Marc Canter, author of Reckless Road: GUNS N' ROSES And The Making Of Appetite For Destruction, spoke with Gnrdaily.com recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Gnrdaily.com: How’d you meet the people involved in Guns N’ Roses?

Marc: "I met Slash as Saul Hudson in the fifth grade in 1976 when he was trying to steal my mini bike, motor bike actually, in front of the KFC on 3rd and Fuller. He recognized me from school when he was looking to see who’s it might be. I didn’t know him but I knew his face. Rather than try to steal it he figured he’d just make friends with me so he could ride it. Turned out he only lived a block away from my house so we started becoming close friends. Soon after that I noticed he had a really good knack for drawing and his art projects were dinosaurs, snakes, jungles, all kinds of crazy things he’d do, so I knew there was something special there but I didn’t really think much of it. Then we were racing BMX motor cross together, when he’d go off a jump flashes would go off, he had a little extra style, he had a little extra than what most people had. Then we lost touch for about a year or two because we went to different schools. We met back up at the start of the tenth grade and by then he had been playing guitar for about a year and he was playing with Ron Schneider and Adam Greenberg and he said, hey, my band is playing a party next week and you should come."

Gnrdaily.com: What’s the name of that band?

Marc: "TITUS SLOAN, so I show up at the party, I saved the flyer, and I was smart enough to actually bring a tape recorder to record the gig cause I just knew something was gonna be cool and it worked. I liked it. I started documenting it. About two years later we met Axl and Izzy. Izzy didn’t stay around for long, maybe a week or so, but I noticed the chemistry that Slash had with Axl was something special and Axl had something special on his own. So, I documented that and took pictures and recorded the shows. Then that band sort of fell apart. Axl went into LA Guns with Tracy Guns and asked me if I’d document that, take some pictures cause he liked the pictures I did with Hollywood Rose. So, of course I recorded that gig too and took some pictures for two of those gigs. That band sort of fell apart and about 9 months later Guns N Roses got back together but without Slash for a couple gigs. Duff had booked a tour to Seattle and Portland where he was from and Traci and Rob Gardner, the ex drummer, didn’t really want to go up there cause they didn’t know where they were gonna sleep or what they were gonna eat. They grew up in nice homes here and, you know, Axl, Izzy, and Duff lived on the streets so it didn’t matter if they slept in the back of someone’s car or in an alley that looks safe, it didn’t matter, they knew they were gonna make it. Music came first. So they simply called Slash and said, hey. They remembered he was good and they remembered that… they just wanted to be with him now that Tracy is not there. They asked Slash if he would join and Slash and Steven Adler joined. They did one gig at the Troubadour two days before they left, that was the first gig. June 6 1985. I noticed at that gig that things were different cause Steven had a single base drum instead of a double base drum, and a year ago when they were playing together Steven had a double base drum and the music was faster and it was like a speed metal band and now it had a little bit of a groove to it. They slowed things down, they were writing, it was like lightening in a bottle. I just knew it was really exciting to be there. After that gig they took off to Seattle and they went through a week of hell. Their car broke down, they had to hitch hike, they ate onions on the side of the road. So, by the time they got back they were no longer just 5 musicians fit for each other, they were blood brothers, they had gone through some hell together. Now they had each others backs. So I think that’s what kept it together the second time because it wasn’t just the music, they had some emotion for each other. So they came, took some publicity shots, and made flyers and just started playing gigs. Every couple gigs they’d write a new song and after Slash joined the band the first song they wrote together was ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and about 6 weeks later, ‘Rocket Queen,’ a little time after that was ‘Paradise City,’ then ‘Night Train,’ then ‘My Michelle,’ then ‘Out To Get Me,’ so the songs are pretty much self produced. They didn’t really get arranged any differently on the record, even the guitar solo is the same as it was the very fist time they played it. So I knew it was like seeing a LED ZEPPELIN starting because everything they did was good. They didn’t know how to fail and it just worked. They looked good, they sounded good, they had the image and like I said they moved properly, and they had the song writing capabilities. They had all 5 elements. A lot of bands will make it on one of those elements and they had all 5 so there was no way that they would fail. I knew that eventually they would get signed and put a record out and possibly have a gold record. I had no idea they would sell 90 million records but I think MTV had a lot to do with that cause Appetite For Destruction was out for about a year and sold about 200,000 copies and Geffen was ready to put out another record, have them record another record. MTV wasn’t playing them, radio stations really weren’t’ playing them, KNAC and the underground cool stations were playing ‘Welcome To The Jungle.’ David Geffen pulled a favor at MTV and begged the guy to play Jungle. They really didn’t want to play it cause they thought the band had a bad wrap and they didn’t want to lose advertisers so they said ok well play the song one time on a Sunday night at 6am eastern time. They played it once and their switchboards blew up with people calling in saying, hey who is that? Play that again. Within one week they were in top 10 rotation and within 3months they were selling 200,000 records a week. MTV was a great tool to show the world what was created here."

To read the entire interview visit this location.