From the beginning of their career, the success and popularity of Guns N' Roses has always been challenged by the scrutiny stemming from the press. Fighting back against this persecution, they released the controversial song 'Get in the Ring' (from the Use Your Ilusion II album)ⁱ which attacked the press and particular figures in the press who supposedly printed falsehoods concerning Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses. My belief behind this incident is that the press are able to use their power to devise and circulate lies about a particular group or figure whom they want to antagonize. I intend to demonstrate this conflict between Guns N' Roses and the press through a brawl that took place on live television between Axl Rose and Spin magazine ex-editor/publisher Bob Guccione Junior (who was specifically named in 'Get in the Ring'). I shall portray this conflict from the point of view of Guns N' Roses in order for my audience to realise that the press can be corrupt and to feel that Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses have been intentionally victimised.
       The only response to 'Get in the Ring' came from Guccione Jnr., who announced to Rose, via the press, that he would be more than obliged to "get in the ring" with him: 'I take the fact that there has been absolutely no response from you to indicate how busy you must be, I mean, what with cancelling concerts, starting riots... So as soon as you're ready, I am too. Perhaps until then you shouldn't sing that song. At least not too loudly, eh?'ⁱⁱ What I found unavailing about Guccione's rebuttal was that he didn't address the core accusation that he had printed lies about Guns N' Roses.
       AJ Rosner, who runs the Guns N' Roses 'Uzi Suicide' homepageⁱⁱⁱ explained that Spin was also mentioned in 'Get in the Ring' because it had printed a full article on the future of Guns N' Roses (date unknown) which was based on a very short conversation that writer Danny Sugerman had had with a very drunk Axl Rose in a bar one night. Rose (indirectly) responded to this in an interview in Rolling Stone, admitting that 'things are always going to get changed or taken out of context, but some magazines will make up an interview just to sell issues. One's written that Slash said I run over dogs.' ^iv
       Further research and an interview with several fans revealed that this conflict extended back to 1990 when the band, sick of being harrassed by the press, proposed a contract which gave them the 'right of final approval over everything that was written by anyone who signed it.'^v In June 1991, Spin printed a copy of the contract, sparking hostility between Rose and Guccione Jnr. In questioning the trustworthiness of Guns N' Roses, I took into account that they are a band who founded their music on integrity and who aren't ashamed of their often indecent behaviour, so I couldn't find any reason why they would choose to use this power over the press to glorify themselves.
       Although Guns N' Roses expressed a general dislike towards the press, they were much more explanatory about their views. Rose, for example, states in an interview in RIP magazine: '... you end up with [journalists] looking at your life not through a telescope, but a kaleidoscope. Everything's in pieces and distorted. I understand that everybody wants to print the dirt-that sells magazines-but you should first try to find out if that dirt is true.'^vi
       What I found interesting was that there were journalists who recognised the contaminated attitude towards Guns N' Roses embodied in other members of the press. Lonn M. Friend, for instance, writes in RIP: 'Along with the success has come the scrutiny of an often jealous and bitter press, which has gone out of its way to exploit the GN'R phenomena ... prostituting the band year after year with rampant rumour-mongering [and] blatant falsehoods ... until there wasn't a legitimate drop left.'^vii Rose relates a specific example of this in an interview in Kerrang! magazine: 'Like [Mick] Jagger was supposed to have told me off [according to the press] and the next thing you know I'm singing on stage with him. That sure fucked with them a lot.'^viii
       I realised that journalists who didn't lie about the band, criticized them with little or no backing to their claims. An article in TIME magazine based its hostile argument around recontextualising and reducing the lyrics to their literal meaning and designating them as the core of the band's integrity. The article also frivolously compares Rose to the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz and the band to the 'brain-dead metalheads' from the film This is Spinal Tap.^ix In the same sense, an article in the Sydney Morning Herald^x established its cynical viewpoint of the band on inept issues and drawing on trivial points, like how 'Axl Rose' is an anagram of 'oral sex' and implies this is a deliberate manufaction of the singer.
       In searching for visual material, I found that the music clips for 'Don't Cry'^xi , 'You Could Be Mine'^xii and 'Paradise City'^xiii were useful. They portrayed the band in a positive way and emphasized their performance qualities and popularity through concert/crowd footage. The band's short MTV Video Vanguard Award documentary^xiv used some of this footage in an effective way, even though it was centered around interviews with Rose and Slash. The revised music clip for 'Welcome to the Jungle'^xv also used a combination of concert and news footage, alongside many stills which, in my case, I thought would be effective with narrational material.
       I realised that because of the nature of the issue the evidence I had assembled was heavily one-sided; the press is not going to openly admit that they lie. Thus, the only indication we have of this is from the word of Guns N' Roses and their advocates in the press and the material supported this avidly. I did discover, however, that the press' perspective is not as contrived as I anticipated. Rather, it stemmed from a combination of the unfavourable approach to heavy-metal/rock music, the role of the press to reflect the views of the general public and the fact that Guns N' Roses is a band whose music and image is proudly built on negativity, as their famed dictum from 'Get in the Ring' shows:

            You may not like our integrity
            We built a world out of anarchy.

       Academic material revealed that the attitude of the press has always been negative towards rock/heavy-metal music. Robert Walser in Running with the Devil says of heavy metal music and the press: 'The enthusiasm of metal fan magazines is paralleled by the hysterical denunciation of the mainstream press and smug dismissals of most rock journalism.'^xvi Likewise, John Hartley in Popular Reality^xvii and Michael Parenti in Inventing Reality both acknowledge that the press can be corrupt, with Parenti writing: 'Like any liar the press is filled with contradictions... the absence of supporting evidence, the failure to amplify and explain.'^xviii
       Yet although all this may be an explanation for why so much bullshit exists about Guns N' Roses on behalf of the press, it is not an effective defense or justification of their corruption. Press are able to use their power to lie about somebody they wish to antagonize and the evidence clearly shows that this was the case concerning Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses.