultans of Steeze/Sleaze, "The Most Dangerous Band In The World" and an act who helped shaped my musical taste while I was covertly recording random rock songs off the radio onto cassette tape as a kid (hi, I'm 40). I'm talking, of course, about Guns N' Roses.
Guns N' Roses genuinely need such little introduction that I'm not even going to do so here. Not because I'm lazy, but largely because this article is already so swollen with a bunch of words and history about the band, and if you're here at The Soundcheck, chances are insanely HIGH that you're already extremely familiar.
So without further adieu, in honour of the upcoming Gunners 2026 Australian tour, below is a round-up of 26 somewhat lesser-known facts about GNR to read and/or revisit. And, for some, maybe you'll find one or a few to learn for the first time.
As always with these articles, please note: there are obviously a million and one stories behind Guns N' Roses and this article in no way is claiming to be a definitive list. We all know the band's knack for sex, drugs and rock'n'roll while exploding out of (and dominating) the Sunset Strip. So many of stories are noteworthy, but a lot of the more notorious ones felt pretty click-baity or downright problematic. Plus, lot of them have been told a million times before. Instead, I've focused on stories that sparked my interest or were a bit off the beaten track in the research process and are definitively (or at least largely) proven to be true either by the band or the people who were there. Strap in 🤘
A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING
There's a first time for everything, and while members from Guns N' Roses were playing shows beforehand, the first live performance with the iconic/classic lineup of Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Steve Adler was ticked off on June 6 in 1985 at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.
According to McKagan, Paradise City was taking shape during the band's first rehearsals prior to the Troubadour show, and as for the setlist for the OG Gunners live christening? Reckless Life, Shadow Of Your Love, a cover of The Rolling Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash, Think About You, Move To The City, Don't Cry, a cover of Rose Tattoo's Nice Boys, the live debut of Back Off Bitch, Anything Goes, and a cover of Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel.
Previously, the GNR precursor Hollywood Rose had played Anything Goes live, and the track of course went on to be featured on Appetite For Destruction, while others from that setlist found their way onto on G N' R Lies and Use Your Illusion I.
Sharing the stage with Mistreater and Fineline in 1985, this show would instantly lead to the short West Coast tour, aka: the Hell Tour (read on to next fact to dive through that wild adventure).
Guns N' Roses @ the Troubadour in West Hollywood circa 1985
IF THE HAT FITS
The piece of headwear that is one of the most instantly recognisable wardrobe visuals in rock'n'roll was itself borne from stage fright...and theft.
In 1985 before a Gunners show at West Hollywood's Whiskey a Go Go, Slash was broke and strolling on Melrose Avenue and found himself in a shop called Retail Slut, where Faster Pussycat vocalist Taime Downe also used to work.
No stranger to wearing a hat to complete his look, a broke Slash laid eyes on the top hat in Retail Slut. "It just spoke to me, I guess," Slash shared on an episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Next minute, Slash left the store with the stolen hat, went next door to another Melrose shop, Leathers and Treasures, and stole a concho belt. Slash cut the belt up and wound it around the hat, inadvertently creating what would go on to be a defining look both for Slash himself and Guns 'N Roses in general.
"I really identified with it," Slash added on the episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. "I wore it all the time. It was the way you could pull it over your eyes, you could hide behind it if you were really high. It was great for bad hair days."
"I had no intention of it being this long-term thing."
A defining addition to his legacy, another use of the top hat also allowed Slash to overcome something else on stage: genuine stage fright. Hiding behind the hat allowed him to shield himself onstage because, as he revealed in a 2023 interview with True Rock Revival, he's been dealing with stage fright his entire career: "Right before I go out on stage, I'm pretty wound up, pretty nervous," he shared with True Rock Revival. "It's always been that way, although I guess not as bad now as it has been. But, it's still there."
Slash (credit: Robert Knight Archive)
HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO HELL
When a band reaches the lofty heights that Guns N' Roses...ahem, "rose" to, it's sometimes easy to forget that once upon a time they were just a bunch of young dudes starting out.
In June of 1985, the band decided to embark on their first ever mini-tour on the West Coast. On paper it all seemed simple enough: hit the road from Sacramento to Seattle and tick off their debut official tour. Just prior to the run, original guitarist Tracii Guns and drummer Rob Gardner quit, leaving Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin and Duff McKagan bringing in Slash as lead guitarist and Steven Adler on drums just before they departed L.A. Allegedly, it was the gruelling and low-budget planned road trip to Seattle that caused Guns and Gardner to drop out, while other reports claim Guns and Rose had a falling out.
Regardless of what led to the lineup change, the happenings of this West Coast tour would go down in GNR infamy, ultimately dubbed the "Hell Tour". And rightly so.
McKagan had booked clubs he was familiar with after his earlier days in the Seattle punk scene, and the band all bundled up into their 1977 Oldsmobile. While the group were two hours north of Fresno, the Oldsmobile and U-Haul gave out, forcing GNR to hitchike 40 hours to Seattle holding only their guitars and not much else.In the A&E Biography series that featured the group, Duff McKagan revealed, "We ended up hitchhiking. And, you know, five guys wearing leather jackets and carrying guitars hitchhiking, you’re not gonna get a lot of rides – and if you do, not for very far. We hitchhiked for 1000 miles."
The band went through hell to finally make it to Seattle, and once they'd finally arrived, they found out that the owner was only going to pay them $50, and the rest of the tour had been cancelled. Playing that solitary set with borrowed gear and an insane journey in their wake, they also had to add insult to injury, hitching their way back home to Los Angeles.
