As the manager of Guns N\u2019 Roses during the band\u2019s debauched heyday, Alan Niven has no shortage of colorful stories.<\/p>\n
The LAPD fetching Axl Rose from his West Hollywood condo and bringing him directly to the stage so Guns N\u2019 Roses could open for the Rolling Stones<\/a> at the L.A. Coliseum.<\/p>\n Slash going off script and taking a Winnebago for a joyride \u2014 and then standing in rush hour traffic and brandishing a bottle of Jack Daniels \u2014 while filming the \u201cWelcome to the Jungle\u201d music video.<\/p>\n Guitarist Izzy Stradlin carrying a $750,000 cashier\u2019s check that Niven had to take from him and hide in his own shoe for safekeeping during a raucous trip to New Orleans.<\/p>\n About 15 minutes into a thoughtful Zoom conversation, the garrulous Niven poses a question of his own: \u201cWhy was I managing Guns N\u2019 Roses?\u201d<\/p>\n Given what he describes, it is a good question.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause nobody else would do it,\u201d he says, noting that the band\u2019s former management firm \u201ccould not get away fast enough\u201d from the group. \u201cNo one else would deal with them. Literally, I was not bottom of the barrel, darling \u2014 I was underneath the barrel. It was desperation.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b> The ‘November Rain’ music video defined a generation. Inside its ‘bonkers’ production<\/a><\/p>\n Case in point: his very first Guns N\u2019 Roses band meeting. On the way into the house, Niven says, he passed by a broken toilet and \u201cone of the better-known strippers from [the] Sunset Strip.\u201d Stradlin and Slash were the only ones who’d shown up. Once the meeting started, Stradlin nodded out at the table and Slash fed \u201ca little white bunny rabbit\u201d to a massive pet python.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I’m sitting there going, \u2018Keep your cool. This may be a test. Just go with it and get through it.\u2019 But that was my first GNR meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n These kinds of stranger-than-fiction anecdotes dominate Niven\u2019s wildly entertaining (and occasionally jaw-dropping) new book, \u201cSound N’ Fury: Rock N’ Roll Stories.\u201d With brutal honesty and vivid imagery, he describes the challenges of wrangling Guns N\u2019 Roses before and after the band\u2019s 1987 debut, \u201cAppetite for Destruction.\u201d These include mundane business matters (like shooting music videos on a budget) and more stressful moments, such as navigating Rose\u2019s mercurial moods and ensuring that band members didn\u2019t take drugs on international flights.<\/p>\n But \u201cSound N’ Fury\u201d also focuses extensively on Niven\u2019s time managing the bluesy hard rock band Great White, whose lead singer, the late Jack Russell, had his own struggles with severe addiction. To complicate the entanglement, Niven also produced and co-wrote dozens of the band\u2019s songs, including hits \u201cRock Me\u201d and \u201cHouse of Broken Love.\u201d<\/p>\n Niven mixes delightful bits of insider gossip into these harrowing moments: firing for bad behavior future superstar director Michael Bay from filming Great White\u2019s \u201cCall It Rock \u2019n\u2019 Roll\u201d music video; Berlin\u2019s Terri Nunn sending President Reagan an 8-by-10 photo with a saucy message; clandestinely buying Ozzy Osbourne drinks on an airplane behind Sharon Osbourne\u2019s back.<\/p>\n And his lifelong passion for championing promising artists also comes through, including his recent advocacy for guitarist Chris Buck of Cardinal Black.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b> Duff McKagan still has an appetite for L.A. and making rock music that lasts<\/a><\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, Niven says people had been asking him for \u201cdecades\u201d to write a book (\u201cIf I had $1 for every time somebody asked me that, I’d be living in a castle in Scotland\u201d). He resisted because of his disdain for rock \u2018n\u2019 roll books: \u201cTo me, they all have the same story arc and only the names change.\u201d<\/p>\n A magazine editor paid him such a huge compliment that he finally felt compelled to write one.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018I wish I could write like you,\u2019 \u201d Niven says. \u201cWhen he said that, it put an obligation on me that I couldn’t shake. Now I had to be intelligent about it and go, \u2018Well, you hate rock \u2018n\u2019 roll books, so what are you going to do?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Niven\u2019s solution was to eschew the \u201cusual boring, chronological history\u201d and structure \u201cSound N\u2019 Fury\u201d more like a collection of vignettes, all told with his usual dry sense of humor and razor-sharp wit.