The Untold Story of Guns ‘N Roses “November Rain” Music Video Cake Jump

Thirty decades in the past, Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain” video clip crashed on to MTV’s airwaves like a Sunset Strip tsunami. Clocking in at 9 minutes and seventeen seconds, it was a sweeping epic contrary to any movie by a tricky rock band. It follows the story of a troubled rock star (correctly performed by Axl Rose), his girlfriend (played by Axl’s real-life flame Stephanie Seymour), and her mysterious suicide. To day, Guns N’ Roses’ magnum opus—which was the center in a audio video clip trilogy, bookended by “Don’t Cry” and “Estranged”—has racked up 1.8 billion views on YouTube.

As an 11-year-outdated, I was riveted by “November Rain” every time it played, which was typically. A few decades later on, one particular shot even now haunts me. In the movie, Axl marries Stephanie, and they host a decadent out of doors wedding reception. Then, the titular rain appears, drenching and ruining the celebration. Everybody heads for include. At the 7-minute mark, to avoid the downpour, 1 visitor, a extended-haired guy in a royal-blue blazer and khaki pants, launches himself like a human torpedo into a five-tier wedding day cake.

The initially time I observed the video, I turned to our babysitter—my mothers and fathers wouldn’t let us check out MTV, but the sitter would. “Why?” I asked. “Why didn’t that dude wander about the desk? Why did he jump via the cake?” Our sitter shrugged. “It may well be acid rain,” she said. I nodded, realizing that she was erroneous.

All these decades afterwards, I can’t shake the image of the cake jumper out of my head. In a online video that is so flawlessly executed—from Slash’s heroic, shirtless guitar solo in entrance of a chapel to Axl’s triumphant performance guiding the piano at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles—the cake jumper feels like a instant of spontaneous chaos. Each time I see it, I just can’t aid but surprise: Was that prepared? How lots of can take did it get to get that shot? How many cakes? Who was the cake jumper? Every single time I see “November Rain,” a new problem about that scene nags at me.

The first person I reached out to for responses was Andy Morahan, the director, who helmed some of the major videos in MTV record. He immediately responded, and declined to comment, declaring, “The techniques of the movie are secure with me.” I’d have to start off my quest for answers someplace else.  

If you Google “who jumped into the cake in ‘November Rain,’” the reply you’ll get is Riki Rachtman. From 1990-1995, Rachman hosted Headbanger’s Ball, a two-hour, late-night, steel-movie demonstrate on MTV. And he owned the Cathouse, a Hollywood nightclub that served as the headquarters for the large steel bands he showcased on tv. Guns N’ Roses have been regulars at Rachtman’s boîte and even filmed audio videos there. I named up Rachtman, now 56, at his house in Mooresville, North Carolina, to talk about his recollections of his time on the “November Rain” set. 

“We had been up all night time shooting at the Rainbow,” Rachtman reported, referring to a nightclub on the Sunset Strip. “And then we went straight to the marriage reception scene the following morning. Axl wanted it to come to feel like a actual wedding, so all his good friends had been there. It is why I was there. When I see the video clip now, it’s a great deal of faces from the previous scene. But the biggest misconception of the entire video clip is that I was the male getting thrown by the cake. That was not me. Every person appears to be to assume it was, but it was not.”

It is effortless to see why people today believe Rachtman jumped as a result of the cake. He’s prominently featured in a single shot, smiling ear to ear at a reception desk, with his very long metalhead mane. Times afterwards, the jumper that plows into the cake also has flowing hesher locks, but his experience is obscured. “I sense bad for the cake dude,” Rachtman states. “He’s possibly some out-of-function actor and on his résumé, he puts, ‘I’m the cake guy in the ‘November Rain’ online video.’ And all people is like, ‘No, you happen to be not. That was Riki Rachtman.’ He almost certainly does like comic-guide conventions, signing things as the cake person, and no one believes him.”

To this day, people however harangue Rachtman about the cake leap. “I got married two months in the past,” he explained, “And every person was like, ‘You gotta bounce by means of the marriage ceremony cake!’ I was like, ‘Guys, make sure you. Stop.’”

