Rolling Stone caught up with Guns N' Roses keyboardist Melissa Reese for an in-depth career-spanning interview. Following is an excerpt from the chat:

On April 1st, 2016, she drove herself to the the Troubadour for the tour’s opening night, still not totally understanding what she was getting herself into. 

“I was immersed in the work so much so that that’s all I was concerned about,” she says. “I parked my shitty rental car like a regular person, and I’m seeing all the paparazzi and all these people. I’m like, ‘What’s this about? Oh my God. I guess this is for this. Okay, this is kind of a big deal.'”

It was, in fact, one of the most hotly-anticipated reunion concerts in rock history, and one of the toughest tickets to score in recent memory. Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, Lana Del Rey, Lenny Kravitz, Jesse Hughes, Norman Reedus, David Arquette and many other big stars were crammed into the tiny venue near a handful of fans lucky enough to secure tickets. Axl Rose broke his left foot just a few songs into the set, but was pumped so full of adrenaline that he barely noticed until the show was over.

Cameras weren’t allowed in, but fan-shot footage still hit YouTube minutes after the band left the stage. Once the fans got over the shock of seeing Axl and Slash onstage together for the first time in 23 years, many of them had the same question: “Who is the woman in the back with the blue hair?” It didn’t take long for the press to figure out it was Reese.

“I woke up the next morning, and oh my God,” she says. “It was like CNN, Time, Billboard, People, Rolling Stone, every magazine somehow found my email address. And they were like, ‘Hello, we would like to talk to you about being in the band Guns N’ Roses.’ And I was just like, ‘What?’ I threw my phone across the room. ‘What the fuck do I do?’  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

Rose did his best to prepare her for this moment. 

“Before the Troubadour show he sat me down,” she says. “He was like, ‘Look, anybody ever fucks with you, talks shit to you, or about you, I fucking have your back.’ And I was just like, ‘Yeah. I got yours too, man.’ I was just trying to be on his level because he’s so intense. I later on found out what that would mean, because I just didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Having all that scrutiny on you and having all those people coming out of the woodwork and being on the news…It was a lot.”

Read the complete story here.