My Michelle
Axl
"I know a girl named Michelle and she became a really good friend of the band's, and I was going out with her for a while. It's a true story. Slash and some other members of the band said that's kinda too heavy to say about poor, sweet Michelle; she'll freak out. I'd written this nice sweer song about her, and then I looked at it and thought 'that doesn't really touch any basis of reality,' so I put down an honest thing. It describes her life. This girl leads such a crazy life with doing drugs, or whatever she's doing at the time, you don't know if she's gonna be there tomorrow. Everytime I see Michelle, I'm really relieved and glad. I showed her the lyrics after about three weeks of debating, and she was so happy that someone didn't paint just a pretty picture. She loves it. It was a real song to her, not something hokey."
[An Interview With The Gunners, Hit Parader - March 1988]

Izzy
For "Michelle" Axl called up and said he had this melody. I had a riff and it was a slow smooth melody. When we were playing with it, Slash turned his amp up and went into this bashing thing and we said wow. It turned into a hard rock song, but it started as an acoustic song.
[In The Classic Way, Guitar - Sep, 1988]