Vanity down with the heavy stars, rock and rolling through the cool guitars. Chuck's got the questions, taking so sharp, feeling back layers, hitting the heart.
Yeah, I don't know, Chuck, keep keep it. Keep it general. I wrote this a long time ago, and I don't even have a copy of the book yet, right? So it's, it's hard for me to remember exactly what's in there. I mean, let's, let's just, just don't hit me with too much heavy trivia kind
of thing. No, no. I mean, I read it and I have notes. So like, yeah. I mean, maybe the heavy trick, just whatever you can recall or remember. But I mean, because I learned a lot of things, and I consider myself a pretty Die Hard Guns N Roses fan, I followed them, like the first band that got me into my first concert was Guns N Roses Metallica, so I think I know the band, and I learned a lot of stuff from your book. Okay, all
right, yeah. Well, here's an easy question, because one of the things I noticed, too is a lot of the pictures in the book. That's another reason for, you know, because we might spoil some of the things in the book. We talk about it too much, but a reason to buy it, too is just for the pictures. I can describe them, but you have to buy the book to see them. And I've a lot of these pictures I've never seen before. Where did you get these pictures?
Well, this publisher has actually always been really good in that, in that respect, it's, it's kind of a collaboration with myself and my editor over there, Dennis. And you know, he's a big music guy too, so he knows what he's doing. He also has his antenna up. He doesn't want to repeat too much stuff that he's seen too many times before. So, yeah, it's a little bit of that, some some things from my collection
and whatnot as well. But just basically speaking, all, all of these books I've done with quarto motor books, Voyager, depending on what name you want to call them, has, has really nice photo curation. It turns into a really nice, you know, coffee table book. How
many books have you, I know, I read that you had 7900 record reviews. How many actual books do you have?
I guess I've done about 130 books at this point. Wow,
that is so crazy. Do you just love doing this, researching, then writing it all out and doing all the work? Yeah.
I mean, it's one thing, you know, I've worked with my, you know, my good buddy, Tim Henderson, on brave words and bloody knuckles. And I've written for a lot of magazines before, and I never liked that idea that that, you know, the month goes ends, and then you got to do it all over again. Do it all over again. Magazines are very disposable, and so is anything kind of news based. So I've always liked the idea of books having that
evergreen quality. Especially, I really like writing, you know, books on bands that are broken up long time ago and they aren't going to give you a new album or whatever that makes that out of date. So yeah, it's, it's nice to have have it end, and then it's there, and it's kind of the story. But what I have been finding recently with with various of my publishers, is, as some time goes on, they've come back to me a few times and say, Hey, what do you want to do an update now that another couple
albums are out? Kind of thing that's always a pain, because, you know, you gotta kind of go through the whole thing and see where you said something like, oh, I don't know what's going to happen in 2024 right? And you got to find all those little things, right? And, you know, people have died and all that, you know, do you change things to past tense? Do you mention it
somewhere earlier? So, so it's always, there's little Gremlins that come out of that process of just updating a book, you know, you got to fool around with a table of contents. You know, you got to redo your bibliography at the end, maybe change your your biography. So, yeah, it's, it's a funny, it's a funny process where you have to really keep an eye on what what you said throughout the book. Well,
yeah, because even in this Guns N Roses book, I'm assuming the time that you finished it, you didn't know that. Frank fair, the drummer was going to be replaced, and they have a and I can't even now, I'm space on the guy's name. I know little
things like that. You know, it's like, it's just kind of like an old darn but it's like, Guns and Roses are working on new album that that would be, you know, having have a new album come out would be not, not great, right? Because you're missing something massive, right? Yeah. So when
you have over 100 books, do you just are you constantly getting in like, mailbox money from books that you've written years ago, like, just various things, like, you'll have a check every month just from all these books you've
written? No, okay, so, so I would say 40% of my income is being a mail order guy of my own books. So that's something, right. But no, once a book dies, once it's over with, it's really over with. Like, I have books where I get maybe, I mean, in an extreme case, I have books that I literally still have copies of, or are in print that I get one order every three months. Months on kind of thing, right? But when it, when a book dies, I mean, you know, one order a month is, is kind of,
kind of normal. So when, when it's over, it's over, right? Okay? And then, and there really is a window right at the front where, where it's almost over after a month, right? Kind of thing. So, and then, yeah, I mean, and some of this adds up to, I get royalties from my various publishers over the years, and those, those dwindle and get smaller and smaller too, because they're not really selling a lot of too. I should do a better job of reminding people that these things exist,
right? Books on riot or Montrose or rainbow or whatever, I should be going on Facebook. And I've been thinking about that and say, hey, you know, there are these books out there. Because, yeah, people don't know, right? I mean, I could put books up at my website that are brand new, like the Iron Maiden and the gun, Guns and Roses with pricing and everything. And if I don't go to my database and tell them about it, it's, it's pretty funny to see how nobody really knows still that they can order
these books from me. So yeah, you know, yeah. I think, I think to keep getting any kind of pay at all, I have to keep coming up with new books. Oh,
wow. So what is the best selling book you've written? Oh, boy.
I would say that the trilogy of, you know, the whole story of rush in those hardcover books and then sought. They all came out in hardcover. They all came out in soft cover with different design. So that's the story of rush through my Canadian publisher, ECW press, that did really well. It's funny. Things we do on Blue Oyster Cult kind of does well. People just are always fascinated by that band, as am I. I find them super interesting. What else has done
well? Over we put out, we put out a queen book through Voyager, which was good timing. It was kind of on the on the backs of the movie coming out. So that did, did well around then, that's kind of important to timing with some of these things. You know, is the band being talked about? Very much kind of thing? Yeah.
So why a Guns and Roses book? Why now, just because you hadn't done that one, and they're still really popular. Well,
it's called Guns and Roses at 40. So we've, we're at Voyager we're constantly looking at these milestone things. We've done some at 50s. We've done at 75 for David Bowie, you know, based on how old he would have been, like some are a little little finagly, right? But Guns and Roses at 40, it kind of made sense. I mean, I've even done anniversary books for them on just the Dark Side of the Moon and the WHO Quadrophenia, right? 50 years since those albums came
out? Right? Is it? Is it 5073, how did we do the I guess it's, yeah, those, those books are two years ago now. Yeah, so, so, yeah, and, and this, this at 50 series they've been doing. And this is the first one I've been doing at 40. The idea is, okay, it is the band at 40 years old.