A hellish start, but McKagan summed up the fortitude the band ultimately returned with in his autobiography: “This trip had set a new benchmark for what we were capable of,” explained McKagan, who said that the frustrations and setbacks ended up showing them what they “could and would put ourselves through to achieve our goals as a band”.
Would You Pick This Band Up? Guns N' Roses Circa 1985 At Canter's Deli After The Infamous Hell Tour
HELL HOUSE(S)
Fresh off the heels of the Hell Tour, Guns N' Roses' return home to Los Angeles after the ill-fated 1985 run led to the original Hell House: a 144 square ft (aka 12-foot) rehearsal space in a West Hollywood building that was actually officially designated as a storage area. There was no bathroom on-site, no amenities whatsoever to speak of and it absolutely wasn't fit for human habitation.
Hell by name and hell by nature, the depraved stories surrounding this house, perched in West Hollywood behind 7508 Sunset Boulevard, found itself an increasing epicentre for seediness; to the point that there's a rumour that a jobless and homeless Slash at the time had to pick between living in Hell House or living on the street...and sometimes apparently chose the latter.
Despite the squalor and debauchery, jams and rehearsals at the Hell House would ultimately grow arrangements for Welcome To The Jungle, Mr. Brownstone and Out ta Get Me, all taking shape in the less than glittering surrounds. Somehow in the chaos and literal trash, a little musical magic was definitely at play.
But if you've ever seen images online of a house with a porch (the picture below in fact) when stumbling upon the lore of Hell House in the past, the storage/rehearsal space imagery doesn't stack up to those black and white photos. That's because there was a secondary Hell House at 1139 N Fuller Avenue in West Hollywood, this one being an actual house. Unsurprisingly the outlaw lifestyle followed to the next Hell House, despite the upgrade to larger digs. And online reports do tend to blur or mistake one Hell House for the other, but ultimately they both sound pretty sketch, despite their foundational backdrop to the band's surging years.
For anyone wanting to catch a glimpse in person, you can't go strolling into either Hell House legally these days, especially since the latter is actually a private residence. As for the first Hell "House", the glorified storage unit is also private property, but you can view it down the alleyway to this day (fair warning though, probably prepare to be underwhelmed by the visual. But if those walls could talk...actually it's probably better that they can't).
Hell House #2 @ 1139 N. Fuller
IN THE EYE OF THE (CONTACT LENS) BEHOLDER
Who would've thought back in the day that the thing to nearly nix a Guns N' Roses record deal with Geffen Records wasn't alcohol abuse, throwing punches or theft. But having said that...with this one, Axl Rose may have begged to differ re: the latter at the time.
In 1986, just prior to the tsunami that Appetite For Destruction would ultimately spark, the Gunners gents inked a deal with Geffen Records. A year after their first ever live show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, the deal was led by A&R exec Tom Zutaut (the same man who signed Motley Crue a few years earlier) as well as significant input from their then-manager Vicki Hamilton.
Detailing the early Guns N' Roses days with the iconic lineup of Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler in her memoir Appetite for Dysfunction: A Cautionary Tale, Hamilton also shared the enduring story of the band's signing day with Geffen Records.
After misplacing his contact lenses that day, Rose refused to go to the meeting. Insisting someone had stolen his contacts on purpose. Believing sabotage was at play so he couldn't read the contract, Rose was eventually found on the roof of the Whiskey A Go Go. Finally talked off the roof by Slash, who informed Rose the contacts had been found (in his pants), the band rocked up hours late to ink the deal. People from the label team had waited, and "nobody was angry. It was kind of the status quo," Hamilton later revealed to the Daily Mail. And then came 1987 and a little ol' album that would change history.
L-R: Axl Rose sporting his specs (and not a contact lens in sight) // Geffen Records
THAT BOY WAS (ALMOST) POISON
There are so many "What If" stories in the music industry that I could reasonably fill a book just with those tales alone about most bands of a certain vintage. But when it comes to GNR members, Slash once skated particularly close to the land of flirty power ballads and heavy makeup, auditioning for glam rockers Poison somewhere around 1984/1985.
Contacted by Poison's OG guitarist Matt Smith, Slash had decided to quit the Guns N' Roses precursor band Hollywood Rose in the mid-1980s, and the timing potentially seemed right to at least test the waters with something new. As it turns out, Slash became a hot favourite and one of the key frontrunners to replace Smith in Poison. But fate (and reportedly a clash in wardrobe ideals and Slash's creative morals) stepped in the way.
"I thought about it for a while," Slash shared in an interview with Music Aficionado of his decision to audition, "and finally I decided to put pride aside and go check it out. At least I'd be playing gigs - they were the biggest band on the Strip at the time.
"I learned four of their songs and went down to play with them, and I gotta say I kicked the shit out of 'em. We had a definite difference of opinion as to what it was all about—image issues, clothing issues. I knew it wasn't going to click. They asked me if I planned on wearing jeans and a T-shirt on stage, and I said, 'Yeah.'
"As I was walking out, C.C. DeVille was walking in. He was dressed to the nines. He had makeup on, his hair was all done up - I knew he was the guy for the gig. Bobby Dall called me and told me they'd picked the guy, and I wasn't surprised.
"Had it worked out and I'd gotten the gig, it wouldn't have lasted long. I wasn't right for them."
Interestingly, in an interview with Decibel Geek, Poison drummer Rikki Rockett alleged that Slash wasn't happy that the band went with DeVille. But regardless of whether Slash was actually devastated at the time or not, it's safe to say that sticking to his moral guns, aka opposing donning makeup and spandex routinely, definitely worked out in the end.
