One In A Million
Rose

Guess I needed
Sometime to get away
I needed some peace of mind
Some peace of mind that'll stay
So I thumbed it
Down to sixth and L.A.
Maybe your greyhound
Could be my way
Police and niggers
That's right
Get out of my way
Don't need to buy none of your
Goldchains today
I don't need no bracelets
Clamped in front of my back
Just need my ticket till then
Won't you cut me some slack

Chorus:

You're one in a million
Yeah, that's what you are
You're one in a million, babe
You are a shooting star
Maybe someday we see you
Before you make us cry
You know we tried to reach you
But you were much to high
Much to high
Much to high
Much to high

Immigrants and faggots
They make no sense to me
They come to your country
And think the do as they please
Like start a mini Iran
Or spread some fucking disease
They talk so many goddamn ways
It's all greek to me
Well some say I'm lazy
And other say that's just me
Some say I'm crazy
I guess I'll always be
But it been such a long time
Since I knew right from wrong
It's all the means to an end, I,
I keep on movin' along

Chorus

Radicals and racists
Don't point your finger at me
I'm a small town white boy
Just tryin' to make ends meet
Don't need your religion
Don't watch that much TV
Just makin' my livin', baby,
Well that's enough for me

Chorus

Axl - "One in a Million was written while sitting in the apartment of my friend West Arkeen, who's like the sixth member of the band. I wrote it at his house, sitting around bored watching TV. I can't really play guitar too well, I only play the top two strings, and I would write a little piece at a time. I started writing about wanting to get out of L.A. , getting away for a little while. I'd been down to the downtown-L.A. Greyhound bus station. If you haven't been there, you can't say shit to me about what goes on and about my point of view. There are a large number of black men selling stolen jewelry, crack, heroin and pot, and most of the drugs are bogus. Rip-off artists selling parking spaces to parking lots that there's no charge for. Trying to misguide every kid that gets off the bus and doesn't quite know where he's at or where to go, trying to take the person for whatever they've got. That's how I hit town. The thing with "One in a Million" is, basically, we're all one in a million, we're all here on this earth. We're one fish in a sea. Let's quit fucking with each other, fucking with me."

" I used words like police and niggers because you're not allowed to use the word nigger. Why can black people go up to each other and say, "Nigger," but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big put-down. I don't like boundaries of any kind. I don't like being told what I can and what I can't say. I used the word nigger because it's a word to describe somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem."

" When I use the word immigrants, what I'm talking about is going to a 7-11 or Village pantries - a lot of people from countries like Iran, Pakistan, China, Japan et cetera, get jobs in these convenience stores and gas stations. Then they treat you as if you don't belong here. I've been chased out of a store with Slash by a six-foot-tall Iranian with a butcher knife because he didn't like the way we were dressed. Scared me to death. All I could see in my mind was a picture of my arm on the ground, blood going everywhere. When I get scared, I get mad. I grabbed the top of one of these big orange garbage cans and went back at him with this shield, going, "Come on!" I didn't want to back down from this guy. Anyway that's why I wrote about immigrants. Maybe I should have been more specific and said, "Joe Schmoladoo at the 7-11 and faggots make no sense to me." That's ridiculous! I summed it up simply and said, "Immigrants."

" There's a lot of people who have chosen to use that song ("One in a Million"). However that song makes them feel, they think that must be what the song means. If they hate blacks, and they hear my lines and hate blacks even more, I'm sorry, but that's not how l meant it. Our songs affect people, and that scares a lot of people. l think that song, more than any other song in a long time, brought certain issues to the surface and brought up discussion as to how fucked things really are. But when read somewhere that l said something last night before we performed "One in a Million," it pisses me off. We don't perform "One in a Million."

" l wrote a song that was very simple and vague. That was the type of painting l was painting for myself, because that's how l write songs. Try going to a museum and not seeing paintings that depict pain and suffering and confusion. l think I showed that quite well from where l was at. The song most definitely was a survival mechanism. It was a way for me to express my anger at how vulnerable l felt in certain situations that had gone down in my life. It's not a song l would write now. The song is very generic and generalized, and I apologized for that on the cover of the record. Going back and reading it, it wasn't the best apology but, at the time, it was the best apology I could make."

