When I first met Axl Rose, I’ll be honest—I wasn’t sure about him.

 

**When I First Met Axl Rose**
*By Erin Everly*

When I first met Axl Rose, I’ll be honest—I wasn’t sure about him.

He wasn’t exactly my type. At that point in my life, I was focused on myself—my career, my goals, my identity. I’d grown up in a world of cameras and name recognition, but I never wanted to coast on the weight of my last name. I worked hard, carving out my own space as a model in a city where beauty was currency and fame came with a price.

Axl, on the other hand, had this effortless chaos about him. He walked into a room and it was like the atmosphere changed. People looked. Conversations paused. It wasn’t just his looks—it was the energy. He was wild and unpredictable, the kind of man you couldn’t quite pin down. There was fire behind his eyes. And yet… he also had this odd stillness sometimes, like he was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere far away.

When we met, it was at a party—of course it was. It was L.A. in the late ’80s, and the parties were endless, especially when you were young and had the right connections. I had just finished a shoot earlier that day and almost didn’t go. I was tired, cranky, and in no mood to make small talk with half-drunk musicians and wannabe actors.

But something pushed me out the door that night. Maybe it was intuition. Or maybe it was just boredom.

He was leaning against a wall, drink in hand, boots scuffed from wear. Someone whispered, “That’s Axl from Guns N’ Roses,” like it was supposed to mean something. I’d heard of the band—they were climbing fast—but I hadn’t really paid attention. He was just another guy with messy hair and a leather jacket… until he smiled at me.

It wasn’t a slick, flirtatious grin. It was crooked, uncertain. Human.

He came over and said something weird about the song playing. I don’t remember what it was, just that it made me laugh—genuinely. He didn’t open with compliments or pick-up lines. He asked about me. What I liked. What I hated. What made me angry.

That last one surprised me.

“What makes me angry?” I asked, eyebrow raised.

“Yeah. I think people hide behind small talk. Anger’s real.”

It was the first of many strange, strangely thoughtful things he’d say to me over the next few months.

At first, I didn’t take him seriously. Axl was… Axl. Wild. Loud. Flirting with the edge of fame and destruction in equal measure. He was the lead singer of a band that looked like they’d either burn the world down or blow up trying. I was used to charm. I’d dated guys who knew what to say, how to behave, when to back off. Axl didn’t know—or didn’t care.

He’d call me at 2 a.m. just to read me lyrics he’d scribbled on a napkin. He once left me a cassette tape of a rough version of “Sweet Child o’ Mine” with a note that said, “Tell me if this makes sense or if I’ve lost my mind.”

I listened to it a dozen times. It made sense. Too much sense.

There was something about the way he looked at the world—raw, wounded, poetic. Like he carried every scar on his skin and wasn’t afraid to let it show.

But being with Axl wasn’t easy. God, no. He was complicated. Mercurial. One minute, he was tender and attentive—bringing me flowers, writing me notes, singing me lines he hadn’t shared with anyone else. The next, he was distant, angry, locked in his own storm of emotion.

I didn’t grow up around that kind of volatility. My world had been controlled, choreographed. Even the dysfunction was rehearsed. But Axl’s life? That was unscripted chaos. He came from a past littered with trauma and silence, and sometimes the weight of it all leaked into our relationship. I wanted to help him. I wanted to fix him. I thought love could be enough.

It wasn’t, always.

There were nights I’d lie awake beside him, his chest rising and falling with the breath of a man who’d just been onstage, screamed his soul into a microphone, and come home to me. And I’d wonder if he really knew how much I cared. If I was just another beautiful girl in the chaos of his ascent—or something more.

He told me once, “You’re the only thing that feels real right now.” I clung to that.

Things moved fast between us. Too fast, maybe. Love, in its most intense form, can feel like a drug. And with Axl, everything was intense. When we were good, we were electric. When we fought, it was thunder and lightning. But there was never indifference. He felt everything too deeply to be casual.

There was a night, months into our relationship, where we were backstage after a show. He was sweaty, exhausted, still vibrating from the performance. I was waiting for him, watching fans clamor for his attention. He came over, took my hand, and kissed it like we were in some kind of old movie.

