Haha, sorry, I was in bed last night and on my iPhone which is absolutely terrible at typing on. Mac and mechanical keyboard now, so no problems there!
The music video portrays a couple getting married, and then something happens at the reception, it starts raining, and then it’s a funeral for the bride. Oh, there’s also a random shot of her walking by a gun shop, though due to the angle and that both of them have long hair, you don’t really know who it is. Also, “Guns n’ Roses” is a reference to Tracy Guns and Axl Rose, so it was also seen as a nod back to Tracy Guns, who left the band early on. At the end of the video is a blurb saying to read a short story. Only, that short story was never widely distributed.
The short story was part of an anthology called The Language of Fear, and it was published in the UK by a small publisher that went under shortly after, only like a few dozen (or a few hundred) copies were released. Most didn’t sell, and when books aren’t sold, they’re destroyed. The books that survived were sold online for many times their value. (This was around the time eBay got big.) I saw listings for $800 and $1200. That was what it cost 25-30 years ago to find out what happened and people were paying. One day, some brave soul typed up the story (hopefully, releasing it after he sold it and got his money back) and shared it online. Then everybody found out what happened.
So the author was friends with Axl Rose and they hung out. They envisioned a multimedia project spanning music videos and stories. That’s why the videos November Rain, Don’t Cry, and Estranged all sort of follow a similar narrative.
Now, about the story itself. It followed a band, Suicide Solution (basically, Guns n’ Roses) and their singer Mayne Mann (basically, Axl Rose) on the last stop of their world tour. Mann (Rose) invites his girlfriend (I forget her name, but basically Rose’s girlfriend Stephanie Seymour) to celebrate after the tour. She says no, she has a modeling gig. The gig falls through, so she buys some roses and plans to surprise him. Anyway, mad that his girlfriend couldn’t be there, he brings a couple groupies back to his hotel room for a three-way. One of his bandmates shows up (or he calls him there) and he asks the bandmate to get him some coke or heroin. A while later there’s a knock at the door, so he shows up with the girls, all of them naked — but it’s the girlfriend. She’s upset, she gets in her car and drives home. He gets in his car and follows. He chases her up the stairs, and she shoots herself in the head. He then sets fire to their mansion, playing his signature song (Without You, which is the last line of the song Estranged, a reference to this) as the house burns around him. He wants to die, but he’s saved.
Funny thing we all missed in the video (though I imagine some people in the business spotted it) because music videos in the 90s were not in HD, it was blurry, it was cable TV, it was like 240p, 360p, something like that, was that during the funeral scene, there’s a mirror running down the length of the casket. It’s shown twice, but if you don’t know to look for it, it’s easy to miss. What I mean by “in the business” is, morticians probably did notice because they would be looking. They know it’s a live actor in there, but they’re going to be looking to see how good of a job the production did in portraying their industry. They’re gonna recognise the mirror. And they would tell you that the mirror is for if half the face/body can’t be reconstructed, but the family wants an open casket service. And one thing that would do that would be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head (which a good mortician can actually cover up).
I learned about the mirror years ago. I don’t know the timeline of the public sharing of the story, but regardless, I had no idea about the rest of this story. Thank you
I think a lot of us saw the mirror when the video was released on the Guns n’ Roses music video DVD. We got it in 480p and it was a lot cleaner than recordings from MTV. Much higher bitrate, too. DVD is “only” 480p but the bitrate was pretty high. DVDs still look decent. There was also YouTube and the 1080p upload, but I’m not sure when that was.
Before people started noticing the mirror, we were guessing she shot herself because she walks by a gun store, but she walks by it at night, and some say we see Axl, not her. (I still don’t know who we saw there. But I think it’s more a reference to Tracy Guns than anything else.) But, now we know what actually happened. She did shoot herself, but we don’t know where the gun came from. She almost certainly did not buy it right after the wedding. I’m guessing it was his. The video also leaves out 99% of the short story. The short story didn’t have the wedding or the funeral. Neither did the other videos. The short story was the piece the three videos were missing. The band (and writer) intended for you to get all the pieces together. That didn’t happen, and when the short story collection went out of print, they just gave up. They didn’t release the story online, they didn’t explain themselves, they just said “fuck it” and moved on. Only a few people who really cared, dug into it, and most of them threw money at the problem. Guys like me had to wait for the story to leak. Or the reprinting, but I’m confident the reprinting only happened because the story leaked. They weren’t reprinting it before then. The leak happened like 15-20 years after the book went out of print.
Oh, here’s the book on Amazon. $8.99 USD for a mass market paperback. No tracking on this link (at least not from me): https://www.amazon.com/Language-Fear-Stories-Del-James/dp/0440217121 So yeah, now anyone can get it for the price of just about any other book. Cheaper than others. I’m not trying to sell it, I’m just saying, it’s available now and it’s super cheap, it’s not the hundreds of dollars people were paying for it on eBay 20-30 years ago.
Go on then, what’s it about?
