Obviously playing for laughs, the showdown you probably never expected to see has arrived. Below you'll find the AFM trailer for Ford Austin's Dahmer Vs Gacy, in which 30 of the world's most notorious serial killers are cloned by the government.
Director Austin plays Dahmer, while Gacy is played by Randal Malone. The indie flick also features appearances by genre alumni Irwin Keyes, Felissa Rose, Brooke Lewis Alana Curry, Lee Perkins, as well as... former Guns N Roses drummer Steven Adler?
Steven Adler had a felony drug case against him dismissed on Monday after successfully completing a court-order drug program. The former Guns N' Roses drummer was in a Los Angeles Superior Court to hear the good news from Commissioner Donald Kennedy.
Adler, a graduate of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, had pled no contest to a felony drug possession charge in 2008. The dismissal was "about the best you can get," his attorney Barry Gerald Sands said.
January 17 VH1's Sober House Premieres. Steven Adler shows up wasted, with syringes in his pants pockets, and a tin foil package full of heroin down his pants. Chaos ensues and he gets taken to the home of a staff member to spend the first night, both to protect himself and the other participants.
January 27 A mere 8 weeks after it's release, Chinese Democracy plummets to number 57 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.
January 29 Former Guns N' Roses manager Alan Niven tells Classic Rock magazine that Axl fired him "to wrestle control of GN’R!" Of the new GN’R, Niven comments: “Y’know, everyone has the right to make the music they want to with whomever they wish. But just be up ’n’ up about it. All this ‘last man’ standing stuff from Axl is horseshit. He wore us all out. Drove us all off. And for a personality like Axl, solo work only makes sense. If he wants to be Elton Rose then more power to him. Go for it. Pull it off. He has the talent to do that. But don’t pretend that one person alone represents the idea of Guns N’ Roses."
February 6 Axl Rose breaks his silence and gives his first public interview in 9 years with Billboard magazine. He addresses rumors of an upcoming tour, "no plans, but there's talk. Management and our promoters are really excited with the offers coming in both here and worldwide." Axl mentions that they're "finalizing a video for 'Better' and writing a couple others now." On the subject of Slash, Axl had this to say "one of the two of us will die before a reunion and however sad, ugly or unfortunate anyone views it, it is how it is. Those decisions were made a long time ago and reiterated year after year by one man. Anyone putting his own personal entertainment above everything else is sickening."
February 9 Matt Sorum reveals that Velvet Revolver hopes to announce their new vocalist in April.
February 9 Steven Adler heads back to rehab (again).
Febraury 9 The third single from Chinese Democracy, "Street of Dreams," appears on eBay and YouTube. It is never played on the radio, seen in stores, acknowledged by the band or heard from again. Copies of the promo disc are fetching over $150 a piece on eBay.
February 13 Regarding Velvet Revolver's new singer, Duff McKagan tells Opie and Anthony that "I think we have the guy ... yeah. You'll be blown away by the quality. I think we have the right guy. We all know he's killer."
February 14 Nick Sterling auditions for Guns N' Roses.
February 18 Jimmy Fallon says that he wants Axl Rose to appear on his new late-night show. Jimmy calls Chinese Democracy "awesome."
February 23 Rumors of a European festival tour begin to trickle in. Organizers of Spain's Kobetasonik festival list Guns N' Roses as a headliner on the festival's web page. Other rumored dates include June 26 in Norway, August 1 at the Sonisphere Festival in Knebworth, England and June 12-14 at the Download Festival also in England. There are also reports of dates in Italy for the month of June.
February 27 Axl is interviewed by his longtime friend Del James. In the interview Axl says the he considers Slash "a cancer and better removed, avoided -- and the less anyone heard of him or his supporters, the better." In regard to a release date for the sequel to Chinese Democracy Axl says he has no idea and that he doesn't care.
March 4 Rolling Stone reports that Axl Rose intends to follow last November’s release of Chinese Democracy with a worldwide Guns N’ Roses stadium tour this summer. Guns’ manager, Irving Azoff, tells Rolling Stone that the band has big plans for this year. "We have some exciting things in the works this year for GN’R, I’m looking forward to it." Hits Daily Double reports that a co-headlining tour with Van Halen is in the works. Rumors suggest that Guns' set will feature a full orchestra and lavish stage show. March 5 Canadian Sports Station, TSN, announces a contest to win a trip to see Guns N' Roses perform live "somewhere in the world."
March 9 Velvet Revolver demos with Gord Prior leak. March 18 Bass Player magazine publishes an interview with Tommy Stinson where he mentions tour dates beginning in April. "I have a feeling it's going to happen, but I'm not holding my breath. It seems that every time that ball starts rolling, it rolls a bit Like a square wheel at first."
March 20 An update on Nomad Recording Studio's MySpace page reads "JT Longoria is the process of mixing new tracks for Izzy Stradlin" As of today (July 24), there is still no release date for this record.
March 21 Guns N’ Roses add guitarist DJ Ashba for “upcoming tour.” The phrase "upcoming tour" is later redacted from the band's website.