L-R: Slash (obviously) // Poison
AXL'S MUSICAL ORIGINS
Before he became a rock'n'roll Hall Of Famer, Axl Rose, born William Bruce Rose Jr, was brought up in an Indiana Pentecostal church by his step-father and mother in an extremely rigid religious environment that impacted heavily on Rose, with TV, music and most things deemed evil according to the future legendary frontman (there are also far more upsetting stories around Rose's upbringing, but for this fact we're honing in on the music).
Performing in the church choir at a young age, as well as school functions with his siblings, Rose found a way to experiment with his voice during choir practices. While he has spoken about being surrounded by abuse and hypocrisy at the time, he also learned to play the piano and soon found early inspiration from the likes of Elton John, declaring at John's 1994 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction that: “for myself as well as others, no one has been there more for inspiration than Elton John...when I first heard Bennie And The Jets, I knew I had to be a performer.”
But back in those very early days, Rose performed with his siblings Stuart C. Bailey and Amy Bailey, performing as The Bailey Trio. "We worked out three-part harmonies," Rose shared with MTV for a documentary in 1989, "and we'd get up in front of the church and we'd sing, like, some gospel hits of the seventies, a little bit more rocked out than the actual hymns. I was the bass then...it was so much fun. It is really weird to think about that. We looked so geeky."
Finding solace in music along the way and expanding from The Bailey Trio, Rose attended Jefferson High School where he learned to play piano and also met a friend, Jeff Isbell; the very same man who would one day be known as Izzy Stradlin.
L-R: Stuart Bailey, Amy Bailey & Axl Rose
IZZY'S NAUGHTY WOMEN
Jeffrey Dean Isbell, aka Izzy Stradlin, bid farewell to the Guns N' Roses life back in 1991, deep into the band's soaring years.
A huge part of the the Gunners legacy, Stradlin not only penned Patience, he also co-wrote a horde of longtime iconic tracks including Mr Brownstone, Pretty Tied Up, Don't Cry, You Could Be Mine, Paradise City and Sweet Child O' Mine.
With conflicting messaging surrounding Stradlin's departure in 1991, spanning from sources claiming that he'd grown tired of the touring schedule through tales of tensions between Stradlin and Rose (who were also childhood friends), things weren't exactly rosy between Stradlin and his former bandmates in the aftermath.
But prior to joining Guns N' Roses, Stradlin played in his own fair share of bands, notably Hollywood Rose with Axl Rose as well as several others. And one of those others saw Stradlin behind a drum kit for a short burst with an LA group Naughty Women.
A cross-dressing punk band, Naughty Women would mark Stradlin's first band since he moved to Los Angeles after graduating high school. Teaming with the theme and dressing up like the other band members, Stradlin's first ever Naughty Women gig would go down in some form of infamy, largely because they were playing to a room full of skinheads who weren't exactly pleased by the band's attire and aesthetic. Allegedly, Stradlin left the show defending himself by using his cymbal as a shield, and it wouldn't be long before he moved on to play with The Atoms and Shire before forming Hollywood Rose with Rose and, of course, founding Guns N' Roses itself in 1985 with Rose and other members from L.A. Guns.
Learn more about Naughty Women here:
CARRY ON WITHOUT YOUR WAYWARD SON
Just before GNR hit worldwide fame in 1987 with Appetite For Destruction, in 1986 the band played a show at Arlington Theater in L.A opening for Alice Cooper. Axl Rose grew a notorious reputation for being late to shows in the late 80s and 90s, occasionally confusing the start time for their sets; so much so that this would ultimately lead to the band opening their live shows with Anything Goes due to its extended and lyric-free guitar solo.
But for this Arlington Theater show in October 1986, the set was performed entirely sans Axl. When the frontman rocked up late, he was denied entry; but the show must go on, and GNR performed entirely without Rose, leading to Izzy Stadlin making up lyrics like "elephant dick up my arms" instead of "rattlesnake suitcase" on Nighttrain, and Slash allegedly asking if anyone in the crowd could jump on the mic.
Axl has continued this trait of being late (or not showing up) on and off throughout his career, choosing to sit out the band's performance when they were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and also in 2017 when the band were late hitting the stage at a Melbourne show (but that one is actually because Axl was denied a police escort and there was a hectic traffic gridlock. So we won't hold that one entirely against him).
Arlington Theatre performance, 1986
THE IMITATION GAME
In 2025, Slash took Guitar World through his five most iconic guitars. For many, Slash rocking a Gibson Les Paul hung especially low is what might instantly spring to mind when you picture the top-hatted axe-slinger onstage. And Slash definitely did rock many a Les Paul throughout his career, but when it comes to Appetite For Destruction and Slash's instantly recognisable guitar and tone...there's certainly a story behind the scenes.
In The Collection: Slash, the Slash revealed that before recording Appetite For Destruction took place, he was broke and sold his prized guitar. “In the early days of Guns, I had this great guitar that I picked up from Guitars R Us in Hollywood. It was called the Hunter Burst after Steve Hunter from Alice Cooper’s band, and it was made by Max Baranet. At some point along the way, I somehow lost that guitar. Well, I didn’t lose it; I traded or sold it because I needed something else that seemed like a priority at the time!”
Playing anything he could get his hands on at the time, including a borrowed Stratocaster for a show or two, Slash was down to just having a Mockingbird and an archtop Jackson when it came time to record guitars for AFD. Under the less-than-forgiving sonic lens of a studio, Slash soon realised that none of the guitars on offer were cutting it.
"Fortunately my manager came through with the guitar at the eleventh hour," Slash revealed in The Collection: Slash. "At the very last minute, right when I was going in to do guitar overdubs, that’s when I got the Derrig from our manager.”
