Gilby and Daniella Clarke in the ’80s; their daughter Frankie, right, remaking “Whatever Happened to Fun” four decades later with Kevin Preston. (photos: Instagram/YouTube)

When rocker Frankie Clarke (Frankie and the Studs, the Gourmandizers, Los Frankies) and her friend Kevin Preston (Prima Donna, Green Day) recently covered Candy’s “Whatever Happened to Fun,” they weren’t just unearthing a criminally underappreciated ‘80s L.A. powerpop gem. They weren’t even merely tipping their rakish hats to Frankie’s famous dad, Gilby, who played in Candy years before he got his big break with Guns N’ Roses.

Frankie’s remake was in fact a true full-circle, cross-generational moment… because if it weren’t for “Whatever Happened to Fun,” Frankie would literally not exist.

Gilby and Frankie’s mother, future fashion mogul Daniella Clarke, actually met on the set of the “Whatever Happened to Fun” music video, and what transpired was a storybook rock romance that has defied all odds and lasted more than four decades. It just might be the cutest rock ‘n’ roll cute-meet tale of all time. And it all started in front of that Hollywood Blvd. mural, right next to the infamous Playmates lingerie emporium.

Daniella and her two younger siblings were visiting from South Africa, spending the summer with their Los Angeles-based father, and were doing some Hollywood sight-seeing when they stumbled upon Candy’s video shoot on July 19, 1985. “I saw a crowd of people standing around and I asked, ‘What’s going on?’ And they said, ‘Oh, this is a band filming their video for MTV,’” Daniella recalls. “Then I saw the guitar player standing on top of a convertible. He had ripped jeans with fishnet stockings underneath, tons of black eyeliner, and hair sticking up in every direction. And for some reason, I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s my guy.’ Everybody else just kind of melted away, and I only saw him. And I stared at him. I think I stared at him so hard, with like, like piercing eyes, that he stared back.”

Gilby did indeed notice Daniella. “She was on my side of the stage, and I kept seeing this pretty girl smiling. She just caught my attention,” he says.

“We locked eyes. I saw him, and he saw me,” says Daniella. “And then my dad said, ‘OK, that’s enough. We’re going to go get ice cream.’ So, we left.”

It was then that Gilby sprang into action and dispatched Candy’s makeup artist to chase after the mysterious accidental video extra who’d caught his eye. “I said, ‘Go get that girl. Go find that girl. I want to say hi to her.’”

“The makeup artist from the set came up to me at the ice cream shop, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, ‘Excuse me, but you were just at the video shoot, and the guitar player there wants to talk to you.’ Well, I ran as fast as my legs would take me! I left my dad and my brother and my sister and ran right back to the set,” Daniella laughs.

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The pair’s first meeting that fateful afternoon was actually a tad awkward, because not only was that makeup artist Gilby’s ex-girlfriend, but Gilby had invited several love interests, past or present, to the shoot. (“Oh, there were so many girls there that were all saying they were his girlfriends,” Daniella chuckles.)

“Back then when you got to do your MTV video, it was a big deal, and you called all your friends. I called all my girlfriends — and they were all there!” Gilby chuckles. “Because it was a big event for us, there were a lot of other girls there. So, I was kind of hiding from those other girls, while meeting this new girl.”

And that wasn’t the only awkward aspect of Gilby and Daniella’s first encounter. There was also the matter of Daniella’s age. “The first thing Gilby said to me was, ‘What’s your name?’ And I said, ‘Daniella.’ And he goes, ‘Daniella, you’re very pretty. How old are you?’ And of course, I lied,” Daniella giggles. “I knew if I [answered honestly], he would never talk to me. The lie just flew out.”

“She right away said she was 18. But she was not 18,” says Gilby. “She was 16!”

It would take several years before Gilby would learn the truth (“We started dating, and the lie just kept perpetuating itself,” says Daniella), but regardless, the two were instantly smitten and inseparable. And this would not be the only time that the infatuated Daniella’s impulsiveness and determination would keep the couple together.

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“When it was time for me to go back to South Africa [at the end of the summer] and my dad dropped us off at the airport, I was already dating Gilby and I was in love, head over heels. I didn’t want to go back. But my mom was expecting us to come back,” Daniella recalls. “My dad dropped us off at the airport. I looked at my brother and my sister and was just like, ‘I’m not going with you. You guys are going to get on the plane without me. I’m going to stay here with Gilby.’ My brother and my sister were like, ‘Mom’s going to kill you!’ And I was like, “Well, yeah, she probably will. But I’m not going home.’ And I took off. Oh my God, my poor mom went to the airport to pick up three kids — and only got two! I swear I could hear my mom screaming all the way from South Africa. She was so mad.”