To get to the bottom of this mystery, I figured I ought to communicate to a particular person with a entrance-row seat to the cake bounce: Daniel Pearl, the cinematographer. Pearl is a person of the most prolific cinematographers in songs video history, and arguably the most distinguished. Not only was he director of photography for Guns N’ Roses famous movie trilogy, he was powering the camera for R.E.M.’s “Radio Absolutely free Europe,” The Police’s “Every Breath You Acquire,” Missy Elliott’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” Brandy’s “What About Us,” and basically hundreds of others. And if you scroll all the way to the base of Pearl’s remarkable IMDb website page, you’ll see that his really very first credit history is cinematographer on Tobe Hooper’s 1974 traditional, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

In 1967, Pearl enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin’s film division soon after slipping in really like with the movies of Fellini, Bergman, and Kurosawa. He’d had some encounter with a camera. Growing up in New Jersey, he’d utilised an 8mm to movie his pals skateboarding. Later, when Hooper looked for a cinematographer for Massacre, he needed a Texan. When I spoke to Pearl, I described that his iconic shot of Leatherface flailing with a chainsaw at the movie’s summary reminded me of the shot of Slash soloing in “November Rain” exterior a chapel. “No one particular has stated that right before,” he explained. “But it has the identical vibe, for guaranteed.”

“My reaction at the time was that it appeared mistaken.” —Daniel Pearl, cinematographer

Pearl’s vocation is the things of legend, but I desired to discuss about just one factor exclusively: The cake bounce. I questioned him if it was pre-planned or a spur-of-the-second shot. 

“It totally did come up on the spot,” Pearl mentioned. “All I know is I got my directions from Andy that we were going to shoot this. And I know we shot it incredibly rapidly. I have to say that your decision of verb, that we acquired the [actor] ‘jumping’ via the cake—it is jumping. It is really not like he just falls through it or anything at all. When we shot it, I went, Effectively, that is no fantastic, person. It seems like the man jumps into the cake, and we experienced only a person cake. So there it is, which is it. That is what it is. My response at the time was that it looked incorrect.”

I was stunned that Pearl, who received the shot, believed it appeared incorrect. Did he believe it appeared improved when he observed it in the closing slash of the movie? “No,” he explained. “It however appears to be like a bit erroneous to me. But I recognize that it truly is caught on and men and women like it. It can be a massive thing. So who am I? Glimpse, my task is to realize people’s vision, not so a great deal to determine what is heading on in the frame.” 

I had read through on a 2006 Blogspot put up that the cake jumper may possibly have been an further who pitched the idea to Morahan. “It was an extra,” Pearl verified, of the jumper’s identity. “But I would’ve assumed that it was Andy’s notion to ruin the cake, and that he acquired a volunteer to do it.”

Pearl had provided more perception into the cake bounce than I could’ve hoped for. Then, as soon as I bought off the cellular phone with him, an e-mail landed in my inbox from Andy Morahan. “OK,” he wrote, “I will cooperate … ha ha.” He was open to an job interview. 

Morahan, 63, identified as from London, and could not have been kinder and funnier when he spoke about “November Rain.” Like Pearl, he had an extraordinary résumé prior to he obtained the call to collaborate with Guns N’ Roses among the lots of other music movies, he directed “West Close Girls” by the Pet Store Boys, George Michael’s “Faith,” and “Vision of Love” by Mariah Carey. Ahead of obtaining into the cake leap, I requested him how he achieved the shiny, stylized, massive-monitor appear of Guns N’ Roses’ “Don’t Cry” trilogy—they’re three films that have visually stood the exam of time. 

“I usually preferred a cinematic search,” he said, “I’m also a substantial enthusiast of places. So I’d fairly do a marriage ceremony reception outside on area with a few or four rain machines than try out and emulate that in a studio.” For his collaborations with Guns N’ Roses, Morahan reported he seemed to the function of British director Nicolas Roeg for inspiration, precisely to the 1973 thriller Really don’t Look Now. Roeg experienced also directed Mick Jagger in Performance and David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, so applying Roeg’s get the job done as impact appealed to Axl. 

