Former Guns N’ Roses manager Alan Niven was asked by Mitch Lafon on how important David Geffen and Geffen Records were for the band in reaching the rock ‘n’ roll stratosphere, to which he replied:
“David had no direct influence on the working process, except for one which was obviously critical.
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“He was prepared to spend $365,000 on a debut record, which I found simultaneously terrifying because that is a huge royalty hole to dig out of, and at the same time I was pleased that we were getting this record done.
“But that was still an awful lot of money to spend on a debut record – and obviously, he allowed that.
“Any other record company would have probably pulled the plug once we went spending $100,000, so there’s a part of your answer.
“I don’t think another label would have put up with that kind of an expenditure, or abandoned that kind of reputation. I think the band would have terrified most of the other labels.
“In terms would the band have succeeded on another label once the record was finished, that again I doubt too.
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“There was a lot of serendipity to certain aspects to the development of the record.
“And bare in mind that Eddie Rosenblatt [chairman/CEO of Geffen Record at the time] in December of 1987 took me out to a lunch and informed me that the label wanted to have band come home and start preparing their second record, and record their second record.
“And at that point we were at approximately 250,000 units sold.
“The company policy was – we sold a quarter of million albums, we basically recovered our money, now it’s time to look at the second album.
“And I looked at him across the table with a certain amount of annoyance and frustration, and I said, ‘Eddie, we’re at the quarter million sales in six months without any AOR airplay and without any MTV airplay. Could you imagine where we might get to if we got a little of both?’
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“And I was thinking maybe we could maybe get this thing up to gold. You know, what did I know? I know nothing at all ever.
“But there was a big push from myself and from Tom [Zutaut] to stay with the record in the coming year. And part of that push was harassment of MTV by everybody to give them video play, because they never played it.
“Had I sat there at the lunch table and said, ‘Yes sir, I’ll do as instructed,’ who knows where the band would have gotten to or what they would have been.
“Tom and I both felt that, ‘Nah, we’re not giving up on this sucker right now!’ Are you kidding me?! A quarter of million records in six months and very little support? You’re smoking crack if you think we’re coming home. We’re staying out there.”