In The Howard Stern Show (1995) With Slash, They Were Talking About How Painful Nipple Piercings Are,

If this isn’t Axl

Which path are you taking? 😈

Have you ever worked with female singers? Izzy: Um... Axl. Uh, no. [laughs]

Now, Izzy, why would you say this? 😭

Reading Slash’s “but I love the guy. I mean he’s a real sweetheart” comment about Axl in their Rolling Stones’ article from ‘88, reminds me that Axl often gets called a sweetheart in particular by the people who know him personally. So, his personality really does exist in extremes, or as Vicky Hamilton affectionately put it, “Axl’s personality is sort of a two-parter: there’s a very sweet little boy personality, and when he’s on edge, there’s sort of the demon dog from hell personality.”

Axl deciding his next move (and manages to be all three simultaneously)

The many times Slash and Axl referred to their relationship as a marriage:

"If there ever was a combination of fucking opposites, like me and Axl or whoever else in the past, that one is crystal clear. Me and Axl are so unalike that we attract each other. The relationship between most lead singers and most lead guitar players is very sensitive, very volatile—I could go on listing these things for hours. It's just very intense. It has major ups and major downs. But somewhere between all this intensity and this friction there's a chemistry. And if the chemistry's right, like me and Axl are really tight, then there's something—a spark or, you know, a need, that holds it together. You fight too. The biggest fights are between me and Axl. But that's also what makes it happen…Like a marriage…When we talk, we're not band members. We talk about ideas that we have, or remember seeing this or hearing that? We'll just sit up all night and talk, and it's me and Axl talking. It goes beyond anything you could write down.” Q-magazine, 1991.

Interview Magazine, 1992: Do you think that having a relationship with a band has to do with the same things as having a relationship with a person? Axl: "Yes, l think so. Especially with Slash and it's definitely a marriage.”

“Slash's name pops up repeatedly, invoked in a way that suggests a shell shocked husband speaking of an ex-wife after a particularly horrific divorce. ‘It is a divorce,’ Rose says with a sad stare.” Rolling Stone, 2000.

"In retrospect, it’s kind of interesting that I suddenly had disconnected with the two most long-term, closest relationships I had had up to that point, just a matter of months apart," Slash in his book about his divorce and leaving GN'R and thus Axl.

“There was a lot of bad feelings from the breakup all throughout that twenty years, whatever it was. But there’s also a part of you that’s, like, in a marriage, where you love somebody; so there’s always that feeling, but then there’s all this negative stuff…It was very cathartic to physically talk. 'Cause there's a bond that you have that's never [broken]. And then what happens is the bond makes the negative side of it that much worse, because you're forced out of it." Slash on Sixx Sense, 2018.

The Izzy/Axl trope is my favourite inter band ship… closely followed by sluff. Obviously we can never know but there is a small part of me that believes it was real… at least a little… maybe only at the very beginning …or in Indiana (im insane)

ANYWAYS I was wondering if you had any fun info or interviews on them (izzax)

Also as a side note I love ur ao3 I’m always dying for more stories on there lol xxx

I mean, you never know 🤷🏻‍♀️ When it comes to gnr, I’ve learned to believe anything’s possible. Aw, thank you, that’s so sweet ❤️

I found it cute that in High school, Izzy and Axl were in Driver’s Ed together (Axl is a “fucking horrible driver,” according to Izzy, lol), and Arts and Crafts Pottery class:

It was their sophomore year of high school, and Jeff Isbell and William Bailey (Axl Rose) were drawing in Boswell’s “Arts and Crafts Pottery” class. Izzy was the better illustrator and member of the school’s Art Club. Axl, the better singer, was in the Boys and Girls Ensemble. The two weren't following the lesson plan that particular day. “Gotcha little bastards!” is what Boswell tells me she wanted to say. Instead, she began to admire their drawing.

“They were combing opposing elements into a beautiful whole,” she tells me over the phone. “The whole, it’s funny now that I think about it, was a skull-like figure with guns and roses.” Boswell tells me Izzy and Axl were illustrating their feelings; tormented by the a pall hanging over them resulting from childhood trauma. Following their art class collaboration, the two boys began silkscreening their design onto plain white T-shirts, a logo for some future punk band. “That took courage,” says Boswell. During Izzy's senior year, 1979, as he walked down the halls of Jefferson High, Boswell saw him for one last time. “He told me he was going to California to start a rock & roll band.” Looking back at their history, it's clear why Izzy expects equality. On the schoolyard, they were always on the same level.

(That last paragraph depresses the hell out of me.)

Adding Izzy’s quote from 2008, "See, I’ve known him for so many years, that there is a familiarity between us. We grew up in the same place, the same atmosphere, and I believe that part of our friendship always will be there."

Bonus: Izzy being the stylist for Hollywood Rose:

According ex-Hollywood Rose bassist Steve Darrow, Izzy was even the band’s stylist: ‘He had us meet up at his place, then fix up everybody’s hair and makeup before anyone left the room. Axl, too.’

this clip is so real ... axl, i too would have to take a break from singing to cuddle up on izzy