Guns N' Roses Chronicles Part VI: That Time I Won a Contest to See GN'R at Castle Donington in England

Naivety can be a beautiful benefit of youth. When we’re young, we may have some sense that the odds are stacked against us. However, inexperience in the “real world” can also manifest in a youthful optimism that can never be matched later in life. Last year, at the height of the pandemic and the lead up to the presidential election, one of the members of my Girl Scout Troop thought it would be a great idea to invite Kamala Harris to Zoom in with us as we were working on the Inside Democracy badge. I let her down gently, reminding her that Harris might be too tied up with the election to attend our meeting. This reminded me of the time I called KNAC radio and asking for advice on getting Axl Rose to come to my school for an ASB election rally. I couldn’t understand why the person on the other end of the call seemed so amused.

Mainly, my naïve optimism came in the form of contests sponsored by MTV or radio stations. The first would have been 1985’s win a Halloween Party with Mötley Crüe. I think I waited until the last minute to enter that one and didn’t have high hopes about winning. Two years later however, I was admittedly disappointed when my name was not announced as the winner of the Mötley Crüise to Nowhere. I filled out over one hundred postcards for the MTV Hedonism Weekend in Jamaica with Bon Jovi and couldn’t wrap my head around how my name wasn’t pulled. Yet, none of it discouraged me.

Back in the late 1980s, I religiously listened to a syndicated radio show called Metal Shop that ran on Sunday nights. When they announced a contest to go to the 1988 Castle Donington Monsters of Rock Festival, I didn’t think twice about entering. The legendary music festival was held in annually in an English town a hundred or so miles north of London, and I had first become aware of it 1984 when Mötley Crüe was on the bill. When I found out Guns N’ Roses was in the 1988 line-up (along with Helloween, David Lee Roth, Megadeth, KISS, and Iron Maiden), entering the Metal Shop contest was a no-brainer.

True to my age, I figured my odds were pretty good. Sure, Metal Shop was broadcast around the country, but it certainly had a smaller audience than the behemoth that was MTV. Okay, the Bon Jovi Jamaica let-down had left me jaded enough to be unconvinced I would win the grand prize; an all-expense paid trip to London, along with tickets and transportation to the festival, and a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans (they were one of the contest sponsors).  However, this venture had a second-place prize: headliner Iron Maiden’s entire catalog in CD, a major luxury item at the time. Plus, there were twenty-five third places: an Iron Maiden Seventh Son of a Seventh Son cassette tape which I considered a handsome prize. I could practically hear the sweet drones of “Only the Good Die Young” coming from my Walkman as I filled out the entry form.

I was especially optimistic because a requirement of the contest was to explain (on a postcard), why I should be chosen. “I deserve to go the Monsters of Rock Festival because I want to show those Brits how to party Los Angeles-American style,” was the sheer poetry I crafted for my entry.  The previous December I had taken a trip to Disneyland with the Sandburg Middle School 8th Grade Honor Society. On our way out, my best friend Nova purchased a bunch of postcards to send out to, well I have no idea who she was planning on mailing them to, but it seemed like a nice idea. On the bus ride home, I admired her stash of postcards and she generously handed me one showing Mickey and Minnie sitting in a Tin Lizzy in front of Disneyland City Hall. Months later, I still had the card and deemed it the perfect (i.e. most convenient) option for the folks over at Metal Shop. I was so confident about my chances that not only was it was my lone entry, but I passed on entering MTV’s Iron Maiden/Donington Contest altogether.

 There was one catch to it all – the winner had to be at least 18 years old, and I was only 14. This age restriction had in fact been a barrier to every one of these contests, so I entered my mom in all of them until my brother was old enough to claim the prize. And so, it was his name that went onto the Disneyland postcard. When he noticed the card sticking out of the mail slot in the front door, awaiting pickup, he read it and had a conniption. “YOU’RE NOT MAILING OUT THIS STUPID SHIT WITH MY NAME ON IT!” he roared as he stomped into my bedroom waving Mickey and Minnie around. “But it’s to win a trip to see GN’R at Donington,” came my innocent reply. He paused for a beat, shrugged his shoulders, and calmly replied, “Oh, okay,” before placing the postcard back in the slot.