Daniella’s father wasn’t too thrilled either. “I called my dad and said, ‘Dad, I’m still in America.’ And he goes, ‘What do you mean, you’re still in America?’ And I go, ‘I’m still in California.’ And he goes, “What do you mean, you’re still in California?’” Daniella laughingly recalls. “And I said, ‘I didn’t leave. I’m staying with Gilby.’ And he said, ‘Are you out of your mind?’”

Eventually Daniella’s “furious” parents realized that their defiant daughter was never getting on that plane. “I told them, “Gilby and I are going to be together. If you make me go back, I’m going to run away. You’re not going to be able to keep me away from him. I will always run away, and I’ll always be with him. So, either you know where I am and I’m with him and I’ll enroll in school and I’ll get a job and I’ll take care of myself, or if you force me to go home, you’ll never see me again,’” Daniella recalls. “And they had no choice.”

And so, Daniella remained in L.A., but even though Gilby “would take [her] to school and pick [her] up,” he still hadn’t figured out her real age. “Meanwhile, I thought he was Elvis and I was Priscilla,” Daniella chuckles.

“I didn’t even find that out until we got married, when we went to do the marriage certificate. All those years, I had no idea,” Gilby insists.

“We went to the courthouse to go get our marriage license, and I figured, ‘Now is the time I better come clean. I better tell him.’ At this point, I was 21. We’d been together a long time already. He thought I was 23,” Daniella explains. “At first I said, ‘I have something to tell you…’ And oh, the poor guy’s face! I mean, he went white. He probably thought I was pregnant or who knows what. Then I said, ‘I’m not 23. I’m actually two years younger. I’ve been lying to you the whole time.’ And he was like, ‘Oh my God, I had a feeling, because you always had some stupid story about why you didn’t have your I.D.’ But at that time, he was already a pretty well-established musician around town, and we never walked in through the front door [of clubs and bars]. We always went in through the back. So, I never had to show I.D.!”

The Clarkes’ young marriage faced another challenge very early on, when — right after their 1991 rock ‘n’ roll wedding took place at Madame Wong’s West, on the legendary punk club’s last day of operation — Gilby received a job offer that had the potential to take his career to a stratospheric new level, but might also tear the newlyweds apart.

“After our honeymoon, we got back and went into our apartment, checked our answering machine, and there was a message. It was Slash, asking Gilby to audition for Guns N’ Roses, saying that they needed a new guitar player,” says Daniella. “At the time I thought it was a joke! Next thing I knew, two weeks after I married him, Gilby was getting ready to go on this huge tour.”

The opportunity was obviously one that Gilby could not refuse. Candy had never really taken off. “We were trying to do something that nobody else was doing at the time, and it was really hard. I think we had three record deals before we put out a record — we were signed to an independent, we were signed to MCA, and then Polygram — and by the time we got a record deal, the whole scene had changed,” Gilby explains. His next band, Kill for Thrills, amassed a sizable local following and released one album on MCA… but Guns N’ Roses were literally one of the biggest bands in the world at the time.

“I was like, ‘Oh, shit. What does this mean for me? Am I going to get left behind here? Is he going to run off with some supermodel?’ Because that’s what happens. I was pretty horrified,” Daniella admits, recalling her reaction to her groom’s new GNR gig. She also remembers wondering if her disapproving mom and dad, who’d always thought her relationship with Gilby was doomed, would be proven right. “My parents were like, ‘He’s a musician! He’s got a girl in every port! Are you crazy? You’re just one of a thousand girls. This is never going to work. He’s going to cheat on you!’ But luckily for me, Gilby is a meat-and-potatoes guy, a good ol’ boy from Ohio, and he was like, ‘The only way this works is if you come with me the whole time.’ And I was young enough, didn’t have that much going on at the time, that I was able to do that. That was a blessing.”

When Daniella joined her Gilby and GNR on the road, she learned to deal with the insecurities that any rock wife would understandably have. “There’s constantly chicks around, like a plethora of women. And that was tricky, especially at my young age. But as I got older and settled into who I was, and what our relationship was, and the trust that we have in each other, it didn’t bother me anymore,” she shrugs.

A decade later, the Clarkes’ lives drastically changed again, this time when Daniella’s career took off with her multi-million-dollar denim brand Frankie B., which set the trend for super-stretch, super-low-rise, super-sexy jeans in the Y2K era. “That was a very tricky time in our marriage, because I had spent most of my years together with Gilby on the side of the stage, watching him and cheering him on, and then all of a sudden I wasn’t able to go out on the road as much, because now we had a daughter and I had a career,” Daniella says of that new power imbalance. “But in a partnership, you’re there for each other when you need each other. So, when he was out on the road, I was there for him. And then when I was doing my work, he was at home helping me. And we worked it out somehow, some way, by hook or by crook. My career was going in one direction, his career was going in another direction, we met super-young, both high school dropouts, et cetera, et cetera. It shouldn’t have worked. But we always figured it out.”