"I'm on a fence with that song. It's a very powerful song. l feel, as far as artistic freedom and my responsibility to those beliefs, that the song should exist. That's the only reason l haven't pulled it off the shelves. Freedom and creativity should never be stifled. Had l known that people were going to get hurt because of this song, then l would have been wrong. l was definitely wrong in thinking that the public could handle it."

"People have taken two parts that they wre offended by and combined them into one sentence and said that's what I said. l find that amazing. What l said, and the first thing said, is, "Police and niggers, that's right, get outa my way." That's what I said."

"Police and niggers, that's right, get outa my way." I'd had four or five black guys trying to rob me who were all junkies. And a couple of other guys trying to sell me gold chains. l had just gotten off the bus and people were grabbing my backpack. It was a very scary, heavy situation for me. l just got off the bus, into boom "You're in Hell, son."

"A black man is the one who got me out of that situation, and l call him an angel. l always have. The police were shoving me out of the way."

"One In a Million." It was originally written as comedy. It was written watching Sam Kinison during one of his first specials. I was sitting around with friends, drunk, with no money. One of my friends had just gotten robbed for seventy-eight cents on Christmas by two black men."

"A lot of people have used the word "faggot," and they're not getting told they're homophobic. But, homophobia? O.K. I'll repeat myself -- this is something that l just said in Rolling Stone. I don't know, maybe l have a problem with homophobia. Maybe l was two years old and got fucked in the ass by my dad and it's caused a problem ever since, but other than that, l don't know if I have any homophobia."

"The song is very generic. it's very vague, it's very simple, it was meant to be that way, it was written that way. It was like, O.K., I'm writing this song as l want to -- l want this song to be like "Midnight Cowboy." That guy was very naive and involved in everything. The cowboy. My friend who got robbed, he was like Dustin Hoffman's character. l wanted the song to be written from that point of view. l wrote it to deal with my anger and my fear and my vulnerability in that situation, that l still felt uncomfortable with, that happened to me. That was the "police and niggers" line. But now we move on to another line that says, "immigrants and faggots, they make no sense to me/ they come to our country and spread some fucking disease." O.K., l wrote that, being a songwriter, and being an abstract songwriter and using my artistic license. The "immigrants" line, the part that says they come to our country -- wait, I just said my own verse wrong. I said what someone else said it was, that I'm really upset about. Sorry. It says, "Immigrants and faggots, they make no sense to me/ they come to our country and think they'll do as they please / like start some mini-Iran, or spread some fucking disease / and they talk so many goddamned ways / it's all Greek to me." O.K.? I can understand not understanding what the hell I meant in that, because I jumbled two thought patterns together."

"The line about "faggots" was written after I heard a story from a sheriff about a man they had just arrested after just releasing from jail, and he had AIDS, and he was back out on Santa Monica Boulevard hooking. We were like, "Oh, my God." And this just happened to get stuck in the song, since we had a radical line like "police and niggers" -- we might as well go all the way now, we'll write something else just as obnoxious, because we were just writing off-color humor at the time. We were dealing with a situation that was really heavy, ugly, and scary, and so we were making light of it. l was being encouraged to write as l was writing."

"I've only performed the song "One In a Million" twice. l don't perform it, because l think it's too dangerous and l don't trust people with the song. I don't trust the audience with the song. I don't want to do "One in a Million" on stage and know that there's a lot of people out there in the crowd who are prejudiced and it's gonna help fuel their fire. It's enough to handle the fact that it's on a record and people use it for their own anthems for their own prejudiced-ness. I question myself every day. Should l pull it? Should I leave it? Do l leave it for the sake of artistic integrity? Do I pull it, do I censor myself? But wait, I'm against censorship. It's a really hard issue to constantly deal with. The only way to deal with it is to communicate about it. l don't like the damage that that song does, l don't like the prejudiced-ness, l don't like the way the song fuels people's prejudiced-ness, and that's a problem for me. l made an apology on the cover of the record. Looking at it now, it's not the best apology, but it was the best apology l could make back then. l knew people were going to be offended, and it says my apology is to those who take offense. Or to who may be offended, whatever it says. I was trying to explain the reasons why I was expressing myself in this way and apologizing if it did offend people. The apology is on the cover of every record. it's not a sticker; it's part of the cover. It's stuck in there with all kinds of other things on the cover -- it's done like a National Enquirer thing. l wrote it myself and put it on there, it was my Idea, and it's like it's been refused to be acknowledged. "One in a Million" has been used continually against Guns N' Roses and against myself, no matter what l had to say about it."

