Young izzy stradlin biography book

It’s been a long time since we last did this - 12 years, to be precise - but suddenly here he is, larger than life: Izzy Stradlin. Ex-Guns N’ Roses, ex-drug addict, but still, in his own way, as defiantly maverick as ever: sitting in a hotel room in London, looking tanned and healthy and sipping camomile tea. He has a plugged-in electric guitar balanced on his knees. Is he going to play us a song? Yes, he is. He picks it up and begins strumming. At first I don’t recognise it, then it hits me: Pretty Tied Up, one of his own from Use Your Illusion II. He starts singing: ‘I knew this chick… lived down on Melrose…’ Axl sang it on the album, of course. But that lazy Midwestern drawl belongs entirely to the guy who wrote it, the one with the low-slung ’tood and the cigarette dangling from his gob.

These days, of course, Axl isn’t around to sing it for Izzy. The ci