The 1994 film, Interview with the Vampire, is interesting for a lot of reasons.
First, Anne Rice, who wrote the book that the movie is based on, criticized the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat. Cruise was already a superstar, but had been heavily criticized as being a one-dimensional actor who could only play a certain type of role (e.g. “Generic Tom Cruise Character” – an immature, egotistical manchild who gets humbled by the right woman, circumstance or autistic brother). This was a departure for him and plenty of people were skeptical if it would work. When he ended up doing a great job, Rice and others had to eat crow. Now, you can’t really see anyone else as Lestat. It also makes you wish Cruise did these types of characters more often.
The film also featured Kirsten Dunst in one of her first big roles, and she absolutely hits it out of the park. It’s still one of her greatest performances.
There was Christian Slater, who was a last-minute replacement for River Phoenix, who had died outside The Viper Room weeks before filming was set to begin.
You also had Brad Pitt who was not quite an A-lister yet and is still finding himself as an actor. As such, he’s arguably the weak link amongst the main characters.
There’s also the fact that Lestat, Louis (Pitt) and later Armand (Antonio Banderas, in an excellent performance) were pretty obviously in same-sex relationships, but the movie had to tone that down since this was still the 90s.
And, there was the soundtrack – notably the centerpiece single and “song that gets played during the end credits.” Guns N’ Roses had agreed to record a cover of The Rolling Stones’ classic “Sympathy for the Devil” for the film, and it seemed destined to rank amongst the best movie themes of all time.
After all, The Gunners had recently worked their magic with “You Could Be Mine” from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Plus, they had always been a great covers band (for my money, their rendition of “Live and Let Die” was better than Sir Paul’s and their live version of “Whole Lotta Rosie” kicks all kinds of ass) and had just recorded a bunch of covers for 1993’s The Spaghetti Incident? This would be child’s play for them.
Instead, their classic lineup turned to dust faster than a bunch of vampires stuck in a pit as the sun comes up.
It’s hard to imagine a time when there was no turmoil or chaos following Guns N’ Roses.
Between substance abuse issues (original drummer Steven Adler had been sacked during the Illusion sessions for his drug use, and more than one commentator has pointed out, you have to be pretty messed up to get kicked out of Guns N’ Roses), stadium riots, and personal feuds both within and without the band, Guns N’ Roses epitomized volatility and controversy.
By 1991, they were veritable “rock gods,” as their two Use Your Illusion albums had been a monstrous success. But that only had the effect of papering over some big cracks in the foundation. Rhythm guitarist and the band’s best songwriter, Izzy Stradlin, quit during the Illusion tour, citing deteriorating relations with lead singer Axl Rose.
The Spaghetti Incident? was supposed to be the band members blowing off steam while working on the Illusion albums. Instead, it turned into a major project that had morphed from the band just recording a few punk covers into a collection that spanned the gamut from glam to rock to even doo-wop.
Unfortunately for the band, the album was not a success, selling only 190,000 copies during its first week, paling in comparison to the Use Your Illusion albums, which each sold over 500,000 in their first week. According to the RIAA, The Spaghetti Incident? is only certified 1x platinum in the U.S. – tying it with 2008’s Chinese Democracy as the band’s lowest-selling studio album (considering how much has changed in the recording industry, you can argue that Chinese Democracy going platinum in the streaming era is actually quite impressive).
The album, itself, is quite forgettable. Most of the covers are by-the-numbers and only a few really stand out. I’ve always liked the band’s take on doo-wop classic “Since I Don’t Have You” by The Skyliners (Slash’s bluesy and expressive guitar was perfect for that song, and Axl gives a great vocal performance – especially at the end of the song).
