Last night I dreamed that I was at a Guns N' Roses concert, but it wasn't as uncool as you might expect. It wasn't super cool in the traditional freaky dream sense, with Guns N' Roses playing in Cloud City because they were appearing on the premier episode of Intergalactic Star Search with host Lando Calrissian, but it was still pretty good.
In my dream, Guns N' Roses was playing a hall that looked to hold about two thousand people. Maybe twenty-five hundred. The band members (not roadies) were setting up their stuff, and for some reason the public was allowed to watch. There were all kinds of people just milling around, and LCG and me were standing in the back passing my phone back and forth as we talked to the Cowboy. I think the Cowboy was on his way to the venue.
Axl was nowhere to be seen (surprise) but the rest of the band was, and this is why the dream was cool. It wasn't the modern day Axl and his Sidemen version of GNR, it was the real deal. I saw Duff there, and I saw Slash, and best of all, I saw Izzy. I couldn't see the drummer, so I don't know if it was Steven or Matt. I didn't care though, because I saw Izzy. Izzy! The best part of GNR, and my favorite member of GNR for all time.
Oh yeah, after I saw Duff setting up his gear I woke up. End of fairly uneventful dream, but now I have an excuse to talk about Izzy Stradlin. I wore vests because of him. I ran out and bought Izzy Stradlin and the Ju Ju Hounds the day it was released. I cried the day I heard (on the radio, I believe it was a live feed and not tape delay) the press conference where Axl announced that Izzy was out of the band. Izzy has been my favorite member of GNR since 1987. At first it was Axl, because Izzy had those horrible yellow pants in the Welcome To The Jungle video. But then I grew to love the pants and Axl stopped using hairspray so my love for Izzy was sealed.
That was also when I was learning how to play guitar, therefore Izzy was more interesting than Axl because Izzy was a guitarist. I was never a Slash fan. I like him okay, but he is no Izzy. But I have been plagued by a question about Izzy for the past fifteen years. It's kind of like that episode of Geraldo, only even more mysterious. Every so often I find myself wondering if I will ever find out the answer to the question.
In the summer of 1988, my September issue of Guitar For The Practicing Musician arrived in the mail. Izzy and Slash were on the cover, and each guitarist got a fairly long interview. One of the guys (I forget which, but I think it was Slash) was asked why Tracii Guns had left GNR, and he gave some answer. I don't remember what it was, although I still have the magazine (the spine now bound with tape because I destroyed the pages learning to play Welcome To The Jungle) so I could find out. But I don't really care what the answer was. I care about the letter that appeared in the magazine the following month. Or two months later, I forget which.
However, I will never forget what that letter said. It was a very long letter from none other than Tracii Guns himself, explaining the True Reason He Left Guns N' Roses. I only really remember one line from the letter. Tracii Guns said that he left GNR because he disagreed with Izzy's lifestyle.
What?
As a fourteen-year-old, my mind was blown. What could possibly be so horrible that he would rather quit a (really good) band than hang around Izzy? I came up with two possibilities, neither of which held up after a good forty-five seconds of thinking. I thought it could be drugs, but if that were the case Tracii could have cited all of the members and not just Izzy. The other thing I came up with was that maybe Izzy preferred the company of men. But...but...I love him!
Seriously though, that didn't make sense either. Would Tracii Guns quit a band just because Izzy was gay? I dismissed that idea as ridiculous, and the mystery remained unsolved. The choice of the word lifestyle made it seem like it was a huge deal. But what was it?
Now that I am a grown-up who watches a lot of Law And Order: Special Victims Unit, I realize that there are all kinds of ways that Izzy could have a disagreeable lifestyle, but, no. I would hope that if Izzy leaned the same way as Gary Glitter (which I hope he does not), he would be in jail by now.
I asked LCG what he thought and he had no comment because when I was fourteen he was twelve and not the last word on Tracii Guns. I told CEB about the fifteen-year-old question, and we debated what sorts of things could be described as a lifestyle. Maybe Izzy was too religious for Tracii. Maybe Izzy wasn't religious enough for Tracii. Maybe Izzy flicked his boogers at furniture. Maybe he borrowed money and never repaid it. Maybe he was just annoying.
I recalled a rumor (never proven to me) that I had heard in middle school that Izzy had been receiving welfare by lying and saying he had kids. So maybe Tracii Guns had zero tolerance for welfare fraud. Which is a sound policy, sure, but why call it a lifestyle? Well, maybe you could call that a lifestyle.
Actually, you can call anything a lifestyle if you like. I know I like to do that. Say I am sitting on LCG's couch, eating Chinese food and watching VH1 Classic. In that circumstance, it is perfectly acceptable to say to LCG, "I enjoy my sitting on your couch eating Chinese food and watching VH1 Classic lifestyle."
But I didn't do that when I was fourteen. Maybe that is what Tracii Guns was doing when he wrote the letter. Maybe Izzy left his socks at the practice space, and Tracii hated that lifestyle and quit the band. Maybe he was trying to stir up publicity. Maybe he is just a jerk. It's been fifteen years now, and I still don't know.