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Where is Guns N’ Roses’ Paradise City? Debunking an Indiana urban legend

Rashika Jaipuriar
Indianapolis Star

Bloomington is no doubt a quintessential college town, with rolling hills and beautiful scenery. A city of "both dreamers and doers." Home to the Indiana University Hoosiers.

But is the southern Indiana city of 85,000, in the heartland of America, really the ultimate utopia for an 80s rock star?

That's what some people have speculated for years, suggesting that the Guns N' Roses song “Paradise City” is not about New York City or Los Angeles or London or Paris but it is, in fact, of all places, about Bloomington. All because Lafayette natives Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin were rumored to take road trips to IU, "where the grass is green and the girls are pretty."

Take me down to the paradise city

Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty

Oh, won't you please take me home

Take me down to the paradise city

So could Bloomington, in fact, be the 'Paradise City'?

For awhile now, Indianapolis sports broadcaster Jake Query has been connected to the theory, attributed as a source "every few years," as a "friend of Axl Rose.”

Query is indeed a proud, longtime fan of the rock band. He was a sophomore at North Central High School when “Appetite for Destruction” came out and has seen them several times in concert, most recently earlier this month at Lucas Oil Stadium.

But prepare to be disappointed.

Query has never met Axl Rose or talked with the Guns N' Roses leader singer

Guns N' Roses members (from left) Duff McKagen, Gilby Clarke, Axl Rose and Slash collect the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. According to Billboard magazine, Rose, McKagen and Slash will reunite for at least two Guns N' Roses shows in 2016.

He’s not “close friends” with Rose, as rumored, nor has he ever even met the musician. And though he's worked in radio, he says he's never been a DJ, as people have cited him.

The story originates as an “urban legend” during his years at North Central High School, but it was even further fueled by the “natural rivalry” between Purdue in West Lafayette and Indiana University in Bloomington, when Query was a student.

“Somehow we convinced ourselves of this ... that people from Purdue would come to IU to party because it was a better looking campus with better looking girls," Query told IndyStar. "We all just joked, like ‘Paradise City,’ yeah Izzy and Axl wrote that about Bloomington because they're from Lafayette, so they know what 'Paradise City' would be. And it’s not Lafayette, it’s Bloomington.”

The campuswide rumor has been connected to him specifically, he believes, because of comments on a radio show more than a decade ago.

Bloomington as ‘Paradise City’ was an absurd theory he repeated on the radio

The Los Angeles-based hard rockers led by singer Axl Rose and guitarist Slash parlayed songs about sex and drugs into platinum record sales. Their "Greatest Hits," one of seven Guns N' Roses albums to reach the Billboard 200 Top 10, went 5x platinum in 2011. The compilation contains such songs as "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child O' Mine" (their lone No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Patience."

He was working at WIBC when they were on air discussing funny incidents of misunderstood music and song lyrics.

"We were talking about that, and I simply was saying in that capacity, 'Oh listen to this one.'"

He told the story of his friends' theory about 'Paradise City' — mocking their own absurdity, he says, but "somehow or another that morphed into fact."

Query says if he did meet Rose in real life, he'd share this story and his somewhat accidental involvement.

"I've been really lucky to have had some very cool encounters, with some very cool people over the course of my career — 99% of which were not exciting enough to be in the paper," Query said. "And the one that people seem to most want to talk about is the one that actually never happened."

Contact Rashika Jaipuriar at rjaipuriar@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter @rashikajpr.