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| Chris Weber
was born in 1966 in West Hollywood, CA. Born into a rich family, Chris got his first
guitar at age 9. Chris started both learning by himself, and also learning by friends of
his family, who taught him to play various things. Chris went to Fairfax High School, with
Tracii Guns, as well as to Hollywood High School. Chris and Tracii were good friends,
which would later prove to help Chris in forming his first real band. Another guitarist who had moved to LA, Izzy Stradlin, met Chris and Tracii for the first time, in 1982 at the Rainbow Bar & Grill. Izzy talked to Tracii who introduced him to Chris. Tracii suggested Izzy and Chris to put together a band with Izzy's old friend Axl Rose. "I got his phone number and called to ask if he wanted to get a band together", Chris said. "He said 'Yeah,' and he introduced me to Axl. So I went over to the place where Axl was living, that was over in Hollywood, and I go up to the roof and he was laying down on this... I don't think he had a towel or anything, just these shorts on, laying on this hot tar roof. He had this bright red hair and he was taking in the sun. I could just see the heat coming off of him. He was sweating and I went up and said 'Hey, I'm Chris,' and he said 'How are you dude?' Ever since then we started playing and writing songs together. That's how it happened." With Johnny Kreis added to the line-up, and Rick Mars and Andre Troxx switching on handling the bass duties, the line-up was completed. "Originally, the band was called A.X.L," Chris explained. "Axl was going by Bill Bailey, Izzy's name then was Jeff Isbell, but I was calling him Izzy. One day Axl got mad and we ended up changing the name to Rose." The name was later changed to Hollywood Rose, because there already was another band called Rose." While the band was named Rose, the band started playing live, and they also got songs written. The most well known is probably "Anything Goes". "We had Izzy's little tape deck, and this girl named Laura came by and she turned us onto Hanoi Rocks and we really got into them. We were the first band to really revive glam in Los Angeles because back then heavy metal and leather and studs were in. It was really big to wear black, spandex, and studs, and we started wearing bright colors and makeup. We were the first band to do that since the '70's, when the last glam bands died out, right before punk. We wanted to revamp it in Los Angeles. In the beginning, we got a lot of flack for it, with our big hair, a million different ways. My hair was white and Izzy's was blue/black, and we had these rhinestone earrings, scarves, pink leather jackets and high-heeled boots. We got a lot of shit, but we were really proud. We went up there and played a lot of hard rocking stuff, a little heavier than Guns N' Roses is now. So we had that glam thing going, and people started catching on to it. We were friends with Poison and they were kinda dressing like that too." After a gig in 1984, Axl got pissed off, and left the band. "We were all just going our separate ways. We had been playing together for a long time and everyone wanted to do something else. That was around early '85. [it actually was early '84] Then we got back together. I think it was about New Years '86 [that was New Years '84]. We played another gig; they made references to that in Rolling Stone that I played with them at Dancing Waters, like a kind of reunion gig. Izzy booked the gig and they didn't have a band so I said I'd do it. But that was basically the end of it -- that was the end of my collaboration with Guns N' Roses." Even though Chris didn't play in band with Axl and Izzy, he didn't stop hanging out with the guys. "I was hanging out with Izzy for quite a long time. In fact, I was going to help produce them. I did in fact produce a demo tape of theirs with Black Randy. He was a punk singer that recently died of AIDS. That was the last time I did anything musical with them, but three of my songs are on their album/EP. And they didn't forget to credit me..." Besides "Anything Goes," Chris also wrote "Reckless Life," with Axl, Izzy (and Slash), and "Move To The City" with Izzy and Del James. Chris sued his old friends because he wasn't given credit for the songs "Back Off Bitch" and "Shadow Of Your Love." Doug Goldstein denied that Weber had anything to do with the songs, and Chris lost the lawsuit. In 1989, Chris Weber decided to reform
Hollywood Rose, and he probably got offers from some of the major companies.
Unfortunately, the band never released anything. He also signed a record deal with Epic
Records in 1998, and worked with the producer Rick Parashar (Produced the Pearl Jam album
"Ten"). Again, it seemed like something went wrong, since there's still no
record released. (Updated January 14, 2006) |
Born: Sometime 1966 in West Hollywood, CA Instruments: Guitar Bands: Hollywood Rose, UPO Parents: Unknown Siblings: Unknown Children: Unknown |
| Influences Hanoi Rocks, UK Subs, Ramones |
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| Quotes "Guns N'Roses was essentially Izzy and Axl..." "For a long time, Axl and Izzy were living in my house, so we'd wake up and I'd come up with a guitar riff and Axl would have some lyrics, or I'd come up with the melody lines and we'd show it to Axl and he'd write the lyrics. I think that their songrwriting technique is a lot different now than it was back then." "They didn't do any drugs while I was in the band. There was just a little bit of pot smoking, but no hard drugs." "I
hear a lot of stuff now about Axl being moody, but when I knew him he was just a nice,
pleasant, and caring guy, who would talk and listen to me, and I would listen to his
problems."
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