1996.09.14 - Kerrang! - GN'R Lies: The Splits, The Feuds, The Shocking Truth (Slash)

Transcript:
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GN'R Lies: The Splits, The Feuds, The Shocking Truth

It's been three years since GUNS N' ROSES made a record - since then, there have been sackings and side projects and endless rumours that they’d split up. Now, in a world exclusive interview with Jeson Arnopp, guitarist Slash finally lifts the lid on the horrific excess and the bitter bust-ups that have almost torn the ‘World’s Most Dangerous Band’ apart...

THE SUNSET Marquis in Los Angeles is a fine hotel. If you pull up a chair by the pool, you will see a superstar of some description wandering by within minutes. And, yes, there goes one now... Topless. Tattooed. Dark, tousled hair held in check by a baseball cap. Fag dangling from the corner of his mouth. Hello there, Slash, Guns N’ Roses guitarist/all-round rock icon, and how the hell are you?

Slash saunters over to the other side of the pool, throws a white towel over a spare sun-lounger, strips down to a pair of skimpy black shorts and prepares to settle down for a day's sun worship. We’ve just returned from visiting Machine Head in their LA recording studio, and we’d really rather like to ruin his day by asking him what the bloody hell is going on with GN’R.

Except, millionaire rock stars aren’t the sort of people who agree to hour-long interviews just like that. And frankly, millionaire rock stars who are members of Guns N' Roses are about as likely to agree to a chat with the press on the spur of the moment as Little And Large are to re-emerge as the world’s funniest comic duo. Especially when they've got their feet up, a waiter has just bought them a cool drink, and they've started chatting to various friends and acquaintances. Which is what Slash is doing right now.

Still, there s no harm in sending Kerrang! snapper/friend to the stars Ross Halfin over to the Slash sun- lounger to request an interview. He will, of course, say no - but at least we’ll have a laugh when Halfin is tipped into the pool by the irate representative of the 'World’s Most Dangerous Band'.

Halfin arrives as Slash’s feet. He speaks. And Slash... Sweet Jesus, Slash nods his head.

A COUPLE more hours' sunbathing later, Slash is ready to talk. He’s drinking Stolli vodka with a hint of
cranberry juice, and he's practically lighting each Gitanes cigarette with the tip of the last. Just as you'd expect.

We're sitting in the Sunset Marquis’ poolside cafe. Much later, Slash will go home and pack for a 6am flight to Hungary, where he’ll play a gig - which he’ll never get around to explaining during the next hour. “The reason I’m talking to you now is that Guns are working towards working,” he says. "We’re looking for a rehearsal situation that’s compatible. But who f**king cares anyway? People just want the record."

Guns N‘ Roses spent the summer of 1993 co-headlining American football stadia with Metallica. The tour became more renowned for bitter inter-band rivalry and resentment and horrendous excess, than for any single show. The last time Kerrang! wrote about Guns N’ Roses purely for their music was on November 13,1993, when their covers album, ‘The Spaghetti Incident?' was given a lukewarm three-K review.

Since then, it’s been nothing but sackings (the hapless Gilby Clarke), side projects (Slash's Snakepit, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum in Neurotic Outsiders), and rumoured splits. Guns N' Roses had, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist as a proper, fully functional band.

So three years, one guitarist, no new records and absolutely no gigs at all later, what the f**k is going on? Over to Slash...

I'VE HEARD so many rumours," he says. “Six months ago, there was a rumour that we were all in the studio and we were all sober. That was f**king bullshit. Only Axl (Rose, GN'R’s volatile vocalist) had been in the studio."

Don't you think so many rumours circulate because you’re not exactly the most communicative band alive?

“Well, I’m communicative,” he shrugs. “I’ll talk to anybody. Going out with Snakepit re-established in my mind why I started in the first place. My love of touring, my love of the people who come, and how I appreciate the fact that they even care.

“When Guns got really big, it got to a point where we felt so dislocated from everybody. The only reason we were that big was that these people were coming to the shows."

Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Use Your Illusion’ world tour was a circus of grand -some would say grim - proportions. Slash admits he felt “disillusioned” by the end of the trek. Again, it will be recalled more for Axl Rose's habit of delaying shows for several hours than for the band's performances. Was Slash embarrassed by the singer’s behaviour?

"I wasn't real fond of it, put it that way," he says. “We should just go out and play. I know it takes a lot of work to be uninhibited enough to go out and perform to audiences that size, but after a three-hours delay it’s really expensive.

