An early example of a stickered album was Guns N' Roses' debut 'Appetite for Destuction' - which had got the band in the big trouble right from the start, with its original cover artwork. Now these guys were the real deal, and perhaps were the most dangerous band in the world. They at least had the right credentials, and even took to giving themselves that title. GN'R were an accident waiting to happen. The band, Axl, Slash, Izzy, Duff and Steven emerged from Los Angeles in the late 80s. They walked it like they talked it - early photographs were seldom complete without one of them firmly clasping a bottle of Jack Daniel's in his fist. But it wasn't just drink that made them dangerous, as even Axl announced from the stage when GN'R opened for The Rolling Stones (themselvs not the most cleancut of groups) that if "certain members" of the band didn't stop "dancing with Mr. Brownstone", he'd quit the band, which was a reference to the increasing heroin use by Slash, Steven and Izzy. But Axl was a loose cannon of his own. He married Erin Everley (who made allegations of mental and physical abuse in the divorce proceedings that quickly followed). Axl himself alleges to have been sexually abused by his natural father and beaten by his step-father, a Pentecostal preacher. And who knows, perhaps that influenced his volatile nature. By this time Axl was holding an extreme vendetta against Vince Neil, frontman of that other most dangerous band, Mötley Crüe. The well-publicised feud between GN'R and Mötley Crüe began after an altercation involving Vince Neil and Izzy Stradlin at an nightclub in Los Angeles. GN'R and The Crüe were continually at each other's throats in the music press, and Axl went on record (to Classic Rock's Mick Wall) challenging Vince to fight. "I hate to give Vince Neil or Mötley Crüe any credit like this, you know. But he's going around saying a bunch of crap and I just want to call him out on it" Axl fumed. "It's like, he's a liar, and he's a wimp. And if he wants to do something - any time, you know? Or wherever. Name a place. Bring who ever you want. I don't care. Just wherever you wanna do it, man. Let's just do it. I think it'd be fun. "It's like, cos this way I can basically get away with it legally and everything, man. I can have a full-on brawl and get away with it". Like his bandmates, Axl was also known to dabble with illegal substances. He even told RIP magazine that he'd had "lost weekends" on smack, but that he was able to keep it all "under control". And he did. It was other elements of his personality, coupled with his out-of-control bandmates, that made GN'R such a lethal combination. The band were deemed dangerous lyrically, too, with their drug allusions - Mr. Brownstone, for example - and Axl's ill-timed comments about every minority group in the incendiary song 'One in a Million' (from the GN'R Lies album) meant he was now perceived as a racist,a homophobe and a misogynist. - As we know now, Guns N' Roses all but imploded. But for that brief moment, the band truly lived up to their adopted appellations. Classic Rock September 2003