The story is told of a birthday party that took place two Februarys ago at a Mexican restaurant in Santa Monica. A few long-haired musicians mingled with some concert promoters in suits, eating mediocre guacamole and drinking Cuervo margaritas. The gifts piled up and the crowd of about forty sampled birthday cake, but the guest of honor, Axl Rose, who was turning thirty-seven, never showed up. Axl's manager, Doug Goldstein, quieted the room. "Axl's not going to be coming," Goldstein said. "But order whatever you want and have a good time."

This story is told not because it is considered an example of eccentric or rude behavior on Rose's part. Rather, it is considered emblematic of the way the singer conducts his life — just another night in the off-kilter existence of a man who used to be one of the biggest rock stars in the world. "Not the least bit unusual," says a friend who was at the restaurant, laughing in there-he-goes-again style. "Typical Axl."

Except for a couple of interviews last winter, timed to the release of a Guns n' Roses live album, and a 1998 Phoenix arrest, Rose has remained out of public view since 1994, when G n' R coughed and spat to a halt. For six years he has been working on the next G n' R record, tentatively titled Chinese Democracy. None of the original band members plays on it. Most of them hardly speak with Rose anymore. Rose spends most of his time in Los Angeles recording studios and behind the gate of his secluded estate atop a hill in the Latigo Canyon section of Malibu. His housekeeper.

Beta Lebeis, does most of the shopping and driving. Axl reads, works out, kickboxes, plays pinball, teaches himself guitar and computers, and tries to write lyrics.

Meanwhile, G n' R's debut record, Appetite for Destruction, released in 1987, marches on. The second-biggest-selling debut album in rock history (15 million copies at last count), Appetite thirteen years later still sells a remarkable 5,000 to 6,000 copies per week — more than 200,000 units annually. G n' R caught a feeling in 1987, a raw vibe of anger and authenticity, somewhere between metal and punk, that still appeals to rock-music fans today. Even in the new millennium, Appetite probably cranks inside more turbocharged Chevys than any rock record ever made.

One can divide the public Axl into two separate periods: before 1993, when the original band was together, and post-1993, after the group's final recording, The Spaghetti Incident?, an unremarkable collection of mostly punk covers. Wherever he went during those years of his fame, Axl left frustrated, angry people behind. He became buried in litigation. Shelves in the clerks' offices at Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles and in Santa Monica bow under the weight of the thousands of pages of legal papers concerning G n' R and Axl that have accumulated over the years, actions involving claims totaling millions of dollars. This is not to mention band- or Rose-related legal matters in Nevada, Arizona, Missouri, New York, Spain, England and Canada.

The documents tell part of the story of how G n' R succeeded and failed, and they give a picture of Axl himself. The image that emerges is one of a complicated man who can be sensitive and funny but who is also controlling and obsessive and troubled, a man changed by fame and wracked by childhood trauma who faces a lonely future surrounded by a small circle of family members and childhood friends. "His world is very insular," says Doug Goldstein. "He doesn't like very many people."

Axl is a man struggling with demons and taking radical measures to overcome them. He became deeply involved in past-life regression, a brand of psychotherapy that exists on the New Age fringe. "Axl," a friend says, "is looking for anything that'll give him happiness."

As successful and wealthy as he became, friends contend, Axl still feels like a victim, unfulfilled, somewhat lost. "He seemed emotionally reserved and a little bit suspicious," says the techno whiz Moby, who spent some time with Axl in California in 1997. "He seemed a little bit like a beaten dog." And Rose, according to those who know him, remains hung up on one old girlfriend: the model Stephanie Seymour, now married to the polo-playing financier Peter Brant. Seymour and Axl's ex-wife, Erin Everly, have both accused Axl of beating them, a charge he denies.

Whether Axl's emotional and legal troubles contributed to the demise of the original G n' R is open to interpretation. There is little dispute, however, about one thing they did cause: a massive delay in finishing Chinese Democracy, which is in reality an Axl Rose solo record. This work has been six years, a roomful of studio musicians and a rumored $6 million worth of Interscope/Geffen's money in the making. It is still not finished and probably won't be anytime soon. "So many times, I have come down [to the studio], and I had no idea that I was going to be able to," Rose told Rolling Stone last November as he played twelve new tracks. "If you are working with issues that depressed the crap out of you, how do you know you can express it?"