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Around 1987

The band began in Los Angeles around 1985 and began to gather a following with their mixture of punk, blues, thrash and the current fad at the time: hair metal. Appetite for Destruction was the debut album released by GNR on Geffen Records in late 1987. The album itself sold well despite the fears of the bands management. Geffen Records feared that the record wouldn’t sell and the band would be a complete dud, but boy, did they prove them wrong. Appetite sold well over 20 million copies and spawned 3 singles.

2009 lineup

During the early ‘90s, the band, more Axl Rose than anybody, fired drummer Steven Adler over his apparent heroin addiction. While it was a new start toward the band, many of the other members dealt with several other drug related problems at the time. As the band went into the studio to record the next albums, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, the band hired a new drummer Matt Sorum and a keyboardist Dizzy Reed. After the Use Your Illusion albums were released, the band endured a tour that lasted almost two and a half years. By then, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin left the band to deal with some personal problems and, of course, with the fans this caused an uproar. Several videos on the internet show kids, who were possibly our age at the time, with signs asking “Where’s Izzy?”, but nobody would say for sure.

The Band around 1991

By 1994, Gilby Clarke quit the band. May of the members started their own side projects now that the band was starting to falter. In 1996, Slash quit saying that he and Axl were having creative differences. Within the next year or so, Duff McKagan and Dizzy Reed also left, leaving Axl as the only original member of the band left. 1998 rolled around and Axl Rose went into the studio with a new band, though they were still under the name Guns N’ Roses, and began to record a new album that would take almost ten years to finish. In 2008 the album Chinese Democracy was released, but didn’t really contain much of a following as the band’s first three albums did. Slash, Duff Mckagan, and Matt Sorum teamed up with Stone Temple Pilots front man to form Velvet Revolver.

Current Members:                    
Axl Rose- lead vocalist (1985- )                  
Tommy Stinson-Bassist (1997- )                                  
Brian Mania-Drums (2001- )                                         
Richard Fortus-Guitarist (2002- )                                 
Robin Finck-Guitarist (2002- )                                       
Dizzy Reed-Studio keyboardist (1990- )
Chris Pittman-Live keyboardist (1998- )
Past Members:

Tracii Guns, guitar (1985)
Robbie Gardner, guitar (1985)
Slash, guitar (1985-1986)
Duff McKagan, bass (1985-1997)
Izzy Stradlin, guitar (1985-1991)
Steven Adler, drums (1985-1990)
Matt Sorum, drums (1990-1997)
Robbie Gardner, guitar (1985)

Discography:

Appetite for Destruction (1987)

GN’R Lies (1988)

Use Your Illusion I (1991)

Use Your Illusion II (1991)

The Spaghetti Incident? (1993)

Chinese Democracy (2008)