N.I.R. Newsletter #12 - 1999
Welcome to the last issue of the N.I.R. Newsletter of 1999.
This issue is a little bit different, you will find a news
summary of the entire 1999 instead of just the previous
month. I will also write about the major updates I've done
to my site during 1999 instead of the ones during December.
I hope you enjoy reading this newsletter.
Content
1. News Summary
2. Site Updates
3. This Month in GN'R History
4. Good/Bad 1999
5. Wanted
6. Unsubscribe
7. After
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1. News Summary
This year will probably be most remembered for the return
of Axl and the release of "Live Era '87 - '93". But, I will
start from the beginning.
The first news story that appeared on my site in 1999 is
from January 6 and is about the Slamdance film festival
where Duff, Slash and Matt played together. The gig took
place on the 24th.
During January there were rumors about Guns N' Roses
playing at Lollapalooza. When those rumors ended other
started. This time it was about GN'R playing Woodstock in
the summer. As we all know, that didn't happen.
In February the new Snakepit headed out on a mini-tour
consisting of six shows around the California area.
On Febraury 5, the attorney Peter Paterno sued Steven
Adler. It was something that had happened after Adler was
fired from Guns N' Roses.
The trial against Axl was held on February 11 [in case
you didn't know, Axl was arrested in February 1998 when he
attacked someone on a Phoenix airport]. Axl didn't appear
in person. He received a $500 fine and was sentenced to
time served, namely the two to three hours Rose spent in
jail the night he was first picked up.
In the middle of Febraury, an official Duff McKagan site
opened. It started out promising with an online chat with
Duff a month later [march 16]. The chat itself was pretty
much a catastrophy due to the amount of people having
serious problems with themselves... Now the site is pretty
dead except for the message board where... well, I guess I
don't have to say anything about that...
In the beginning of March it got official that Sean
Beaven was the producer of Guns N' Roses new album.
On March 16 Guns N' Roses received the Diamond Award. The
award is given for albums that have sold more than 10
million copies ["Appetite..." have today sold about 15
million copies]. The only one that was there to accept the
award was Steven Adler.
In the end of the month, Duff McKagan's band Loaded did
four shows in Texas and California. Two of the shows were
recorded for a live album that was released through Duff's
official site in the end of May.
Snakepit went out on their second club-tour of the year
on March 20 in Memphis, TN. The tour was finished in
Florida on May 2.
As Duff had said in his online chat, Neurotic Outsiders
returned in April. They were scheduled to play four gigs at
the Viper Room in Los Angeles, CA. Sadly, Duff's mother
passed away so the second gig had to be canceled. Matt
Sorum reunited with The Cult on the shows when Ian Astbury
and Billy Duffy made guest appearances. On the last show a
third guest was brought up onstage. This one a little bit
more surprising... It was Mel C of the Spice Girls.
In their July issue, Spin magazine did a quite large
article on Axl. They had interviewed old band members and
other people. My personal opinion is that the old stuff in
the article was more interesting than the new.
On June 25 and 27 Slash played together with Michael
Jackson on two benefit concerts in Seol, South Korea and
Munich, Germany.
During the summer Matt toured with The Cult. Now it looks
like he's going to stay with them.
The new Guns N' Roses band made their debut in the movie
"Big Daddy" in July. When the credits started, a live
version of "Sweet Child O' Mine" from the Use Your Illusion
tour [same version as on Live Era] started playing. In the
middle it changed to a new version by the new Guns N'
Roses. Most people thought it was cool to hear Axl sing
again, but not too many were satisfied with the new guitar
player, Robin Finck.
Slash probably had a difficult summer. On July 24 he was
arrested and charged with domestic abuse. He had had a
fight with his girlfriend in a hotel room. About a week
later there was a break-in at Slash's house. Several of his
guitars were stolen. The rest of the year was likely better
for him. The recordings and mixing of the new Snakepit
album was finished in November and it looks like it will be
released in February or March.
On August 1 Guns N' Roses' new lead guitarist Robin Finck
left the band for re-joining Nine Inch Nails instead. Still
no replacer has been named.
