Analysis Of John Sullivan's The Comeback Of Axl Rose

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In John Sullivan’s essay, “The Comeback Of Axl Rose,” he introduces us to an intriguing man named William Bruce Rose Jr. or otherwise known as Axl Rose. He is described as looking unusual and resembling a thin, redheaded woman, but when Sullivan sees Axl Rose on stage he notices a change in his appearance. He had gotten thicker and gained more muscle which took away from his feminine looks. However, the best way to describe Axl Rose is to talk about where he is from, “He is from nowhere. That sounds coyly rhetorical—in this day and age it’s even a boast: socioeconomic code for I went to a second-tier school and had no connections and made all this money myself.” (127). Although this isn’t what Sullivan meant when he said that “he is from nowhere,” …show more content…

His mother had him at sixteen years old and his father left him when he was only two. He grew up believing that his step-dad was his biological father, only to find out the truth at seventeen, causing him to change his last name from Bailey to Rose. We can see that it was “Not always fun to be Axl.” (133), he had a police record in Lafayette and it was likely he couldn’t step out of his house without the police being notified. Most people saw him as some lowlife criminal who was out causing trouble and the police must have given him a hard time wherever he went. This is what caused him to become angry with his hometown. When Sullivan went to visit Lafayette, he interviewed some people who knew him before he got famous. “Everyone had his or her Axl story.” (133), none of the stories put him in a very good light. They described the stupid stunts he did, the times he got beat up, and the things he stole. Axl Rose decided it was time to leave his hometown after a serious encounter with the police and because he knew there was no future for him in Lafayette. He left for Los Angeles in 1982, looking to make a change in his life and he made it known that he didn’t want to go …show more content…

If he continued on that path and didn’t pursue music then he would have become a nobody and would have probably worked two jobs for his entire life. Axl Rose escaped his likely fate, he took his musical talent and made something of himself. When Sullivan was interviewing Dana Gregory, he said “The night Axl left for L.A., he wrote, ‘Kiss my ass, Lafayette. I’m out of here.’ I wish I’d taken a picture of that.” (140) Axl Rose’s choice to leave his hometown was the best decision he could have made for himself. He got away and he is better off because of it, he wouldn’t have found success if he didn’t move

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