14 years - Axl Rose x OC

33

--January 20th, 1991

Axl and Lita had been in Brazil for just under a week now, and while there was really no reason for her to be there, Lita was there to help her boyfriend prepare for Rock in Rio 1991. The Silent Cherries weren't performing, most likely due to not being as popular or successful as their counterpart, but that didn't bother her.

Guns N' Roses only had one more show there before they all continued on their current tour in early May. Lita Monroe was glad to get a few months off.

For one, it would give Axl's band more time to record their new album, and with Izzy gone (something she could not speak to Axl about just yet, though she'd be able to rationalize best, having also known Izzy around the time he'd met Axl), it would be an even more arduous task.

Lita had seen him doing some writing before the show, early this morning. No matter how much she wished to enter into Axl's mind, see and understand everything going on in his head, Lita just didn't have the confidence to inquire about his recent stresses.

Axl's performance tonight had been otherworldly, and Lita assumed that his anxiety over the band and his personal life (Christopher had been a pain in the ass to the two of them following her mother's death and funeral) had pushed him to be his greatest, trying to combat those feelings taking over, which would therefore give a bad show.

Lita had watched the man she loved (and they admitted it so much more, coming to the realization that either of their lives could end any day) sing the songs she'd seen him pine over for hours on end in the weeks and months before. The new songs: Perfect Crime, Civil War, November Rain, 14 Years, and more were played that night; songs from Appetite and Lies as well, and she couldn't be more happier for Axl's success.

Prince, George Michael, INXS, and so many more bands had or were going to play in the next few days of Rock in Rio II. Lita was excited to see all the performers, but couldn't quite rid herself of the beautiful, tropical air cultivating around her, distracting her from the reason she was in Brazil.

Maybe when they all got the next four months off, Lita and Axl could stay here, for she loved it so much she contemplated not leaving. But she couldn't. They had to get back to Los Angeles for the release of the Silent Cherries' new album, now officially titled 'You Oughta Know,' a name taken directly from Lita's childhood.

Without much word from her bandmates, Lita had taken most of the initiative with its titling and production; a more bluesy-type rock, different from anything they'd done before, with a single based on the Elvis cover of Mickey Newbury's 'An American Trilogy.' In that she had overlayed her own voice with Presely's, harmonizing with him. Their second album's lyrics were heavily inspired by this time in her life, including her time in Indiana, and the influences that brought her her love of music.

Discussions of her father, Axl, and her early drug addiction were littered and sprinkled here and there, but it was an overall very up-beat album with its loud drums and electric, acoustic guitars and subtle orchestra in some songs. Vocally, Lita didn't think she'd ever match it again.

In Los Angeles they would have a small release party, where Lita would unveil the homemade music video she'd recorded (partly in New Orleans but also throughout the entire tour) for the album's only single (still titled 'An American Trilogy'), which was the only new work she'd played recently during their tour soundchecks besides the already-played 'Pacific Coast Highway.'

Lita wasn't sure how they'd react to it, for she'd never mentioned it once (again holding the 'power' of the band in her own hands, one might say; she'd heard of Axl doing something of a similar dynamic). With the amount of recording and editing that went into it, she hoped at least Della and Melissa appreciated it, since none of them had discussed any videos for the album.