Dizzy Reed - Music Career

Music Career

As an adult, Reed pursued a music career in Los Angeles. He was a founding member of the club band The Wild in the late 1980s, with whom he spent five years.

Reed met the original lineup of Guns N' Roses in 1985; his band, The Wild, rehearsed in a neighboring studio. He kept in touch, and in 1990 was invited by friend Axl Rose to join the group for the recording of the two Use Your Illusion albums.

In spite of the rough start, Reed soon became an accepted member of the group and his work was heard on the majority of tracks on both albums. As a member of Guns N' Roses, Reed has become well known for his keyboard, piano and backing vocal work during live performances, music videos and on such songs as "Dust N' Bones", "Live and Let Die", "Bad Obsession" "November Rain", "Garden of Eden", "Don't Damn Me", "Bad Apples", "Civil War", "14 Years", "Yesterdays", "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", "Get in the Ring", "Pretty Tied Up" and "Locomotive", as well his contributions to some of the band's new tracks, including "Chinese Democracy", "Shacklers Revenge", "Better", "Street of Dreams" "If the World", "There Was a Time", "Catcher in the Rye", "Scraped", "Riad N' the Bedouins", "I.R.S" and "Prostitute", and when not playing keyboards or piano, Reed frequently provides backup on percussion and vocals during live Guns N' Roses performances. He's also known for playing percussions during live performances of songs such as "Mr Brownstone","Nightrain", "Welcome to the Jungle" or "Rocket Queen".

Dizzy continues to record and play live with the current Guns N' Roses line-up, and has now been a member of Guns N' Roses longer than any other member besides Axl Rose. Since he joined the band in 1990, five years after its formation in 1985, he cannot be described as an original member. However, apart from Rose, he remains the only remaining link to the Use Your Illusion era and Guns N' Roses's heyday in the early 1990s. Although Reed did not co write any songs during the Illusion sessions, for Chinese Democracy he co wrote "Street of Dreams" with Axl Rose and Tommy Stinson and "There Was a Time" and "I.R.S" with Rose and Paul Tobias, as well as the non-album single "Oh My God" with Rose and Tobias. It has also been confirmed that the unfinished demo that did not make the cut on Chinese Democracy called "Silkworms" was written by Reed himself and the bands other keyboardist Chris Pitman. As well as singing during Guns N' Roses live performances, Reed also serves as a backing vocalist, more notably with the current lineup than the old lineup, he sung backing vocals on a few songs on the Use Your Illusion albums, notable examples were "November Rain", "Garden of Eden", "Bad Apples" and "Civil War" as well as "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory" from "The Spaghetti Incident?" which was a Duff solo track where Dizzy was the only other member of the band that sung on that track. On Chinese Democracy, one of Reed's biggest roles in the band today is serving as a backing vocalist.