Read Online Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman - Free Book Online Page B

barely matters today. But accept this as true: Axl clearly loved the concept of Los Angeles, even if he constantly sang about how disgusting it was. Like a new student in a new school, he was always trying to prove he belonged there. Judging from his performance on Appetite for Destruction, Axl thought about Los Angeles the same way I thought about L.A. when I read those Shout at the Devil liner notes in the fifth grade.
    Axl wasn’t a nice person. He beat up camera-wielding fans and treated women like shit. It seems like most of the women he slept with eventually accused him of being a violent lover (ex-wife Erin Everly and ex-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour both filed abuse charges against him). And generally, this sinister weakness made him more alluring to redneck intellectuals. There has never been a time in my life when I supported violence against women, and I can’t think of many things that I find more repelling. But there was a weird legitimacy to this kind of image. Let’s face it: Sadness and evil are always more believable than happiness and love. When a movie reviewer calls a film “realistic,” everyone knows what that means—it means the movie has an unhappy ending. We associate happy endings with fairy tales, and Guns N’ Roses was no fairy tale.
    I once did a human interest story on two guys from West Fargo named Mark Rudel and Gregg Lura. (Reader’s note: For those of you wondering where West Fargo is … well, that should be self-explanatory.) These two fellows were essentially male groupies; they loved to meet metal stars and had all sorts of tricks to get backstage. They were damn good at it, too: They met virtually every major hair band from the ’80s. When I asked them about meeting Guns N’ Roses outside of a Fargo hotel at 4:00 A.M. during GNR’s ’93 tour, this was what Rudel told me: “I tried to get an autograph from Slash, but he just hobbled past me. It was exactly like a video—you couldn’t see his eyes, he had his top hat on, and he was stumbling around. One of the roadies said he’d had a long night. Of all the bands we’ve met, Guns N’ Roses appeared to live their life the most like their image.”
    I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, but hearing that made me very happy. In some ways, I suppose that proves I’m just another stupid fan. I wanted Guns N’ Roses to be the band I imagined they were. When Rudel talked about meeting the guys from Cinderella, the conversation focused on how normal they seemed (he specifically said Tom Keifer looked sleepy and “really pale”). Guns N’ Roses had always seemed more real than other groups, and I honestly think they might have been. Instead ofmirroring the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, Guns N’ Roses adopted it for real—almost like they couldn’t tell it was supposed to be a gimmick to sell records. They were as fucked up as advertised.
    At least I hope they were.

December 12, 1985

    While listening to Judas Priest’s Stained Class LP, eighteen-year-old Raymond Belknap blows off his head with a shotgun. His twenty-one-year-old friend James Vance tries to do the same and—somehow—manages to fail.
    I don’t know why two guys from Nevada would think that a gay British metal singer was telling them to kill themselves. I honestly have no clue whatsoever, and I can’t even speculate. Sure, they were drinking a few afternoon beers and smoking some low-grade dope, but that’s hardly an excuse for getting that confused about anything. In 1985, I listened to Stained Class at a friend’s house, and that didn’t even convince me to buy the goddamn record.
    Moreover, I’ve never understood why European heavy metal is so appealing to kids who like shooting themselves in the head, but they obviously love it. Oh, I understand the superficial connection and the conventional explanation: Downtrodden people dig