But what we're doing, and I didn't even come up with this concept, this is probably Dennis's idea, but we're basically taking, okay, now I need you to come up with 40 career highlights and tell the story chronologically with 40 career highlights. And that's, that's the format of the book. So that's the other thing that publishers like to do, I mean, they like to come up with fresh, new ways to present this information and put a book
together. So, you know, I don't know it's, it's hard to tell what level of Guns and Roses fan is going to learn what from this, but it is squeezed into a pretty limited word count and and a pretty, you know, interesting sort of canned idea of these 40 career highlights. So, yeah, that's what you get with
this book. Yeah, I was interesting. I maybe I knew this and I forgot, or I don't remember this part about, well, axles, first band was called Rapid Fire, some guitarist, Kevin Lawrence, like, you just wonder, like, gosh, it'd be so weird to I've never, I don't know if I've ever seen an interview with him. I wonder if he's still around, if he has memories of that first band that Axel was in. That would be interesting.
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of complication with the whole first band situation, and it's all covered in pretty, pretty, quite a bit of detail in in this book that was on that took a lot of hours to put all that together, because you're fighting the word count of each section all the time, right? And you have to, you have to make it really concise, so you kind of have to
make every sentence count. But yeah, there was a lot of shifting, moving pieces around at that time that the chaotic sort of, 8384 8586 period with those guys. Yeah,
I had Tracy guns on my show, and he kind of, I mean, he's already talked about it on so many other shows, so I tried not to bring it up, but it did kind of spill in to the conversation, but, and he's just Yeah, because it was, like, for people who don't know it was a it was first Hollywood rose. Or, I think did it, I think you said it was called something else, I think was just called Rose at one point, then Hollywood, or first called Axel, then rose, then Hollywood rose, and then
there was la guns. And I think Axel was in LA guns for a minute, and then they merged the two, and it was Guns and Roses. La guns, Hollywood rose, Guns and Roses. And then Tracy guns went back to LA guns. And then Axel got slashed, and then the rest is history,
yeah, and he's, you know, I you wonder sometimes if it's just. Like, Okay, it's time to write up a flyer, guys, or drop a flyer. What do we put? What's the name of us now? Right?
It's crazy, though, because I think, I mean, I'm such a fan, and I do think a lot of it is, you know, the skulls and the in the the artwork and the name Guns and Roses, I just sounded so cool to me as a kid, and just like, with a gun, and they had the rose on it and, and it fit the band too, because it was like this, you know, macho, heavy, like guns, angry. And then there's also, like, this ballad, soft side with the roses
and stuff. So it was like, I thought it just was a great name and a great fit for the band,
yeah, you know. And I've always, I've always, and I say this in the book, I'm, you know, I don't, I don't pull punches particularly, I mean, I sort of say, you know, my viewpoint of philosophically on all this, I've never considered them anything other than another hair metal band. They're just a really good one. And so there's a whole chapter in there about Guns and Roses versus hair metal, and how people, you know, differentiate them and stuff.
But I swear, I think, over the years, it gets differentiated more and more and more. And the legend of how massive that first album is feeds into that and it and it makes people frame it a certain way. And I think the story morphs over time. But when that album came out, it was just another, you know, what I call it. I coined that term dirty hair metal, right? Or, or, you know, there's a similar category you could call bluesy Hair
Metal, right? And then everybody, you know, Guns and Roses, you know, frankly, were kind of the first. But, I mean, the look, the look, is basically Hair Metal. I don't think we have to ascribe any massive genius to, oh, they didn't dress hair metal or whatever, right? And so, but, but what happens is, because they were the first, and they were big, a big success at this, coming up with this. So, I mean, I guess what I'm saying is, it was a, it was the
best hair metal album. Put it that way, but it is squarely in that genre, in in many, many different ways. But then what happens is, it was so successful and so influential that it actually kind of caused the dirty hair metal or the bluesy hair metal thing going forward, right, where you get, where you get every poison and Cinder everybody, everybody tries to make their authentic album at some point, right? And, and then you also literally got bands
like Badlands and whatnot. But, yeah, I don't, I don't see any reason to really, uh, really say it doesn't belong to that genre, yeah, but
it's just I, because I think too. I mean, you could talk about the illusions and how that totally went away.
A lot of those songs are completely not hair metal, but even that first album, I feel like even there's not really a ballad, but it's, I think it's the punk influence that that gives it a different spin, like you, maybe that's what you would call the dirty hair metal, because I feel like a lot of hair metal, it's, it is very cliche, and I can't even I as a die hard hair metal fan, sometimes I can't tell which one is this, but Guns and Roses, I feel like they just had this,
like, raw, kind of punky vibe to it that a lot of I didn't. I don't think a lot of hair other hair metal bands had that, except maybe la guns, and maybe that's, I don't know if that was on purpose or just a coincidence, that they both like the same stuff. Yeah,
I don't particularly feel a punky vibe in it. I mean, I feel like, like a, just a really high quality Aerosmith vibe to the whole thing, right? And there are, there is a lot of personality in it as well. I mean, that's like, like, there's a reason it sold so many copies, right? Slash is a very unique sounding guitarist, albeit a very conservative guitarist. You know when, when he starts talking about his influence, it's just like stones and Aerosmith and
stuff like that, right? And Axel has this super interesting voice. The album had good lyrics. It was super long. It was a long album. It's an ambitious album as well. And, yeah, it had hits that did various things on it. So, you know, I almost, it does feel to me like it almost. I've never really thought about it this way, but it almost feels like it's got the ambition of an Aerosmith permanent vacation and a pump, but, but all the great things you love about draw the line and rocks and get your
wings in it as well. But
don't you think too they had an edge to them as well. Because I know, like, I mean, the song is so easy the lyrics to that. I mean, that was not something a typical Hair Metal band would be doing at the time. And the same with, like, with the usual illusions. There's a bunch of songs. As a kid, when I was, like, 13, I was like, Well, this is, like, because they're telling people to fuck off and all this shit.
And then that was not a thing that a lot of bands at the time, especially bands that were very popular, were doing, you know, I mean, this would be more like a niche, niche thing that where, you know, if you you could buy that record, but you're not going to sell millions of copies of an album where you're swearing all over it, yeah,
yeah. You know, I think, I mean, most of the edge to that band comes from the fact that, yeah, they were, they live, literally live that life. They were authentic. I mean, scary people, right? Yeah. So that's where the edge comes from. But when I think musically about it, you know, having grown. Up being a metal head since seven years old, eight years old, 1960 or 1970 1971 and then being into punk as well, and then seeing hardcore go by.
