Appetite For Dysfunction

At 22, Vicky Hamilton left her hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and arrived on the Sunset Strip as a wide-eyed blonde with an ear for rock & roll: “I was back home interviewing Tom Petty for Three Rivers Review,” says Hamilton, “And he told me I was a ‘real California girl,’ and that’s all it took.” It was 1981, and Hamilton arrived at the center of Hollywood; where the scene was erupting with spandex, sex, cocaine, Aqua Net hairspray and madcap visionaries, like Hamilton, who discovered Guns N’ Roses and became their first manager and surrogate mother. At one point, GNR lived in Hamilton’s apartment, as Axl Rose ducked a rape charge. “I realized I was harboring a fugitive,” she says, “But then Axl ended up crashing on my couch for six months.” Hamilton then negotiated GNR’s contract with Geffen Records. In 1986, she was let go and forced to sue the band to recoup the $25,000 she’d borrowed to bankroll them. Hamilton now shares her stories in a memoir about a woman who rode the crazy train with some of rock’s wildest frontmen, and matched their hard-partying ways. Sober for 15 years, Hamilton spent that last seven excavating her private collection of photos, flyers, contracts, letters, and interviews to create a revealing look into her fascinating life. Her book includes new details about her turbulent relationship with Axl Rose and Poison’s Bret Michaels, her experience as an A&R rep for Geffen, and above all, Appetite for Dysfunction is the story of her rise and fall, and how she regained her life by becoming a Grammy Award winning executive that helped relaunch the career of June Carter Cash in 1999.