The Derrig was a copy of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul, made by luthier Kris Derrig; and lo and behold, this imitation was what we all ended up hearing on Appetite For Destruction. Not a real Gibson, even though Derrig did apparently put the Gibson logo on the headstocks, the unique-sounding (and looking) guitar would ultimately shape the end result of AFD (and also spawn Gibson to eventually make a replica of a replica).
Slash obviously went on to rock genuine Gibsons throughout his career, becoming Gibson's first global brand ambassador, and there's a lot of other myths and legends surrounding Slash's guitars over the years. But while he recently estimated that he owns 400 guitars, he still considers the Les Paul copy from the Appetite For Destruction era his favourite.
Slash (credit: Phillip Faraone)
WHERE DO WE GO NOW?
We've all had those moments where you're deep in a project, hit a roadblock and don't quite know where to go next. But for Guns N' Roses, being in that predicament creatively would eventually lead to rock'n'roll immortality when Slash's "stupid little riff" he was fooling around with at The Hellhouse back in the day caught the attention of Axl Rose. Jamming on the riff, GNR massaged the riff into a skeletal song form, with Axl penning lyrics that same day, baring his heart about then-girlfriend Erin Everly.
Next came guitars, then the bridge and before you know it, the band are recording a demo for what would ultimately become Sweet Child O' Mine alongside producer Spencer Proffer (of Tina Turner, Beach Boys, Quiet Riot and Cheap Trick fame, to name a few). Suggesting a dramatic breakdown before the ultimate climax of the song, Proffer inadvertently set in motion a series of events that would put the finishing touches on a future #1 US single, with Axl literally muttering "where do we go" over and over while listening to the demos while pondering how to tackle the breakdown. Proffer heard this sitting in the control room and suggested Axl literally just try singing those very words. And thus, one of rock's biggest home runs was cemented and completed via a somewhat happy accident (and also some obvious stellar intuition from Proffer).
APPETITE FOR ARTWORK
The artwork for GNR's debut 1987 album Appetite For Destruction is still one of the most iconic covers in rock'n'roll history. With a physical link to a tattoo design Axl Rose had before before Gunners ever hit the big time, the cross and skulls black sleeve design summed up the band's vibe simply yet powerfully. But the cover most of us all know today actually wasn't the original artwork.
Back in the day, an underground artist named Robert Williams was struggling to find work that would match or appreciate his vivid style. After a colourful stint as the art director for Los Angeles cartoonist and custom car designer Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Williams created a fever dream cartoon in the late 1970s featuring robots, a voracious red creature emanating red skull sperm-like entities from its body, and an unconscious woman crumpled on the sidewalk in a lurid state of undress. The name of said artwork: Appetite for Destruction.
There are differing accounts about what the original plans were for GNR when it came to their debut album cover, with Loudwire stating that Axl Rose originally wanted a photo of the Challenger shuttle explosion, while The Doors' former manager Danny Sugarman claims in his 1991 book Appetite For Destruction: The Days Of Guns N' Roses that the group had spied Robert Williams' artwork on a postcard and took the inspo for the album title (and planned album cover) from that.
Williams' artwork was originally tapped for the cover, but Geffen Records raised concerns about potential backlash due to the confronting imagery in the original artwork. GNR won the battle and released the album with Williams' grotesque tableau adorning their first ever record. But they also lost the war, and as the label had predicted, the backlash came in thick and fast, with various chains refusing to stock the album. Geffen ultimately pulled the album, switched out the artwork to the cross/black sleeve cover, and...well you know the rest, best-selling debut album of all time in the States, considered one of the greatest rock albums of all time, and so on and so on.
Bonus fun fact: the cross on the cover of the version known today was designed by Billy White Jr who revealed to Culture Creature in 2016 that "the cross and skulls that looked like the band was Axl's idea, the rest was me – the knot work in the cross was a reference to Thin Lizzy, a band Axl and I both loved".
L-R: The original Appetite For Destruction artwork feat. Robert Williams' artwork // The iconic Appetite For Destruction cover
VIDEO MADE THE GLOBAL SUPERSTAR
Still on the topic of Appetite For Destruction, the album's initial introduction to the world may have started with a swapped album cover and some minor controversy, but beyond Los Angeles the world hadn't really woken up to GNR in a huge way just yet.
Upon release, the album barely scratched any major mainstream attention, the airplay was minimal, the critics were lukewarm and/or downright hostile, and the label were ready to wash their hands of the whole thing. But in an extremely unexpected case of video made the radio star, allegedly at the time MTV were afraid to air the video for Welcome To The Jungle over fears of backlash from media mogul John Malone. David Geffen put in a direct call to MTV and convinced them to give the video a chance. The kicker for this one-shot, hail Mary? The video would air at 1am PT (4am ET), a veritable dead zone time-wise on MTV.
To some, the graveyard time slot would equal failure, but the band preemptively took it as a win, holding a wild viewing party that allegedly had the LA Country Sheriffs rocking up. The raucous Welcome To The Jungle video aired in the dead of night, and sure enough the MTV switchboards erupted. It seemed like every kid in America had witnessed the video and MTV fielded the largest influx of calls the station had ever experienced, fielding waves of requests for Welcome To The Jungle.
MTV couldn't ignore the insane amount of requests in the aftermath of that fated 1am LA time airing, and they added the clip officially to rotation. The floodgates opened, with radio stations also finally taking notice. At last there was finally an appetite and a platform for Appetite For Destruction, and global exposure immediately ensued.
APPETITE FOR INVESTMENT
What do Starbucks, Amazon and Microsoft all have in common? Aside from all being Seattle-based companies and worth an unholy amount of money, they're also three companies who Duff McKagan shrewdly decided to invest in when GNR money started coming in hot.