 A couple of weeks later, we were both at my dad’s house in Yorba Linda. When the phone rang. He answered, and I could immediately tell it was my mom (she talks loud). Later, he would convey her side of the conversation which went something like:

 “Did your sister enter you in one of those contests to go to England?”

 “Yes.”

 “Well, I just got a phone call – and you won.”

 All I heard was his side which went, “Oh my God, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”

 I raced across the kitchen to him, convinced someone had died.

 “What is it?” I pleaded.

 He put down the phone on the counter, Mom still on the line, and shrieked, “WE WON!!”

 We hugged. We NEVER hug, but we did on that balmy August day in Yorba Linda. We jumped up and down. We wooped and hee-hawed. It was exhilarating. But after that initial rush, something dawned on me.

 I probably wasn’t going.

 The promotors of the contest were not thrilled to hear a 14-year-old had entered her big brother. As it was, everything was very last minute, so my brother spent a couple of days down at the Federal Building in Westwood getting an expedited passport. And while I technically could have gone, the folks at Metal Shop discouraged it. Besides, there was no way my mom and stepdad were going to let me go to another continent with my brother who wasn’t exactly a pillar of responsibility.

 All I wanted was a cassette tape, and instead got a trip to England. However, I did call dibs on the pair of Levi’s 501 jeans.

 My brother ended up taking his best friend Paul to Donington, and while I won’t go into too many details about grand prize trip, it was about as fabulous as you can imagine. They were in the crowd during GN’R’s set, which was filmed and included in the “Paradise City” video. The band’s appearance at Donington should have been a triumph but was marred when two fans were crushed to death during their set. My brother was far enough back to not even be aware of what was taking place. It had only been two years since he first saw them at the L.A. Street scene and had declared “they were going nowhere.”

 As it turned out, the winner of the MTV contest wasn’t much of an Iron Maiden fan, but my brother and Paul were, so the band’s publicist took a shine to them. She let them go onstage with the MTV winners to sing backup on “Heaven Can Wait,” and showed them around backstage. Somewhere, I still have a drunken Lars Ulrich signature they got which is barely legible and has “Fucked Up” written underneath it in parenthesis.

 After GN’R’s set my brother saw Slash backstage, but the guitarist so quickly became besieged by people that an autograph was not obtained. The day of the concert, I had hung up a blacklight poster of the cross from the cover of Appetite and remember staring at it as my brother relayed over the phone that he was not able to get Slash’s signature or photo. For some reason, as a stared at a blacklight version of Slash’s skull, that struck me as especially tragic.

 It was a quick trip. My brother and his friend were in England only three or four nights and then came back. I think he must have felt a little bad that he’d gone on this glorious adventure without me. He brought back a program, t-shirt, and bottle of “Eddie’s Evil Brew” (cheap wine with the label replaced) from the show, along with a Mötley Crüe demo bootleg and some photos of Marilyn Monroe, which helped dull some of my disappointment. However, when it came to his kid sister, his generosity certainly had bounds. Less than a month after Donington, GN’R was scheduled to come to town with Aerosmith. When I asked if we would take me, the reply was, “Why would I want to go see Guns N’ Roses in concert? I just saw them.”

 Whether he liked it or not, he had enjoyed a once in a lifetime experience because of me, and everyone in our orbit was quick to remind him. “You should be really nice to your sister from now on because she got you that trip to England!” Being indebted to me was more than he could bear. A couple of weeks later, a local indie record store got in a copy of Mötley Crüe’s “Too Fast for Love” on their Leathür Records label which they had pressed before they signed with Electra. I’d pined for a copy for years, but now that it was in my grasp, the $125 price tag was too much. My brother was 19 and had a job, so he bought it for me. I told him I didn’t want it if he was going to hold it over my head that he had purchased it. “It’s yours, no strings attached, if you never mention Castle Fucking Donington again.” I never did.

 As it turned out, my lone entry was randomly pulled from the piles of postcards Metal Shop received. What I wrote on the entry didn’t matter, so it wasn’t my brilliant writing that prevailed, but sheer luck of the draw. Yeah, it was a huge drag that I did not get to go, and I often feel like my brother was the least deserving person in my life to get to do something like this. Did I really think I would get to go if he won? Maybe. But again, naivety is a benefit, or sometimes a curse, of youth. If nothing else, I guess it was nice to have a direct tie to GN’R at Donington and it still makes for a good story at parties.