“I want to marry you someday,” he whispered.

I didn’t know what to say.

I wanted to believe in that future. And part of me did. But another part—the quieter, more grounded part—worried about what that future would look like. Could you build something lasting on a foundation that shook so often?

Eventually, we did get married. A small ceremony in Las Vegas. It was impulsive. Emotional. Beautiful, in that way only chaotic love stories can be. I remember looking into his eyes and seeing not just the rock star, but the broken boy beneath. I loved both.

But the truth is, love isn’t always enough.

The very things that made Axl extraordinary—the intensity, the passion, the depth—were also the things that made our relationship volatile. There were times I didn’t recognize the man I had fallen for. Times when his pain became a weapon, even unintentionally. We were young. We didn’t know how to fight without hurting. How to heal without running.

We tried. I’ll never pretend we didn’t. We loved each other fiercely. But fierce love can be a wildfire. Beautiful from afar, destructive up close.

Our marriage didn’t last. It ended in heartbreak and silence and too many unanswered questions. But even now, looking back, I don’t regret a second of it.

Axl gave me a love that was raw and real. He saw parts of me no one else did. And for a time, I saw the parts of him the world never knew—soft, scared, tender. He let me into a heart that had been closed off for so long. That’s not nothing.

People like to paint our story in black and white: the rock star and the model, the drama, the headlines. But real life is lived in the gray. And in that gray, there was beauty.

He wrote songs about me. Songs people still sing today. And every time I hear them, I’m taken back to those days—to the laughter, the fire, the passion. To the boy who wanted to be loved so badly and didn’t always know how to ask for it.

I hope he’s found peace. I hope, in some way, I helped him get closer to it.

As for me, I carry those memories with a kind of quiet reverence. We were young. We loved hard. And we lived a story that was ours—messy, magical, and unforgettable.

So no—Axl Rose wasn’t exactly my type.

He was something else entirely.

And for a time, that was enough.

 

 

 

Erin Everly: “When I first met Axl Roses, I’ll be honest—I wasn’t sure about him. He wasn’t exactly my type. At that time, I was focused on my own life and career, and I didn’t really think much about relationships. Axl Roses, on the other hand, had this effortless charm about him. He was outgoing, funny, and definitely had that Rock Band superman vibe. But, I wasn’t sure how to take.

—

**When I First Met Axl Rose**

When I first met Axl Rose, I’ll be honest—I wasn’t sure about him. He wasn’t exactly my type. At that time, I was focused on my own life and career, and I didn’t really think much about relationships. I had grown up in a world filled with music, fame, and all the chaos that came with it—being Don Everly’s daughter wasn’t exactly a low-key upbringing. I was used to big personalities, the highs and lows of the entertainment world, and the fragile egos that came with talent. So I wasn’t easily impressed.

Axl Rose, on the other hand, had this effortless charm about him. He was outgoing, funny, and definitely had that rock band superman vibe. He walked into a room and somehow everyone’s attention shifted—whether they wanted it to or not. He had that electric presence, like a lit match in a dark room. But, I wasn’t sure how to take it. It felt dangerous. It felt familiar. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go down that road again.

We met in the late ’80s, a time when everything seemed like it was on fire—in a good way, and sometimes in a bad way. Hollywood was buzzing. Guns N’ Roses was exploding into the mainstream, and everywhere you looked, there was that iconic voice, that wild red hair, those eyes that seemed to see too much and not enough at the same time. Axl was larger than life, but when we met, he wasn’t performing. He was just Axl. Or maybe just Bill, the boy from Indiana who had clawed his way out of a tough childhood and into rock and roll legend status.

What caught me off guard was how sweet he could be. Behind the sunglasses and swagger, he was thoughtful. Introspective. Vulnerable, even. We started talking, and instead of hitting me with clichés or flexing his fame, he asked questions. Real questions. About my life, my work, what I believed in. He listened, really listened, which was rare in that world. Especially from someone who had every reason to be self-absorbed.

