Man, Axl Rose is possibly the crappest of crap dudes. Nothing he does can ever be awesome.
That's the point. He's such a crap dude that he has completely flipped the switch. He transcends.
He has taken being a crap dude to Awesome levels.
I attended one of the few Guns N Roses shows with the "new" Guns N Roses that actually happened? With the guy from Nine Inch Nails and the guy from Primus and the guy from the Replacements and the guy with the chicken bucket on his head?
And between songs, it was like watching Hunter S Thompson trying to defeat the devil by ignoring a midget that was cruelly mocking him by destroying effigies of long-lost dead friends of his. He would go on these insane rants and... sometimes, he would just play classical piano between songs. Surprisingly well, to be honest. As though in the fifteen years hiding in underground compounds scattered about Malibu, he at-least learned how to play piano relatively well.
And he woke giant peasant shirts and weird oversized football jerseys and the man with the chicken bucket on his head handed out Star Wars toys to the moshpit but...
At one point, before performing "Patience" he went off on a tirade that was so Crap, it is why people call the point where you are so crap that you are awesome again The Axl Point:
He started rambling in a fashion that could only be described as if Howard Hughes had discovered the joys of trailer-brewed methamphetemines about how all the other guys in the "old" Guns N Roses didn't want to record any of the crowd's favourite songs. This went on for minutes and minutes.
"Izzy didn't wanna record Patience. Slash didn't wanna record Patience. I MADE them record Patience! I GAVE YOU Patience..."
And the line that I could not believe a man could ever deliver seriously, except for the power of crossing the Axl Point:
"Those guys were bad cops... and I'm f-ing Serpico!"
Except, you know, the swear word was intact, as he was saying this to the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, NY and not on a message board.
You can say all you want that Axl Rose can't be awesome... but if you can picture a man, in a peasant shirt, standing next to a man with a chicken bucket on his head, in his early forties, out of shape, with dyed blonde braids, screaming to a crowd of aging-themselves old hair rockers, claiming of the men that helped him become so inscrutably rich that he could go this mad... Seriously Saying:
"Those guys were bad cops... and I'm f-ing Serpico!"
If you can picture that? You can know that you can be so crap that you are the most Awesome of all.
Unless you're not into jerks. I guess I'm still young enough to enjoy jerks.
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