Otherwise, most of the songs on The Spaghetti Incident? are somewhat forgettable and only a few truly stand out. Of course, the one song that stands out the most does so for the wrong reason. The hidden 13th track on the album, a cover of Charles Manson’s “Look At Your Game Girl,” generated a huge controversy and ended up overshadowing the entire album. Plenty of column inches were spent reporting on whether Manson would receive royalties from sales of The Spaghetti Incident? (yes, but those royalties had been assigned to Bartek Frykowski, whose father had been murdered by Manson’s family). David Geffen, whose label had distributed the album, claimed to have had no knowledge of the song and criticized the band for acting in poor taste. “I would hope that if Axl Rose had realized how offensive people would find this, he would not have ever recorded this song in the first place,” Geffen told the L.A. Times. Meanwhile, Patti Tate, whose sister, Sharon, had been one of the Manson Family’s many murder victims, also called out Axl Rose, asking: “Doesn’t Axl Rose realize what this man did to my family?”
The fact that it was Axl being singled out for criticism was not a coincidence. Rose had long displayed a morbid fascination with Manson, often wearing Manson-themed t-shirts during concerts and video shoots. Rose admitted he had been the driving force behind the controversial cover song, telling newspapers that he liked the melody and lyrics and was struck by the irony of recording a song about madness that “was recorded by Charles Manson, someone who should know the inner intricacies of madness.” SPIN, meanwhile, speculated that Axl was actually trying to maintain his street cred while being consistent with the punk ethos of co-opting shocking imagery and symbols (witness Sid Vicious and his swastika shirt).
Additionally, Rose had a history of forcing his bandmates to record controversial songs, including the racist and anti-gay “One in a Million” from Lies. Sometimes, he even bypassed the others entirely, like when he secretly recorded the bizarre hip-hop track “My World” and snuck it onto Use Your Illusion II to the surprise, and chagrin, of his bandmates.
While “Look At Your Game Girl” was recorded with the knowledge of others in the band, it was reported that his bandmates had opposed including the song on the album. Besides Rose, the only other member of the band to play on the track was keyboardist Dizzy Reed. And when the controversy blew up, most of Rose’s bandmates expressed support for pulling the song from future pressings of the album – although to date, it has yet to be removed from the record.
The worst part about all of this? The song sucks. The lyrics are elementary and the meter is inconsistent. A charitable view of Manson’s original song could be that he does this to put the listener on edge – his simplistic lyrics juxtaposed with his odd delivery is somewhat unsettling – even before we realize just who it is that’s doing the singing. But Occam’s Razor tells us that the song is just bad. Simply put, there’s a reason why Manson couldn’t make it as a songwriter. Rose and Reed (they were accompanied by an outside guitar player – lending credence to the notion that Slash and rhythm guitarist Gilby Clarke wanted nothing to do with this song) go for a lounge-type cover with a samba beat. I guess Rose really was in an ironic phase when he decided to record this – that or he thought the breezy vibe would inoculate him from criticism over the song’s subject matter and history.
The bad feelings crested when the band started work on “Sympathy for the Devil.” Rose was becoming more isolated from the others – something which had started happening during the Illusion sessions but was, no doubt, exacerbated by him taking the brunt of the Manson criticism. It got to the point where Rose would work in the studio at night, after the others had already gone home for the day.
He was also flexing his muscle, demanding a version that was nearly identical to the Stones’ original – pissing off the others who wanted to put their own spin on the song. As such, the song is what it is: an inferior version of the Stones’ classic, completely devoid of any additional flavor or bite that GNR were known for.
Additionally, he unilaterally booted Clarke from the band without telling him. Clarke, who had replaced Stradlin during the Illusion tour, later said the termination hurt him even more since he was a huge Stones fan.
Into the breach stepped guitarist Paul Huge (later known as “Paul Tobias”). Huge was an old friend of Axl’s and has been called the “Yoko Ono of Guns N’ Roses.” Simply put, Slash hated him and didn’t think much of his guitar skills. Worse, Slash didn’t even know that Huge was now in the band, or at least playing on the song with them. One day, Slash heard a guitar part on the tape that he didn’t like and demanded to know what it was, only to be told it was Huge.