I resisted him at first. Something about him felt volatile, unpredictable. He was clearly brilliant, but brilliance often comes with shadows. And I’d grown up around enough artists to know what those shadows could do. But there was something disarming about Axl. Something that made me want to look closer, even when everything in me said to be cautious.

He pursued me with a kind of intensity that was both exhilarating and overwhelming. Axl didn’t do anything halfway. If he was interested, you knew it. If he was hurt, you felt it. If he was in love, he wore it like a tattoo on his soul. And when he looked at me, it was like he saw something no one else had. Like I was his anchor in a world spinning way too fast.

Falling in love with him wasn’t a decision. It was a current I got swept up in. We’d talk for hours, laugh about the absurdity of the music business, share memories from our childhoods that made us who we were. He’d write me poems, leave me notes. There was this boyish sincerity to him that was completely at odds with the firestorm persona he carried on stage. It made me want to protect him. To understand him. To love him.

But love with Axl wasn’t easy. It was beautiful, yes. Passionate. Raw. But it was also intense. Consuming. There were moments when it felt like we were the only two people in the universe—and others when it felt like we couldn’t breathe in the same space. His past haunted him in ways I couldn’t always reach. There were scars he carried that music couldn’t soothe and fame couldn’t erase.

Still, we tried. God, we tried.

We lived fast, like everyone in that scene did. Nights blurred into mornings. Concerts into afterparties. But when we were alone, there was quiet. There was comfort. He’d curl up beside me and talk about dreams, fears, the kind of things most people never let slip. I saw sides of him the world never did—and maybe that was both a gift and a curse.

Our relationship became the stuff of tabloid fascination, which only added pressure. People loved the idea of Axl and Erin—the rock star and the model. But they didn’t see the work, the love, the struggle. They didn’t see the nights I waited up for him, or the arguments we had about the smallest things that somehow felt like life-or-death. They didn’t see the tenderness, either—the soft kisses, the handwritten lyrics left on the pillow, the look in his eyes when he said, “I don’t deserve you.”

We got married in Las Vegas in 1990. It wasn’t a fairy-tale wedding. It was impulsive. Emotional. We’d broken up and gotten back together more times than I could count by then, but that day, we believed in forever. Or at least we wanted to. I remember standing there, in the chapel, thinking, “Maybe this time, love is enough.”

But sometimes love isn’t enough. Especially when it’s tangled in trauma, addiction, fame, and pressure. Our marriage didn’t last. We were young, broken in ways we didn’t know how to fix. There was hurt. There was pain. And eventually, there was separation.

Looking back, I don’t regret it. Not one second. Because for all the chaos, the heartbreak, the headlines, I loved Axl. Truly. And I believe he loved me. We were just two kids who hadn’t learned how to carry the weight of each other’s pain. The world saw the mess. I saw the man.

And he saw me.

After the divorce, I tried to move on. To heal. To find peace. It wasn’t easy. There were times I felt angry—at him, at myself, at the whole wild machine we’d been caught in. But time has a way of softening edges. I can look back now and see not just the mistakes, but the meaning.

Axl Rose was a storm. But he was also a shelter. For a little while, we found something real in each other. We tried to build a life amid the noise. And even though it didn’t last, it mattered. It still does.

People still ask me about him. About us. They want the juicy stories, the drama. But that’s not what I remember. I remember the laughter. The music playing in the background while we made dinner. The long drives through LA with the windows down. The way he held my hand like he’d never let go.

I’ve had other relationships since, lived other lives. I’ve grown, changed, learned to love myself in ways I never did back then. But there’s a part of me that will always be connected to Axl. Not because of who he became, or what he represented, but because of what we shared. A kind of love that burned bright, burned fast, and left a mark.

Some people come into your life like a breeze, barely felt. Others like an earthquake. Axl was the latter. He shook everything loose—my fears, my dreams, my definitions of love. He showed me how deep connection can run, even when it’s messy and imperfect.

I don’t know where he is right now, emotionally, spiritually. We haven’t spoken in years. But wherever he is, I hope he’s found peace. I hope he knows he was loved—not just by fans, not just by the world, but by me. Really loved.

Because when I first met Axl Rose, I wasn’t sure about him. But now, years later, I’m sure of this:

He changed my life.