CURE GILBY CLARKE OR KILL GILBY CLARKE

So Tracii Guns told Metal Underground who told me that Gilby Clarke is in the hospital. Oh noes! Tracii sez:

“Gilby got nailed on his motorcycle last night. His leg is broken in three places. It was a hit and run. I am gonna try to go see him tonight – he will be ok.”

For those of you who don’t know, Gilby Clarke was Izzy Stradlin’s original replacement in Guns N’ Roses back in ’91. Unfortunately, the poor bastard only got to record one album with them, and that album was The Spaghetti Incident?, which was a) a covers record so Gilby didn’t get no publishin’ and b) Gilby only played on GN’R’s least-famous, lowest-selling album ever*. After he was fired from the band basically because Axl Rose didn’t like the way he wrote songs, he had a solo career that didn’t really go anywhere, produced some stuff (including a really good record by The Bronx), and finally ended up on/in Rockstar Supernova as the dude no one remembered being in Guns N’ Roses even though he kept saying he was.

All of which is to say that Gilby was never really a rock star even though he was kind of a rock star, which must be why he was actually nice to me when I met him as a young ‘un. Little did he know that being nice to that young dorky kid would someday buy him a nice “FEEL BETTER SOON!” post on a blog, published many hours after plenty of other media outlets had already decided to suddenly remember who he is, because putting the words “Guns N’ Roses” in any headline is still good for search engine traffic.

Here’s a Gilby solo song, “Cure Me or Kill Me,” written and recorded while he still kinda-sorta in the band. Slash plays the guitar solo.

FEEL BETTER SOON GILBY!

-AR

*Actually it may have outsold Chinese Democracy, but it’s definitely less famous than CD.