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As for how they’ve stayed together in an industry where most rock marriages barely last as long as one album’s promotional cycle, Gilby says matter-of-factly, “Honestly, there is no secret. It’s just things change. Things that were important when we were first together aren’t important now. You just have to adapt, and I think more than anything, you need to put that person first. It’s about making her a priority. I mean, a gig’s a gig, but we just had to make our marriage a priority. And then we kept that throughout my whole career — and her career.”

“The ‘secret’ is we just love each other and want to be together, period. That’s it,” Daniella adds. “We just wanted to be together, and we knew that the most important thing was that we stayed together throughout it all and prioritized each other. I describe our relationships sometimes as a seesaw: We always balance each other out, because the ultimate goal is making sure our family works. So, he was always my strength and my supporter, and I was always his.”

“I mean, look, it hasn’t always been roses,” says Gilby (no pun intended). “There have been hard times. But we made it through somehow, and now this is the good stuff.” And as the Clarkes’ marital fun continues, he looks back on Candy’s memorable “Whatever Happened to Fun” video shoot and says, “It was a beautiful day. We’ve got a daughter, and we’ve had a life together. It’s been pretty good.”

Above, watch Frankie Clarke and Kevin Preston’s “Whatever Happened to Fun” remake — which includes video scenes shot in front of that iconic Hollywood Blvd. mural and at the San Fernando Valley’s equally iconic record store Licorice Pizza, as well as cameos by Gilby and his original Candy bandmates. Below, watch Daniella and fellow rock wife Barbaranne Wylde’s live “Honest AF” podcast taping at Licorice Pizza Records, during which Daniella shares more adorable details about her and Gilby’s Walk-of-Fame star-crossed first meeting.

“Driving Rain,” the new single by Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and his other band, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, tells the tale of a co-dependent relationship from the point of view of an addict’s significant other. While he tells Yahoo Entertainment that the song is inspired by personal experiences (“It’s something that hits a little close to home — not presently, but in my past, and I guess in Myles’s past”), Slash has obviously been on the other side of that equation.

Although Slash has been sober for 12 years, he and his GNR bandmates were well known for their drug exploits and, well, their appetite for self-destruction. At first, Slash says, it was all about partying and having fun, but eventually he fulfilled the prophecy of GNR’s cautionary tale, “Mr. Brownstone”: The small amount of drugs he did at first wouldn’t do it, so the little got more and more.

“I just really got to a point where I wasn’t enjoying it anymore,” he says of his decision to finally get clean in 2006. “I mean, God knows I probably have my fair share of psychological misadventures, but I got into booze and drugs mostly just to kill time. I mean, it starts out for fun, and then you use it in between shows, after a show, before the next show, that kind of thing. And especially I’d really fall in hard when the tour was over and we were off the road — I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. So that’s just something that before you know it, you’ve got a real physical, and as it happens, psychological addiction going on. And you just keep managing it, and managing it, and it takes its toll eventually. It catches up with you.”

Slash in 1986. (Photo: Marc S Canter/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Six years before Slash kicked drugs and alcohol, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a form of congestive heart failure caused by his chronic substance abuse; at first he was given between six days and six weeks to live, but he recovered with the help of physical therapy and a defibrillator. His GNR bandmates had their own serious, addiction-related health issues: Drummer Steven Adler reportedly suffered 28 overdoses, along with two heart attacks and a stroke; guitarist Izzy Stradlin was in a coma for 96-hours; and bassist Duff McKagan nearly died from acute alcohol-induced pancreatitis.

And of course, Slash has seen many of his peers — including Scott Weiland, who fronted Slash and McKagan’s other side band, Velvet Revolver, from 2002 to 2008, and who died of an overdose in 2015 — suffer even worse consequence of their own addictions. He’s clearly  grateful that he didn’t meet a similar fate.

Steven Adler and Slash in 1986. (Photo: Marc S Canter/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

“I was fortunate. I didn’t die, and I didn’t go to prison,” he says. “Because that’s usually what happens with anybody who doesn’t come to terms with it at some point. So, I just finally really like, ‘I can’t do it anymore. It’s just I’m not getting anything out of it.’” Slash confesses he went on one last binge before getting sober for good — although he stresses, “I don’t think there’s ever a thing called ‘sober for good.’ You’re always practicing sobriety for as long as you possibly can.”

