The musician Axl Rose said was as important as classical music: “Just amazing”
Many leading figures in rock, such as Axl Rose, built a reputation by living up to the archetypal rock star image.
Like many of his peers, Rose embodied all the quintessential personality traits typically associated with rock ‘n’ roll stars, with stage charisma, a defiant attitude, and an aloof attitude that mirrored the spirit of all previous influential rock icons. Some go so far as to say he’s the ultimate rock god, someone that not even other devil-may-care heroes like Mick Jagger could ever come close to.
Given his reputation, therefore, Rose knows exactly what it takes to live up to the role. More than that, he observes others with similar reputations and knows exactly which weaknesses to look out for that would help them to live up to the role even further. For example, he once said that George Michael could’ve done it if he’d just adjusted to a set of rules.
Mainly, he felt his music could have benefited from having more loud guitars, a realisation he’d had when Michael approached him and asked why Guns N’ Roses covered up so much of their music with loud instruments. They loved loud guitars, he’d told him – and couldn’t figure out why Michael wouldn’t embellish his own gorgeous melodies by doing the same thing.
What’s perhaps most telling about Rose’s position is that none of it seems fake, according to him, anyway. After all, when he was asked in 1989 about his image, he’d said that most of it comes from wanting to look good and wanting to express himself through his image, because it’s “another form of the art”. And this kind of authenticity doesn’t always look the same way; sometimes it can manifest itself entirely differently, at which point Rose would call it exactly what it is.
Most people wouldn’t consider Elton John to be the typical rock star, but knowing this – that it can look completely different so long as it’s authentic – Rose sits on the opposite side of the fence. In fact, he once said that John and his collaborator Bernie Taupin were as important to the world of rock as classical music, because they share a lot of the same qualities.
“They’re the only two people I’m nervous to meet,” said Rose. “Especially the first seven albums – Bernie Taupin, to me, is the best lyric writer on the face of the earth, and Elton John was just amazing in the studio. To me, that’s my classical music, because some of his stuff is classical. I listen to Elton John all the time.”
It’s easy to see why Rose would be endeared to a partnership like John and Taupin’s. It’d be natural to assume that he’d only drawn to the more traditional rock icons; the ones that walked the same walk in exactly the same way and turned their noses up at people who weren’t as effortlessly charismatic or cool, like John.
John and Taupin taught people like Rose a lot about structures and progressions, and prioritising the material and the feeling of it before anything else. Not everything was for show, which Rose learned early on. But from them, he realised that authenticity is the best ingredient to being a real rock legend, and one that he exercised well.
