There was just one approach to remove the moth occupying Axl Rose’s Malibu home — and it wasn’t a flyswatter.
As an alternative, the Guns N’ Roses singer fetched his shotgun, as Craig Duswalt recalls in the paperback release of “Welcome To My Jungle” (BenBella). “Then with the moth hovering within the corner of the room, Axl pulled the trigger, and… BOOM!”
Duswalt still can’t consider it.
“For him, it was just one other day within the lifetime of a rock star.”
In October 1991, Duswalt was watching girlfriend Kim Evenson (“Playboy Playmate, September 1984”) swim when his pager beeped.
A former colleague, Doug Goldstein, was managing Guns N’ Roses and wanted Duswalt on their “Use Your Illusion” tour.
“So, I take a look at Kim in her bathing suit and I weigh the situation. Stay here, or go on the road with the most well liked band on the earth,” he writes.
“I knew what I needed to do… break up with Kim via a phone call from far, distant.”
Thrown right into a world of excess, Duswalt had to maintain the band protected.
It wasn’t easy.
In 1992, guitarist Slash “died” outside Duswalt’s San Francisco hotel room.
“He principally died from an overdose, [but] they revived him, and we played a concert that night, as if nothing happened.”
Then there was Rose’s, with the newborn wallaby he took on tour.
“He named him Freddie, after the lead singer of Queen,” writes Duswalt. “Axl built a sling, to mimic the newborn wallaby mother’s pouch and carried his pet around.
“He also fed Freddie with somewhat baby’s bottle.”
When Guns N’ Roses played 1992’s Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in London, Duswalt photographed actress Liz Taylor “after she walked into Slash’s dressing room, and saw Slash in all his glory.
“Rumor has it she wasn’t embarrassed and didn’t quite leave immediately.
And he or she wasn’t looking into his eyes.”
Nudity features prominently, including one nude woman found making like to a automobile outside Rose’s dressing room and the U2 bassist, Adam Clayton, strolling naked through a packed bar in Vienna, carrying a birthday cake.
When the tour resulted in July 1993, after 196 shows in 31 countries, Duswalt, was relieved to have made it through alive.
“I saw all of it: the highlights, the lowlights, the nice, the bad, and the just plain strange,” he writes.
“And the moth, after all, was obliterated.”
