‘My Michelle’: How Elton John inspired Axl Rose’s darkest song
Having a song written about you might sound like an honour, but if you’re asking Axl Rose to come up with something sweet and touching, you might want to hold your breath a little bit.
As a close friend of Guns N’ Roses, having known guitarist Slash since high school, Michelle Young probably thought that her pals in an up-and-coming rock band were the best in-road to achieving this, although it was only a flippant comment that she made to Rose during a car journey where she suggested that she wouldn’t have minded being the subject of a track. Rose, however, took this as something of a challenge, and when she suggested it to him, he immediately set to work.
The thing is, it wasn’t just because of a comment that Young had made that he wrote a song about her, and the source of inspiration for this comment came from an unlikely place, one that not many people would consider to be the first port of call for influencing Guns N’ Roses. As revealed in a 1999 interview with Spin, Young shared how she managed to work her way into a song that would eventually appear on their debut album, Appetite For Destruction, in 1987.
“I’m the subject of the song ‘My Michelle’,” she claimed. “I was driving Axl to a gig and ‘Your Song’ by Elton John came on the radio. I said I wished that somebody would write a beautiful song about me.” Elton John being an inspiration for Guns N’ Roses isn’t exactly a likely pairing, but given the success that ‘Your Song’ brought to the British pianist and songwriter, you can’t exactly argue with the idea of trying to make a song in the same vein.
However, ‘Your Song’ is a sweet and tender love song, while ‘My Michelle’ dives into darker territory. Rose had initially tried to write his tribute to Young as a love song, but none of it was true to the reality of Young’s life, which was filled with the horrors of drug addiction, grief and family issues, and instead, he chose to rework it to make it more accurate.
“You know the song,” Young continued, addressing the morbid lyrics that address her tragic story. However, while many might be put off by having a song like this dedicated to you, Young admired Rose for his bravery in trying to accurately portray her. “At the time, I didn’t care because I was so fucked up, but what it says is all true: My dad does distribute porno films and my mom did die.”
The fact that the band also gave Young a special thank you in the liner notes of the album is perhaps a sign that she was special to them, and that it was written with their love and respect for her in mind. It might not be the most delightful song to be known as the subject of, and it doesn’t come across as being tender with its high-energy riffs, but it certainly is a claim to fame that you can keep for the rest of your life.