March 26 Duff McKagan's Loaded announce Spring tour dates.
April 14 Chinese Democracy comes to the Rock Band 2 videogame.
April 17 Sick, the new album from Duff McKagan's Loaded, sells 1,400 copies in the United States its first week of release.
April 22 Guns N' Roses front-of-house engineer, Ken "Pooch" van Druten appears in a pair of videos discussing the band's Waves audio set-up for their upcoming tour. Pooch talks about the challenges of live mixing a 9-piece band. You can hear the musicians rehearsing "Sweet Child O' Mine" in the background. The videos are removed from YouTube in a matter of hours and the tour is called off several days later.
April 28 Richard Fortus tells KDHX 88.1 FM that Guns "hopefully, will be announcing dates soon, I hope."
April 30 Matt Sorum tells Joe Bosso at MusicRadar that Velvet Revolver needs "a singer soon. We need the right guy in six months. We can't wait another year. Otherwise, it might not matter."
May 7 Slash appears as a mentor on American Idol's rock week.
May 19 Bumblefoot jams with Duff McKagan's Loaded at the Gramercy theater in New York City.
June 1 Slash announces that Izzy Stradlin will play with him on his upcoming solo album.
June 7 The NY Daily News reports that Axl Rose has fired and rehired his manager, Irving Azoff, at least three times in the last five weeks.
June 15 Amazon announces a June 30 release date for the Chinese Democracy guitar tablature book. As of today (July 24) it has not been released.
June 16 New, alternate artwork for the Chinese Democracy booklet appears online. An indie record store in Hollywood is selling copies of the promotional disc for $100. A rep at Universal told me that there are no plans to re-release the album.
June 30 Slash and Friends play the Quart festival in Kristiansand, Norway. The 90 minute set featured appearances from Ron Wood, Ozzy Osbourne and Fergie. The band, which featured Franky Perez on lead vocals, covered songs by Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Velvet Revolver, The Rolling Stones, Guns N' Roses, Black Sabbath and more.
July 7 Mister Saint Laurent resurfaces in an attempt to obtain and release a collection of hoarded, unheard songs from the Chinese Democracy sessions. He is, unfortunately, unsuccessful.
July 14 Blogger Kevin "Skwerl" Cogill is sentenced to 1 year probation for leaking 9 songs from the Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy. "No fines, no restitution, no jail." July 15 A live chat with new Guns N' Roses guitarist DJ Ashba fails to deliver any information on the group.
July 17 Slash tells Classic Rock magazine that Velvet Revolver is "at a standstill."
July 23 Kevin Cogill tells the GN'R Syndicate that Beta Lebeis' son Fernando lied to the FBI and was responsible for past leaks of GN'R material. "He may have been trying to play hero to redeem himself, or he may have mistakenly thought he was somehow responsible. I don’t know."
On the corner of a big Los Angeles intersection stands an office block you could pass a thousand times and not take in. At ground level, there are a few shops, a couple of places to eat and the ubiquitous Starbucks. Nothing the tiniest bit special.
It's here (armed with a skinny cappuccino) that I meet someone totally out of place in the mundane surroundings - Duff McKagan, American hard-rock institution.
Taking in the fortysomething with short, spiky blond hair and aviator shades, you know he couldn't be anything but a rock'n'roller.
Founder member and bassist of Guns N' Roses, he's now bassist in Velvet Revolver (with his GN'R mates Slash and Matt Sorum) and frontman of his own group Loaded.
I also gather he's a seriously daring mountaineer, martial arts expert, financial guru for Playboy.com (yes, really) and budding radio presenter in his home town of Seattle where he also writes a local blog.
Tonight, he brings Loaded and songs from the band's riotous new album Sick to Download 2009 at Donington Park, on the same bill as a much anticipated performance from the reformed Faith No More. But, as we take a table outside Starbucks in the early LA summer sunshine, this pencil-thin, sober, super-fit character tells me he's "just happy to be alive".
He experienced it all - the women, the drugs, the extreme highs, the devastating lows and, most of all, the booze.
"If I wrote about what happened to me in 1994, it would have to be called All The Shit I Don't Remember," he explains.
That was the year he contracted acute alcohol-induced pancreatitis (his pancreas swelled to the size of a football) and he was told to give up booze or die.
"And I wanted to die because it hurt so bad and there was no escape. I was pleading with the doctors to kill me."
1994 was the year he became sober.
"If I drank, I would have died. It was very black and white," he continues. "When I got sober, I really started to get in touch. I took up martial arts. My sensei told me to look at myself in the mirror every day and say, 'Yesterday, I did everything right that I could do'. I'm proud of that."
It was at this point Duff began to realise he wanted out of Guns N' Roses, which, with Axl Rose at its helm, had become the biggest band in the world.
"I met my wife Susan and she got pregnant. And as I was about to have this kid, I started thinking , 'Shit, there's only me and Axl left (of the original members).'
"Why are we rehearsing at three in the morning? I don't want to do it anymore. I got a life.
