in their own words 2

"Rock musicians, like the guys in this band, anyway, are all such fucking sensitive and volatile individuals. That's where the drug problems have come from."

-Slash, 1992

"There was that rape charge, which is basically old news ... Three of us supposedly OD'd. We had been busted on drug charges in England and had been dropped from our label. I was supposedly this bisexual heroin addict who had AIDS and was into small animals. There's been a rumor a week about this band ..."

-Axl, June 1987

"It's strange, but tragedy and pain seem to dog our career. A lot of weird shit happens to this band. We seem to attract it. I dunno, I can't help wondering if the reason Slash and Izzy were so strung out on 'certain substances' recently was their way of attempting to hide and numb the pain they felt."

-Duff, June 1989

"The only thing that bothered me was the drug thing. I've dabbled in it and everything, but nothing like what you hear that they do! When I went into it I thought I'd be walking into an opium den!"

-Matt Sorum, September 1991

"Drugs were doing me in. I felt like shit all the time. I went somewhere where I knew I couldn't score, I had some Codeine with me and a few Valium to take the edge off, and I basically sweated it out. I made it through the 72-hour period but then I started drinking like a fish. I gave that up as well a couple of months later. I've been told that alcohol's no good for American-Indian blood which I've got in me. Alcohol really does fuck me up. It makes me crazy. I become impossible to deal with. I knew that I couldn't afford to fuck up anymore. I'd used up all my 'Get Out of Jail Free' cards."

-Izzy, 1992

"Axl is just another version of the Ayatollah."

-Slash, 1986

"I must say that Axl has fucking balls."

-Duff, January 1990

"I sing in about five or six different voices that are all a part of me, it's not contrived ..."

-Axl, June 1987

"Before, Axl used to be one of those guys who, if he thought someone was looking at him weird, would just haul off and smack 'em. And sometimes, y'know, the people he went for weren't even looking at him."

-Izzy, October 1991

"Axl's, you know, a different kind of cat."

-Matt Sorum, September 1991

"Maybe it would've been best for the purists if we'd died or broken up."

-Axl, 1992

"It's a brotherhood."

-Duff, July 1991

"This is the most highly organized unorganized bunch of people in the whole world."

-Axl, January 1991

"Steven Adler's sacking will be the last line-up change we make. The current band is it. I wouldn't want to see anyone else go."

-Slash, October 1991

"We may be fuck-offs in life, but we're not fuck-offs in the studio."

-Slash, September 1991

"There's no way of getting this band in any kind of regimented routine."

-Slash, October 1991

"There's only one photograph of the six of us in existence, can you believe that? Getting all the members of Guns N' Roses in the same room at the same time is very difficult."

-Matt Sorum, October 1991