Who The Fuck is

Raz Cue

Back in 1985, a little ol’ band called Guns N’ Roses formed in my living room. And thus, I became the band’s first manager. As a trusted member of G N’ R’s inner circle for the remainder of the decade, I witnessed the iconic band tour the world’s stages as they rose to the pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll.

With good times and fun stories constantly swirling about in my mind’s eye, I resolved to set the standard for which all future memoirs should be judged. Four hundred and twenty drafts later, the product of that quest emerged: The Days of Guns & Raz’s. Far more than a Hollywood rock ‘n’ roll memoir, the book follows a drug-addled journey from feral child to moral-ish adult.  Add a crippling spinal injury during high school, through rehabilitation into a life of riding a wheelchair, my story just keeps rolling along.

The Days of Guns & Raz's
Raz Cue

How Do I Start This Thing: 1965-74

February 1965 – a baby boy they called Rached entered this world ass-first, screaming like thunder. Not from the smack on my bottom, but because the doctor yanked me from a warm, moist environment I had grown quite fond of. My resistance

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The Best Days of My Youth: 1975-78

We rented a place at “Our Town Apartments.” The mega-complex, billed as “A Place for Kids and Their Families,” sat right across the street from Orange Coast College. It sported a community center with pool tables, swimming pool, BBQs, and a “Teen

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A Fourteen-Year-Old Boy Has Great Plan: 1979-80

A day later, I sprang from Ma’s Kawasaki KZ 750 twin, semi-eager to enroll at my newest school. Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High boasts several illustrious alumni, but a girl named Norma Jeane Baker attended decades before me and tops the list.

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Behind The Orange Curtain: 1980

A midnight drive south in Pops’ Lincoln Mark V delivered a far scruffier Raz back behind the Orange Curtain. We hadn’t spoken the entire – year and a half, six schools, and felony conviction – time I lived with Ma, so we

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How To Face Life Head First: 1980

Monday afternoon, I caught a downtown bus to grab my final paycheck. It was far less tense with Pops away, so I hung out long enough to burn a few bowls and shoot the shit with the kitchen guys. In case he

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How I Gained a Whole New Perspective: 1981-82

And so, back to the real world to witness years fly by from a seated position. Pops’ newest house had a pool in the backyard, which my therapists thought was great. By simultaneously providing buoyancy and resistance, pool therapy is the best

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How to Meet Super Famous People: 1982-83

Shortly after 1982’s first hangover subsided, Ma’s kind friend, Robin, let me have her super-cheap, street-level, one-bedroom apartment. Three days before my seventeenth birthday, I got my own pad to come and go as I pleased. The place was a block from

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Open G is The Best Tuning For Air Guitar: 1984

The outstanding Ian Gillian, of Deep Purple fame, banded together with Black Sabbath to put out a kick-ass metal record, Born Again. A few weeks into 1984, Mike and me went to enjoy that evil shit live at the Long Beach Arena.

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Raz Records Office 1984
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How to Start a Fire Using Hundred Dollar Bills: 1984

Barely a month after my chat with a top-ten all-time-great rock god, Ronnie James Dio, my lawyer called to report two of five opposing parties were offering to settle my lawsuit. For two hundred and fifty grand, all I needed to do

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Axl Rose Joins L.A. Guns (For a Minute)

About two weeks later, I got a call from Mr. Axl Rose himself. He didn’t beat around the bush. Right after a hello, he straight-out asked, “Is L.A. Guns still looking for a singer?” We met up to have a few drinks

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New Singer Hired, then Mike Jagosz Fired: 1984

Six days after Axl Rose departed L.A. Guns, Ronald Regan earned a second presidential term with the largest electoral vote landslide victory in United States history. Maybe it just seemed like it because I was nineteen, but times were good in a

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How to Make Ten Bucks In The Music Business: 1985

My freelance music-business school courses depleted my settlement funds at a pace comparable to lighting up blunts using hundred dollar bills. I invested in the wind and blew through eighty-five grand in six months. Plus, when there’s a dude selling killer blow

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Let There Be Guns and Roses: 1985

Shortly after that Iron Maiden concert, Izzy and Axl regrouped Hollywood Rose for a one-off gig at Dancing Waters. The South Bay club featured an actual waterfall cascading down behind the stage, but I never actually saw it because the joint wasn’t

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The Guns N’ Roses You Know N’ Love: 1985

Axl only had one guitarist in mind. But Izzy expressed a desire to explore all options, in hopes of finding an older, more established musician. Axl remained steadfast and eventually convinced Izzy to at least invite Slash over to talk music, and

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A New L.A. Guns Steps Up to Challenge GNR: 1985

Whatever Tracii Guns believed he had going on, right after getting the boot from G N’ R, never panned out. After a few months of sitting around twiddling his thumbs, one afternoon he dropped by my house to tell me he formed

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The Very First Steps to Becoming Infamous: 1986

Guns N’ Roses pulled a capacity crowd into the Troubadour on the first Saturday night of 1986. Along with a first-ever opportunity for fans to purchase Guns N’ Roses T-shirts, club goers also heard and felt the “My Michelle” debut. For months,

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How the World Met Guns N’ Roses: 1987

By the start of 87, The Wild were also long gone from their Gardner Street studio. All the cool 24/7 parties moved to Orange Street, right around the corner from the iconic Chinese Theater. A recent building boom had produced several mostly-wheelchair-accessible,

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How to Get a Thrill That Will Get You: 1988

After months of relentless touring, G N’ R earned themselves a little time off. At the start of 1988, they returned to Hollywood as conquering heroes and were without a doubt the new band with the biggest buzz in the business. But

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When Guns N’ Roses Ruled Their World: 1989

I don’t know if it was something I did or said, but Axl never again called or gave me his phone number. I wasn’t officially blacklisted, and never had an issue getting show tickets and passes. Plus, whenever I ran into Axl,

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Popular Past Posts
Raz Cue

Rap, Uncle Ted & The Rock Hall of Fame

“Rap overtakes rock as the most popular genre among music fans,” shouted a 2018 USA Today headline. Born on the streets of 1970’s inner-city America, the influential genre has dispatched to second place the formally dominant, seemingly immortal art form known as

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Raz Cue

Do the Victor’s Write the History?

If “History is written by the victors,” then why are Marxist losers in control of our history curriculum? I think we can all agree that racism is bad. If not, fuck you! But the question is, why is hating old white guys

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How To Combine Two Duff Posts Into One

In 2019 I broke the Hollywood “dude-bro code” by publishing these two blogs. For all those who got their panties in a bunch, I made no revelations or accusations. Zero! Every dastardly deed spoken of in the following blog was common knowledge

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