1991.MM.DD - Quote from Steven on his lawsuit Vs GnR (from a press release?)

They told me I had a drug problem, well, who the fuck were they to tell me that? A couple alcoholics and heroin users? Did they take some time in between fucking strippers to decide they were going to throw me out of the band? Doug Goldstein took me to have an opiate blocker, which made me very sick. I told them [slash & Duff] that I felt sick and couldn't record. Slash told me we had to, because we couldn't waste the money. I said "Money? What about the money we wasted last year [referring to the 1989 Chicago rehearsal/recording sessions] when Izzy was cleaning himself up, and Axl was nowhere to be found? Why was it okay for those guys to waste the money, but not me [in order to] get well?" So anyway, they bring me into the studio and I feel like shit. It took me forever to get the song [Civil War] right, and they got frustrated with me. So next thing I know, Doug has a stack of papers in front of me that I could never fucking read because they were about five inches thick! He's telling me 'sign here, sign there' and telling me I was signing an agreement saying I was on "probation", meaning I was going to detox in time to record, or else. But it turns out, those papers weren't really giving me that chance. So I don't hear a fucking thing from anyone for awhile, then I got these notices saying 'you're out of the band'. Through my lawyers, I discovered that the "probation" papers that Doug had me sign were actually the rights to my partnership and all my royalties, which I was unknowingly signing away! They completely screwed me out of everything, these guys, [who were] my friends, my family. It hurt more than anything. My royalties were from playing, writing, and [use of] my image such as t shirts and shit.

When we recorded [Appetite for Destruction], Slash came up with this system where whoever wrote got credit. But then when it came time to actually divide them up, suddenly everybody was getting credit but me. I mean, [for example] Izzy wrote the song "Think About You" by himself before we started playing it, yet Slash, Duff, and Axl were also going to be receiving royalties for it, since they supposedly "added to it". I said, "well what about me? Did I add nothing?" I mean Izzy wrote the fucking song, I thought that's how the writing credits were determined, but the other guys were getting credit for something they didn't write, and I wasn't. Same thing for all the other songs, Axl would get credit for songs such as "Brownstone" [written by Slash and Izzy] and "It's So Easy" [written by Duff and West Arkeen], even though he didn't write anything on them, and the other guys [who didn't write also got credit] too. So why not me? So Axl gave me a portion of his [to compensate for not being included], and my name was put beside the rest of theirs [in the writing credits] and that was that. But now they've screwed me out of those royalties and my other ones too. Two fucking albums that I played on are still selling and they're collecting money from them, and I'm not. Guns N Roses T shirts with my face on them are still selling, and they're collecting money from them, and I'm not. That's what they did to me, people I thought were my friends took it all away and said goodbye as if I never existed. Fuck that! That's why I sue them, and I'm confident the jury will see it my way."

This doesn't read like a press release. More like Steven's comments in regards to a press release. It sounds like Steven

It would be nice to have the press release, too, I have just started writing about Steven's being fired from the band. This comes in handy.

Soulmonster wrote:This doesn't read like a press release. More like Steven's comments in regards to a press release. It sounds like Steven

It would be nice to have the press release, too, I have just started writing about Steven's being fired from the band. This comes in handy.

It's been on various GnR fora under the title "Steven's press release" but you're right, it reads like a transcript of Steven's comments.
It's all I could find so far.

I did a search myself but couldn't find any press release, either. Anyway, still brilliant to know how Steven felt after being kicked out.