The First Female Member of Iconic Rock Band Guns N’ Roses Started As a Classically Trained Pianist

Behind the scenes with Melissa Reese.

As told to Patti Greco

Anyone who’s seen Guns N Roses on their “Not in This Lifetime…Tour,” which kicked off in April 2016 and ends November 29, will have noticed Melissa Reese on keyboard and singing backup. The Seattle native is the only woman on stage with Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan, Dizzy Reed, Frank Ferrer, and Richard Fortus. She’s also the only woman to have joined the band’s ranks as a full-time member, period, since it formed in 1985. “People, unfortunately, even now in 2017, have a tendency to be harder on women,” she says. “You have to work to break glass ceilings and to be noticed and acknowledged. But if I spent my time worrying about that shit, [I’d] have less time to do the work.” Here, Reese, who also works as a composer for video games, movies, and TV, tells the full story of how she got to be part of an “iconic, larger-than-life” band.

The story my parents tell is that they heard somebody playing a beginner Bach piece on the piano in the living room, and they assumed it was one of my two older sisters playing, because both of them played the piano and violin. But they caught me, at four years old, plunking it out. I had learned it by ear. They were like, “OK, we have to take this seriously.” I don’t remember this exact incident, but I remember in general always wanting to be like my sisters and copying them…