I have been scanning my archive lately (Alphabetically) and have recently gotten through the G section of the alphabet, which includes Guns and Roses. I photographed them a lot in their early days. Axl Rose was always a surly egomaniac with a great voice and great songs. I was through with them when he jumped off the front of the stage with his microphone stand to hit me over the head with it because he thought I had used a flash (it was actually an audience member behind me). Luckily his road manager was standing next to me and stopped him!! It seems that the band spent a lot of time and energy stopping people from photographing them in their early days.
Then they went away for about 20 years while they made their next album! They went out on tour to support that album (which wasn’t finished yet). I went to that show. They were two hours late hitting the stage, and Guns and Roses was composed of Axl, Matt Sorum and a bunch of guys that looked like G and R members,, but didn’t play like them!. Axl looked pretty good, sang pretty well also. They then did a few more tours, like Spinal Tap, always in smaller and smaller venues. I heard that Axl got quite fat during that period.
Now, he is trying to “scrub” the internet of all of the fat photos, using DMCA takedown notices to do so. DMCA takedown notices are meant to be used to protect copyright holders from piracy, not to protect rock stars vanity. Axl’s takedown notices claim that “no permission has been granted to publish the images.”
Excuse me! The photographers were granted photo passes!
Axl must know that he will be photographed by hundreds of “Photographers” with cell phones every time he steps out on stage. Will he next try to stop all of them??
On another note, didn’t Ryan Lochte and his three friends realize that there are cameras everywhere in the world and they cannot lie about what they were doing at that gas station last week? Also, why did they post their whole night on social media (with time stamps) to counter their whole made up story? Lochte is 32 years old- but really only 12 in real time years. He should be ashamed of himself!