The early formation of Guns N’ Roses and their disastrous debut tour: “They’re willing to fight through anything”
When Guns N’ Roses first formed, there was apparently “no paint or cocaine involved”. It was as easy as that – there were no primitive desires for fame and success, just a group of musicians getting together to express themselves on stage. This approach served the band well in the long term, but in the early days, it was a recipe for disaster.
Before the Appetite for Destruction tour, a name which now sounds like a hilarious manifestation of foreshadowing, Guns N’ Roses formed after an argument with Axl Rose and LA Guns’ manager pushed them in another direction. A few days after their formation, with only a few rehearsals and a newly formed line-up, Guns N’ Roses performed at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.
At this point, the band still had a number of alterations to implement before becoming the “classic” line-up we came to know and love. They initially consisted of an amalgamation of Hollywood Rose members Rose, Rob Gardner, and Izzy Stradlin, as well as LA Guns’ Tracii Guns and Ole Beich. However, Beich was eventually fired after a couple of rehearsals and replaced with Duff McKagan.
While the group had been working on a handful of songs and scheduled an EP, this fell through when Guns and Rose fell out, which resulted in them hiring another former Hollywood Rose member, Slash. The icing on top of the cake was the arrival of Steven Adler, who filled Gardner’s spot when he quit soon after Guns left.
Guns N’ Roses performed for the first time with this line-up in June 1985, two months after they first formed. The show began just two days after rehearsals with the new members, which set them en route to their first-ever official tour of the West Coast, from Sacramento to Seattle. Primed and ready to go with nothing but their inherent passion for rock music, the band loaded up two vans and hit the road.
The vans broke down. In fact, what was intended to be a smooth-running debut on the road with the new members ended up becoming more disastrous than perhaps any other band’s first tour after the group was forced to ditch all of their instruments and hitch-hike for 40 miles with nothing but a couple of guitars. When they arrived at the first venue, the stress was far from over.
The “Hell Tour”, as described by the band, was made worse by the realisation that they would only be receiving a small fraction of the money they were promised for performing. Then, the rest of the tour was cancelled. Despite this pointing towards a certain kind of divine intervention telling them that Guns N’ Roses probably wasn’t meant to be, apparently, it had an adverse effect.
“This trip had set a new benchmark for what we were capable of,” explained McKagan, who said that the frustrations and setbacks ended up showing them what they “could and would put ourselves through to achieve our goals as a band”. In his autobiography, he echoed this sentiment, noting the transformation of a rock group into one that could withstand anything.
He added: “Guns N’ Roses were no longer a band, but the band — our band. These are my fucking boys. They’re willing to fight through anything.”