And then here comes grunge. I think grunge has 10 times more edge than get anything Guns and Roses ever did. And, you know, and there, there is other music, but you're right for popular music and for being part of this genre, it's, it's at the outside edge of that, not even though, but not even at the outside edge of it creatively speaking,
right? I mean, at the far outside edge of it, maybe you had something if you want to talk about getting really creative from inside that scene, faith, no more, Jane's Addiction. You can go that far, but you can even think of boy when, when you just getting a little later and out of I've never really thought about this, but boy around that time, you would have had, eventually bands like big F, liquid Jesus, mind funk. I guess we're getting a
little more into grunge. But, you know, even think of Alice in Chains, right? Alice in Chains at the very beginning even be, say, before facelift, right, when they when they were Alice in Chains, maybe with a Zed, I think they had a little more of a glance. So at one point, Alice in Chains would have been kind of just the next step past Guns and Roses. But by the time you get to face lift the debut album, it's, it's, it's three steps beyond, right? Yeah. I mean
more kind of alternative, yeah, although, although
that band in particular is much closer to Guns and Roses than Soundgarden or Pearl Jam or Nirvana, or Melvin's or mud honey was right. And it even is in their in their roots. In fact, the other band that is that is the next step past Guns and Roses would be Mother Love Bone from that scene. Yeah,
that's true, yeah. I think the same thing with Guns and Roses and Allison chains. Both bands kind of came in and, like, turned things upside down, like they shook. I think the appetite album totally shook the hair metal thing. And I think Allison chains, it just shook the rock and metal in general. Same with Nirvana too. Like it kind of those, both those things needed to happen. Like Hair Metal needed the shake up, and then rock in general needed the
shake up with the grunge. And I mean, I was just thinking about that the dirt album, especially for Allison chains. I mean, that is just so dark. I don't even know if I would say use the word edge, but it's just so dark and like, and just so original and like you just, you could feel like what they were going through. That's probably laying you know, it was a big influence on a lot of that sound, and Jerry with the guitars and stuff. But just, it was just this dark place that you could
feel it. You could feel where they were coming from. Yeah, it's,
it's a, it's a, definitely a big step up in creativity. And I mean, the most creative band from all of that was Soundgarden. But, you know, and then there was a different kind of creativity, more of a, more of just a different sensibility or esthetic that you got out of Nirvana and Melvin's and mud, honey and stuff like that. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know if Guns and Roses shook things up
particularly. I mean, when I think back to it, it's, it's like, this album comes out, Hair Metal still has four, four and a half, five good years to go when this album comes out. Right? I mean, you talk about all those guys on the strip, and all they said is that we just started dressing differently. There are still tons of Hair Metal albums to come. Skid Row still coming around. Warren's still coming around. Cinderella's got three or four more albums. Motley Cruz
got more albums. There's not a big difference that happens, right? I mean, you essentially get, you essentially get some more, you know, you get a little more authenticity and a little less pure glam out of things, but, but the pure glam out of things kind of continued as well. So it's not everybody kind
of changed course from this. So, so I don't think, I don't think you ever get within See, I, I did this book called The Big, Big Book of hair metal, and I kind of regretted ending it at 1991 because we ended it at at the Nirvana album
coming. Oh no, yeah, there's some great hair metal stuff that I know. I think, as a hardcore fan, Warrens and and a lot of these bands, in my opinion, put out their best poison. I think they put out some of their best stuff in the in the mid like 9392
Exactly. That's the point, Chuck So, so what happens with hair metal is, is it? It's not like it's not like everybody is is is influenced by grunge, and they completely change direction. What happens is, there's this one little I did a podcast episode called go to Vancouver and try harder, right? Which is where, which is where a lot of hair metal bands did that. Did that pilgrimage to record in Vancouver at either little mountain or what's the
other one called? Anyways, we're with Bob Rock, or with that, you know, Mike Fraser and all these guys. So, so one thing that happened, one thing that hair metal bands did. COVID, right? Is, is they said, Okay, grunge has happened if we're going to compete with this new music, you know, it would look really fake if we changed our entire philosophy. But what we're going to do is we're going to make the very, very best, most ambitious, most sober, most thoughtful, most interesting, long version
of a hair metal album. We proper, but, you know, we, we can, right? And so you get, you get better records from extreme and motley crew and Mr. Big. And, like you say, Cinderella poison warrant, does dog eat dog? So, so love hate comes along. I love, love hate. I think they're amazing. I my favorite hair metal album, probably, of all time is wasted in America, the second love, hate and and. So, yeah, you're right. You get you kiss, does
revenge, right? Revenge is a is a total upgrade on crazy nights and Hot in the Shade, right? So, so that's kind of what happens. And then Guns and Roses comes out, and they, they kind of kind of do the same thing, where they're, we're now. I mean, one of the cool things they do is this massive, 277, minute album idea, but a lot of those songs, yeah, they widen their palette.
They get even more generalist, rock and roll, like, like, we're now a world band and we represent or, you know, it's almost like the clash with London calling or, or, you too, with Rattle and Hum, where they say we're going to embrace all of American culture here, sort of thing, Guns and Roses. Moves from, you know, here's our selection of songs on, on
Appetite for Destruction. But now that we've got whatever it is there, maybe, what would we say, 40 songs, something like that, across those two albums. Now that we've got this wide palette, we're doing this entire thing all at once, which was so ballsy and cool that they did that right. But now they've now they now they've really stretched out. And you get an estranged in a November rain, you get some total gut bucket blues kind of things on there. You get some punkier things, I
think, as well. So it's almost like here, appetite is like the the the hub of the the wheel, the Guns and Roses wheel. And now you get to appetite, and they're going off in all directions and giving you this cool panorama of, frankly, like American rock history in a way, right? Yeah,
I love those that Use Your Illusion albums, although I do wonder if it wouldn't be more revered if they had taken all the best songs and just put it on one album and then took the rest and maybe made it like a bonus album, or released it later as like a die hard fan out, you know, something different, like a bootleg or something. Because I think if you put the best songs on one album, I think it rivals appetite. But obviously, as it was with two doubles, it just, it never did as well as happen.
It wasn't. It was, you know, criticized. There was, oh, there's a lot of filler and things like that.
Yeah, I always love that idea to like, like, you know, it's, it's good. Metallica is another example of a band who makes these massive, long albums that have to be on double CDs now, where, where it would be really cool if, if, I think they gave us more albums and maybe even even pumped up the identity, like, that's something Guns and Roses could have done as well. Is like, give us, give us. You know, distinguish them a little more, because people always have that hot debate on, on, oh, which is
better? Which is, what is the personality of Use Your Illusion, one versus two. But yeah, if, if you played with those songs and sequenced them across two separate albums, say, say, 1112, 13 months apart, or
whatever, right? You could have, you could have really, like, said, Okay, well, we're gonna, people are gonna say this about these 12 songs, but these 12 songs, they're gonna be generally way more up tempo or something or punkier, and they're gonna say, and we know, you know, there are adjectives they can ascribe, ascribe to this. But I think, as it stands, people listen to those two albums, and they're just because they're at the same time too.
