Interesting interview with 80's music manager Vicky Hamilton:
John Parks of Legendary Rock Interviews spoke with former Guns N' Roses manager and Motley Crue/Poison/Stryper consultant Vicky Hamilton. Highlights from the interview appear below.
LRI: ....I know that one of the earliest bands you worked with was Motley Crue. How did you get involved with those guys to begin with? That was a really, really exciting time in their career.
Vicky: I was a management consultant for them. I had become friends with Nikki really early on, even before the Leathur Record and I was hired by their first manager Alan Coffman as a management consultant. I helped shop them to the labels and did a lot of their display merchandising for the Too Fast For Love album. I lived in Hollywood so I sort of babysat the band and helped out a little bit. I was also a really, really big fan of the music and was a record store buyer for a store out here called Licorice Pizza so I bought a LOT of Motley Crue records and pushed them heavily through their 30 store chain which really helped their career early on. At the time they played the show they really got famous off of at the Whisky I had set up a huge display in the window of the store to promote it and the album. I had included a lot of their personal items and whips and chains and Vince gave me a pair of pink panties to include in it which, by the way, were NOT clean but I put those on the mannequins in the window too. We had fluorescent painted the MOTLEY logo and you could see it up and down the street so all of that in addition to moving so many records in the store was , I think, at least some factor in helping them get signed.
Did you have the sense that despite the rawness they were really tapping into something special?
Vicky: Oh totally. When Motley busted out it was all punk rock and European new wave stuff like Duran Duran or Psychedelic Furs. So they just stood out with their duct tape, spandex and hair. Nikki lit himself on fire and just everything about them was like “What is THIS???!!” I was very curious by the time Nikki came into my record store and he had this German model girlfriend and I befriended them and started hanging out with them...I could see that despite the image and abrasiveness there was a commerciality in Motley Crue that was very different and new. It was clearly marketable and I was ready to ride the train. Nikki Sixx is a visionary and he knew from day one where this project was headed. I think that I just really believed in him and knew that whatever he set his mind to was gonna work.
LRI: I know it’s been mentioned that your time managing Poison ended badly but you really believed in them at a time when few people did, isn’t that correct?
Vicky: Pretty much. They were really fresh and Pennsylvanian (laughs). We had done a demo deal with Atlantic and they passed on the band. Because of my association with Motley and Stryper I was very friendly with the Enigma people and we were offered a very small deal by Enigma, I think it was like 25,000 dollars or something and they of course took it. At that point I was not getting along with Bret Michaels so I sold my contract to Howie Huberman who was my financial backer so he took over management from there. They were released by Enigma and Capitol bought it and it blew up.
LRI: Bret has made such a name for himself outside of Poison and much of it has to do with this easygoing, fan friendly persona but he must be at least somewhat difficult to deal with behind the scenes or creatively. Is he headstrong?
Vicky: I’ll put it to you this way John, everyone assumes that Axl Rose was the most difficult personality or character I’ve ever dealt with which ISN’T true. It was unquestionably Bret Michaels (laughs).
LRI: (laughs). Wow…ok, that IS interesting.
Vicky: (laughs). It’s true. Say what you want but at least Axl wears his heart on his sleeve. You know where you stand because he’ll let you know. He’s honest to a fault. Bret is much more devious and just not a nice person in that regard. Those bands were very much at war at one point with each trying to outdo each other. It was very high school (laughs). Of course, everyone knows that Slash auditioned for Poison and they were going to do it but he was not gonna do the bit in the show where he was like “Hi, my name is SLASH!!!!” and he said “I’m not gonna wear all that fuckin makeup”. They ended up going with C.C. because he was a good fit and Slash was not going to bend to Bret Michaels “rules."
LRI: When you and Bret had the falling out was that around the time you got actively involved in Guns N’ Roses?
Vicky: Yeah, pretty much. Well, I had always been a big fan of Slash and his playing. I always kept an eye on what he was doing and I booked Hollywood Rose when I was an agent for Silver Lining Entertainment which I was also doing when I was working with and booking Stryper. Axl and Izzy came into Silver Lining and played me their demo tape and it was amazing and I booked them sight unseen.
LRI: I didn’t see the band until the Illusions era so I can’t imagine what you saw at the Troubadour. Did you ever see GNR in a bad show or a sloppy show back in the pre-Appetite days?
Vicky: I wouldn’t say sloppy was the word maybe raw but even in the very beginning they were brilliant. Everyone knew that you were watching a trainwreck but you couldn’t take your eyes off of it. It was RAW. It felt a little dangerous and there was just so much magic and brilliance in that original lineup. Those five guys together were the magic ingredient. It’s hard…..it’s hard to really describe what that band was like but it was amazing and it was pure magic. No one can take that away from them. I went to go see Axl’s hired guns at the Forum this January. All those guys in Axl’s band are technically great musicians but that magic and fire is gone, it’s just….dead and gone. There was no fire. It’s not what GNR was when they were young and living. That was like real life to them, those songs were their lives, it wasn’t just a bunch of good musicians playing a show, it was REAL. It’s those five guys or nothing, I mean Matt Sorum is a great drummer but it just wasn’t the same without Steven. Steven had a way of playing that was stylistically important and his spirit and spark drove those songs where they needed to be. Steven’s early friendship with Slash added a certain dynamic and then when Izzy left it was just OVER because he was such a grounding force to the songwriting and was childhood friends with Axl. Those two being replaced by other musicians didn’t replace that chemistry. When Izzy left that was when Axl really just lost his mind in a lot of ways. By the time Illusions had hit I was so far removed from all things Guns that it was interesting. Axl had this Elton John thing going (laughs) and keyboardists and background singer girls. It just wasn’t the same rock band I had even worked with, not to say there wasn’t some brilliance on those albums because there clearly was it was just so radically different. I mean the first time I heard him play November Rain on the piano I was blown away that the same guy who could write the stuff on Appetite could play such a beautifully arranged piano ballad but they were clearly headed in a different direction.
LRI: Marc Canter sort of intimated in our interview that the things holding back a Guns N Roses reunion were not that complicated, that they were in fact pretty simple and somewhat based on misunderstandings that could be worked out by a marriage counselor between two prideful personalities in Axl and Slash. Do you agree?
Vicky: Pride? I think it might be more ego. I’m clearly on the Slash team and I know that Slash would do it but you know Axl is just…..I mean, he had people thrown out of the forum for wearing top hats (laughs). I mean, it’s gotten to the point of absurdity and then some. I just don’t know that Slash would ever bow down to Axl and I just don’t think Axl would allow a reconciliation any other way. It’s become such a Guns N’ Roses spider web. It sucks for the fans because not only can they not reunite but they can’t even all get on the same page to release this movie of the footage from the Use Your Illusions tour. I find it really sad and the mere fact that they can’t get up onstage together and accept the Hall of Fame thing together was just SAD. They made the greatest hard rock record of the decade and they should be able to all be on the same page about that and stand together and at least wear that badge proudly for one night. The fans want it so much and it’s so sad that they couldn’t put their differences aside for even ONE song.
Subject: Music Insider Vicky Hamilton Dishes On The Early Days Of Motley Crue And GN'R 
Wed May 02, 2012 11:05 am