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you tell the stories well enough, they might be illuminating,\u201d he says. \u201cI saw it more as a record than I did a book. And you hope that somebody will drop the needle in at the beginning of the record and stay with the record until it’s over.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, dialogue was key \u2014 and, fortunately, they were all more f\u2014 up than I was,\u201d he adds. \u201cSo my memory of the dialogue is pretty good. \u2026 There’s some dialogue exchanges in there that imprinted themselves for as long as I live.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the artists that doesn\u2019t get much ink in \u201cSound N\u2019 Fury\u201d is another group known for its hedonistic rock \u2018n\u2019 roll behavior, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce.<\/p>\n Niven promoted and facilitated distribution of the independent release of the band\u2019s 1981 debut, \u201cToo Fast for Love\u201d and helped connect M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce with Elektra Records. He doesn\u2019t mince words in the book or in conversation about the band, saying he feels \u201cvery ambivalent about the small role I played in the progression of M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce because I know who they are. I know what they’ve done to various people. I know how they’ve treated certain numbers of women. And I am not proud of contributing to that.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd on top of that, someone needs to turn around and say, \u2018It’s a thin catalog that they produced,\u2019 in terms of what they produced as music,\u201d he continues. \u201cThere’s not much there and it’s certainly not intellectually or spiritually illuminating in any way, shape or form. They are brutish entertainers, and that’s it.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Niven says he didn\u2019t hesitate to include the stories that he did in \u201cSound N\u2019 Fury,\u201d and by explanation notes a conversation he had with journalist Mick Wall.<\/p>\n \u201cHe sent me an email the other day saying, \u2018Welcome to the club of authors,\u2019 \u201d he recalls. \u201cAnd I’m going, \u2018Yeah, right. You\u2019ve been doing it all your life. I’m just an enthusiastic amateur.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Welcome to the club \u2014 and by the way, it’s cursed.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Niven pondered what that meant. \u201cA little light bulb went on in my head, and I went, \u2018Ah, yes, the curse is truth,\u2019 because a lot of people don’t want to hear the truth and don’t want to hear what truly happened.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are people in the Axl cult who won’t be happy. There will be one or two other people who won’t be happy, but there’s no point in recording anything unless it’s got a truth to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b> Guitarist Mike Campbell had a challenging relationship with Tom Petty, but ‘love and respect’ never wavered<\/a><\/p>\n Niven says when the book was done, he didn\u2019t necessarily gain any surprising insights or new perspectives on what he had documented.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that people are still interested in what you’ve got to say about things that happened 30 years ago is almost unimaginable,\u201d he says. \u201cI never used to do interviews back in the day. But at this point, it would just be graceless and rank bad manners not to respond.<\/p>\n \u201cOccasionally people go, \u2018Oh, he’s bitter,\u2019\u201d Niven continues. \u201cNo, I am not. I don’t think the book comes off as bitter. Many times I’ve said it was actually a privilege to go through that period of time because I didn’t have to spend my life saying to myself, \u2018I wonder what it would have been like to have had a No. 1. To have had a successful band.\u2019 Well, I found out firsthand.\u201d<\/p>\n Niven stresses firmly that management was more than a job to him.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was my way of life,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople who go into management and think it’s a job that starts maybe at about half past 10 in the morning once you’ve had your coffee and then you check out at six, they’re not true managers.<\/p>\n \u201cThey’re not in management for the right reasons,\u201d he adds. \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 roll is a way of f\u2014 life. It’s 24\/7, 365. And that was my approach to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the latest book news, events and more in your inbox every Saturday. <\/a><\/p>\n