 The next time I went to Disneyland, I bought a stack of those postcards and used them to enter all kinds of contests. I never won anything again and eventually became jaded enough to stop trying. I’d already won my prize.

 As a postscript, I’m still waiting for my grand prize pair of jeans. What’s up with that Levi’s?

Guns N' Roses Chronicles Part V: They're Really That Good

I can’t claim to remember the first time I listened to Appetite for Destruction, because it took me at least a month to get through the whole album. It’s not because I didn’t like it, mind you. Quite the opposite in fact. I loved every song so much that I would listen to each track over and over before moving onto the next one. It didn’t matter that I was borrowing my brother’s copy temporarily. I just couldn’t bring myself to rush through Appetite.

 This was the era of the cassette tape, and rewinding/forwarding to specific songs was kind of a pain, so with Appetite I chose to just rewind each song over and over to fully absorb every note. Each song blew me away more than the next and when I finally got to “Paradise City,” they were well on their way to becoming my all time favorite band. Eventually, I became acquainted enough with the “Guns” side of the record to move on and flip the cassette, though I got stuck on “My Michelle” which I spent days listening to again and again.

 Finally, I got to “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

 Over the years, certain songs have impacted me enough that I can remember how I felt when I first heard them, even if I don’t remember exactly when/where I was at the time. With “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” I remember it all. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was in my bedroom, tidying up. Appetite was playing and I was so absorbed in my task that I decided to just let the record play past “My Michelle.” I dug “Think About You,” but wasn’t balled over enough to hit rewind. And then…

 That opening riff of “Sweet Child” ran up my spine like an ice pick. I was frozen in place as I stared at my stereo, completely in shock by what I was hearing. By the time the first verse started, I had dropped to my knees and laid my head on the bed. I silently listened, thinking it was the most achingly beautiful song I had ever heard. It seemed to go on forever, which was fine with me. When the song ended, it was decided. Guns N’ Roses was and would forever be my favorite band.

 Needless to say, I listened to “Sweet Child” non-stop after that, never moving past it before my brother asked for his cassette back. At the time, he was living with our dad in Orange County and I was in the San Gabriel Valley with Mom, so on weekends he would come and pick me up and we would listen to Appetite during the long drives. It was on the 57 Freeway, in between Diamond Bar and Brea that I would first hear “Rocket Queen” and was stunned that there could be a song almost as memorable as “Sweet Child.”

A year later, Guns N’ Roses would be one of the biggest bands in the world, but in August of 1987, they were my band. I don’t know exactly why their music resonated so deeply. As a kid I the suburbs, I couldn’t exactly relate to the lyrics which largely focused on the drug infested Hollywood “jungle” (it was irritating how much I could related to the lyrics of the Smiths, my best friend’s favorite band). After four years of obsessing over Mötley Crüe, GN’R’s bad boy image was tiring. When they appeared on the Headbanger’s Ball in late 1987 and trashed the set at the prompting of the VJ (was his name Smash?), I rolled my eyes. Ultimately, the music was just that good. Also, it was pretty cool to be the only kid at Sandburg Middle School who knew who Guns N’ Roses was.

 For the next four years, Appetite for Destruction would be my rock. As I endured he hell of being a teenager in an unstable household, I would constantly turn to Appetite for solace and listened to it every single day until the Illusions were released. When I was fifteen and had to be rushed into the operating room for an emergency appendectomy, the last words I said to my Mom were, “Don’t forget to pack my Walkman and Appetite.” Later on when I lay in the hospital for two days, alone and homesick as hell, wanting to cry my eyes out, it was Appetite that calmed me down. As my relationship with my stepdad deteriorated beyond repair and sent me on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Appetite would stop me from going completely crazy.

 At one point, I played Appetite for my mom for no other reason than I figured she would hate it and I thought it would be hilarious. After the album ended she paused for a few moments and then said, “What’s that singer’s name?”

 “W. Axl Rose.”

 “I don’t know about that name, but at least he can sing on key. They’re good.  If they can stay off the drugs they could actually be really big.”

 What? This was coming from the same woman we had been able to easily torture with Mötley Crüe and Metallica? While no self respecting 13-year-old actually wants their parents to like their music, my mother is actually a talented musician, so deep down I really did respect her opinion. I fact, I remember beaming with pride at her comments. It wasn’t just me, Guns N’ Roses were really that good.  