Slash recalls his behavior right up until he sought professional help. “I came to that decision when I had an ample supply of [drugs] sitting in front of me, and I had a date that I was going to put myself into rehab,” he reveals. “I just did what [drugs] I did until that date came, and checked into rehab. And haven’t done it since. And I haven’t really had the desire to do it. I haven’t been struggling with craving it, which is great.”

Slash credits his love for music and for his children for saving him. Of the latter, he says, “I had two kids, and I didn’t want their earliest memories of me to be this burned-out drug addict.” Of the former, he explains, “[Music] really was my driver, and I think it was really wanting to be able to put all my effort and time [in that instead]. Because you end up spending a lot of time copping, and getting loaded, and getting into a nice place where you can sort of write. And I think I just got sick and tired of f***ing around with all that stuff. I just wanted to get to music and get back to work.”

And Slash has done just that, not only with Guns N’ Roses’ hugely successful “Not in This Lifetime” reunion tour, but with his aptly titled new album with Kennedy and the Conspirators, Living the Dream. When he’s onstage with either band, it’s hard to believe he put his body through so much abuse, considering that he seems positively ageless, nearly unchanged since 1987. Slash claims he doesn’t adhere to any special health regimen, and just says, “I think I was really fortunate. I got out of the sort of half a gallon of vodka a day, and all the smack, just at a time [at age 41] where I was about to come out the other side in not such a good way. I try to be healthy. That’s the best I can do.”

This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

When bad boys Guns N’ Roses first exploded onto the scene in the late ’80s, the lyrics of their politically incorrect songs, like “It’s So Easy” and “Used to Love Her” — or of their peers, like Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and Poison’s “I Want Action” — barely raised an eyebrow. In today’s #MeToo era, you’d think it’d be a different case. However, the public appetite, no pun intended, for GNR is still as massive as ever. The band’s “Not in This Lifetime” reunion trek is now ranked as the fourth-most-successful concert tour of all time, and the GNR even just released a Appetite for Destruction boxed set with a $999 price tag.

When asked about whether GNR’s catalog has aged well in the current political climate, the band’s guitarist, Slash, actually seems a little surprised that it would even be an issue.

“I’ve never thought of that. It’s never crossed my mind,” he says contemplatively. “I mean, I think when the #MeToo thing really blew up, the thought crossed my mind of a bunch of musicians, not particular ones, but just musicians [who might be implicated]. But for the most part, as far as all the ones I know, it wasn’t like that. We didn’t have that particular [predatory] relationship with girls. It was a lot more the other way around, in some cases! Anyway, so some of the songs and all that were sort of sexist in their own way, but not to be taken that seriously. I don’t think they were malicious or anything.”

The flip side of the current climate, unfortunately, is that rock ’n’ roll has become too PC, too safe. The appeal of Guns N’ Roses back in the day, after all, was that they seemed so dangerous – that “You don’t even want to f*** with us” attitude, as Slash puts it. Do any rock acts exude that thrilling sense of menace today?

Guns N’ Roses in 1985. (Photo: Jack Lue/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

“That’s a great question,” muses Slash, whose 16-year-old son, London Hudson, actually drums for a rock band called Classless Act. “That sort of spirit, it’s still around. It’s still inherent in metal bands. It’s still inherent in young bands who have something that they want to express that maybe they’re not having the easiest time dealing with. But that attitude really is not something fabricated, and so right now at this particular point in time, a lot of bands or a lot of artists are doing a lot of different things — and not much of it is really rock n’ roll. There’s nothing to rebel against. … I think trying to figure out how to have the attitude in your music, and songs, and so forth, is probably difficult for a lot of young bands because now it’s about politics again. So we’ll see what that turns into.”

The metal ’80s were obvious a very specific point in time, in ways both good and bad. And Slash admits that “some of the bubblegum nature of the music at that time was a little bit like, whatever — but it was also what fueled Guns N’ Roses to be the antithesis of that.” Thirty years later, Slash is still Living the Dream, according to the title of his third album with his non-Guns band, Slash, featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. And with songs that tackle topics like modern technology (“Lost Inside the Girl” is about an Instagram stalker; “Call of the Wild” is about social media oversaturation), codependent relationships (“Driving Rain”), and unrequited love (“Read Between the Lines,” “Sugar Cane,” “Slow Grind”), the album mixes GNR’s classic rock riffage with mature themes.