“Axl went on to do the vocals and brought in another guitar player with him, who’s a guy from Indiana who I can’t stand,” Slash said in a 1995 interview. “And he added a little rhythm guitar there. He also put little answers on my guitar solo… You’ll hear my guitar and then you’ll hear this little tinny thing in the background. So that f—- pissed me off.”
In fact, Slash wasn’t feeling the project at all, calling the movie boring and lame and agreeing with Rice’s original sentiment that Cruise was not the right choice to play Lestat. Time hasn’t mellowed him, either, as he expressed anger in his 2007 autobiography that he had been forced, against his will, to play a guitar solo that was nearly identical to Keith Richards’s original, seethed and later pointed to this song as his breaking point.
“If you’ve ever wondered what the sound of a band breaking up sounds like, listen to Guns N’ Roses’ cover of ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ If there is one Guns track I’d like to never hear again, it’s that one,” he wrote in his autobiography.
The song hit #55 on the Billboard 100 – not great, but better than “Since I Don’t Have You,” which peaked at #69. Meanwhile, it hit the Top 10 in the U.K., where they were red hot at the time. Not a bad return for a soundtrack single.
Nevertheless, it was clearly the beginning of the end for the band and ushered in a decade-plus hiatus. Slash quit/was fired shortly after the single was released. Drummer Matt Sorum, who had replaced Adler, followed after he had his own blow-up with Huge. “Paul Huge walked into the studio and made a bad comment about Slash. I said, ‘You don’t say that when I’m in the room.’ Then Axl laid in, I argued with him and it was over,” Sorum told Q Magazine in 2001. “Huge followed me out into the parking lot and said, ‘Come back.’ I said, ‘I can’t come back, he’s fired me. Do you feel good about breaking up one of the greatest bands that ever lived?’”
Bassist Duff McKagan quit in 1997 citing lack of activity from the band. Indeed, Rose would spend the next decade shuffling in various replacements and retreads, spending so long on the band’s next album, Chinese Democracy, that it became one of the most expensive productions ever and nearly took the place of The Beach Boys’ Smile as the ultimate album that never was. Between “Sympathy for the Devil” and Chinese Democracy, which was finally released in 2008, the band only managed one single – a soundtrack song for an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, appropriately enough (“Oh My God” from 1999’s End of Days). They also were a surprise performer at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards, but that performance did not exactly go well.
Meanwhile, Duff, Slash and Sorum formed Velvet Revolver in 2002 with Stone Temple Pilots’ frontman Scott Weiland (Stradlin was even a member for a couple of weeks). The band released a well-received debut album before things fell apart under circumstances that were possibly uglier than what happened with Guns N’ Roses.
Huge, for his part, has long denied being the guy who broke up the band – and Rose has always defended him. “The public gets a different story from the other guys Slash, Duff, Matt — who have their own agendas,” Rose said in 2002. “The original intentions between Paul and myself were that Paul was going to help me for as long as it took to get this thing together in whatever capacity that he could help me in. So, when he first was brought into this, he was brought in as a writer to work with Slash. At the time those guys never suggested one name. Nobody else. Ever.”
Huge/Tobias would stay with the revamped GNR until 2002, when he would be replaced by Richard Fortus of Love Spit Love and The Psychedelic Furs. Fortus would play alongside several different lead guitarists, including Robin Finck, Buckethead, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, DJ Ashba – and starting in 2016, a returning Slash.
Duff also rejoined at the same time, replacing longtime Replacement Tommy Stinson. So far, things seem to be going well with the new/old lineup. The Not In This Lifetime Tour in 2016 did well (the name was from a quote from Rose saying he didn’t expect to reunite with Slash in this lifetime) and they’ve done a few more successful tours since then. The band has recorded a handful of well-received singles. There hasn’t been a new album, yet, and knowing how long Chinese Democracy took, it could be another decade before we see a proper follow-up to Use Your Illusion.
Plenty of time for this lineup to go the way of so many others before it.