In his recovery, McKagan realised he couldn't make sense of the band's accounts. So, he took himself to college and university to get his head around the financial aspects of all things Guns N' Roses. In 1994, McKagan's first $100,000 (USD) was placed in stock investments of local Seattle companies, catapulting himself from finance noob to managing his own portfolio; and down the track he allegedly became a sounding board for other musicians looking for financial advice.
Revealing to Louder AAA about his earliest investments, Duff shared: "I stick with things I know. I know about guitars, and some of them have done well. When I got sober in ninety-four, Seattle was going off. Starbucks had been there ever since I was a kid. I’d seen stores in LA and San Francisco and there were lines, so I started buying single stocks – which I don’t recommend, by the way. Same thing with Microsoft. Thanks to school I saw a good company, growing but not too fast. Everybody knew about Bill Gates in Seattle, that he had a long-term plan. They were local businesses, you could see them."
Fast-forward to 2011, McKagan founded Meridian Rock, a wealth management firm. And In 2025, his net worth was estimated at $70 million, so he definitely became a rare beast who can balance rockstar status and Wall Street know-how. Guns N' Roses in name, but Guns N' Capital by game.
L-R: Duff McKagan, credit: By Antje Naumann (AllSystemsRed) | Stock Market shenanigans (this is not my strong suit)
DUFF MAN (?)
In his autobiography It's So Easy: And Other Lies, Duff McKagan details his rise to fame, his struggles with addiction and beyond. But amongst the hairier stories throughout the book, a strange bit of lore is touched on involving another juggernaut pop culture creative property that started to take the world by storm in the late 80s: The Simpsons.
According to Duff's book, he claims he was the real-life inspiration behind the overly enthusiastic beer company spokesman Duffman (Oh, yeah!). With McKagan known as "Duff, the King of Beers", and also with The Simpsons renowned for featuring celeb cameos (and/or boasting thinly-veiled caricatures of celebrities while also predicting the future), Duff's repeated claims over the years that he inspired Duffman and that the show reached out to him to get clearance use his name doesn't seem entirely implausible on paper. Plus, the timeline of GNR kicking off also syncs up with the earliest days of The Simpsons' own formidable run. But here's where things get weird.
After Duff's claims, which have now been in print form as well as in multiple interviews online, several Simpsons staffers have since spoken out about the story, including Mike Reiss who penned classic episodes like There's No Disgrace Like Home, The Telltale Head and The Way We Was.
"We needed a name for Homer's favorite beer, and Jay Kogen came up with Duff," Reiss reveals in the book Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets and Outright Lies from a Lifetime of Writing for The Simpsons. "No, it was not named after Duff McKagan, bassist for Guns N' Roses; we'd never heard of this guy. McKagan loves to claim we called him and asked to use his name: 'I knew nothing about branding yourself then or the royalties off it. I just thought cool, they wanna use my name and boom, The Simpsons was born. Yeah, if I had a nickel for every time ... but it's fine.' It's a cute fake story that McKagan tells in his aptly named memoir It's So Easy: And Other Lies."
TMZ even tried to get to the bottom of things a few years back, reaching out to an OG producer and writer Jay Kogen, who was present for early pivotal episodes alongside writing partner Wallace Wolodarsky.
"We named it Duff because it's a synonym for butt, tushy, booty, and so on," Kogen told TMZ in 2024. "It's very weird this Duff McKagan guy wants to claim credit for Duff Beer ... He had zero to do with it."
It genuinely seems like a weird thing for someone in recovery to lie about, but chalk this one up to "agree to disagree" if you're Duff and team Simpsons.
L-R: Duff McKagan's autobiography cover | Duff Man (20th Century Fox/The Walt Disney Company)
BMX BANDIT
Before Slash became the top hat-wearing shred lord for Guns N' Roses, he was actually massively into BMX, switching from skating to riding BMX in his early years. But it wasn't just a hobby for Slash, aka Saul Hudson, with the future rockstar racing in national comps and even competing at pro level at one stage.
In an interview with New Zealand's Stuff in 2018, Slash enthused about his BMX history, saying "my main aspiration was to eventually become a moto-cross champion...but then I inadvertently picked up the guitar and everything switched gears inside of 24 hours, and before long, my career took off."
Slash's pro BMX past may not be what he's remembered for the most these days, but he's still carried his love for the sport throughout his career, taking a BMX bike on tour with him, and also expanding his BMX collection along the way, including adding a Mongoose Supergoose into the family a few years ago.
L-R: Young Slash and more recent Slash rocking his bikes
GET IN THE RING
This is another one of those "could fill an entire article/book" type facts. It's no secret that the 1991 Gunners track Get in the Ring is a straight up diss track aimed squarely at music critics and journos, with lyrics like "And that goes for all you punks in the press /That want to start shit by printin' lies / Instead of the things we said", also naming and shaming people like Andy Secher, Mick Wall and Bob Guccione Jr. in the actual song.
But! More than once Mr. Axl Rose has gotten into it physically with with some celebs (one of which will be featured more significantly in the next fact after this. Stay tuned).
Rather than dive into each and every fight Rose has gotten into over the years, in summary there were a few more legendary fights of note I'll touch on here; including a more infamous one that never actually eventuated physically despite a huge lead-up.
Tracing back to 1988 at The Cathouse in Hollywood, Izzy Stradlin was in the crowd and allegedly (drunkenly) approached Sharise Ruddell. Ruddell was a model and mud wrestler at the time, and she would later also wed Mötley Crüe vocalist Vince Neil. But back in 1988, Stradlin didn't know who Ruddell was, and things got pretty heated, with unsubstantiated rumours of physical contact also rumoured to have taken place during the chaos.