They're just confused. And really, there's not a lot of there's not, you can't describe a personality to one versus the other. I don't think too accurately. No,
yeah, well, it's the production is different and stuff. But yeah, I mean, going back to the to the appetite and the stuff in your book, that was the another thing that I found so interesting that I don't think I knew this, I don't. Maybe this is common knowledge, but I didn't know all the different producers they were meeting with to produce appetite before they settled on Mike Klink, it was the Nazareth guy, Manny Charlton. They met with him, who produced some of the
demos, I guess. And then Paul Stanley was considered and Max Norman. I didn't know how that's, that's kind of, I thought that was kind of interesting to think of how that album could have sounded different with a different producer. Because, as it sounds now, I feel like Mike Klink, he didn't do a lot, which I think was good. He kind of let it have a raw, you know, feel he didn't try to overproduce it. I mean, I'd say the most i. Produced thing is having the keyboards on Paradise City,
yeah, the production job on that is absolute magic. It's, and it's hard to describe what it is, it's, it's correct, it's conservative. It's got all the bottom end you want. It's got all the top end you've want. But there's just something aggressive about it. There's something, there's, there's, it's got really magical mid ranges to it. And I think, I think the other thing that is, I think Mike clink helps slash get
a sound. There's just something about the way his tone is on that album, which, again, it's just got hair on it. It's just a gnarly, cool guitar tone. But, you know, it's not an album that you're going to say, Wow, this is weird. You know, this is weird production. There's nothing strange about it. It's just, it's just really, really street, but, but tough Street, it doesn't sound like crappy Street. It just that there's, it just has this, this really visceral in your face, sort of
quality. And I think that all helped as well. And, you know, you kind of feel, you kind of feel that there is a little push pull in the in the in the tempos as well. There's, there's a little bit of breathing that you get out of Stephen Adler and Duff in terms of the rhythm section as well. It's just a brilliantly, brilliantly produced album.
Yeah, I thought that was interesting, too. I didn't know this, that Steven Adler recorded all the drums in six days. That blew my mind.
Yeah? And, well, I mean, just this band was really routine. They knew what they were doing at this point and, but, yeah, it's still, it's still, you wonder. It's just, it's just so scary thinking of the drugs and the drink going into into this band all the time, and to have them pull this stuff out. But, you know, I guess, I guess, when it comes down to it, maybe they, you know, I do. I do kind of get mad when people say that Guns and Roses didn't put out much music.
But yeah, obviously it's, it's a fair bit of part, and this is, it's still a small catalog, but when you add it all up, you know the you've got, you've got the EP with originals on it and and faux live stuff and covers. You've got acoustics so they start off, there's some complication already. You get a super long album for the vinyl days in appetite. You get two more super long Albums of All originals, right? Which could have been easily three albums worth of material. You get a
full covers album. And then over the years, I mean, we do get Chinese Democracy that, I think that that totally counts. Over the years, you get individual songs here and there along the way for soundtracks or whatever. And then I, in fact, I That's right. I have sort of a chapter in the book that kind of argues this point right, where, you know, you think of slashes, Snake Pit and duff and Duff side projects. You think of Izzy stradlin And how prolific he was
over the years. You think of slash featuring miles Kennedy. You think of the slash slash album, you know, you add all that stuff together, and these guys have stayed busy, Velvet Revolver. They've, they've actually, you know, they, they absolutely have stayed busy. It's just a lot of it doesn't have the Guns and Roses branding to it, yeah,
do you know, is there any sort of talk of a new album? Because, I mean, you always hear rumors, but is there any sort of concrete things that says a new album is coming, or new new songs? I mean, if they put stuff out here and there?
Yeah, I just, I remember hearing about two months ago just a very vague thing, oh, we're working on new material for a new album or whatever. So I don't know how serious they are. I mean, frankly, I mean, they've been pretty quiet in the news, and that that often means they're working, right? So, yeah, I
wonder too, if they could, I would love for them to get Izzy back, at least for a song or two, just a songwriting session, you know, have him play on one or two songs. Just curious what they could do with him, because I feel like he was a big part of the songwriting process. I mean, it's kind of hard to tell because of the appetite. It just says, written
by Guns and Roses. But you know that he had, you know, people wrote, brought in different riffs and lyrics and things, and I feel like he was a big part of the songwriting, yeah.
And that's also what I found so interesting about doing the book. I mean, one of the surprising things is how often he'd, he'd show up and he'd play, live with them and stuff, right? Or, or you know, any estranged members, they're not all that estranged. They can
come around and do stuff. So these guys, you know are on kind of talking terms and all that, all the guest stars all the time that show up and and do songs with them and or, or you know them paying tribute to their their heroes, like Mike Monroe, or whatever, and going play Angel City, right, the angels from Australia. I thought that was amazing, right, playing with those guys. So, so that's,
that's really cool as well. But, yeah, it's, it's, it's good to see that, that the relations are there, you know, and these guys are not, are not, you know, crazy old, like, are, like, like, many of my. Heroes who are into their 70s now, kind of thing, I mean, there, they still could have some gas in the tank where we could, we could see another album from them. I hope it happens.
Yeah, you also mentioned in the I don't know if I must have probably knew this, maybe I forgot, but they had done early during the appetite, or before that, around that time, they did shows with Motley Crue. Is there any, do we have any documentation of that, like stories or pictures or like video that, because that, I mean, that's a crazy show to think of guns and roses in their heyday with Motley Crue and the same. I mean, yeah, I can't remember, insane, yeah, I
can't remember if there's anything on YouTube. I mean, I mean, you know, the way YouTube works, obviously, is, you know there's, there's probably you individually. You could see Guns and Roses playing when you know they're on the Motley Crew tour. You can see Motley Crue play when you know they're on the on with Guns and Roses. But you're not going to see them together kind of thing, right? So,
yeah, because the thing you said in the book slash was, was with Nikki six the night he od that's, I see. I thought it was Stephen Adler, or was it both of them? I
don't know what it whatever. I can't, I can't remember, you know, and where I got that.
It's such a yeah, there's so much incestuous things, doing these interviews, and interviewing a lot of these guys that, I mean, there's so many things where this, they're friends with this guy, and then this, this band and and even a lot of the bands that you wouldn't think, like the hair metal people hung out with, like, Red Hot Chili Peppers and stuff. Back in the day, everyone
was just friends. And because, who didn't have Bob forest, who's now like a, you know, he's like, a drug alcohol counselor, but he said, back in the day, like he was friends with Red Hot Chili Peppers, and he goes, Oh, they were friends with all the hair metal bands. He's like, the thing that brought them together, drugs, drugs that brought everybody together. Yeah,
funny, yeah, it's, it's interesting. I think I've done some, some stuff on my history, and five songs with Martin pop off podcast about the whole, you know, various times I know it comes up with, with the whole thing, like, these guys should have been big. These guys should have been big. These guys should have been big. But the main point, you know, and being here in Canada, I'm in Toronto, the main point is, you know, how
big do you want to be? Because if you want to be big, you got to move to LA, right, you know, so, so if you're not going to move from your from your territory, from your region, you know, you're not, you're not going to be boots on the ground where all the other musicians are and all the all the guys are from, from the industry that you can meet in person and invite out to gigs and be at parties with, and go down to the office
and negotiate and stuff. So there's, there's so many stories like that where, you know, it really does feel like there are so many bands that left a lot on the table, you know, and it's a personal choice, and there's probably a million reasons not to move as well, but, but it's like, yeah, there are a lot of bands that had they gone and set up shop in LA at that time, if you're that kind of music or whatever, like, get in there in 1984 85 and don't move. Just
stay there. And, yeah, you would have a lot more doors open for you than than staying, you know, than than staying in Toronto or staying even in New York City, for that matter.
