Who was gay in Hair Metal?

[R54], was the guitarist you were with a member of L.A. Guns? [R216] Tracii Guns (the founder and leader of the the ‘'Never Enough’ lineup) was always a question. I feel like he’s comfortably and privately heteroflexible, maybe even bi, but leaning toward the het end.

While having the same female partner for near-on 25 years, I have heard tell that he had a very voracious sexual appetite and was promiscuous during his youth--sex/gender of partners irrespective. He’s a Cali-kid, open-minded at the very least, and created L.A. Guns after leaving an early version of Guns N’ Roses--a tenure that saw the drifting rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin living inexplicably in his house for a year. More pointers--I read in a groupie biography (not the most reliable source, but still intriguing) that Tracii once had a threesome with his (adopted?) son Jeremy. He is close friends with with vocalist Andrew Freeman, who I believe is openly bi (so Tracii is obviously comfortable with the idea).

I put an interview in the link below that is a must-hear for anyone into these bands--but most tellingly, around the 21/22 minute mark, Tracii teases the (male) interviewer sweetly about having a crush on his babysitter’s brother as a kid. It’s a playful, lighthearted topic for him, no awkwardness or defensiveness around the subject--he even discusses AIDS with surprising and gentle sincerity. He calls the 80‘s Sunset metal scene a group of ‘sappy, insecure, not-at-all Macho guys’. Tracii goes on to call Duff McKagan’s looks ‘beautiful’ (they were/are), and speaks with startling fondness about his teenaged friendship with Axl Rose; the pair were ‘inseparable’ for two years, and have been estranged since. A bad-breakup, do we think?

Even more mysteriously, Tracii and his L.A. Guns lead singer Phil had a notoriously tempestuous relationship OFFstage, for which no-one in the industry appears to know the reason. Despite being close working partners with an open affection for each other for a long time, they argued terribly in the early 90‘s, and subsequently did not speak for decades, even started rival bands with identical names to spite one another. I could never figure whether they fought as a media ploy to upstage Slash and Axl’s ongoing Lover’s Tiff (decidedly a closeted-freak-out thing), or if Tracii and Phil genuinely had a personal bone-to-pick..

Tracii seems like a friendly, funny, grounded, happy-go-lucky little guy in interviews, though, so this could all be a misconstrual of his ‘nice-guy’ behaviour towards fellow dudes. Coupled with his bizarre inability to endear himself to a lead vocalist in any band ever.

He's a sweetheart no matter what, I hope he's got enough love for everyone.

[R.e. the other L.A. Guns alum--Kelly Nickels is a sweetheart but surely stoned to the point of asexuality by now; Mick Cripps keeps a notoriously low profile in any band (although he did idolise Kraftwerk); and I’m undecided on Steve Riley, drummers throw me off. I’ve lost track of the million line-up changes since, but no standouts bar Tracii for me so far. ]

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