Oh, and they're doing a cover of Floyd as I type and it's absolute garbage. ouch.
You could really liken Axl Rose and Syd Barrett if you thought about it long enough.
I saw GNR play in Pasadena back in '87...before I even knew who they were. Fantastic raw energy and absolute debauchery (Duff getting head on stage mid-performance and half the audience smoking cocaine out of their empty cans of Coors). The perfect remedy for the lame "hair metal" movement LA was saturated with and the best vocalist in rock since Freddie Mercury.
Even after they blew up...I thought the music was evolving into something beyond another Sunset Strip band. I cannot pretend to know what really happened. The common perception is that Axl douched his way out of everything and the band fell apart.
Maybe Axl Rose was the only true artist in that band. He wanted to spend more time in the studio and keep progressing towards the more theatrical work they did on the Use Your Illusions albums while the rest of the band just wanted to get back to the drugs, booze, sex combo that touring gave them.
Left alone by his band at that height of success causes Axl to become very introverted and his follow up effort is repeatedly self-sabotaged for over a decade until it becomes a running joke. In his few public appearances and performances...he is uncomfortable in his own skin and rigid with the press and television.
("Shine On You Crazy Diamond")
Its a shame....that band should have been a legacy, not a joke.