Yeah, you've put, like you said, your big love, hate fan you because do they were they east coast, I think they were New Jersey, right? No, no,
they're in LA band. They were LA, okay, they're LA, yeah, yeah. And I revere those guys. I think they're amazing. I thought blackout in a red room was incredible. And then waste in America is an absolute masterpiece. And the next one's a masterpiece too. But the fact of the matter is, you know, by the time they come around, the tide is turned, right? There's that whole, you know, you could get laid in the scene. Things are still very good in 8990 kind
of thing. But you know, if you're making a brunt of your records after that kind of things, you know, Skid Row had a nice run. Jackal comes late, right? Jackal comes late. They stay in Atlanta. But you know, you come late, and you can have some success with that first one. You're catching the mature
phase kind of thing. But by the time he gets to the second and the third one, all of a sudden that record label, you know that major label, record labels, got a slash next to it, and you're and you're now on the boutique part of it, and then the next one, you're down to an indie, and the next one, you're putting it out yourself kind of
thing. Yeah, that is crazy. It's like, it's, it was tough back then now. I mean, I guess it's so the music scene is so different. I feel like you don't really need to move to LA and New York, as much like, you can put out everything yourself, and you can just go viral, but it's so hard to get your voice heard in such a sea of like, how many new records come out every day on Spotify or whatever? I mean, it's insane. It used to be like there's so many record labels and only so many records
come out every week. And now it's just like, anybody can put out a record, and it's a hard to and a lot of them are sound pretty good.
Yeah. Well, you know, you go all the way back to the 70s, and the fact of the matter is, all those records that were failures, that we know are all done in the same studios as the big, expensive, successful records, they're all done with a big producer. You know that there's. Was no real, even small label structure in the 70s. So everything's more or less on a major label. So and then that changes, you know, with punk and the new wave British heavy metal and hardcore
and stuff. So now you start getting Indie labels and stuff. But you know now that now the whole situation is that it's just with with computers. You know, the dozen different ways computers can be used, it's just way, way more efficient and easy to make a good sounding album now. So that's why there's so many records out there, so and yeah, the different ways to make money, the kids have come up with new ways to make money. It's not the same model that it
was before. You know that the whole death of physical product is such a profound thing in all of this as well. Yeah,
do you think could there be a new rock band that could come and, you know, turn the rock scene upside down, like Guns and Roses and Allison chains and all these other bands did? Because it seems like it's, you know, that used to happen every few years, somebody would come around and go, Wow. And like, turn the scene upside down, and now it's like, it seems like it's been, I don't know, 20 So, years. I mean, who
was the last people? I mean, there was, like, you know, the Marilyn Manson and Kid Rock. That was kind of a big new scene, and then it hasn't, I'm trying to think of someone that in the last 20 years or so that's really, like, stood out.
Well, all I know is, and I'm just amazed at this. But I mean, we have, we have a, we have a stadium here in Toronto, right, Rogers Center where the Jays play, and used to be called the Sky Dome, right? You know, with the famously retractable dome and all that, right? Rarely you get rock concerts in there, but you do once in a while, I just saw Metallica in there. But even Metallica, you know, I think they're in there. They were
there for two nights. But, I mean, they were there with also with Pantera suicidal tendencies. And the other night, I think, is limp, Bizkit and whatnot. But, you know, rarely you get rock concerts in there. But I think the fact of the matter Chuck these days, I mean, I saw a roster the other day. And there are acts that are big enough to play that place which gets used, I swear, for rock concerts, maybe three times a
year. I mean, it's mainly the hockey arena, football, I mean basketball, hockey arena that gets used, right? But to have there are, there are bands that are big enough to play these massive venues that we barely even know the name of. So there are still huge, huge, huge bands out there, but, but it's, it's
the kids thing now. So, so you could, you could be, you could be a cult Act, as far as as what cult act used to mean to us in the 90s or 80s, or whatever, you could be a cult act and and fill, fill hockey arenas all day and night all over the world kind of thing. There are massive, massive bands that we barely know the names of these days,
really like name some of them that like that are recently, the last five or 10 years?
Well, I know. Okay, so, so at the Rogers Center, I believe there was a hip hop act going in there, and a country act that I barely knew the name of. So that's two. My son's going to see Kendrick Lamar at that venue. And, like I say, that venue almost never gets used. I mean, we know who Kendrick Lamar is, of course, yeah. But so
there's a rock, there's no, I mean, yeah, there's tons of pop and rap and country, those are all still
token. I know those guys are really big. Who, who's, who are some of the other ones. There's the odd one of those, those big, massive new death core bands, which which get huge crowds, which is hard to believe, because it's so it's so extreme. I used to joke. Well, I I joke now, but I used to say it quite often that that, oh, nothing could get heavier
than this, right? And then I must have said that five times through the last 40 years, and then something, sure enough, comes along that is heavier, right? So, so it's funny, and today's heavy music is, is just off the charts. I mean, with the with the with the pig, pig grunt vocals and the, you know, moving well beyond the death vocals and the black vocals these days, and the and the, you know, the massive breakdowns and stuff. It's very, very progressive and complicated, the absolutely
fluttery double bass drum. You know, the drummers are insane these days. And, you know, you scroll through your Tiktok, this stuff is kind of mainstream. Kids brains are able to process this stuff just like we were, you know. Well, there's a funny Tiktok. In fact. This just drives home the point, you know,
as scrolling. It might have been Facebook shorts that that they had one of these, these crazy, you know, Lorna shore type, or what's the other one, suicide, something or other type, completely insane, death core bands, the music playing over the Beatles at Ed Sullivan, right? And the headline said, This is what your mom thought
the Beatles sounded like. Oh yeah, I've seen, I saw that video that is funny.
So I mean that that just drives home the point. It's. Like, you know, extremity has, has changed all the way since, since, well, since, probably, you know, fairly sped up jazz music in the 1920s right through Elvis Presley and the Beatles and on and on. But yeah, you never, you never thought things could get heavier than Metallica. Then you never thought things could get heavier than Pantera, and then you never thought things could get heavier than black metal or slipknot.
