A woman is speaking out on decades-old claims that Axl Rose sexually assaulted her when she was a minor in the 1980s, dating back to before Guns N’ Roses first broke through as one of the biggest rock bands of all time.
Michelle Rhoades has spoken out about her allegations against Rose before, coming forward earlier this year during a press conference about sexual misconduct in the music industry, but she went into much further detail speaking to the podcast over the past two weeks.
The podcast shared several interview recordings another reporter had conducted with associates of Rhoades in 2019, who recalled what Rhoades had previously told them about the alleged incident. The podcast itself does not mention Rose by name nor any of the other members of Guns N’ Roses, though Rolling Stone has confirmed Rhoades was referring to Rose in the podcast. (A rep for Rose did not reply to a request for comment.)
Speaking with the “enough.,” podcast, Rhoades alleged that she met Rose when she was 15 years old and he was 23, claiming the relationship quickly became sexual. She alleges she became pregnant with Rose’s child, but miscarried at West Hollywood concert venue the Troubadour the night of one of the band’s earliest shows.
Rhoades said that she later showed up to the band’s rehearsal space to tell Rose what happened. “It went from ‘we need to talk because you’re pregnant with my baby’ to him screaming at me that I killed the baby, to him sobbing in my arms that he should have been there for me,” Rhoades alleged.
Rose left her at the studio, and Rhoades says she eventually went outside to use an outhouse behind the studio. She alleged that she saw Rose having sex with a different woman, and she approached them to confront him about it. Rhoades alleged Rose was “still fucking her while he’s talking to me, and he starts telling me these really sick things.”
Rhoades alleged that she went back to the studio to grab her purse before Rose brought her back to the outhouse and ripped off her dress. “As soon as my clothes hit the floor, his roadie came in and grabbed my clothes,” she alleged.
Rhoades yelled at Rose demanding she get her clothes back, she claimed, but he picked her up, took her through the parking lot and brought her back to the studio as she yelled for help, she claimed.
“He threw me in the studio, and almost immediately he was holding me down,” Rhoades alleged. “He was holding me down with his hands on my knees, and his knees were on this part of my elbows. I remember hurting so bad, and his ass was in my face. He was calling people over to me like a carnival barker. Like ‘she’s got the best tits in town,’ and had people coming over and touching me. I was surrounded by people, and I was screaming. And he kept screaming that he was going to shit in my face if I wouldn’t shut up.”
She alleged that Rose and others had “put bondage cuffs around my ankles,” and that Rose “was really hurting me and allowing these other people to put themselves inside of me and pinch me and all these things.”
Soon after, she claims that Rose raped her. “And then he spun me around and he put himself in me and entered me and put his face in my face. I remember trying to bite him,” Rhoades alleged. “And then it was almost as if he came to himself for a second. He threw everyone off of me, the ankle cuffs off of me. And he was holding me again. I remember begging him for my clothes. I told him ‘please just give me my clothes, I’ll never come here again. And he told me that I didn’t deserve my clothes.”
Rose threw her out of the studio naked, and a member of a band in the studio next door saw her and gave her a towel to cover herself, she alleged.
Her mother’s boyfriend, Vince Gilbert, who at the time ran another local recording studio, picked Rhoades up from the space and demanded she be given her clothes. Gilbert confirmed picking Rhoades up in an audio recording of an interview he gave in 2019, which the podcast shared this week.
“I was there immediately afterwards, I went and got her, walked back, and the next morning took her to her mom’s house,” he said in the interview. He also claimed that he knew that Rose and Rhoades had some type of relationship though “to what extent I couldn’t say with any authority.”
Rhoades claimed that he told Gilbert not to tell her mother, but she found out and called the police. Rhoades alleged that several of the band members had contacted her begging her not to go to court. Duff McKagan, who Rhoades referred to only as “the bass player” in the podcast, came to her home with his girlfriend and “begged my mother to drop the charges,” she said.
“I’ll never forget him saying, ‘we know there’s something wrong with him, and we promise that he will get mental health and that he’s not going to hurt any more girls.’” (A rep for McKagan did not reply to a request for comment.)
Rhoades claims she had increased mental anguish and suicidal ideation leading up to the court date for the charges and ultimately decided to not pursue charges. She says Rose “profusely apologized” to her and that after she told the rest of the band she would not be pursuing the case, the band “came and hugged me that night.”
Different versions of this story have appeared in books and memoirs recalling Guns N’ Roses’ early history. In Slash’s autobiography in 2007, the guitarist wrote about an unnamed woman who he wrote “had sex with Axl up in the loft.” Slash made no mention in the book on if he knew the girl or knew how old she was.
“Toward the end of the night, maybe as the drugs and booze wore off, she lost her mind and freaked out intensely,” Slash wrote. “Axl told her to leave and tried throwing her out. I attempted to help mediate the situation to get her out quietly, but that wasn’t happening.”
Slash wrote that the studio was raided by the LAPD, and that he and Rose were charged with felony rape. Rose went to Orange County, Slash said, while he went to Santa Monica. “For fear of arrest, we didn’t book gigs and maintained a low profile. The truth was, Axl had definitely had sex with the girl but it had been consensual and no one had raped her.”
A few weeks later, he and Rose moved in with their future manager Vicky Hamilton to stay on her couch. Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2016, Hamilton recalled some of the same details.
“Axl had a guest at the rehearsal studio, and he basically took her clothes off and locked her outside, and the girl went to the cops and said he raped her,” Hamilton said. “Slash called me up and said, ‘Can Axl come stay on your couch for a little while?’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ He told me that story, and it was pretty clear that I would be harboring a fugitive at that point, but I let him come. It was only supposed to be a couple of days, but it ended up being six months.”
Rhoades came forward more publicly after former Penthouse model Sheila Kennedy came forward with a lawsuit late last year, alleging that Rose sexually assaulted her in a New York hotel room in 1989. Through Adult Survivors Act in New York, Kennedy was one of many women who filed lawsuits against prominent music industry figures, accusing them of sexual misconduct.
Rose filed a motion to dismiss that suit in April, calling Kennedy’s claims “salacious, inflammatory, and false,” and alleging that Kennedy “is a fabulist and an opportunist looking to rewrite history in pursuit of a financial windfall.”