"I was kind of hoping the band would get back together. I was under a lot of pressure but I was looking like the level-headed guy.
"Our manager was calling me every day for advice. What a scared little prick. I'm going, 'Dude, manage the fucking band. You're the manager!' I started to look around and go, 'What a bunch of morons'."
It's sad to reflect on the disintegration of a band who made some of the finest rock albums since Led Zeppelin - Appetite For Destruction, Use Your Illusion I and II.
Duff remembers the band's humble beginnings in LA. "Five guys who started in this town. We were living in squalor with nothing but a united belief in what rock'n'roll was,
"And we brought enough different shit and we trusted each others' opinions and we liked each others' influences. We toughed it out. We didn't care. Then not just America but the whole world were like, 'Yeah, we relate to this whole thing'."
All these years later, I ask Duff what he thinks of Chinese Democracy, the Guns N' Roses album that took an excruciating 15 years to make with only Axl of the original line-up present.
It's a question he gets asked a lot. "Number one, what does it matter what I think of it?" he replies. "But for the record, Axl sings great on it. There are some songs I really like and some I don't.
"People have read it as, 'Oh, Duff doesn't like it,' but it's not like that at all."
This brings us on to the subject of Velvet Revolver, formed in 2002 as a kind of hard-rock supergroup made up of ex-G N'R members, Dave Kushner from Wasted Youth and, until he left, Stone Temple Pilots' singer Scott Weiland.
For Duff, the lead-up to Scott's departure in April 2008 was a particularly harrowing time.
As someone who's been sober "apart from a couple of stumbles" since 1994, he was watching the singer going "over to the other side".
"Our last month and a half of touring with him was brutal," says Duff. "I guess maybe it's not fully known that Slash, Matt, Dave and I decided that we were going to get rid of him.
"We tried to bring him back but we couldn't do it. His old demons popped back up. Look, I'm a drug addict, I totally get it but he was too far gone. None of us had the energy to go through that.
"So we actually fired him on April Fools Day after the gig in Amsterdam. I wish him the best of luck."
Now VR are on enforced hiatus as they look for a new singer. "We've written all the music for the next album and the songs are huge," says Duff. "Scott was an amazing frontman, one of the best on the planet, but I think we still have our best record to come.
"But until Velvet Revolver find a singer, I'm putting 110% of my energy into Loaded. The new record was really fun and really inspired."
You can see elements of Duff's other bands in Sick but there's a clear nod to his youth and his love of punk rock - "the 13-year-old kid who saw the Clash in Seattle in 1979".
This is Loaded's third album, arriving a full eight years since Dark Days, and finds Duff swapping bass for lead vocals and guitar.
One song kind of sums up Duff's life less ordinary - Slide. It goes, "The Seventies gave us punk rock/The Eighties gave us crap/Nineties junky chic so cool, I don't remember much of that".
Then he turns to me and smiles: "Well fuck, I survived all that shit and I'm here feeling really great about it."
Adler’s Appetite, the band led by original Guns N' Roses drummer Steven Adler, will embark on the second leg of their 2009 US tour next month. Check out the band's upcoming tour dates below.
Upcoming Tour Dates:
June 13 - Las Vegas, NV - Cheyenne Saloon 15 - Colorado Springs, CO - Sodo Niteclub 16 - Oklahoma City, OK - Rock Theater 18 - Tolono, IL - Radmaker’s 19 - Cedar Rapids, IA - Rock 198 KFMW Festival 20 - Shaumburg, IL - Chicago City Limits 21 - Greenville, WI - Route 51 23 - Warren, MI - The Ritz 25 - Harris, WI - The Back Door 26 - Waterloo, IA - Reverb Rock Room 27 - Monroe City, MO - The Dam Rally 28 - St Louis, MO - The Library 30 - New Bedford, MA - New Wave Cafe
July 01 - Rumford, ME - The Shak 02 - Farmingdale, NY - Crazy Donkey 03 - Cinncinati, OH - Riverstar Entertainment Complex 04 - Bridgeville, IL - Toyota Park Festival 05 - St Paul, MN - Taste Of Minnesota (Harriet Island)
August 15 - Lake Elsinore, CA - Storm Stadium Rock Fest 28 - Universal City, CA - City Walk
Adler’s Appetite recently brought vocalist Rick Stitch, of the Los Angeles-based group Ladyjack to handle vocals, when their former singer, Sheldon Tarsha, parted ways with the group.
Last month, Steven told Beat Magazine that his autobiography will be out in late-January 2010.
"It’s almost completed, it should be out by late January of next year. Basically it takes Slash’s book, Nikki Sixx’s book and puts everything together as one. Because we were all together – we’ve known Nikki forever – so if you read his book and you read Slash’s book and when you read mine, everything, all the pieces of the puzzle will be put together. That’s how it works, and yeah, it’s very exciting."
Recently, Steven laid down some drum tracks for Slash's forthcoming solo album.
In addition, Adler's Appetite is threatening to release a new record, hopefully next Fall.
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