And it does. It has, I mean, the heavy metal over the last five years is, it's very, it's very degent and meshuga influenced as well, right? But it's, but, yeah, that the heavy metal of the heavy stuff of these days, you know, makes, makes death or who, who are some of the other heavy, heavier bands of the extreme death scene of the 80s or 90s. It makes them look like AC, DC, right? It's just that simple compared to what they're playing now.
Yeah, I thought when I was a kid, I thought Nine Inch Nails and the industrial sound. I thought that was going to be the next thing, the next future. And I think Axel kind of banked on that too. And I think that's what he was kind of trying to do with Chinese Democracy a little bit. And then I feel like, for whatever reason, that that industrial kind of sound, it kind of went by the wayside there. Really, I can't even think of a newer, really industrial that, that's,
you know, really their sound. I mean, there's pieces of that, like, what's the Ronnie Radke falling in reverse? They have that, some of that industrial rap rock, kind of a mix. But there's not like a, like a Nine Inch Nails, type of, like, Next Level band, I don't think,
yeah, although, again, I think what happens, what tends to happen out there is, once a genre is invented, it never, kind of goes away. It goes underground. And then, like I say, there's so much music out there that there are little pockets of scenes for everything. I had a funny situation where I just went and saw a band I really love, chameleons UK, and I thought they were the headliner at this thing. And I'm there watching them, and all of a sudden it's over. And sudden it's over. And
go, Oh, that's interesting. And, but I remember looking around the crowd saying, there's a lot of girls here. There's a lot of Goth people here too, right? I thought that doesn't seem like really, them, them, that kind of band. And then right after that, there's like a, you know, to my surprise, there's, there's like a, like a two piece industrial act from San Diego, who are obviously much bigger than the chameleons UK are, which just kind of goes to show that there's just scenes out there,
right? But, you know, to get back to Axel for a second in industrial, Axel is a true artist. He He loves art, and that's, that's why, that's why so much time is spent and so much hand wringing is done over
him putting something out. I mean, with the legendary, you know, example, being Chinese Democracy, but just that band in general, he loves, He loves creativity so much that, that he is so particular and and so anal retentive about just absolutely making everything perfect before he he can put it out that, that it's, it's really admirable to watch, like going through and writing those chapters in there and thinking about him doing sessions and then just shelving them and they, you know, some of
it gets used years later and whatnot, right? And then change all these members and put try something with all these guys. That's the other thing he would he was very good at, at just wanting to work with different
musicians all the time. So there's a lot of there's a lot of really neat, you know, experimentation that goes on with that band, whether the fans want to hear experimentation out of them is, is something that probably is, is a no. And that happens a lot with a lot of bands that you don't want them to change to so much, but I think he got to let Axel be Axel. I think I think that guy is his head is screwed on straight when it comes to to really worshiping creativity and worshiping the muse.
Is that what he was doing? Because I know there's that. There was that time from like 9495 when the original lineup kind of dissipated, and then I don't think he came out. I mean, 1999 oh god, he did that single. And then I think they started doing shows later. But was that whole time? Was he just working on Chinese Democracy?
Well, working on, what is working on? Mean, right?
You know, was it like every day he's just writing music and tinkering and stuff, or was it, was there just long periods of, like, what was he just depressed and later
he's just on and off, right? It's the business of being Axel, it's the business of doing the business. It's the business of going on tour. Yeah, it's the odd song, here and there. So I think just in the back of his mind, he's just always, I mean, there's there's writing, there's thinking, there's lyrics, there's making demos. There's making demos by yourself. There's making demos with one person, three people, five people, you know, different people. Next time, different
studios all over the place. So, so yeah, it's just yeah. And to say I'm working on Chinese Democracy, it's like, okay. When does that really come up? Kind of thing that it is Chinese Democracy. So, and then, you know, changes were being made right up to the last minute, kind of thing with that whole thing, right? So, yeah, that's, that's the cool thing about that guy is, and you wish, you wish we would have got more music out of him over the years, but he's,
he's just one of these. He's just one of these guys that says, When it's ready, it's ready, and then I'm not going to put out anything I don't believe in.
Yeah, well, it's interesting, because I think in the there's like a little mini interview in your book where you interview Tommy Stinson, who was in Guns N Roses for a long time, and you ask him about, I'm surprised he answered. You asked him about actual strengths and weaknesses, and he said his strength was loyalty to people.
He's going to be as loyal to you till the day, you know, till it's over, as long as you're loyal to him, but you but he did say that axles weakness was that he cared too much about what other people thought of him, which kind of surprised me, because that was something I always looked up to, Guns and Roses, and especially Axel was like he didn't give a fuck what anybody thought he was going to do what he wanted, no matter what. And so that was interesting. To hear Tommy say that, yeah,
that is interesting. I forgot about that. Yeah, that's, that's, that's funny, you know? And maybe that's, that's a that's kind of like a good quality of axle, that that we really, that we really don't know about, because he's such a private person. But maybe he's just yeah, maybe, maybe he does want to be liked, but, but the public persona of them is, is yeah, he will do what he wants, kind of
thing. He's his own boss, but yeah, maybe deep down, or maybe in more personal relationships, he's he's more like, Yeah, I do want to be like, yeah.
And then also that he mentioned that how hard it was for Axel just to walk down the street because he's such a big rock star. I mean, that part of him is so fascinating, too, just how famous he is. Like, how do you deal with that? It's got to be such a mind fuck. And maybe that's why he kind of disappeared for a while and just was a recluse. Because he was like, Dude, I don't want to be bothered every time I go out to eat or whatever. Yeah,
yeah. It's funny. I've noticed over the years, hey, when you, when you interview really, really big rock stars, and you kind of come away thinking, I You didn't really say much that interesting or controversial, right? And then you go, I think there's a reason for that. You know? The reason is everybody's gonna listen to every, every exact word I say and and my words have impact, right? My words could,
could, could kill jobs. You know, it's, it's a little bit like we got to go on tour, because so many of our friends rely on a job being on tour, right? So, so it's, it's almost like, I think these guys, over the years, just realize their words have weight and and a lot of people are going to see their words so they, they're just, they just get a little more
careful over time. But having said that, I mean, I guess every time Axel comes out and talks, you know, these guys aren't particularly, particularly like that. I think, I think these, this particular bunch of super famous guys, are pretty honest and forthcoming when they do do interviews. And maybe that's a little bit of their, of their, you know, don't give a damn sort of attitude where, where they are. They, they still have a little bit of that, that punk
rock in them. But I'm sure even, I'm sure even slash and Duff have realized over the years, it's like, yeah, we got to watch what we say, because people are going to read these interviews.
That's interesting, yeah, because I just think, I don't think Axel has done a lot of interviews, and people always ask me, like, you know, when they find out to do podcasts or whatever, like, Oh, who's your like, number one person that you'd love to get on the show? Like, who's your bucket list interview? And it's number one. Would be Axel for sure. I think it would be such I could do such a good job too. I think I would.
It would be an amazing interview, and it probably wouldn't be that hard, because he's just so fascinating to me, anyways, but I mean, well, so you think that's why he doesn't do interviews, because he thinks he might say something that could offend people or cost jobs, like you said, or cause damage. It's interesting
you say that, Chuck, because here's, here's another thing I've noticed by doing many, many interviews over the years, there are people that don't do that many interviews because they're way too good at it. So part of it is, is they, they, they will probably say some really good stuff that'll be out there that probably shouldn't have got out there, and then they're going to regret it. But the other thing is, they just put their heart and soul into it, and it wears them out.
And literally, even, even the time, like, like, I've interviewed a lot of people who don't do a lot of interviews, where they'll just go way over time and they'll blow off, you know what? They mixed up, and then they've made a mess of the whole schedule and all this stuff, and everybody hates them, and they get mad at that. So, so I think a lot of people don't do a lot of interviews because they just care too much, and they just do way too good a job at them. And then they get off.
They get off the line after, you know, this was supposed to be a 15 minute interview, and it went. Hour 15 and and they're worn out. It's like, I don't do interviews, because at the end of it, it's a little bit like arguing politics with a buddy, right? You know, you get to the end of it after two hours of just like, like wearing yourself out, arguing about politics, and you stand back and go, there's only two people that heard this damn thing. What a waste of
time. This was, right? You know, this should have been on camera. That's what I tell people all the time that want to talk to you about music. It's like, No, I don't want to talk to you about music. It's, it's, it's, it should be on camera. We gotta get use out of this, or don't send me this massive email. Stick it on the Facebook so we can all look at this. You're, you know, you're wasting your time just showing it to me, right? Because I sure as hell ain't going to write you back
something that long, right? So, so that's the other thing. I definitely feel like, I've talked to people where, where it's like, they don't do a lot of interviews, because it just wears them the hell out. And they and they and they do end up saying things they shouldn't have said, That's
interesting, yeah, because I always feel when I come away with a longer interview, like I just had Tracy guns on, like I said, and it was like it was close, I think was like a three hour interview. And I got off of that interview, and I just felt so energized, and I felt like we just had this great conversation. And he revealed so much stuff, and he really opened up about Guns and Roses stuff, and La guns, and what he thinks about this. And there was a little bit of politics, and it
was just everything. And I just feel like he really opened up, and I just felt so energized. So it's interesting
that you say that, but you say, when, how long? How long did it go? It went about three hours. Yeah. So think about how him getting off that line, right? He goes, he gets off the line and goes, I just shot my whole day doing this, right? And like, it's like, seem to have a good time. I mean, well, I know, I know, but, but he's worn out. His voice is shot, right? He can't talk for the rest of the day. He's probably blown off two or three things he was supposed to
do that day, right? So my point is, he might have enjoyed your company, but in the back of his mind for the rest of his life, he's going to think, Man, I can't do these in, you know, people have asked me to do interviews, and in the back of his mind, he's thinking an interview is three hours long. When? When really the publicist saying, No, I want you to do like, 420 minute interviews? Yeah,
it's like, that is what the publicist wanted. But I said, I go, Hey, you need to go. And he goes, No, we keep going. I was like, well, then I'm just going to keep asking questions. Yeah, that's fine. So, yeah, I mean, Axl Rose, like, I feel like, if I did it, I would want it to be a three hour interview, because I want to get there's so much to cover. There's so many things from the beginning of the the early days to the, yeah, use your illusions, to the Chinese Democracy to now, and just all
this stuff that's so fat. Like,
the thing is, Chuck, the reason I went on that big rant is because in the back of my mind, I can remember seeing some older axle interviews, and they are great. He is that, oh yeah, he's a Jew who will just, who will just give himself to the interview, right? So, so he is that guy where part of the reason he probably doesn't do a lot of interviews is he's probably gotten into a lot of trouble by doing the few that he has Tracy
guns. I can't remember if he said it in my interview or another one I listened to, but he was saying part of the reason that he left Guns and Roses at the time is because Axel would get up there and he wouldn't even say Tracy's like, I just want to play music. And Axel get up there and do these rants for like an hour. He would just rant about different things in the end, like, but people loved it. It was really fascinating, because he's a fascinating guy. Yeah,
and Chuck. The other thing I noticed by seeing prince on Oprah. I think it was, did Prince do an interview on Oprah? I think prince went on Oprah.
I don't know if it might be on YouTube, if it happened. Anyway,
I realized that Prince doesn't do a lot of interviews because he's stupid. He had nothing to say. He's a terrible interview. So he probably realized that early on and said, I, I, and he's a genius too. He's a musical genius, musical, yeah, but I think he realized early on is, like, I have nothing to say about any of this stuff. So, so it's like, probably even his management everybody said, you know, Prince, don't do talking, because you don't do it very well. That
would be interesting to interview another one that would have, like, almost be up there as high as Axel would be Izzy. And I don't know if he would be a good interview or not, because I think he's a brilliant songwriter, but Kenny, Kenny, verbalize that in an interview. Could he explain how he wrote these songs and or would it be like a prince thing?
Yeah, I can't remember, off the top my head, yeah, there's, there's a few like that Prince one, where you go, yeah, I can see why you don't do a lot of interviews.
Who's the best person that you've personally interviewed?
Oh god. I always liked talking to Bill Ward. I always liked talking to Zach Wilde, especially when he was drinking and we were on the bus. That was always hilarious, because he could do, he could do Bill Ward and, well, he could definitely do Aussie, Aussie impressions. That was always good. You know, oddly enough, Ted Nugent is an amazing interview.
He's, I've had him on twice. That guy's, he's, so you. Easy. You just, yeah,
yeah. After a while though, you get his greatest hits, and you gotta, you gotta, like, steer him away from the Greatest Hits kind of thing, right? But
yeah, there's a lot of good ever interviewed a Dee Snider. He's another one who's, oh yeah, yeah, he's great.
