Appetite for Distortion · Appetite For Distortion

"Estranged: Guns N' Roses & Use Your Illusion" author, Geoff Harkness | Ep. 557

March 24, 2026·56 min·4 clips

Author Geoff Harkness reveals why Axl Rose was the driving creative force behind Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion albums.

The copy is physical, and Brando makes sure everyone knows it. He does the old radio page-flip bit, jokes about a small apartment full of books, then lands on Harkness and the new Estranged volume. Then the obvious question arrives. Why go after Use Your Illusion when Appetite gets the love, the books, and the origin-story treatment already? Harkness answers as a fan first. The Appetite era, he says, has been handled incredibly by writers such as Mark Cantor, while the Illusion years never got the same satisfying treatment. There was a gap. He wanted the whole strange, sprawling stretch followed from start to finish, instead of brushed past in a band biography or memoir. Slash becomes part of the case, too. Harkness points to Slash saying the tour was too long to fully retell, which left space for someone else to trace the whole thing properly. Brando understands why it still sticks. If the albums had been one record, or if the tour had gone smoothly, maybe people would not keep circling back. But they do. The riots, the lateness, and the every-year arguments make the era feel less like a closed chapter than unfinished business. The book comes out of that fixation. Harkness says he writes the books he wants to read, and only about bands he loves enough to chase all the way down. So the tone stays fan-to-fan. Brando leaves in the apartment clutter, the YouTube book-showing, and the small self-corrections alongside the real music talk. The ending stays casual. Harkness calls the appearance an honor, Brando jokes that he thinks he is the only one watching, and the show wraps with an Axl Rose Chinese Democracy callback.

As heard by us

A fan-led deep dive into why Use Your Illusion still deserves its own book.

Jeff Harkness comes on to talk about why he wrote a book on Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion era, and the conversation works because it treats that stretch as its own thing instead of just another footnote to Appetite.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want a deep dive into the Use Your Illusion era, this one is for you.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Appetite for Distortion