Duff got married with Susan Holmes on August 28 in
Seattle, WA. It is Duff's third marriage. Let's all hope
that this one lasts.
On September 9, 1999 the 99th news story on my site was put
up. It was about something most of us had been longing for
since "Sympathy For The Devil" was released in 1994. A new
Guns N' Roses song! A short clip of the song "Oh My God"
was played in a commercial for the new Arnold
Schwarzenegger movie "End of Days". It took until early
October before the song was played on American radio.
Five days later a Guns N' Roses tribute album called
"Appetite For Reconstruction" was released. The artists
were quite unknown too the big audience. LA Guns was
probably the most known band.
September 22 saw the second fax sent to MTV by Axl. The
first one was sent on October 30, 1996 when Slash left
GN'R. This time Axl wrote about "Oh My God".
Slash did his third charity concert on October 9 in East
Rutherford, NJ. He performed the song "It's All About The
Benjamins" together with Puff Daddy. The concert was one of
the NetAid concerts [the other two were held in London and
Geneva].
In the middle of October Gilby got an official site. It
had a terrible layout and not much info could be found. I
really hope it gets better.
Throughout the year, all ex-members and Axl worked hard on
the Guns N' Roses live album. It would be released on
November 30.
To promote the album, a re-done version of the old
unreleased "It's So Easy" video was released to MTV in the
end of October. A little later a new "Welcome To The
Jungle" also was released.
The title of the live album was "Live Era '87 - '93". It
was recorded on different places but the booklet said
nothing else than that it was recorded between 1987 and
1993. Some people on the web [including myself] tried to
find out when and where the recordings came from and now
there's only four or five songs missing.
In the beginning of November Guns N' Roses got an
official site. It still doesn't have much except for a
small news section, a message board and some audio & video
clips.
Axl did his first interview in six [??] years on November
8. The interviewer was MTV's Kurt Loder. Axl talked about
the band and the new album that there had been rumors about
throughout the entire year.
On November 18 Slash was presented with an award on the
LA Music Awards. He also played at the awards together with
Paul Rodgers.
Not much happened in December except that Slash said that
the title of the new Snakepit album will be "Ain't Life
Grand".
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2. Site Updates
It's really hard to say what I've updated during 1999
shortly and I don't want the newsletter to be that long so
it will be very brief.
I've changed the layout on all the pages a little
throughout the year. However, in October I decided to do it
properly. I got a friend of mine to design a logo for the
page. Then I changed the look of every page pretty much
completely. Except that the text is still in the middle...
The index page has been redone a few times. If anyone has
suggestions for it, please tell me because I never seem to
be satisfied with it.
I've changed the photo section quite much and added a lot
of photos. I think that my site has the biggest photo
section of all GN'R sites. Right now I have:
89 Slash
87 Axl
63 Photos with more than one GN'R member on
42 Duff
16 Izzy
8 Matt
6 Steven
5 Gilby
4 Dizzy
2 Tommy
1 Josh
Another section that has been growing quite much during the
year is the concert reviews section. This is something I'm
really proud of since there's nothing like this (not that I
have seen anyway). Of course, the section would be nothing
without the help of all you people that have went to
concerts and written down your experience and sent it to
me. Currently, this is the number of concert reviews on my
site:
12 Guns N' Roses
8 Snakepit
7 Gilby solo
6 Duff / Loaded
4 Slash's Blues Ball
4 Neurotic Outsiders
2 Ten Minute Warning
I've changed my tour dates section really much too. Now all
the old dates are in a special "tour archive" that can be
found if you just scroll the main tour dates page. From
this archive there's links to reviews, photos, setlists
etc. from that particular show.
Other than that, the site has kept growing and growing and
today I checked how many pages it consisted of. I hadn't
done this in a couple of months and it was quite a chock
when I saw how many it was now...
602 pages dedicated to Guns N' Roses!
I think it's quite true to say that it's the web's biggest
site about GN'R. Oh, I really, really need to get a search
function somehow...
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3. This Month In GN'R History - January
January 14, 1992 - When Guns play in Dayton, OH, he slices
his hand on his mike stand. This show could continue but
two other shows had to be canceled.
