Biographic - Sunday January 11, 2009 Comic Strip Licensing and Permissions

Transcript

Axl Rose was born William Bruce Rose, Jr. in Lafayette, Indiana, on February 6, 1962, but raised by his mother and stepfather as William Bailey. A wild teen, he began to play in local bands before following her friend Izzy Stradlin to Los Angeles. He played in a number of bands before forming Guns N' Roses in 1985. He changed his name to W. Axl Rose in 1986. The band's 1987 debut album "Appetite For Destruction" topped the charts worldwide, eventually selling more than 28 million copies. Fueled by the band's hard-living antics, Guns N' Roses was the biggest, baddest band on the planet by the early 1990s. In 1991, Guns N' Roses simultaneously released two albums- "Use Your Illusion I" and "Use Your Illusion 2" and secured the top two slots on thebillboard charts. The band undertook a two-year world tour, but all was not well within the ranks. Drummer Steven Adler had been jettisoned in 199, and Stradlin quit in late 1991, but 1997, guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan had bailed out, leaving Axl as the only member of the original lineup. And then Axl and Guns N' Roses disappeared from the limelight. For more than a decade, Axl Rose was the most famous recluse in rock. He took new lineups of Guns N' Roses out on tour in 2002 and 2006, but no new material was forthcoming. Work on a new album had apparently begun soon after 1993's "The Spaghetti Incident" but a new release was persistently delayed and postponed, until it took on an almost mythical status in rock circles. Finally, in late 2008, Axl unveiled the "Chinese Democracy" album, taking Guns N' Roses back on to the charts.

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