“I confirmed the lower to Axl, and he claimed, ‘Where’s the cake? I appreciate the cake.’ So we put it again in.” —Andy Morahan, director

“The principle of ‘November Rain,’ what does it necessarily mean?” Morahan said. “It’s like a terrible dream. It was deliberately over the major. It is really an allegory. When Daniel [Pearl] goes, ‘Oh, I failed to really like the guy likely by way of the cake,’ I’m not indicating it really is a joke, but it is intended to be a tongue-in-cheek terrible desire, the place all the things just goes to shit. For me, that scene was like pissing on the wedding ceremony reception in ‘The Godfather.’ It’s an upside-down nightmare model of that wedding ceremony.”

Morahan speedily debunked any theories I’d occur up with throughout my childhood about the this means of the cake dive—that it symbolized Axl and Stephanie’s doomed romance or that it must’ve taken substantial planning and several requires. “It was just one of those people factors the place we knew we experienced to wrap because we would been up all night time, and we would dumped all the rain. It was like, ‘Oh, fuck it. Let’s do it, since who cares if it is effective or it would not perform?’ That’s all I bear in mind. I you should not keep in mind a stuntman saying to me, ‘I’ll bounce through the cake.’ But it could have been. In the madness of my stupor at the time, since I’d been up all night filming, it is really incredibly tricky to recollect.”

“When we ended up modifying the movie, I truly took the cake shot out,” Morahan stated. “I concur with Daniel. It looked a small bit also jokey to me. But then I confirmed the minimize to Axl, and he reported, ‘Where’s the cake? I appreciate the cake.’ So we put it back in.”

Thirty many years later, I was curious to get Morahan’s ideas on the legacy of the video. “Well, I wish I had 1 cent for each time it obtained played on YouTube,” he explained with a chortle. “Actually, I obtained a contact pretty a handful of a long time again, 10 or 15 decades in the past, from an assistant to Sofia Coppola. She required to invest in any memorabilia or storyboards from ‘November Rain.’ And it did not strike me until then that this could have had an impact on many others. I do not assume I recognized the electrical power of MTV really until finally years later. We all took it for granted mainly because we have been in this bubble.”

Soon after I spoke with Morahan, I attained out to Sofia Coppola to ask why the “November Rain” movie resonated with her. “It was so epic and glamorous. I beloved it,” Coppola explained by using email. “I was truly into the Axl and Stephanie appreciate story. I painted a commemorative plate of them in art college, like they do for royal couples. Our pal Shawn Mortensen is the photographer in the [wedding reception scene]. It was a second when I lived in L.A. and Guns N’ Roses were massive and Nirvana was about to occur along and every little thing shifted.”

And of class, I questioned Coppola for her feelings on the cake soar. “Ha funny, I did not keep in mind that element,” she wrote back again. “But I just viewed yet again, and it goes along with the drama of the total thing. I enjoy that it’s so sincere and really embracing the drama.”

“I adore that it truly is so honest and seriously embracing the drama.” —Sofia Coppola, fan

I continued my sleuthing and finished up down a rabbit hole that I imagine led to the name of the cake jumper. In the reviews area on Blogspot, a man from Sweden named Jim mentioned he was on a teach in Malaysia and sat up coming to an actor, nicknamed “Slow,” who claimed to be the cake jumper. I reached out to Jim and Sluggish, but neither responded to my email messages. So I simply cannot positively ID him. His identification will continue being unidentified for now, but I feel like I solved a even larger mystery: Soon after talking to Morahan, I finally understood why the shot of the guy careening into the cake has caught with me all these yrs. 

We appreciate when artists get massive swings—from the Sistine Chapel to the Beatles’ White Album. From time to time assignments with outsized ambitions falter, but we’re thrilled when an artist goes major, specifically if, like Rachtman mentioned, they carry their pals together for the journey. Pearl told me that a helicopter nearly crashed into Slash whilst they shot his solo. Morahan reported that they moved an entire chapel to the center of nowhere in New Mexico for that exact shot. The video’s spending plan ballooned to $1.5 million. There is very little fifty percent-assed about “November Rain.” 

That is what the cake shot encapsulates: With “November Rain,” Morahan and Guns N’ Roses weren’t just swinging for the fences, they had been aiming to demolish them. If the marriage visitor experienced clumsily fallen into the cake, it wouldn’t have worked. He necessary to propel himself like a Scud missile into the cake for the shot to belong in the video clip. As Axl sings, nothin’ lasts endlessly. But when you go for the glory, people will nevertheless be conversing about it thirty years later.