How Alan Niven was 'sucked in' to managing Guns N' Roses

Wellington-born Alan Niven managed American rock band Guns N' Roses at the peak of their career in the late 1980s.

“In terms of self-awareness, I'm old and in the way and pushed into the corner of the kitchen. So, there I sit like a jukebox and somebody may come and put a quarter in or pour me a glass of port and I'll tell a story,” he told RNZ’s Afternoons.

Niven says he took on the gig of managing Guns N' Roses as a favour.

“I got to a point of saying, okay, I'll go and take a meeting as a favour to a friend who is begging me, please, to the point of saying, pretend to manage this band, because Eddie Rosenblatt, president of Geffen, will not let me start recording with this band until they have management. So, will you at least pretend to be the manager?”

Niven agreed to do so and was immediately “sucked in”, he says, by the band’s top-hatted lead guitarist.

“Slash was articulate, charming, had English blood in his veins, and was more than just the typical Sunset speed merchant.

“He had a developing sense of feel that was strong. But he was very articulate and charming, which immediately got me to the point of going, okay, there's more here than I thought.”

The rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin was also a key ingredient in the band’s sound and success, he says.

“I got to know Izzy a little bit, and Izzy was rock n roll to the manor born.”

He’s no fan of memorabilia, he says but treasures a picture he has of Stradlin.

“I have a photograph in my living room of Izzy, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards, standing as a trio, looking at each other, playing on stage together at Atlantic City.

“And those are three chips off the same block of rock 'n' roll marble.”

Charm is not the currency Axl Rose trades in, he says.

“If you want charm and charisma, sit down on a bar stool next to Slash, not that he can drink anymore. If you want cool and charisma, sit down next to Izzy, not that he drinks.

“If you want bad-tempered contentiousness, go and sit with the person at the far end of the bar who's giving off a low negative frequency that's making everybody avoid him.”

What Rose brought to the band was an outlaw voice, Niven says.

“The f...ing voice. Welcome to the jungle. I would describe that as the voice of an outlaw. He is Billy the Kid.”

Guns N’ Roses had that elusive quality of chemistry, he says.

“In my own old and befuddled way, I tend to look at bands as molecules. And a molecule that holds together will have various parts of differing significance and power and influence.

“But the interesting thing is you take one element out of that molecule and the whole damn thing collapses. And with Guns N' Roses, there was definitely chemistry from the get go.”

It not something that can be conjured or contrived in a moment, he says.

“I think that's a part of what's missing in today's culture is people don't sit in and go, okay, we're going to be a band, we're going to take it level by level. And we're going to let our determination overcome the pulse of ambition.

“Because a lot of bands become successful, and it's their ambition that exceeds their talent. Mötley Crüe, for one, if I'm not going to mention any names.”

Being a rock 'n' roll manager, for him, was more than a job, he says.

“This might be a definition of my naivete, but I thought of it as a way of life, 24-7, 365 days, and there were those who were involved in management who had tried to manage Guns N' Roses, who did treat it as an occupation, as a job. They clocked in at 10.30 maybe, depending on the hangover, and they were gone for drinks at six. And good luck trying to find them throughout the night.

“For me, being involved with bands was not an occupation, not something I could clock in and clock out of, but something I had a wholehearted and complete commitment to.”

A manager must “supply the spontaneous on demand,” he says.

“One of the intriguing aspects of rock n roll, is that if you go and you spend time analysing a tour, just for a few days, you find that it is incredibly well rehearsed, incredibly well drilled.

“And that piece of equipment goes into exactly the same truck in exactly the same place every night. Behind the scenes, it has to be like a Swiss watch, so that you can present the illusion on stage that this show is completely spontaneous, haphazard, and will never happen the same way tomorrow night.”

A lifetime of rock n roll yarns is told in Niven's recent memoir Sound n Fury: Rock ‘n Roll stories.