southsamurai, 1 year ago

Ehhh, Axl has gone on record about when and why he wrote the song, and why he used the words he used. He outright said that he didn’t like gay people unless it was lesbians he could watch because that’s his fetish. He did say that he was only using the slurs to point at part of the groups, but the way he said it was still both racist and homophobic.

Slash has said on the record that he objected to the song, and wished it hadn’t been made, but that (at the time) the band didn’t interfere with each other creatively. He also didn’t play much on the track, btw. Afaik, Axl wrote all the acoustic guitar on it, because he’s stated on the record that he sucked at the guitar and was essentially just strumming two strings. I’ve never seen any breakdown of who played what on the recording though, so I can’t say who is playing on the track.

However, Slash has also said that while he didn’t like the song, he wasn’t pissed at Axl because of it. But you can’t use that as a guideline for the song being acceptable or not because a shit ton of other musicians were quite vocal in their objections at the time (including the band that toured with them during that era, Living Color).

It isn’t anyone ascribing anything to him (axl), it’s what he himself has said in interviews, and on stage.

In later interviews he’s outright said that he as a person was a rage junkie (abridged version lol, he did a lot of interviews), and absolutely had hatred for gay people as a whole. He’s given multiple reasons for that, and none of those are self-contradictory. However, none of them excuse his behavior towards gay people.

As far as other things he’s said about his racial beliefs, I don’t know if it’s fair to say he’s full on racist, as in hating black people or any given ethnic group. What is fair to say is that his excuses for use the n slur in the song amount to stereotyping and was certainly intended to attack at least the black people he was stereotyping.

Now, I’m pulling this from having been a fan of the band since they broke into national awareness, and all the stuff I read and heard along the way. But, the interviews are usually available online. I know the Rolling Stone magazine stuff is. There’s still concert ,footage of him from the era ranting about being accused of bigotry, though that was pretty much just him saying “fuck you” to anyone that didn’t like him.

Very specifically, Axl has said that he wrote it from his own perspective, talking about his experiences and his anger. The “one in a million” sections of the song are him repeating something said to him in real life because he was a raging asshole (again, he’s said that on record).

So, the worst motives being ascribed to him aren’t ONLY because he isn’t well liked. Hell, I’ve still got the vinyl of Lies, and have the rest of the pre-breakup albums on at least CD, if not multiple formats. I don’t hate Axl, much less the band.

Knopfler has also been open about how his song was written, and it’s intent. It was, just as you said, holding up the kind of speech and behavior in the song to ridicule. That’s been his public stance on the song from the beginning, and it has never changed afaik. The lyrics support that stance. He’s told the story of writing down many of the lines from the song after hearing them in person by another person. The lyrics are saying that the musicians on stage and screen are the yo-yos playing Hawaiian music, so the f slur in the song would be directed at Knopfler himself even if he was writing from his own perspective.

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I know, that’s a lot of words for a decades old song lol. But anyone that was a fan of the band back then had to negotiate the matter. My best friend still hates Axl because of the song. The debate about exactly how bad the lyrics are was a nearly daily thing for a few weeks after the EP came out. I never hated Axl, I don’t waste my hate on strangers very often (and never on strangers that can’t really do anything with whatever bullshit they spew). But I get why people do.