"In order to deal with "One in a Million" properly, you had to accept the fact that certain things really exist. But for whatever reasons -- I don't know, whatever negative forces there are -- it was just decided to take one point of view and continually shove that dawn people's throats. It helped make money. It helped make a lot of people money. Because people could just get in there and needle and fuel up peopIe's anger and make money: "Wait, we've got nothing to write about. Let's write about 'One in a Million,' let's talk about that now. Go!" We've got some attention because we've got controversy and we've got an ugly scandal, rah-rah-rah. But l think that "One In a Million" has done some good, too. People have thought about what racism means in their own life by being pissed off at Axl Rose, and made decisions and even acted on those decisions, and many were positive. There's a lot of negative ones too, but some were positive. It forced people to speak when they heard it."

"That's a strange amount of power for a song to have."

"It definitely helped me to be able to change. I went out and got all kinds of video tapes and read books on racism. Books by Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. Reading them and studying, then after that l put on the tape and l realized, "Wow, I'm still proud of this song." That's strange. What does that mean? But l couldn't communicate as well as do now about it, so my frustration was just turned to anger. Then my anger would be used against me and my frustration would be used against me: "Look, he's throwing a tantrum."

"What l didn't get back to was the line In "One in a Million" that wrote about immigrants. I wasn't really living anywhere and I'd been hassled a few times in convenience stores and gas stations, and told by the way l looked that I couldn't even go Into stores. At one store I'd been chased out with a butcher knife just because the guy went crazy. It was just my frustration with dealing with all that in L.A. I wasn't condemning people from other countries. People like to say that that's what my thoughts were. No. Just because the lines were real, simple, and angry, they're reading a lot more Into it than was really there. The last verse has always been Ignored. It has a line that says, "Radicals and racists, don't point your finger at me." Then it says, "I'm a small-town white boy." People have taken that like that's wavIng a flag that I'm pro-white or something. To say "small-town white boy" at the time that l put that In that song was something you didn't say. You didn't say that when you were trying to play the rock clubs, you'd just gotten to Hollywood, and people are going, "You look like you just got off the boat. Are you some fucking hick from Indiana, or what?" Or whatever. I was saying, "Look, yeah, I'm this naive, confused, small-town white boy, and l have a lot of problems, so racists, don't point your finger at me and go off and say I'm one of you, or whatever. And radicals, don't you be going off on me and saying I'm on your side or against your side or whatever."

"I went back and forth from Indiana eight times my first year in Hollywood. I wrote it about being dropped off at the bus station and everything that was going on... the black guys trying to sell you drugs is where the line 'Police and niggers, get out of my way' comes from. I've seen these huge black dudes pull bowie-knives on people for their boom boxes and shit. It's ugly... When I say 'I'm just a small town white boy' I'm just saying I'm no better than anyone else I've described. I'm just trying to get through life, that's all." "It was originally written as comedy. It was written watching Sam Kinison during one of his first specials. I was sitting around with friends, drunk, with no money. One of my friends had just gotten robbed for seventy-eight cents on Christmas by two black men. ... The song is very generic. It's very vague, it's very simple, it was meant to be that way, it was written that way."

"The racist thing is just bullshit. I used a word that was taboo. And I used that word because it was a taboo. I was pissed off about some black people that were trying to rob me. I wanted to insult those particular black people. I didn't want to support racism. When I used the words 'faggots' I wasn't coming down on gays. I was coming down on an element of gays. I had heard the story about a man who released out the LA county jail with AIDS and he was hooking. I've had my fair share of dealing with aggressive gays, and I was bothered by it. The Bible says, 'Thou shalt not judge', and I guess I made a judgement call, and it was an insult. The racist thing, that's just stupid. I can understand how people would think that, but that's how I meant it... The most important thing about 'One In A Million' is that it got people to think about racism. A lot of people thought I was talking about entire races or sectors of people. I wasn't. And there was an apology on the record. The apology is not even written well, but it's on the cover of every record. And no one has acknowledged it yet. No one.