A year later at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1989, Guns N' Roses had just finished performing, and, as the story goes, Vince Neil bailed up Stradlin backstage with a punch in the face in retribution for the incident with Ruddell the year before. Security were called and Neil left for his limo...but not before Rose hurled out some threats. While the pair didn't come to physical blows that night, things certainly escalated, with Rose and Neil playing out a pretty nasty back and forth publicly in the press, even despite Stradlin and Neil privately burying the hatchet behind the scenes following an apology over the phone from Stradlin.
Mötley Crüe eventually got on MTV and delivered a personal challenge to Rose: name a time and place for Rose and Neil to fight, televised to the world, to settle things once and for all. The fight fizzled and never ever took place, but in this day and age of novelty televised fights, who knows? Maybe one day we may actually see this transpire.
As for celeb fights that did actually land, Rose apparently got punched by now-friend Tommy Hilfiger in 2006 (although opinions and recollections on that one vary), and there was also another infamous moment with David Bowie as well. Which leads us to the next fact...
Hold him back! Axl Rose.
THERE'S A STARMAN...WAITING TO STEAL YOUR GIRL
In a perfect segue from the previous fact, Axl Rose definitely was known for having a notoriously short fuse, but its a rarity that someone he punched would emerge as a friend. It's even more bizarre to think that person on the receiving end of a punch from Axl would be the Thin White Duke himself, David Bowie.
In 1989, Guns N' Roses were filming the bondage-tinged music video for It's So Easy, and Axl's then-girlfriend Erin Everly apparently received some excessive attention from Bowie on set. Already with a reputation as "Mr Steal Your Girl", and allegedly showing up to Hollywood's Cathouse club drunk on the shoot day for It's So Easy, Bowie received a punch from Axl for his advances on Everly, and also earned himself an ejection from the shoot, with Axl then reportedly chasing Bowie down the street yelling that he would kill him. Bowie took the classy route and not only apologised to Axl, but afterwards the pair hit the town and settled their differences.
But that's not the only GNR connection to Bowie, with the future Starman also having a lengthier link to Slash. In the 1970s, Bowie dated Ola Hudson, aka Slash's fashion designer mum, with the pair's initial professional working relationship evolving into a bona fide love affair.
Explaining in a 2012 radio interview with Triple M, Slash once walked in on his mum and Bowie naked in bed together back in the day (a story he later expressed regret about due to the level of attention it received), and years later Slash also credited Bowie for helping him to get clean decades after their earlier meetings. A fashion designer to the (rock) stars, Ola Hudson's work has been praised for its pivotal role in embracing Bowie's gender fluidity and channeling his unique and magnetic sound into a look that would ultimately shape his legacy.
L-R: Axl Rose & David Bowie (credit: Gabriel Lorden) // David Bowie & Slash
THE KURT COBAIN CONNECTION
Before the untimely passing of Kurt Cobain in 1994, the legendary grunge frontman had become notoriously reclusive. In his final week alive, Cobain had leapt over the wall of the Exodus Recovery Centre near Los Angeles to escape (according to The Guardian, Cobain could've simply walked out the front door, but instead chose to make the dramatic exit over the fence).
Prior to this, during Nirvana's worldwide tour in honour of In Utero Cobain's mental and physical health was rapidly declining, leading to an overdose in Rome. Following an intervention, Cobain entered the Exodus rehab centre, only to make his daring escape a few days later. His next destination? Home to Seattle. And showing irony has a strange sense of humour, Cobain wound up sitting next to Duff McKagan, who was coming off the Use Your Illusion tour and also deep in his own drug and alcohol addiction in 1994 prior to getting sober that same year.
McKagan recalled in the 2006 BBC documentary The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain, that he could sense Cobain was not in a good way, and that it seemed like Cobain just needed someone to talk to. When the pair landed in Seattle, McKagan never suspected what would happen a few days later, but he did initially contemplate taking the obviously out of sorts and lonely Cobain with him. Instead, Cobain was whisked away in a car and McKagan unknowingly became one of the last people to speak with Cobain.
"We were just two fucked up guys," McKagan shared with Mulatschag back in 2014, "but we were both in big bands and we landed at the airport and we kind of talked about… I mean, my pancreas blew up four weeks later. He died two days later. So that's where we were both at at our lives — at the end of our ropes. I didn't have a sense that he was gonna die in two days, but again, a lot of my friends and peers were dying, or had died, and I was getting numb to it, getting used to it."
Elsewhere in the GNR camp, Cobain was absolutely not a fan of Axl Rose, you can read more about some of that beef here if of interest. And in a hilariously petty move, Cobain occasionally used to check into hotels using Rose's earlier legal name, Bill Bailey.
L-R: Duff McKagan | Kurt Cobain
MY MAGIC (MUSHROOM) WORLD
In the least surprising news of this (and the previous) century, drugs tend to go hand-in-hand with bands and music. Guns N' Roses of course were no strangers to substances of a wide variety, but those general drug-addled stories feel like low-hanging fruit at this point in time. What is a unique drug-adjacent story for today's list however is the pretty surprising closer for the GNR 1991 album Use Your Illusion II: My World.
Confounding listeners upon its release, My World is a weird and short fever dream. Just shy of 90 seconds, the "track" dishes up an industrial-meets-electronic vibe, with Axl Rose snarling in somewhat spoken word/rap and absolutely deviating from the palpitations of You Could Be Mine, the anti-war opener Civil War and the theatricality of Estranged elsewhere on the album.
But it wasn't just listeners that were confused by the inclusion of My World closing out album #4 back in 1991; some of the actual band members themselves didn't know the song was even included until the album's release, with Izzy Stradlin sharing with Rolling Stone back in 1992: “I didn’t even know it was on it until it came out. I gave it a listen and thought, ‘What the fuck is this?’”
