As the sales of the legendary Appetite For Destruction approach the 20 million copies in the United States, who remembers today that it almost never saw the light of day? Not only the bonds uniting Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler were fragile, but fate seemed set against this band which seemed to be slow to catch on to Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Cinderella or Dokken. This is almost as a kindness that David Geffen had accepted to welcome this homeless band on his label. He would not regret his altruism…

Former manager of Crosby, Stills And Nash or Jackson Browne, then founder of the Asylum label (Eagles, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Waits…), David Geffen was seen as a lunatic at the down of the 80s when, to launch Geffen Records, he had signed John Lennon with his eyes closed, without having heard a single note from his latest album, Double Fantasy. No one wanted the former Beatle after more than five years of retirement. Four years later, people thought he had lost his legendary intuition by welcoming Aerosmith while everyone thought they were at the end of their rope, even if they were freshly back together, or even Neil Young during the most unstable period of his career. But, in 1987, he tasted sweet revenge after relaunching the careers of Simon & Garfunkel, Peter Gabriel, Joni Mitchell, Elton John, Don Henley or Cher and succeeded brilliantly with albums as improbable, for the era, as the ones from Asia, Sammy Hagar, Siouxie & The Banshees, Irene Cara, Berlin, Quarterflash, or, in a more hard rock vein, Tesla, Y&T and Whitesnake…

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