American musician W. Axl Rose was born William Bruce Rose Jr. on February 6, 1962. He is most recognized for his work as the main singer and songwriter for the hard rock band Guns N’ Roses, which he has been a part of continuously since the group’s founding in 1985.
Rose, who has a unique, powerful, and versatile voice[5], has been hailed as one of the best vocalists of all time by publications such as Rolling Stone and NME.
Why did Axl Rose change his name?
In 1986, he officially changed his name to W. Axl Rose. Rose did not want William to share his name with his real father, therefore she chose the legal, not an abbreviated, “W.” was in a band before Guns And Roses called Hollywood Rose.
William Bruce Rose Jr., the oldest child of Sharon Elizabeth (née Lintner), who was 16 years old at the time and still in high school, and William Bruce Rose, who was 20 at the time, was born as Axl Rose in Lafayette, Indiana.
The pregnancy was unintended, and his father has been said to as “a troubled and charismatic local delinquent.”
When Rose was about two years old, his parents divorced, which prompted his father to kidnap and allegedly molested Rose before fleeing Lafayette. When his mother remarried, she gave her son the new name William Bruce Bailey.