Guns N' Roses Chronicles Part IV "It Might Be the Best Record I've Ever Heard"

By the mid-summer 1987, I had heard “Mr. Brownstone” and “Welcome to the Jungle” on KNAC enough times to know I really wanted Guns N’ Roses’ full album. This was no small decision. I was 13, could wrangle the occasional babysitting gig for extra cash and tried to make Christmas money stretch out as long as possible. Occasionally, I could catch my stepdad in a good mood and he would let me pick up a cassette at our local Music Plus or Tower Records, but his good moods and generosity were unpredictable. In short, albums were a major purchase in my young life.

When I finally decided to take the plunge with Guns N’ Roses, I was irritated that their debut album hadn’t even hit the stores yet. I was finally tipped off to the release of Appetite for Destruction when the Sunday “Pop Eye” column in the Los Angeles Times ran a piece about the album cover being banned because of a controversial painting that was used.

I had to get this album.

When it finally came out, I couldn’t find it anywhere. Stores near me in the San Gabriel Valley were sold out, along with stores in Orange County where my dad lived. I was impressed that this band was so instantly big that record stores couldn’t keep their album on the shelf (it would take a while for me to realize that most stores only ordered a coupe of copies or didn’t bother to stock it at all). At that point, whatever money I had burned a hole in my pocket and was spent. Guns N’ Roses would have to wait.

Earlier that year, my brother’s contentious relationship with our stepfather had reached a tipping point and he moved out. He had finished up his senior year of high school while living at our grandparent’s house in the next town over. After that, he headed to Yorba Linda to live with our dad and stepmom. It sometimes feels like the term love/hate relationship was invented for my brother and me. We’ve had knock down drag out fights over the year, often peppered with periods of deliberate silence. But we also had the shared history of enduring our parents’ divorce and our mother’s remarriage which turned our lives upside down in the worst way.

We also shared a love of Star Wars and music, so when Cory finally got his hands on a copy of Appetite for Destruction sometime in late August/early September of 1987, he called me immediately.

“I finally found a copy of that Guns N’ Roses album.”

“And?”

“Oh my God. It might be the most amazing record I’ve ever heard. They cuss so much! I think Jungle and Brownstone might be the only songs that can be played on the radio!”

I still couldn’t find a copy and didn’t have money anyway, so I needed to rely on the generosity of my big brother, which was never a sure thing. Fortunately, he had just started his first job as a bus boy at Marie Callender’s, but had quickly been promoted to line cook and was working crazy hours and picking up every shift offered to him. He was so busy that the next time I saw him, he let me borrow his copy of Appetite for Destruction to take home with me. Finally, I was going to hear what Guns N’ Roses was all about.

My life would never be the same.

GN'R Chronicles Part III "Welcome to the Jungle"...It's OK.

“Mr. Brownstone” is the first Guns N’ Roses song I ever remember hearing, though I didn’t know it was them. It was the summer of 1987, and Appetite for Destruction had not been released, but KNAC had a couple of songs that they played on a constant rotation. For those of you unfamiliar, KNAC on 105.5FM out of Long Beach fulfilled the radio dreams of local rockers and was the only station playing Metallica, which once upon a time were one of the least airwave friendly bands.  

That summer, I was looking for a knew #1 band to pledge my allegiance to. I had been fairly obsessed with Motely Crue for the previous four years, but my devotion had waned after the lackluster Theatre of Pain was released in 1985. While Girls, Girls, Girls was certainly an improvement, it hadn’t completely won me back. I needed a new band.

I had in fact been on the lookout during the preceding months, even launching into a brief but intense infatuation with Bon Jovi, something my mom still gives me crap about. At one point, my brother Cory proclaimed that I was on the verge of becoming completely, hopelessly, and obsessively devoted to a band other than Motley, and it would be…Dokken. Well, he got one part right.

I can recall hearing “Mr. Brownstone” enough times that I really started to dig it, even though I didn’t know who the band was. At some point, the radio station also started playing “Welcome to the Jungle.” The first time I heard it, I did catch the introduction identifying the next song as being from that shitty band Cory had seen at the L.A. Street Scene the prior year. I was actually surprised they were still around and had a record label. I was also curious to finally hear them. I settled in and listened to “Welcome to the Jungle” for the first time…it was ok.