To conjure the end result, Rose took a bunch of magic mushrooms and recorded the bonkers track tripping absolute balls. "My World happened when were were sitting around being a bit bored," Rose shared with Musician in 1992. "I'd been listening to a lot of industrial music, and all of a sudden I said, 'Hey, man, let's do something. Let's just make it short and sweet, and see what we come up with.' In three hours we wrote and recorded the song."
Not long after the release of the Use Your Illusion albums, Stradlin quit the band, and a touch of the experimental elements on My World did show a ghostly presence later on Chinese Democracy many, many years later.
MORE COWBELL
This one's for my instrument nerds out there. For a band fluent in maximalist behaviour, 1991's Use Your Illusion I showcased a fresh take on instrumentation in the Guns N' Roses repertoire, including harmonica and using (more) cowbell largely in lieu of a hi-hat to hold the rhythm on the track Bad Obsession.
This honky tonk toe-tapper, penned by Izzy Stradlin and frequent collaborator West Arkeen, boogies away with slide guitar additions, jaunty pianos, saxophone, lyrics about addiction, a roaring harmonica and the unique distinction of being the only non-acoustic Guns N' Roses song to not dominantly use a hi-hat cymbal.
Described as having a riff that is "wicked enough to steal your car" by Medium, Bad Obsession may have released in 1991, but it was written well before it's spiritual twin, 1987's Mr Brownstone.
"It’s a follow-up of ‘Brownstone,' really," bassist Duff McKagan said during a September 1991 radio interview about Bad Obsession. "Actually, it was written before 'Brownstone.' 'Bad Obsession' is us objectively looking at ourselves. Duff, Slash, Axl, you’re screwing up. You got a bad obsession."
JAM DUNK
To be honest, the stories around the making of Chinese Democracy are likely longer than the time it took to make it (it took 14 years in case you weren't already aware). During the insanely sprawling timeline Guns N' Roses spent conjuring that album, everything from Queen's Brian May recording some (unused) guitar solos through to Brian Carroll (aka Buckethead) recording guitar parts standing in a chicken coop took place. But a very 1990s thing also happened in 1997 during a rehearsal studio involving NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O'Neal.
Shaq was filming a commercial for Taco Bell in Santa Monica in April 1997, approaching the end of the regular season for his maiden Lakers year, when he noticed Guns N' Roses listed on the bulletin board in the lobby of the studio.
Telling Spin in 1999, Shaq recalled: "I stuck my head in to check it out. They asked me to join them, so I started freestylin’ over their track. It was the first time I ever performed with a rock group, and it felt good.”
According to keyboardist Dizzy Reed, Shaq started riffing on Reed's keyboards and the entire room got into the groove, with Shaq and some friends jumping on the mic and rapping. While the jam session didn't make it onto the end result of Chinese Democracy itself, the impromptu session was made even more memorable with Shaq closing out by doing the Worm on the floor. And the notoriously late Axl Rose missed the whole thing.
L-R: Shaquille O'Neal | Chinese Democracy album cover
THINGS THAT GO BUMP...ON THE ROAD
This one's a story that expands on the already pretty lengthy backstory during making of Chinese Democracy.
Once upon a time, Axl Rose had Can-Am Studios in California hired on retainer for approximately two years...and had never once set foot in the studio. Rose also had a long-standing passion for cars, with his collection over the years spanning everything from a Porsche 918 Spyder through to a Ferrari F60 Enzo and a Porsche Carrera GT.
All of this brings us to a memorable night back in the day that was recounted earlier this year on the Green Room Radio podcast with music industry powerhouse Damion "Damizza" Young. According to Young, after two years of renting out the space but never showing up, word got around one day that Rose would be actually rocking up to the studio that night to actually start recording.
"We go outside because we want to see Axl Rose come in," Young shared on Green Room Radio. "We see this green Lamborghini start pulling into the parking lot. We're like: oh shit, that's Axl. And the roadie's like: yep, that's Axl." "He starts pulling forward," Young continued, "and he gets to the speed bump. He starts trying to get his Lambo over the speed bump, and he can't get his Lambo over the speed bump. Then the door opens up, Axl gets out. I saw Axl, he's looking at the speed bump and he's looking at the car and he's like: what the fuck?! He was like yelling at it, he kicks the tyre, he's yelling at the car. He shuts the fucking thing, backs up and takes off." "Everybody in the studio's like: what the fuck? And then one of the roadies comes in and tells the studio manager: Axl can't work here. And he goes: why? And he goes: he can't get his Lambo over the fucking speed bump. And he goes: so you've rented out this studio for two years, spent like $2 million and he finally shows up and now will not ever work here? Because he couldn't get his Lambo over the speed bump."
In the end, Chinese Democracy was recorded in 14 different studios, both in the US and London. And Can-Am is listed in the album's liner notes, but only because some engineers, editors and a few others did some work there during this time.
L-R: Generic green Lamborghini (since no stories confirm Axl's exact model) | Can-Am Studios Exterior (Credit: thatstudioguy)
CRITTER STORIES
Celebrities are just like us, until we read about some of their animal stories. And on that note, here are but a few animal and critter stories on record related to Guns N' Roses.
Slash's love for animals extends back to a very young age, revealing in a 2011 interview with REPTILES that he has always had an intense fascination with snakes and reptiles. After he relocated from England to California, Slash kept a cage full of garter snakes, and grew his collection over the years. An educated and devoted pet owner, Slash takes ownership of his critters seriously, however one night his "rock'n'roll anaconda" named Clyde snuck out through a hole in his cage and slithered into the bedroom nearby. No big deal, except that Axl Rose was living with Slash at the time and sleeping on the floor of said bedroom. Slash awoke to the sight of Clyde face-to-face with a sleeping Rose.
"The snake was really close, just like this (Slash holds his hand in front of his face like a snake's head)," Slash shared with REPTILES. "This retic was just sitting there…and sitting there. And Axl's not a snake guy, man. The snake never would have bit him, but Axl didn't know that (laughs). I kept saying, "Don't move. Just stay there!" This went on for almost an hour."
Slash also once owned a mountain lion, a 100kg unit called Curtis. In 1994, Slash's house was rocked by the Northridge earthquake, and Slash sought refuge in a snazzy suite at the Four Seasons in Marina Del Rey. Oh, and Curtis was also snuck into the hotel.
Axl Rose has also publicly shown his own appreciation of a range of animals, tweeting in 2016 that "Dog's Lives Matter" after a pit bull was shot and killed by an NYPD police officer. He's also owned multiple dogs, including Rosie (who had a concert dedicated to her after her passing), and Geneva, a maltese dog whose death, some believed inspired, Used To Love Her (online accounts about this are sketchy at best, so I'm not claiming this one as a stone cold fact).
Rose also once took a baby wallaby out on tour, naming him Freddie after Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. “Axl built a sling, to mimic the baby wallaby mother’s pouch and carried his pet around," Craig Duswalt shared in his memoir Welcome To My Jungle. “He also fed Freddie with a little baby’s bottle.”
L-R: Axl Rose with one of his pups // Slash and Curtis just casually hanging out
THE LOST EAZY E COLLAB
The Godfather of Gangsta Rap, Eazy-E's fingerprint on the DNA of West Coast hip hop is undeniable. Founding Ruthless Records in 1987 and surging to attention behind the wheel of N.W.A, Eric Lynn Wright tragically passed in 1995.
Before he left this mortal coil, Eazy-E collabed with Slash on the 1994 single Luv 4 Dem Gangsta'z, which featured on the soundtrack for Beverly Hills Cop III, and it was the legendary rappers last solo single release (not his last material ever, but his final solo outing).
But there is apparently more in existence linking Eazy-E and Guns N' Roses beyond that Slash team-up, with Eazy-E apparently recording multiple records before his death that have yet to be heard at large; and for many of these, their specific whereabouts are currently unknown.
Eazy-E's childhood friend and CEO of Rich & Ruthless Records Arnold "Bigg A" White has spoken in the past about unearthing collaborations once upon a time at a listening party.
"There is unreleased music still out there," Bigg A told Rock The Bells. "We know for a fact that he had two or three or four reels in his car when he went to the hospital. Those reels came up missing. He had songs with Slash from Guns N' Roses — he had songs with Guns N' Roses on those reels."
"Those reels have been found 'cause they wound up in Canada," Bigg A continued, "That's a whole other story, but what happened to them [since], I don't know. I don't know if the estate got them, but there is unreleased music, and Yella [rapper and producer] has some, I know for a fact that there is some unreleased acapella vocals, that he was working on some records with a couple of producers I worked with and last I heard was that they were up in Dre's studio."
If you happen to be living in, or reading this in Canada, please check if your neighbour's garage might be harbouring said lost music?
Slash & Eazy-E
DANGER DANGER
When you're dubbed "The Most Dangerous Band In The World", you obviously have a horde of stories to back that up. This list today actively skewed away from the more typical partying and rampant shenanigans that we all usually read about rockstars, largely because the majority of those stories are so well-known.
But to close things out today, who exactly coined the "Dangerous" moniker for Guns N' Roses, and were they actually the most dangerous band in town at the time?
Sources nod to a few people and incidents that contributed to the title, notably author and music journo Mick Wall when he used the phrase as the title for a 1991 biography, Guns 'n' Roses: The Most Dangerous Band In The World (fun fact: you may recall that Wall was also called out by name in Get In The Ring for those who have read this entire list).
Prior to 1991 though, there's records of the phrase being used, notably in a 1989 Raw Magazine feature and even earlier than that, in a 1987 Kerrang! cover feature published a few months after the release of Appetite For Destruction.
It's almost impossible to describe to younger generations just how batshit crazy bands were in general back then, pre-social media, pre-internet, pre-so much technology that we're all immersed in these days. Hell, it's even hard for me to wrap my head completely around since I was born bang in the middle of when AFD was being made.
The stories of riots, delays, feuds, tragedies, scandals, combustible personalities and more that are on record very much would only scratch the surface to the truth of every single moment that has colourfully accompanied the Guns N' Roses trajectory.
From the iconic 1980s Sunset Strip scene into a ridiculously storied band, you honestly don't have to adore GNR to know that you can't fuck with their legacy, impact and longevity. For every Sweet Child O' Mine or Paradise City, there's a bunch of lesser-known songs that utterly slap to this very day. The band continue to tour the globe after over forty years of existence, which is an impressive feat in itself for anyone who knows the realities of life as a touring musician, rich or not. We'll never be able to recapture those towering days when the band toppled hair metal and changed rock'n'roll history, but we'll always have the memories. And endless, endless stories.
L-R: Mick Wall's The Most Dangerous Band In The World | GNR n 1988 (credit: Neil Zlozower)
GUNS N'ROSES
WORLD TOUR 2026
AUSTRALIAN LEG
WITH SPECIAL GUEST AIRBOURNE
Sunday 29 November - Adelaide Street Circuit, Adelaide
Wednesday 2 December - Queensland Country Bank Stadium, Townsville
Saturday 5 December - Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane
Tuesday 8 December - McDonald Jones Stadium, Newcastle
Friday 11 December - Marvel Stadium, Melbourne
Monday 14 December - ENGIE Stadium, Sydney
Tickets available here
BY TIANA SPETER