Haha, sorry, I was in bed last night and on my iPhone which is absolutely terrible at typing on. Mac and mechanical keyboard now, so no problems there!
The music video portrays a couple getting married, and then something happens at the reception, it starts raining, and then it’s a funeral for the bride. Oh, there’s also a random shot of her walking by a gun shop, though due to the angle and that both of them have long hair, you don’t really know who it is. Also, “Guns n’ Roses” is a reference to Tracy Guns and Axl Rose, so it was also seen as a nod back to Tracy Guns, who left the band early on. At the end of the video is a blurb saying to read a short story. Only, that short story was never widely distributed.
The short story was part of an anthology called The Language of Fear, and it was published in the UK by a small publisher that went under shortly after, only like a few dozen (or a few hundred) copies were released. Most didn’t sell, and when books aren’t sold, they’re destroyed. The books that survived were sold online for many times their value. (This was around the time eBay got big.) I saw listings for $800 and $1200. That was what it cost 25-30 years ago to find out what happened and people were paying. One day, some brave soul typed up the story (hopefully, releasing it after he sold it and got his money back) and shared it online. Then everybody found out what happened.
So the author was friends with Axl Rose and they hung out. They envisioned a multimedia project spanning music videos and stories. That’s why the videos November Rain, Don’t Cry, and Estranged all sort of follow a similar narrative.
Now, about the story itself. It followed a band, Suicide Solution (basically, Guns n’ Roses) and their singer Mayne Mann (basically, Axl Rose) on the last stop of their world tour. Mann (Rose) invites his girlfriend (I forget her name, but basically Rose’s girlfriend Stephanie Seymour) to celebrate after the tour. She says no, she has a modeling gig. The gig falls through, so she buys some roses and plans to surprise him. Anyway, mad that his girlfriend couldn’t be there, he brings a couple groupies back to his hotel room for a three-way. One of his bandmates shows up (or he calls him there) and he asks the bandmate to get him some coke or heroin. A while later there’s a knock at the door, so he shows up with the girls, all of them naked — but it’s the girlfriend. She’s upset, she gets in her car and drives home. He gets in his car and follows. He chases her up the stairs, and she shoots herself in the head. He then sets fire to their mansion, playing his signature song (Without You, which is the last line of the song Estranged, a reference to this) as the house burns around him. He wants to die, but he’s saved.
Funny thing we all missed in the video (though I imagine some people in the business spotted it) because music videos in the 90s were not in HD, it was blurry, it was cable TV, it was like 240p, 360p, something like that, was that during the funeral scene, there’s a mirror running down the length of the casket. It’s shown twice, but if you don’t know to look for it, it’s easy to miss. What I mean by “in the business” is, morticians probably did notice because they would be looking. They know it’s a live actor in there, but they’re going to be looking to see how good of a job the production did in portraying their industry. They’re gonna recognise the mirror. And they would tell you that the mirror is for if half the face/body can’t be reconstructed, but the family wants an open casket service. And one thing that would do that would be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head (which a good mortician can actually cover up).
I learned about the mirror years ago. I don’t know the timeline of the public sharing of the story, but regardless, I had no idea about the rest of this story. Thank you
I think a lot of us saw the mirror when the video was released on the Guns n’ Roses music video DVD. We got it in 480p and it was a lot cleaner than recordings from MTV. Much higher bitrate, too. DVD is “only” 480p but the bitrate was pretty high. DVDs still look decent. There was also YouTube and the 1080p upload, but I’m not sure when that was.
Before people started noticing the mirror, we were guessing she shot herself because she walks by a gun store, but she walks by it at night, and some say we see Axl, not her. (I still don’t know who we saw there. But I think it’s more a reference to Tracy Guns than anything else.) But, now we know what actually happened. She did shoot herself, but we don’t know where the gun came from. She almost certainly did not buy it right after the wedding. I’m guessing it was his. The video also leaves out 99% of the short story. The short story didn’t have the wedding or the funeral. Neither did the other videos. The short story was the piece the three videos were missing. The band (and writer) intended for you to get all the pieces together. That didn’t happen, and when the short story collection went out of print, they just gave up. They didn’t release the story online, they didn’t explain themselves, they just said “fuck it” and moved on. Only a few people who really cared, dug into it, and most of them threw money at the problem. Guys like me had to wait for the story to leak. Or the reprinting, but I’m confident the reprinting only happened because the story leaked. They weren’t reprinting it before then. The leak happened like 15-20 years after the book went out of print.
Oh, here’s the book on Amazon. $8.99 USD for a mass market paperback. No tracking on this link (at least not from me): https://www.amazon.com/Language-Fear-Stories-Del-James/dp/0440217121 So yeah, now anyone can get it for the price of just about any other book. Cheaper than others. I’m not trying to sell it, I’m just saying, it’s available now and it’s super cheap, it’s not the hundreds of dollars people were paying for it on eBay 20-30 years ago.
Well, that was a wild ride. Thanks for following it up!