how soon is now? || w. a rose [i/v]

AXL V

"Everything was just falling apart. When we left Vegas, I didn't see any of them again until the VMAs. Even after the plane incident. I shouldn't have done that, I should have watched out for them."

"You weren't recording then?"

"No, there had been some arguments within the group beforehand, we were struggling to decide the sound we wanted. I don't think we recorded properly again until 90, we were just very divided."

"And the heroin?"

"I don't want to talk about that. That's their business."

// Kerrang Article with Axl Rose, 1993

Axl pressed the button for the floor below his. It had finally reached the Friday that they would be returning to Los Angeles and he couldn't fucking wait. To get out of the godforsaken desert heat, the suffocating air and honest to God, the fucking band. Just for a couple of weeks.

And he hated how that made him sound. He hated how it made him feel, he felt like a fucking monster, alway fighting, screaming and cursing at his bandmates, his brothers who had struck with him through thick and thin, hell they stuck with him for so much more than that. He had been a tormenter, a gaoler and a devil, all wrapped in a sick package of cruel words and harsh punishments.

A mad King whose crown was forcing its weight upon his head. Sometimes he wondered if he was on the edge of madness, walking the tightrope over judgment. The judge striking the hammer either way for the way he was remembered, the great monarch or the mad King, those two things often overlapped themselves. Maybe he would be both, a promised prince full of potential only to slip down the slope of tyranny once he won his crown. A crown made of rusted over iron, the silver giving way to the eaten moss of dark orange and red, digging so deeply into his forehead it left ridges through his skin, eventually forcing through drops of blood, the crimson joining the auburn strands.

It was a painful crown but he was willing to wear it, anything just to prove he had it. Maybe that was already the tyrant in him. Born evil, born wrong, just like the Baileys always thought.

But nobody would be able to force the weight off his head, he'd take it with him to the grave. He didn't care about how many bridges that had to go up in ash, or how many wars that would have to be fought,  bleeding the rivers red, he wouldn't let anyone have it. No manager, no guitarists or bassists and certainly no heroin addled drummers.

It was all he had after all.

Well, not to some degree, not anymore. He couldn't imagine last year that he was willingly going to somebody else's room, but here he was hearing the ding of the elevator and walking out into the hallway.

He still couldn't understand why in the hell Geffen let them stay here, the mirrors in between doors, the paintings on the ceiling, heavy glass chandeliers hanging down, lighting up the patterned carpet. They just didn't fit the environment with leather pants, constant chain smoking straight from the box, no cigars needed, not to mention blatant drinking of cheap liquors and beer.

The rich life was so, so good, so much fucking better than the past, not having to worry about rent, or mounting water bills and his ever thinning ribs. Being able to buy what he wanted, whether that be a new record or the most expensive drink and meal on a menu, hell he could even get people to do basic shit for him, booking taxis and flights, something the little boy with scraped knees in Lafayette could never imagine.

All for just being a singer. One could debate if he had any talent to give, but that didn't matter, after all, they were performing with the fucking Rolling Stones in the next couple of months.

But he still felt a stranger to the world he was on top of, that little boy just couldn't converse with the black ties and white collars that this hotel provided, they would always look down on him, a bug to be squashed with time, a million dollar fad that would be out by the next decade.