Tracii Guns

Tracii Guns, born Tracy Richard Irving Ulrich on January 20, 1966 in Los Angeles, California, is an American guitarist best known as the co-founder of glam metal band L.A. Guns and one of the original members of Guns N' Roses. Inspired by hearing Jimmy Page on the radio as a six-year-old and taught to play by his uncle, Guns formed L.A. Guns in 1983 with drummer Rob Gardner and singer Michael Jagosz after meeting them at Fairfax High School. When Axl Rose joined as vocalist the band merged with Rose's Hollywood Rose to briefly become the original lineup of Guns N' Roses in 1985 - but Guns departed after a falling out with Rose and was replaced by Slash, while his L.A. Guns bandmates were also replaced by what became the classic GNR lineup. Guns rebuilt L.A. Guns with vocalist Phil Lewis and the band became a major force on the Sunset Strip, releasing their self-titled debut on Vertigo Records in 1988 followed by the gold-certified Cocked and Loaded in 1989 - ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the 50 Greatest Hair Metal Albums of All Time - and Hollywood Vampires in 1991 which sold over a million copies. The band continued releasing albums through the 1990s before Guns departed in 2002 to form Brides of Destruction with Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx, releasing Here Come the Brides in 2004. He returned to various iterations of L.A. Guns through the following decade and reunited with Phil Lewis in 2016 for what became the most celebrated version of the band in years, releasing a series of acclaimed albums including The Devil You Know (2019) and Checkered Past (2021). Guns has been credited as composer and songwriter on over 135 titles across his career.