The real monsters of rock are back. Thirty years on from Appetite For Destruction and 25 years after the Use Your Illusion tour that almost destroyed them, Gun N' Roses have returned. Axl Rose, Slash, and Duff McKagan announced two dates for the London Stadium in June and with a million tickets sold in a single day for 19 European dates, the Not In My Lifetime Tour will be 2017’s most unlikely comeback – especially when you consider what happened in the preceding three decades. We asked rock journalist Mick Wall, author of Last Of The Giants: The True Story Of Guns N’ Roses, to tell us ten things you probably never knew about GnR...

1 Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin was Aerosmith’s heroin dealer before he joined the band.

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1 Slash died five times on the Use Your Illusion tour. The band’s manager Doug Goldstein carried a Pulp Fiction-style narcan save shot for this eventuality.

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1 Goldstein always carried $50,000 in a briefcase to bribe people, such as hotel workers, medics, strippers and drug dealers on tour. It had to be replenished every day.

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1 One the same tour, Axl took a physiotherapist, psychotherapist, spiritual guru, acupuncturist, physical trainer and crystal guru, and was in therapy for eight hours a day.

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1 At the end of the tour in 1993, bassist Duff’s McKagen’s pancreas exploded

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1 One of Slash’s first memories was being tucked up in bed by David Bowie . His mother had an affair with Bowie while she was a costume designer who worked on 1976’s The Man Who Fell To Earth

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1 Axl found Iron Maiden so repulsive he refused to be photographed with then when Guns N’ Roses opened for the British band in 1988.

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1 When Slash walked out in 1996, Axl sent a fax to MTV News insisting he had fired him from the band. In fact, Axl was devastated and took to his bed for days with a loaded pistol.

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1 On the Use Your Illusion tour the band had a travelling casino set-up after every show.

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1 Axl Rose’s stepfather beat him for singing along to Barry Manilow’s “Mandy”.

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Last Of The Giants: The True Story of Guns N' Roses (Trapeze, £20) by Mick Wall is out now.