Oh, Axl, how we used to love you.  We couldn’t get enough of “Appetite for Destruction”, and we waited in line until midnight in 1993 to buy BOTH “Use Your Illusion I” and Use Your Illusion II”, even though the second one really, really sucked.  We did it because we loved you.  We even paid for “The Spaghetti Incident?” with money that would have otherwise been spent on beer because we all wanted to hear the song that Charles Manson wrote.  We became the music fans of a notorious serial killer, Axl, and it was because we loved you for your skin-tight pants and flannel shirts, for the gorgeous face you tried to hide behind greasy hair and baseball caps.  For the perfect teeth that were obviously caps after your years of living on Jack Daniels and heroin.

And we were so, so envious of Stephanie Seymour, gorgeous supermodel who has since dropped off our radar, when you gave her an engagement ring sometime while I was in college.  We endured 20-minute videos for “Don’t Cry” and “November Rain” on MTV in which you exchanged wedding rings—yours was badass, of course—with your bride-to-be.  We were with you there, in the rain, as you busted out your best acting chops and mourned her fictitious music video passing.  We even cried with you as you looked up at the sky at the end of the video as if to ask God “Why?” as she lay motionless, dead, at your very wedding–even though we hated her deeply, since she had you, and we only had your CDs to hold onto. 

Axl Rose, You Aren't 22 Anymore.

Axl Rose, You Aren't 22 Anymore.

We were there with you, inexplicably, on that oil tanker, singing backup with Shannon Hoon of “Blind Melon”, and we jumped off that oil tanker with you when you made your video-music suicide attempt.  We were all rescued together by merciful bottlenose dolphins who clearly knew that there was more beautiful music for you to make. 
We put “The Spaghetti Incident?” in our CD racks, only to never really listen to it except that one first time, because it wasn’t very good.  And we saw Kurt Loder on MTV News, telling us of the discord between you and your Guns ‘N Roses brethren, and we could see that the end was coming.  Your flannel shirt foretold the onslaught of grunge music and the death of metal as we knew it.

Then, a decade later, there was that very strange appearance on the MTV Music Awards, when you showed up chubby, and with red cornrows.  We had been hearing of this “Chinese Democracy” CD for so long that it became an urban legend to us.  Then, after Dr. Pepper bet you that Guns ‘N Roses would not release “Chinese Democracy” before the end of 2008, you pulled it off.  Finally, after 15 years, it was here, and, even though all of your original hardcore fans (like me) are at least in our 30s, and most of us have either crow’s feet or botox, we are still ready to rock out with you. 

But please, Axl, that 4,500-odd word tirade on your website, explaining everything pretty much since the dawn of time, that doesn’t mesh so well with the whole heavy metal thing.  We want to read your e-novel explaining how you’ve been misunderstood about as much as we want to see you squeeze yourself into the skin-tight white “Sweet Child o’ Mine” pants again.  Let it go.  Aqua-net is dead.

Just rock out man.  We’re here with you, still, after all these years.  Can we just start the shows earlier?  I have to get up early for work.

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