“I’m going to kill you”: When David Bowie and Axl Rose had a brawl over Erin Everly
If you heard the line, ‘David Bowie, Axl Rose, and Don Everly’s daughter, Erin, walk into a bar,’ you’d assume it was a joke. In many ways, the torturous tryst of this unlikely trio is an utterly comical affair, but despite the classic rock odds, it is somehow said to be true.
In Slash’s salacious self-titled memoir, he recalls the manic moment that his fiery frontman had a furious fight with David f–king Bowie over flirtations with his partner. Slash, in characteristic style, was rather nonplussed by the event. After all, he had once accidentally walked in on Bowie having sex with his own mother, Ola Hudson, so he was used to skirmishes involving the Starman.
While many might have chosen to omit their mother’s own sex life from their memoir, no matter how star-studded it may have been, Slash evidently felt that it brought vital insight into his boho upbringing. Hudson had been a costumier back in the day, working with the likes of Diana Ross, John Lennon, and, of course, Bowie, which is what eventually brought the ‘Life on Mars’ singer into Guns N’ Roses orbit.
As Slash’s in flagrante recollections of finding Bowie having a Hunky Dory old time with his materfamilias might suggest, beyond costuming collaboration, the ‘Modern Love’ singer enjoyed a fling with Ms Hudson. After which, they remained friends.
So, in 1989, when Bowie found out her son’s fledgling band were shooting a video and supporting the Stones, he figured he’d come along for a bit of a catch-up. He did not anticipate that he’d be catching a furious frontman’s fist in the process.
At the time, Guns N’ Roses were well and truly on their road to the major leagues. The band were announced as the warm-up act for The Rolling Stones at their favourite haunt, The Cathouse. Yet fans in attendance at this star-spangled show got even more than they bargained for, suspecting something was afoot when Axl Rose went rogue (a few years before he was famous for doing so).
With Bowie and Hudson sitting in the front row no less, Axl started throwing nasty insults in David’s direction, sneering and posturing toward the singer with his usual cocksure swagger. Bowie, who thought the air had been cleared, and showmanship involves leaving sour grudges in the wings, was seemingly disgusted with Rose’s actions, stood up and left mid-way through Guns’ set.
Hudson was as perplexed as the rest of the audience… until Slash later revealed the full story a little further down the line: Axl was angry at Bowie for allegedly hitting on his girlfriend earlier that day.
Prior to the gig, the band were using the venue for the shoot for their new video, ‘It’s So Easy’. Bowie rocked-up early to The Cathouse that day, drunk and in a mischievous mood. With the video set to feature Everly in leather bondage gear, handcuffs, and with a ball gag in her mouth, the temperature inside the classic LA venue was set to strip paint off the walls.
The inebriated Bowie was said to have approached the leather-clad daughter of a doo-wop singer. Whether he was after polite conversation or perhaps even the time is a fact lost to the sands of time, but according to the owner of The Cathouse, who spoke to Kerrang, when Axl caught wind of Bowie ‘actively pursuing’ Everly, he lost it.
While it is not surprising that Mr Rose is the jealous type, and even less surprising that he takes rather serious measures – around the same time he killed a moth in his mansion by firing a shotgun at it – the image of him coming to blows with Bowie remains a hard picture to form even in the playground for the most active imagination. Nevertheless, as the Cathouse owner attests, the two began throwing punches.
It all ended with Axl chasing Bowie out onto the streets of LA, screaming, “I’m gonna kill you, TIN MAN,” it is reported. (Prior to Slash’s publication of the incident, no doubt an onlooker idling in traffic outside of the venue saw this incident unfurl and spent many years being dismissed as a bullshitter when regaling the manic anecdote).
While Bowie, no stranger to skirmishes, given that Lou Reed also once slapped him, might have figured that the ordeal had blown over enough for him to attend the show with Hudson in the evening, Rose still felt aggrieved. The frontman even figured he had found further justification for his actions when he later ran into another frontman, Mick Jagger, who was hanging around the shoot ahead of the gig.
The Rolling Stones singer had fallen victim to the charms of Bowie before and met Rose alongside Eric Clapton, who, at the time of their meeting, had heard about the shenanigans of the day and was interested to hear of any bops landed on Bowie’s beautiful bonce. In his blow-by-blow recollection to two of classic rock’s most lauded names, he found himself affirmed by their gossipy responses.
The Guns N’ Roses singer said: “I’m sittin’ on this amp and all of a sudden they’re both right there in front of me. And Jagger doesn’t really talk a lot, right? He’s just real serious about everything, and all of a sudden he’s like [adopts exaggerated Dick Van Dyke-style Cockney accent], ‘So you got in a fight with Bowie, didja?'”
While Jagger being dubbed as perpetually serious might throw a curveball into the credibility of Rose’s remembrance of the incident, he also claims they were both unsurprised by Bowie’s apparent drunken affront. “I told him the story real quick, and he and Clapton are going off about Bowie in their own little world, talking about things from years ago,” Rose says.
With the two London blues boys lost in chatter, the ‘November Rain’ singer listened in. “They were saying things like when Bowie gets drunk, he turns into the ‘Devil from Bromley‘ [Bowie’s family moved to the London Borough of Bromley when he was a teenager]. I mean, I’m not even in this conversation.” Rose recalled.
“I’m just sittin’ there. Listening to ‘em bitch like crazy about Bowie. It was funny,” he added. Indeed, the whole thing is ‘funny’. While it is far from the joke that the set-up suggests, this daft tale appears to be a rare truism amid the mythological depths of classic rock, featuring the most unlikely protagonists all in one sultry, fist-swinging room.