January 18, 1986 - Guns N' Roses play at the Troubadour in
Hollywood, CA, USA. This show was recorded and it is the
first known recording of a GN'R show.
January 20, 1981 - Duff McKagan records his first single
together with his band Veins in Seattle, WA, USA.
January 20 & 23, 1991 - Guns N' Roses do their first shows
in almost a year at the Rock In Rio Festival. Duff:
"Matt and Dizzy had never played with us as a complete
band, because Axl doesn't come to rehearsals. They'd never
seen Axl sing with us. And we didn't even have a set list
for Rio. We have this 'pick list' we like to use. So,
anyway, we tell Matt, three minutes before he goes onstage
in front of 140,000 people, that he's gotta do a drum solo.
And he pulled it off! He rocked! Dizzy, shit, the biggest
crowd he ever played for was about 400, opening up for L.A.
Guns at the Country Club. Let's just say Dizzy had a few
cocktails before we went on, but he pulled it off too.
Right before we went onstage, the whole band - and this
hadn't happened for a long time - got together in one room.
You could just feel the electricity. No matter how many
people were out there, or our families, or the press and
photographers, bla bla bla, what it came down to was, we
were just the same guys that we were five years ago, and
you could feel that in the nervous laughter. It was fucking
amazing."
January 22, 1965 - Steven Adler, drummer in Guns between
1985 and 1990, is born in Cleveland, OH.
January 22, 1990 - At the American Music Awards are Slash
and Duff drunk when they are going to pick up their award
for "Sweet Child O' Mine" ("Favorite Single, Pop/Rock").
They utter four-letter words during their acceptance
speech, which causes scandal in the US.
January 25, 1990 - Axl records a video to the song "Dead,
Jail or Rock N' Roll" together with Mike Monroe.
January 30, 1989 - GN'R performs "Patience" on the American
Music Awards. Don Henley filled in for Steven on drums.
January 30, 1993 - While Guns are in Australia, a meet 'n'
greet has been arranged for 15 handicapped fans.
January 31, 1988 - Guns play at the Limelight in New York
and they did an acoustic set. Afterwards they did an
electric set. In the middle of that left Axl and the band
didn't know what to do, so they played the Led Zeppelin
songs "You Shook Me" (covered by Led Zeppelin, originally
done by Willie Dixon), "Rock And Roll" and "Communication
Breakdown," with a roadie singing.
January 31, 1998 - Slash's Blues Ball did their (so far)
last gig at the Roxy in Hollywood, CA, USA.
January, 1994 - Duff tours in Japan.
January, 1995 - Slash and Eric Dover travels all over the
world to promote Snakepit.
January, 1997 - W. Axl Rose buys the rights to the name
"Guns N' Roses."
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4. Good/Bad 1999
This is a small list of good and bad things during 1999. I
have ranked them and you must understand that the rankings
is based purely on my personal opinions and not so much on
facts...
Good
1. Axl's MTV interview
2. "Live Era '87 - '93"
3. "Oh My God"
4. Neurotic Outsiders' reunion
5. Duff, Slash and Matt on Slamdance
6. Snakepit's and Loaded's club tours
7. New album's by Izzy and Gilby
8. New SCOM version
Bad
1. "Coma" only on Japan/vinyl LE releases
2. No new Guns N' Roses album
3. No new Snakepit album
4. Izzy's "Ride On" only released in Japan
5. Slash with Michael Jackson
6. Slash with Puff Daddy
7. Official sites that isn't updated
8. Slash's arrest and the break-in
9. Robin Finck leaves GN'R
10. All the fucking poll sites
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5. Wanted
Could the person that sent me the short story "A
Story" send me an email? Several people have asked for
your address since they really liked the story.
------------
6. How to unsubscribe
Go to this URL:
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Arena/3342/newsletter.html
And there it says exactly how you should do.
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7. After
Yeah, I think this was all I had to say for this year. I'll
see you soon!
If you would like to read old newsletters there's a
page for this newsletter located at the URL below.
On that page you can also unsubscribe from the
newsletter.
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Arena/3342/newsletter.html
Goodbye everyone!
Andreas
lap@swipnet.se
N.I.R.
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Arena/3342/nir.html