He was born William Bruce Rose on Feb. 6, 1962, to Sharon Lintner, a 17-year-old high schooler, and a \u201cLafayette bad boy\u201d named William Rose. Years later, after attending regression therapy, the junior Rose would say, \u201cI didn\u2019t like the way he treated me before I was born, so when I came out, I was just wishing that motherf-\u200a-ker was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rose claimed his father sexually abused him. (Wall writes that there also might have been an abduction.) \u201cI remember a needle. I remember getting a shot. And I remember being sexually abused by this man and watching something horrible happen to my mother when she came to get me,\u201d Rose said, describing memories that had surfaced through therapy.<\/p>\n
The senior Rose was out of the picture by the time his son was 2, and a year later, Lintner married Stephen Bailey, the preacher. Rose grew up believing Bailey was his natural father and used his last name.<\/p>\n
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The family attended church at least three times a week. The Rev. Bailey \u201cruled his family with God-fearing rhetoric and an iron hand,\u201d Wall writes, noting: \u201cWilliam was struck in the face for watching a woman in a bikini in a TV advertisement. The television itself was thrown out soon afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rose came to know the Bible so well that he was invited to give sermons at his stepfather\u2019s church.<\/p>\n
\u201cLearning to speak in front of a crowd and later to play piano and sing,\u201d Wall writes, \u201cBill somehow found an identity.\u201d While he never had his stepfather\u2019s support \u2014 the preacher once \u201cknocked him from the piano stool when he played Led Zeppelin\u2019s \u2018D\u2019yer Mak\u2019er\u2019\u2009\u201d \u2014 the young Rose was on his way to escaping from the man\u2019s shadow.<\/p>\n
Jeff Isbell was a teenage drummer still in the ninth grade when he first saw Rose. Isbell was standing in a school corridor when, he would later recall, \u201cI heard all these books hit the ground, yelling, and then he went running past. A bunch of f-\u200a-king teachers chasing him down the hallway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, well, here\u2019s a guy who\u2019s completely crazy, he\u2019d be a f-\u200a-king great singer.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it turned out, Isbell had to coax his friend to take a turn behind the mic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t go so well in the early days,\u201d said Isbell, who moved to LA in 1981, changed his name to Izzy Stradlin and traded drums for the guitar. Rose would follow Isbell to LA a year later. \u201cSometimes he would just come over and stand around, like he was embarrassed. Or he\u2019d start to sing, and then he\u2019d just leave. Walk out and I wouldn\u2019t see him again for, like, three days! Some things don\u2019t change, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n
The upbringing of the band\u2019s other star guitarist, meanwhile, couldn\u2019t have been more different.<\/p>\n
Born in England, Saul Hudson moved with his family to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles when he was 4. The son of an artist and a clothing designer, Hudson was branded \u201cSlash\u201d by actor and family friend Seymour Cassel, a regular in John Cassavetes\u2019 films. Cassel gave him the name, Slash later said, because \u201cI was always running around the place, at lightning speed.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a child, Hudson was surrounded by celebrity.<\/p>\n
\u2018I thought, well, here\u2019s a guy who\u2019s completely crazy, he\u2019d be a f-\u200a-king great singer.\u2019 – Izzy Stradlin on Axl Rose<\/p>\n
David Geffen, who would make GnR stars when they signed to his label, was one of his baby sitters (and had no idea when he later signed the band that Slash was young Saul). When his father designed an album cover for Joni Mitchell, Mitchell used Hudson\u2019s drawings for a book of her poetry. His mother, meanwhile, was designing clothes for Mitchell, Ringo Starr, Carly Simon and David Bowie, with whom she had a brief but intense affair after splitting with Hudson\u2019s father. As a child, Hudson met the likes of Diana Ross, Bill Cosby, Stevie Wonder and John Lennon.<\/p>\n
Whether due to his parents\u2019 split, his exposure to the Hollywood lifestyle or other factors, Hudson engaged in wild behavior at a very young age.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the time he was 12, Saul was drinking, smoking, even having sex,\u201d Wall writes. He got deeply into BMX biking and also had a shoplifting phase that ended when he was caught stealing tapes from Tower Records.<\/p>\n
Just as Rose and Isbell had connected, Hudson found a constant companion in junior high school in \u201cValley Boy\u201d Steven Adler, who would become GnR\u2019s first drummer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pair were, according to Saul, \u2018instantly inseparable,\u2019\u2009\u201d Wall writes. \u201cSoon they were snorting \u2018locker room\u2019 \u2014 a cheap form of amyl nitrate \u2014 before class, and then bunking off to smoke dope and wander the streets of Hollywood bulls-\u200a-tting one another about music, forming bands and hustling money.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d go out and meet chicks \u2014 older women \u2014 who would take us back to their Beverly Hills homes,\u201d Adler recalled. \u201cThey\u2019d give us booze, coke, they\u2019d feed us, really. All we\u2019d have to do was f-\u200a-k them. Occasionally, a guy would pick me up. In return for [oral sex], I\u2019d get a little dope and 30 or 40 bucks.\u201d<\/p>\n As it happened, Adler had a guitar in his house. Slash fell in love with it, and the rest is rock history.<\/p>\n \u201cI gave it to him, and within a week, he was writing songs,\u201d Adler said. \u201cHe was just made for the guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n Adv<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n The two pairs of friends were soon connected by a hot-shot young guitarist named Tracii Guns, who would later lead the hit band LA Guns. Guns, the four future GnR members and others played band roulette for several years, performing in bands together, sharing drugs and sleeping with one another\u2019s girlfriends.<\/p>\n Seattle punk musician Michael \u201cDuff\u201d McKagan, a veteran of more than 30 bands by the time he was 20, arrived in Los Angeles in 1984.<\/p>\n When he answered an ad in a local music paper called The Recycler, which asked musicians to call \u201cSlash,\u201d the pieces were in place for one of the greatest bands in rock history.<\/p>\n\n While Guns N\u2019 Roses vocalist Axl Rose came to fame singing about the seedy side of LA life, welcoming fans to the Hollywood jungle, he was raised with far tighter standards for what constituted appropriate music. At around age 10, he was punched in the mouth by his fire-and-brimstone preacher stepfather for singing along to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[391],"tags":[2671,2672,2673,2674],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gettyimages-134944550.jpg\")
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