Bruce Dickinson is great. I just had a big fat new Iron Maiden book just come out on my birthday, actually, two weeks ago, 666, pages, Hallowed by their name, the unofficial Iron Maiden Bible and and I have fond memories of interviewing Bruce. He's always very intelligent. Has good stuff to say. You know, big musicologist. He can talk about the influences on everything and all that, and put things in
context. So, yeah, there's, there's, I mean, most of the time they're, they're pretty good, yeah, but you do get, you do get some, you know, inarticulate ones that you think haven't, haven't really told you much,
and so you're not much of a hair metal fan. Then, oh,
I'm, oh yeah, absolutely, I'm a fan of all that stuff. You know, people sometimes think that because, because there's also a hot debate, like, people don't like calling it Hair Metal, right? I have no problem with that term. But, yeah, no, I from the very moment it came out in 1983 with rat and great white and Motley Crue second album, and whatever you want to call it, docking at the beginning, quiet ride at the beginning, Twisted Sister,
right? All the way through, I had most of those albums, and I liked most of those albums like anybody else, the poppier it was or the more repetitive or or redundant to things that came before. Sure, I was just like the critics, not, not a big fan of for some reason, I always hated every single thing Bon Jovi ever did. That's one band I just never, never could get into for a moment and then, and then,
oddly enough, poison. I became a massive poison fan, starting kind of in the 90s, when I started interviewing them and liking them and, you know, understanding what they were doing and their newer music and stuff. So I was never a big poison fan of their actual big albums. It's just kind of later on, but, but I loved, oh man. I loved Skid Row and extreme and, like I say, Love Hey, I love slaughter. I love kick Tracy, that whole screechy Dana strum sound. I love that as well.
Loved Guns and Roses, of course, great white. Great White went downhill for me a little bit. I mean it. I love the EP in the first album. And then it kind of went downhill a little bit because it got a little too, too smooth sounding and not, not very heavy. But you know, as a fan of that, all through that thing, plus all traditional heavy metal through the 80s, thrash through the 80s, when grunge picked up, I loved grunge. I loved alternative, hard stuff. All through the 80s.
Did you ever get to interview like any of those grunge bands, like Allison chains or nirvana or,
Yep, yeah, let's see. Dave Grohl, Lane. Staley, I'm not lane. Staley, Jerry Cantrell, Sean, Kenny, Mark, arm stone Gossard, who else from that scene? Buzz from Melvin the Melvins, I guess, not really too many of them. If I, if I thought about, there'd be, there'd be a few more, and then, and then repeat it. Let you know, Jerry Cantrell two or three times, and Sean a couple times. What
about Nikki six from Motley Crue? That's another one bucket list for me.
Yeah, I interviewed him a bunch of times as well, on the phone, in person, met those guys, been backstage with Vince, on the bus with them. Hang on. I know I didn't get on the bus with them. I was backstage with them, also at the record company with them. Yeah, they're all They're all good interviews. Nikki knows his music really well. He's a very personal guy, personable guy. I think out of those four guys, my favorite interviews would be Nikki and Tommy. Tommy's also a
really Tommy's. Tommy's a smart guy. He's a he's a good dude. Yeah, Vince doesn't have particularly much to say. Nick's pretty good too. Yeah, Vince. Vince, I suppose, is not that, you know, insightful on on, I don't know, I sometimes it just feels like maybe he doesn't want to be there. It felt like that at times. But when did
you when were you backstage, like back in the heyday when it was crazy, or more like when recently
with Motley I remember one place being the our big shed in Toronto, Molson amphitheater. So that would have been, what years now, 2025 that would have been maybe 2000 2005 something like that.
Okay, yeah, they kind of cleaned up a little bit by then. Yeah, Nikki, at least, and not so much. Vincent Tommy, yeah, yeah, that's what's it another thing I find interesting that doing a lot of these interviews, like, it's a lot of the same story, like, the band works really hard, they get big, and then there's a drug problem, the band breaks up, then they get sober, and then the band get back, gets back together. I feel like that's like a lot of. Stories, it sounds like to me, yeah,
yeah. And, like I say that go to Vancouver and try harder. Which, which, you know, you reminded me of that, because a lot of that has the we got sober and and made this really good quality album, right? So, yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I think it'd be really cool to just do a hair metal book that just looks at, looks at the years after Nirvana, that that would be kind of pretty interesting, because I agree with you. I think, I think all the albums got better in 9293
Yeah, a lot of them have kind of a cult following, like I thought, because I grew up in Seattle in the 90s, and I was really, I was into grunge, but I was really into Hair Metal and Guns and Roses and Motley Crue and warrant. And I thought, like, dog eat dog and poisons native tongue. I thought those albums were so great. And I was like, I feel so, like, alone because all my friends are listening to Allison chains dirt
and all that stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, I like that stuff too, but like, what about this album? Like, it's like, you it was, like, embarrassing to tell people you liked it.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I, I was living in Vancouver in 8889 and getting all that grunge stuff, all the original EPs and everything at Zulu records there, and I was just blown away by all that music. It just did everything for me that I I never really thought I didn't really recognize was lacking in, in the hair metal stuff that I liked. But it just, it just checked off a whole bunch of other boxes. It just, it just felt way more dangerous, like you just didn't know what was going to happen
next, like sound garden. It'll be a froggy song, a doomy song, a bluesy song, a short song, a long song. It's anything could happen with that music. And that's, that's what I loved about it and it and, and, yeah, it felt heavier. It felt heavier than all the hair metal stuff. It just something about injecting that, that sabbathy vibe, or they were just the murkiness of it meant that, you know, by certain definitions, it was heavier than Hair Metal. No,
absolutely. Yeah. I love it all. Well, the Guns and Roses book. Do we have a date as to when that is that it's not out yet, right? When does it come out?
I think it's, you know, it's kind of out right now, as we're speaking. It's, what is it? May 13. It's kind of out by the end of this month, middle of June, kind of thing. I know physical copies exist there in the warehouse, all that sort of stuff. So just like an album, well, no albums have a have a clear release date. I suppose books do too. I think it, I think late June is when it actually says, I think
it's, can people pre order it now? You can
get it on Amazon. And my site, I've got, I've got all my, you know, description of it, and PayPal buttons. And anytime anybody gets them from me, I sign them and send them out. So yeah, mail order is a big part of my business. So yeah, you can order it now. And yeah, what? Soon as it comes in, it'll let it'll head out the door,
and then your podcast is on YouTube, and people can follow you. I think you're on Instagram, right?
No, I'm not on Instagram, but we do have a very prolific YouTube channel called the contrarians. But my podcast is an audio only podcast, and it's called history and five songs with Martin pop off. I've done like 308 episodes of that. The website is Martin pop off.com. Like all the books in print, full descriptions, PayPal buttons there for us, international Canada. Out of the 130 books, there's probably 100 that are in print. So they're they're all available. Yeah,
that's about it. I do an AC DC podcast with John Gaffney called kicked in the teeth and AC DC Podcast. I'm on Brian slagles podcast as well, every time, with a little little clip in there about these songs. He does 100 most important songs, heavy metal. So, yeah, yeah, awesome.
Well, thank you so much for doing this great conversation, and I'll get this episode out soon. All right.
Chuck, very cool. Nice. Nice chatting with you. Nice chatting
with you. Bye, bye, every stop. Pick one of a kind, from
the rockets to the wise men. You