Letter to the Editor (SPIN Magazine, 1991)
I picked up the June issue of SPIN, the first I’d ever read, because of the simple line on the cover, “How to Get Your Own Guns N’ Roses Interview” [June ‘91]. These nine words caused me to grab the magazine and pay for it, without taking the time to look through it, as I usually do, when purchasing magazines.
Guns N’ Roses is my all-time favorite band. Slash was the first inspiration for me to pick up the guitar and get some decent equipment. Axl has recently inspired me, eight months after starting the guitar, to begin trying to write lyrics and music and to try and put together some songs. The band as a whole has inspired me to get my own band together at 13 years old. I am trying to be as serious as an eighth-grade honor student can be, and I must give them a lot of credit for keeping the group, with only a few minor changes, together.
I have always wondered how they work together to make such cool music. I want to learn how they think, so maybe one day that will be me on the stage cranking out some rock’n’roll.
Up until now, I have been buying every magazine with so little as one short paragraph on G N’ R to help me find out more about them. I almost stopped breathing when I saw those nine simple words… “No guarantees,” you said, but I didn’t care! I’d try anyway. So, I ripped the page out and ran up to ask my dad, the music whiz of the family, how I should go about filling it out. The shock hit me like a speeding train when my dad skimmed through it and told me it was just a way for the magazine to get back at the band for the lousy contract they made and those now-hated nine words were just to sell some magazines.
What kind of cruel joke was this?! How could you not even give so much as a little “not” at the bottom of the page? Go ahead! Try teasing me again with the people I look to as gods!! I won’t be fooled anymore! I won’t be made into a fool ever again; not by this cheap, lying magazine!
I think I deserve an apology.
Laura Skerratt
Bernardsville, New Jersey
