The release, at midnight on September 17, 1991, of Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II was a big deal. Geffen Records may have put out GN'R Lies in 1988 to cash in on the phenomenal success of Appetite For Destruction, but every genuine Guns N' Roses fan knew that the sprawling Use Your Illusion twin-set - featuring 30 songs, and a run time of over two and a half hours - was the true follow-up to their killer debut. The albums duly entered the Billboard 200 charts at number 1 and 2 - II taking the top spot by virtue of selling 770,000 copies compared to the 685,000 first-week sales of I - cementing the Los Angeles band's status as one of the biggest bands in the world.
Some weeks later, LA resident Cynthia McCloud Woodman was understandably somewhat surprised to receive a phone call from her brother Billy claiming that he'd co-written one of the new Guns N' Roses' songs that local rock radio stations were spinning.
"He called me on a Monday," she told the Appetite For Distortion podcast last year, and he goes, Hey, remember I told you that I used to hang out with Axl Rose, and I used to play with them, and we'd write songs and stuff together? Well, I don't know, they were playing song on the radio, and it's my song that I wrote with him. It's my song, Yesterdays, and I wrote it with Axl in the mid-80s."
Had she not been introduced to Axl Rose in a Los Angeles club in the mid-'80s, McCloud Woodman might have thought that her brother was spinning her a yarn. At that time, Billy McCloud was playing in a rock 'n' roll band called The Prodigals Sons, and on the night in question they were supporting LA Guns, who Rose was singing with. For a few months in the mid-'80s, McCloud also was room-mates with Del James, who became close friends with Axl Rose, co-wrote songs with the singer, and went on to tour manage Guns N' Roses: McCloud told his sister that, after after hearing Yesterdays on the radio, he had called up the station's DJ to ask who had written the song, and was told that it was credited on the album to [Wes] Arkeen / James / Billy / Rose.
"He said, 'They only listed my first name. What am I supposed to do, that's my song?'" McCloud Woodman recalled.
McCloud Woodman was still a little sceptical. Her brother had developed a heroin addiction in the mid-'80s, and had been homeless for a time, and she was aware that reformed drug addicts are not always the most reliable witnesses. To try to verify Billy's claims, she called a friend who was a band manager, who promised to make some phone calls to his contacts in the industry. Ten minutes later, McCloud Woodman told the podcast, her friend phoned her back and said, "Have your brother call me right now."
Guns N' Roses could have fought any kind of lawsuit with coffee change, and my brother would have been screwed
Cynthia McCloud Woodman
"Six weeks later," she said, "they handed my brother a $100,000 check, and 29 per cent of the royalties for the future. My brother was one year clean and sober, he was trying to get his life off the ground again, and he's handed this $100,000 check... He could have told that story in a bar and everyone would have been, 'Sure.' And Guns N' Roses could have fought any kind of lawsuit with coffee change, and my brother would have been screwed. So the integrity, it's just mind-blowing to me. I mean, how many musicians would do something like that?"
McCloud Woodman went on to reveal that her brother, who passed away in 2002, would receive regular checks in the tens of thousands of dollars for the rest of his life. Before his death, Billy Cloud bequeathed his future royalties to his nieces, McCloud Woodman's daughters, and that money continues to help their education.
"Anytime that anybody says anything negative about Axl, I say, Er, no,I got a story for you" McCloud Woodman added.
Watch the full Appetite For Distortion podcast interview below.
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