On the road with Guns N’ Roses

There was only one way to remove the moth occupying Axl Rose’s Malibu home — and it wasn’t a flyswatter. 

Instead, the Guns N’ Roses singer fetched his shotgun, as Craig Duswalt recalls in the paperback release of “Welcome To My Jungle” (BenBella). “Then with the moth hovering in the corner of the room, Axl pulled the trigger, and… BOOM!”

Duswalt still can’t believe it.

“For him, it was just another day in the life of a rock star.”

In October 1991, Duswalt was watching girlfriend Kim Evenson (“Playboy Playmate, September 1984”) swim when his pager beeped. 

A former colleague, Doug Goldstein, was managing Guns N’ Roses and wanted Duswalt on their “Use Your Illusion” tour.

“So, I look at Kim in her bathing suit and I weigh the situation. Stay here, or go on the road with the hottest band in the world,” he writes. 

“I knew what I had to do… break up with Kim via a phone call from far, far away.”

Thrown into a world of excess, Duswalt had to keep the band safe.

It wasn’t easy.

In 1992, guitarist Slash “died” outside Duswalt’s San Francisco hotel room. 

“He basically died from an overdose, [but] they revived him, and we played a concert that night, as if nothing happened.”

Then there was Rose’s, with the baby wallaby he took on tour.

“He named him Freddie, after the lead singer of Queen,” writes Duswalt. “Axl built a sling, to mimic the baby wallaby mother’s pouch and carried his pet around. 

“He also fed Freddie with a little baby’s bottle.”

When Guns N’ Roses played 1992’s Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in London, Duswalt photographed actress Liz Taylor “after she walked into Slash’s dressing room, and saw Slash in all his glory.

“Rumor has it she wasn’t embarrassed and didn’t quite leave right away. 

And she wasn’t looking into his eyes.”

Nudity features prominently, including one nude woman found making love to a car outside Rose’s dressing room and the U2 bassist, Adam Clayton, strolling naked through a packed bar in Vienna, carrying a birthday cake.

When the tour ended in July 1993, after 196 shows in 31 countries, Duswalt, was relieved to have made it through alive.

“I saw it all: the highlights, the lowlights, the good, the bad, and the just plain strange,” he writes. 

“And the moth, of course, was obliterated.”