At some point that summer, Cory and I were in the car and “Jungle” came on. I had heard it many more times and the song had really started to grow on me, though I was still undecided about the screamy-mimi singer.

“Did you know this is that crummy band you saw at the Street Scene?” I said to my brother.

“Yeah! That Mr. Brownstone song is also them.”

“No it’s not”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It IS.”

“Really? Then they have different guys in the band singing? Kind of like Kiss?”

“Same guy.”

“No it’s not.”

“YES IT IS. I think those are the two songs I saw them play.”

For some reason, I could not wrap my head around that array of vocals coming from one human being, However, there was no Googling in those days to verify such things. The album wasn’t out to closely scrutinize the songs. I just needed to take my brother’s word for it and wait until KNAC got around to playing the song again. The one thing I could confirm is that I was rapidly becoming mesmerized by Guns N’ Roses.

I had found my band.

GN'R Chronicles Part II - On the Cover of the Hit Parader

At long last, the second musing about the mighty GN'FN'R as experienced by a teenaged girl in suburbia. 

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My initial encounter with Guns N’ Roses had been through my brother’s first-hand account of bearing witness to their disastrously abbreviated set at the 1986 Los Angeles Street Scene. The next time I met them would be up close and personal – via a magazine rack at the Thrifty Drug Store in Azusa.

Like any good rocker kid in the 1980s, I maintained a large stack of music magazines; Circus, Cream, Hit Parader, Metal Edge, Faces, Kerrang (if someone took me to an import record store), and of course the gold standard of all metal magazines – RIP.   In the pre-Internet world, these rags were a lifeline between fans and their rock gods. How else could I have possibly known that Nikki Sixx’s favorite movie was The Godfather, or that Mick Mars had a penchant for red wine? (I may or may not be remembering that last one accurately). I needed to maintain my reputation as Sandburg Middle School’s resident rocker chick, and in a world without official websites, fan websites, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., etc, etc., memorizing the content of these magazines was a necessity.

It was probably February or March of 1987 when my mom and I were at a Thrifty Drug store (my mom worked for the company, so we frequently shopped there for the employee discount and 5 cent scoops of ice cream). While she engaged in the latest company gossip, I sauntered up to the racks, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nikki Sixx. Instead, the cover of the new issue of Hit Parader caught my eye for a very different reason.

THE NEW METAL EXPLOSION was the headline that screamed out at me in black and hot pink. Below that, the cover was divided to feature the four bands leading this new metal explosion; Megadeth (hell yeah!), Cinderella (um, ok), (Stryper (huh?), and…

Guns N’ Roses (what the hell??)

I guess could buy into Megadeth and Cinderella being a part of this “explosion.” True, they couldn’t have been more different, but they were each decent enough andI did own albums (cassettes actually) by both of them. Stryper, the self proclaimed Christian rock band weren’t highly regarded in my limited circles, but hey, at least they had a record deal. But Guns N’ Roses? If my brother had not derided them a few months earlier, I would have been even more confused.

I peered at the cover, mystified by the inclusion of this band whom my brother said had sucked to high heaven. It wasn’t difficult to spot the lead singer with the teased hair who was the biggest asshole my brother had ever seen (his words). And right there before me was the dick guitarist with the T Rex hat (again, his words).  I was not impressed, though I did still get my mom to buy it for me.

At home, I read the one-page article on Guns N’ Roses which, as a recall 30 years later, was the typical sex, drugs, and destruction blathering. I was 13, jaded, and at that point had read enough Motley Crue interviews to be completely bored with such nonsense. Even though I had not heard their music, I was starting think that my brother’s assessment this had not been too far off. As I closed the magazine and threw it on the top of the pile, I remember looking at the photo of sneering young men and thinking to myself, “What a bunch of dorks.”

Within mere months, my entire universe would revolve around them.

GN'R Chronicles Part I - "Guns N' Roses - They're Going Nowhere"

After having spent the past week attending multiple Guns N' Roses concerts, something I never thought I'd do again, it got me thinking about my own history with the band. Appetite for Destruction came out when I was 13, so the entirety of my teenaged years were spent completely fixated on GN'R. I got to thinking how different it was to be a fan of a rock band in the pre-Internet age. 

Here's the first of what may be many musings about the mighty GN'FN'R as experienced by a teenaged girl in suburbia. 

