14 years - Axl Rose x OC

30

—October 2nd, 1990

After their most recent show, yet again featuring his voice in the newly finished songs, Izzy Stradlin couldn't wait to get out of the arena, away from everybody. Every day he walked onstage with vigor, ready to play a set to the crowd. That's how he'd been doing it as long as he's been in the industry. Even in early Guns N' Roses' days, when they were hopping from one club to the next, playing shows in exchange for little money, he was never one to play with the  crowd.

That was Axl; he'd interact with the women before him, who were just waiting to grasp their hands around him as he was singing, and now Axl would be running around the stage, somehow still able to produce clear sound from his throat. Axl thrived on the attention, Izzy knew, but he himself didn't need it, only the music.

That was why it had become to difficult to perform recently. Now he was in the spotlight like Axl, something he didn't want, even from the beginning. When Axl had pushed for his songs to be on the album, Izzy was hesitant, especially when it came to their recording.

Another problem he'd recently seen since becoming sober last year was the pure intoxication that the band, namely those besides him, Axl, and now Matt Sorum, live under. It bothered Izzy deeply, itching at him. Izzy had been arrested in 1989 because of public intoxication, though he didn't remember it, but it had served him like a slap in the face for all his other problems.

Now, with the unwanted attention thanks to Axl, and the bottles of Vodka and syringes of substances unknown, Izzy had problems within the band. He loved them all individually, but it was their problems, their addictions, that he couldn't get over. He had almost ruined his own life on this stuff, and he couldn't sit and watch Slash and Duff do the same. Their penalty might be worse than Steven's.

So Izzy tired his best to distance himself from the band.

But what was his life without them? Maybe he could go back to Lafayette, visit his mother and brothers, but being there would only remind him of them all. Izzy struggled to fit into the band he'd helped form five years ago, unrecognizing to the people he called his friends. But he knew he'd continue on longer.

He was just getting fed up, ready to blow, his head currently spinning with stars above him like the cartoons from his childhood.

So yes, his problem with Guns N' Roses came from all directions, all sectors of the band: the management section, which was heavily guarded by Axl, who reigned supreme over all their important decisions; and the producing section, Axl still in charge, but not as heavily. They were all pushing him over his limits. Then there was the members itself:

His best friends, the people he had come to cherish in his worst, most intoxicated moments, who had consoled him in his addiction, telling him it couldn't get worse—they had all followed down the path behind him, leading towards self-hatred and an unexplainable pain, a stabbing of you will, that couldn't be quenched by the most powerful drugs.

Duff and Slash weren't ones to bother Izzy with their problems, but he observed it plainly, just as he had everything else in life. They had their booze and their blow and their 'bitches' and 'babes,' but it was all an illustrious joke. Izzy perceived that they both wouldn't know what they'd gotten themselves into until a freight train hit them with its consequences. It bothered Izzy that they were so careless, and a loathing for the two younger band members grew within his heart, something he wished hadn't.

Axl was never one to dabble in extreme drugs, maybe a little but in his earlier days,—and those were far gone—but he wasn't immune to copious amounts of alcohol. Different to Slash and Duff, Axl's problem (that he had seemed to soothe since Lita Monroe came back into his life) stemmed from his internal problems, his misguided spirit, and not the need for that Strip Life (disregarding their own personal struggles, of course). Izzy's problem with Axl was the reaction that came with his bouts of alcohol, or even just when he was fired-up, ready to pounce on anyone like a spit-fire, blushing hyena.