But Slash still harbors some nostalgia for those wild days on Hollywood’s infamous Sunset Strip. (He plays two nights — one private SiriusXM show, one open to the public — at the Whisky a Go Go this week.) “My fondest memories of the ’80s were the ‘flier wars,’ to romantically look back on how exciting all that s*** was,” the 53-year-old rock legend says with a grin, looking back at the time when Mötley, Poison, and GNR ruled the Hollywood scene. “It’s a thing for me, because the scene of the ’80s, what it was all about, was a little plastic to me, but people were very, very passionate. … The energy that was around was palpable, and you couldn’t ignore it. And so when it came time to promoting your own band, the flier wars, and getting into the Rainbow [bar], and the girls, and all the craziness, I did dig all that aspect of it.”

A flier from Guns N’ Roses’ early days. (Photo: Jack Lue and Marc S Canter/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Entertainment.

It seems that Slash — the famously top-hatted, aviator-shaded Guns N’ Roses guitar god, who’s about to about to release Living the Dream, his third album with his other band, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & the Conspirators — was almost literally born to be a rock star. As the son of artist Anthony Hudson, who created album covers for Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and costumer Ola Hudson, who worked with (and briefly dated) David Bowie, he grew up surrounded by rock ’n’ roll role models, the coolest of the cool. But interestingly, he didn’t pursue music himself until he was a teenager … and the guitar wasn’t even his first instrument of choice.

“It’s funny, because I grew up in that world,” the rock legend, whose real name is Saul Hudson, tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I grew up in that very bohemian, artistic environment — tons and tons and tons of music. I never aspired to be a musician, but I loved listening to records. I loved going with my parents to the Troubadour and the Forum and this and that. So, I loved music, and I was fascinated — like, if you go to a gig and you see them putting up the gear, I was completely mesmerized — but I didn’t think about an instrument until I just sort of accidentally picked up the guitar, when I was just about 15. It was right before my 15th birthday. And then, that just changed everything. So I guess I was groomed for it, but I just didn’t know.”

Slash recalls Bowie coming over to his home when Ola and Bowie were a “little item for a while,” when his mother (who died in 2009) was designing outfits for Bowie’s Thin White Duke era. “She did some of his coolest stuff, I have to say — that whole thing with the suits and everything. He definitely looked good,” Slash chuckles. A-list rockers like Bowie understandably made a lasting impression on little Slash.

The suit from the “Thin White Duke” from the “Station to Station” tour designed by Ola Hudson, left. (Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)

“David was very cool,” he says. “I was in the presence of growing up with a lot of those musicians and artists, who were really, really f***ing cool. Whereas a lot of people try to be cool these days, but these different folks were really, really together: really intelligent, but just very much had their own language and style and everything, and it was very counterculture. … They were very aware of themselves, and very aware of their music and what they were trying to convey, and they just were, like, very left field, but together. … All very different personalities … it was a really exciting time, because it was so inspired and creative.”

The “Sweet Child o’ Mine” axeman met Stevie Wonder, Minnie Riperton, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, and Keith Moon as a child, but he seems to have the fondest memories of one dynamite disco encounter. “There was a guy — I mean, I just have to mention him because he was so awesome — he was this very extroverted performer named Sylvester, back in the day. He gave me my first pet rat, and he was awesome,” Slash, a noted animal lover and activist, recalls with a grin.

However, it was Slash’s one-time GNR bandmate, drummer Steven Adler, and an astute, Eric Clapton-loving schoolteacher who encouraged Slash to take up the guitar. “I went over to [Steven’s] place one afternoon, and he took one of those really cheap department store electric guitars and an amp, and an equally cheap stereo, and put KISS Alive II on, and just cranked everything up and just banged on it,” Slash remembers. “I mean, at that point we were doing a lot of air guitar too, so we were sort of discovering your own music at that age. And I thought, ‘We’ll put a band together!’ That naïve dreamy thing: ‘We’ll start a band!’”

Slash initially thought he’d play bass, but a visit to a nearby music school changed his destiny forever. “I went over there without an instrument, and not knowing what the f*** I was doing, and went in and talked to the teacher, this guy Robert Walling, who I’ve talked to a couple times over the years. So, he took me in the room and we were talking, and he was playing guitar the whole time, and he was playing Clapton licks. And I said, ‘Well, that’s what I want to do.’ And he goes, ‘That’s not bass, that’s lead guitar.’ And that started. That’s where it went.”

Slash went on to be as cool as the rock stars he met as a child, becoming one of the greatest rock guitarists in history and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. His recent “Not in This Lifetime” tour with the reunited Guns N’ Roses is now the fourth-highest-grossing concert tour of all time, and his new song with the Conspirators, “Driving Rain,” is his most successful single released under his name. Surely his mother would be proud.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Entertainment.