Izzy Stradlin was born as Jeff Isbelle on April 8, 1962 in Lafayette, Indiana.
"It was cool growing up there. There's a courthouse and a college, a river and railroad tracks. It's a small town, so there wasn't much to do. We rode bikes, smoked pot, got into trouble - it was pretty 'Beavis and Butt-Head,' actually."
Izzy’s biggest musical influence as a child were his grandmother: "My dad's mother played drums. She had a band with her friends - these old ladies who'd play swing and jazz at parties. I knew by second grade that I wanted to play drums, too, and the idea of being in a band seemed pretty great. I'd watch 'The Partridge Family' and think, 'That looks good. I'll do that.'"
He talked his parents into buying a drum kit. Izzy and some friends of his started a band in High School. They were playing covers in Izzy’s garage. The singer was Axl Rose, by this time called Bill Bailey.
Izzy grew soon tired of Lafayette;
"In the town they sell a T-shirt that says "Lafayette - the all American city." A friend usually says that it ought to say "Lafayette - the all American city, bring your own fun." There’s absolutely nothing to do there".
So after graduation in 1980 he decided to move to Los Angeles.
"When I wasn't in school, I was practicing. I was trying real hard to put together a solid band in Lafayette, but it wasn't working out. After graduation, I just said, 'Fuck it - I'm going to L.A., because the weather's better and that's where everything is.'"
Once in LA he hooked up with a punk band called the Naughty Women.
"They were kinda like the Stooges. The guitarist looked like Gene Simmons. He had this apartment covered in rock posters, with a ton of records. And to me, straight from Indiana, I thought, 'He's really got it goin' on!' I had a car, a kit and a P.A., so they figured, 'This guy came from Heaven!'"
"I played my first gig with them in downtown L.A. The audience was like the angry guys in 'The Decline of Western Civilization.' I'm sitting there waiting for the rest of the band to come onstage, and they finally get out there - and they're all in drag. The singer's wearing pink spandex and this big afro. I'd never thought twice about the name Naughty Women. The crowd hated us. They were throwing beer bottles and jumping onstage. Finally, they started beating the shit out of the singer. They knocked over the guitar player's amps, and he got his hand busted. I just grabbed a cymbal stand and stood on the side trying to fend them off, yelling, 'Get the fuck away from me, man!' That was my introduction to the rock scene in L.A. I was like, 'Wow, this is exciting!'"
After two months with the Naughty Women, he went on to play with the Atoms. One day, parts of Izzy’s drum kit was stolen. He decided to sell the rest of it and buy a bass. He joined a band called Shire. He left Shire in 1983 and sold his bass to buy a guitar.
"A friend from Indy had lent me his guitar for three months. I had this little amp and just taught myself to play. It seemed cooler to play guitar, and easier to write songs on it."
The first band Izzy played guitar in also included Axl Rose.
"I was living in Huntington Beach, and Axl came out with a backpack. He stayed for about a week. But he came back a year later and we started a band called Hollywood Rose."
"Our first gig was at Raji's, in Hollywood. We realized that if you wanted to get a club gig, you had to say, 'Oh, man, we're huge in Orange County. We play these keggers, and they're massive. We can probably get 500 people.' Then seven people would show up, but we got to play."
Later Axl quit and Izzy joined a band called London where Slash also played.
In March 1985 decided Axl and Izzy to start up Hollywood Rose again, this time with a new name, Guns N’ Roses. Izzy left Guns N’ Roses on November 7, 1991. "There was the riot in St. Louis - when stuff like that happens, you start wondering what you're doing. Plus, I'd gotten sober around the time the Use Your Illusions albums came out. The machinery was working, the planes were flying, the shows were happening just like always. But once I quit drugs, I couldn't help looking around and asking myself, 'Is this all there is?' I was just tired of it; I needed to get out."
He went back to Lafayette and started writing songs. He recorded them with his new band, Izzy Stradlin and the Ju Ju Hounds. Their self-titled debut album was released in October 1992. They toured all over the world before returning home in late 1993.
He then started to live a vagabond-life with stays in England, Trinidad, Costa Rica, Spain, Denmark and Sweden. After that he moved back to Indiana with his Swedish wife Annika. Izzy started to resume one of his consuming passions - racing.
"We bought this old road grader over the phone - sight unseen. It had no brakes and leaked, but it had the big blade and we just went around in circles and made the track. We started out racing bikes, these specialized models. But then we moved on to cars. It was generally a 'run what ya brung' setup. I started getting into the old BMW 2002s and Alfa Romeo GTVs. They're from the '70s. You can pick 'em up pretty cheaply, maybe $1,500 for the beaters, and they run real well. They were endurance races, just for fun. I've always been into anything motorized. Racing is a great tension release."
In late 1995 Izzy went to LA to spend some time with his old friend Duff McKagan. They soon found themselves in a studio.
"We recorded ten songs in eight days. It got me excited about music again. I realized how easy the whole process could be. Those sessions were fun and painless. We just had a great time and didn't think too much about it."
Those songs should appear on his second solo album, "117 o", which was released on March 10, 1998.
Since Izzy only did a few interviews and no live shows to support the album, he was dropped along with (among others) Duff McKagan when Geffen merged with Interscope and A&M Records. In 1999 Izzy, Duff and the other guys that had recorded "117 o" to record another album. It was called "Ride On" and was released only in Japan in November. In April of 2000 they did four shows in Japan to promote it.