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When my older brother Cory told me he was going to “borrow” Mom’s 1978 Toyota Rabbit to get to a concert on a street corner in Downtown Los Angeles, I figured there was a 50-50 chance of ever seeing him again.

Even though I had grown up roughly 22 miles east in the lazy suburb of Glendora, my knowledge of Downtown was pretty much limited to The Omega Man, and the existence of a Thrifty Drug Store at the Greyhound Bus Station. Sometimes, my middle-management mother would be scheduled to work graveyard there whenever she pissed off members of the upper-management boys’ club. On those nights, my stepdad would personally drive her to the entrance where she would pay off the gruff homeless regulars out front to ensure no one fucked with her.

Therefore, to my twelve-year-old mind, driving Downtown was my brother’s proclamation that he had a death wish. To him, my parents going on yet another getaway without us and leaving the car keys in plain site was practically an invitation to attend the L.A. Street Scene.

The Street Scene was an annual weekend festival of food and music with local bands performing on stages set up near the Civic Center. That year, Poison was going to be performing which was a big deal because they had a record deal and had even released an album. In 1986, the was an impressive feat. If my brother survived the enigmatic black hole of Downtown Los Angeles, he’d probably come home with a good report.

Cory is 5 years older than me, and as much as I hate to give him credit for shaping me in any way, shape, or form, I can’t deny that my teenaged love of metal was because of him. Mom was never particularly thrilled with my love of misogynistic cock rock, but she rolled with it, and usually rolled her eyes when I subjected her to the sweet sounds of Motley Crue or Metallica. However, she drew the line at my attending concerts until I was 13, so I was forced to vicariously experience the joy of live shows through my brother. I’m sure there was a part of him that genuinely enjoyed sharing these experiences with his kid sister, who was stuck at home. At the same time, I also think he loved throwing it in my face, which is why his retellings of concerts would be so detailed. So goes the complicated relationships of siblings.

The weekend of the 1986 Street Scene, I was in Lancaster at the home of a friend’s dad. When I returned that Sunday, I found my brother alive and well and settled in for what I was sure would be a blow-by-blow recap of Poison’s set. Eventually, he would indeed recount how Poison was one of the most entertaining live bands he had ever seen (no joke). It would take him years to admit that when rioting occurred later that night, which would cause Mayor Tom Bradley to abolish the annual festival, he honestly feared for his life. But on that September evening, there was only one band on his mind.

“How was Poison?” I asked.

“They were good.”

He paused.  

“But there was this other band  – Guns and Roses.”

“Guns and Roses? That’s a lame name.”

“Right? Man, they-,” he stopped and strained, looking for the right words to describe what he had witnessed.

“They SUCKED! Worst band I’ve ever seen. By far.”

He then went on to give me the complete lowdown on their set. He described the lead singer with the teased out hair who was the “biggest fag” he’d ever seen (if you’ve ever watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, you already know this was a word teenagers used liberally in the 1980s). The guy was an asshole to boot and kept yelling at the audience. Then there was the guitarist wearing a T-Rex hat who was kicking people in the front row. The crowd wasn’t impressed, and when the singer screeched, “If you keep acting like this, we’re not going to play,” a bottle was thrown from the audience and almost hit him in the head. At that point, this wiry, “butt white” guy with the big hair and tattoos jumped into the audience to enact his revenge on the bottle hurler, only to be thrown back up on stage like a rag doll by security. When their gear started shorting out, either because of rain or beer being poured on it, I don’t remember which, the band had had enough. Before parting, Mr. Butt White Big Hair screamed, “You guys have fucked everything thing up and we’re not going to play for you anymore.” Before departing, he then raised his middle finger at one person in particular and yelled, “And you? Fuck you!”

They had played less than three songs.

Thirty years later, my memory of the details Cory imparted to me are probably only partially accurate, but the next thing he said I remember as if it were yesterday.

“Guns and Roses. They’re going nowhere”

I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard Cory say something with so much conviction.

It struck me as odd that he spent so much time telling me about a band he thought was terrible. Later on, when we both had become full GN’R converts, I brought that up. He replied by musing, “Maybe they were awful, but I must have seen something special in them.” I’m not sure how true that was, but they certainly made an impression on him.

Soon, they would make their impression on me.