As the world waits – apparently in vain – for the grand Axl Rose folly that is Chinese Democracy , we time-travel back to the early daze of Guns n'Roses in this excerpt from Sylvie Simmons' classic 1987 encounter with the band. -- Barney Hoskyns, RBP Editorial Director

Guns N' Roses, born in a bottle and spilled into the streets of Los Angeles. A cocktail of Aerosmith, Pistols, early Stones, Ramones, and New York Dolls; the worm at the bottom's their own. The nearest thing to a street band in a city where there's nothing but boulevards and freeways and if you sit in the gutter long enough a mobile lavatory-brush truck will come along and suck you up to kingdom come.

"There's a picture of Lemmy in some magazine, opening a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He's so cool! Lemmy's cool! Lemmy reminds me of someone who'd, like, crawl right out of someone's a**hole and take a shower and then make it really big and have the last laugh..."

Guns N' Roses, Lines n' Noses, Wine n' Poses, "the only real rock 'n' roll band to came out of LA in the last ten years" (Axl Rose), "the sleaziest band to come out of Smog Angeles since Motley Crue's Too Fast For Love" (Xavier R.). Delinquent, delicious, decadent, Excess All Areas rock. Guns n' Roses stalk through your every silk scarf fantasy and rub you raw like Piranhas in a jacuzzi.

"I watch MTV and it's hard not to throw sh*t at the TV set because it's so f**king boring. Even the bands around here in LA are the same way, the whole music industry. It's new to us, this business, and we meet these people and they say, 'Do this, do that'. And we go, 'F**k it, f**k you! Because it's just not us. We do whatever we want to..."

WE PULL up in the parking lot by the Winnetka Animal Clinic: Rumbo Studios, home of Captain and Tennille. The band's already here, sitting in a back room all in a row like Hitchcock's birds, by a table layered with bottles and frozen food: Steven Adler, drums, and Duff McKagan, bass, beachbum rhythm section with bleach-blond hair and easy smiles; Izzy Stradlin and Slash, guitars, Izzy looking like a rock 'n' roller, sharp and languid all at the same time, Slash a mean mop of hair, only the lips move, killer pout and faraway eyes. Axl, vocalist, salt-rubber into the wound of rock 'n' roll, joins in later.

In the other room, Mike Clink is leaning over a control board and looking slightly anxious. Ron Nevison's engineer on several projects and veteran of bands like Triumph, UFO, Airplane, he's producing Guns n' Roses' debut Geffen album and follow-up to the delirious indie EP Live – Like A Suicide, a greasy, lemon-squeezy slice of smirking, strutting vinyl. The album, Appetite For Destruction, has every indication of being a killer. When it's out (soon) they're coming over to play the Marquee (the first date will be June 19 with one other to follow).

"Everyone's from everywhere: Indiana, Ohio, Seattle. Slash was born in England somewhere" – Stoke-on-Trent has the honor – "and moved here when he was a little kid. Duff's from up north. Axel and I," says Izzy, "are from the Midwest." Indiana. A place I've been to twice and can't remember, a place whose jails they know only too well – the wrong drinks at the wrong time, in the wrong places. But LA's, well, where you end up.

"When you watch the news and you see what's going on everywhere else, it is f**king paradise, this place. You can get away with murder here. I'm just waiting for this place to self-destruct and the record companies to drop off into the ocean and everything," says Slash, "will mean nothing."

"AT THAT time – this is when Motley Crüe's first album came out and everyone was in leather and studs, Izzy and I," says Axl, "walked into the Roxy one of our first times and I remember Vince [Neil] and Nikki [Sixx] leaning over a rail trying to figure out who the f**k we were! It took three years to start getting accepted in LA."

Just what the town needed; another band with radical hair and a '70s album collection.

"I remember for two years standing at the Troubadour and people wouldn't talk to me; I didn't know what to say to them, so you just watched and learned for a long, long time."

They lived off girls and drugs and scams. "You drifted around," says Axl. "You stayed in friends' garages, cars, stayed one step ahead of the sheriffs."

Before, Guns n' Roses looked like any other LA flash merchants you care to name. When Izzy and Axl ran an ad in The Recycler to find Slash, they asked for "a Heavy Punk Metal Glam guitarist." They wanted, says Axl, "someone who wore make-up and put their hair up. That was the first glam ad I think I ever saw. And then we quickly got rid of that but it stuck."

"We're a lot more down-to-earth now," says Slash, who looks positively seedy. "They still try and label us as a glam band but I don't give a s**t because we're not."

Are Guns N' Roses personal crusaders for the return of sleaze?

"No," laughs Axl. "That's just a by-product. I think a lot of other bands are really wimpy."

"We don't really care," says Izzy. "We never set out to do anything but play."

What records do they all have in their collections, then?

"We've all got Never Mind The Bollocks and Aerosmith's Rocks and right now," says Axel, "we listen to Exile On Main Street a lot. The Ramones – back in '78 Izzy and I had all the tapes and learnt all the songs. Duff is a real big Johnny Thunders fanatic." They all like the Beastie Boys and Motorhead. As for Guns N' Roses...

"I think it's going to kick ass," says Izzy of Appetite, "listening to the playback. It's against the mainstream grain. It's definitely a case of you'll either love it or hate it – which is good, as long as you notice it."

"You couldn't really hate us," says Slash, "because the band's real. Regardless of whether you like us or not, we're going to go on and still do what we do."

What they want us to do is: "We want to tour, travel, continue the big Guns n' Roses adventure, And indulge ourselves. And f**k a lot!"

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