“And by the time Axl comes out, the rest of the band’s pissed drunk because we've been waiting around. This time, I’m confident we can just go out and do it."

THE RELATIONSHIP between Slash and Axl Rose is crucial to GN'R’s survival. In the past two years, the singer has allegedly tried to sue the guitarist and fire him from the band. How do things currently stand between them?

“Axl and I are on civil terms,” Slash says, with a slight smile. “At this point, we’re partially sober. In the last three months, Duff and Matt have started rehearsing every night, and I’m coming in when I get back from Hungary. We all have tons of material, and we have a lot to work out.”

Including what the next GN'R record will actually sound like.

“I just want us to make a simple, kick-ass hard rock record," says Slash. “Axl’s playing guitar now, so I have to deal with that. There’s also another guitarist, who I don’t want to work with." This will be Paul Huge. Gilby Clarke's replacement, who was recruited by Rose. “This whole thing started because of him,” nods Slash. “But there’s someone I do wanna work with.”

Who?

“I don’t wanna say at this point."

Izzy Stradlin (GN’R’s original guitarist, who had reportedly started writing with the band again last year)?

"No. Well, Izzy was an idea, but there’s a guitar player I worked with who was in Alice Cooper's band. He’s really good."

REMARKABLY, IT has been five years since anyone heard a new Guns N’ Roses song. Why?

“I couldn't tell you," says Slash. “Axl’s been wanting to make a record this whole time. But when we finally got together and I'd written some material, he didn’t want to do that type of music, cos the scene had changed. I’m not going to keep up with trends, so we had a conflict of interests.

“That’s when Paul Huge came in. After two weeks I said I wouldn't work with him. Axl got really pissed off about it, and I took off in March ’94 to do my own thing with Snakepit. So now, I’ve come back and Paul’s still there. Now, I’m dealing with this.”

Are you prepared to compromise?

“No, I’m going to confront it. Either Paul goes, or he... Well, this is personal, I don’t want to get into this. But during this whole period, Axl’s been geared to get up and do it."

Why didn’t he work on a solo project?

“That’s what I told him to do. Get it all off his chest... Well, you're starting to pull stuff out of me now," he smiles. “In Axl’s mind, Guns is his solo project. He didn’t see any reason, as far as I know, why he should do a solo thing.

"With Snakepit, I just wanted to do my own thing. So with all this psychological bullshit going on, time goes by. For any younger bands reading this, you’ve got to watch the beast in this business that stops you from talking to each other.

“Nowadays, when the tail-end of my generation gets confronted with it, they either die or disappear into drug-dom. That’s not where we come from. So we will fight and struggle through it."

NEXT WEEK: Metallica, money and marriage - Slash reveals all in part two of our GN'R world exclusive

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WHO’S WHO

The War Of The Roses: it features the following cast of characters...

AXL ROSE: Tyrant. Singer. Famed for his red hair, bandanas, multiple costume changes and mood swings. Has sacked everybody in GN'R at least once.

SLASH: Long-suffering right-hand man of the above. Guitarist. Curly of hair, bare of chest, loud of riff.

DUFF McKAGAN: Punk rock bassist. Hair colouring sponsored by Domestos. Currently playing with Neurotic Outsiders.

MATT SORUM: Stout percussionist. Previously played with The Cult, so used to loony vocalists. Also in Neurotic Outsiders.

IZZY STRADLIN: Original guitarist. Left during 'Use Your Illusion' tour. Formed Ju Ju Hounds. Record flopped. Once arrested for pissing in the aisle of a plane.

GILBY CLARKE: Stradlin's replacement. Did interview with Kerrang! in which he suggested Rose was a dictator. Sacked.

PAUL HUGE: Clarke's replacement. Friend of Rose. Enemy of Slash. Long-term future uncertain.

DIZZY REED: Played keyboards on 'Use Your Illusion' tour. No one seems to know if he's still in the band. Nor, in fact, do they care.

It turns out that the date of this is September 14, 1996, so it's the first part of this interview:

https://www.a-4-d.com/t1606-1996-09-21-kerrang-we-ain-t-dead-yet-slash

I suppose the guitarist Slash wanted in GN'R must have been Ryan Roxie?

Soulmonster wrote:I suppose the guitarist Slash wanted in GN'R must have been Ryan Roxie?

Yes, that's what I've figured, as well.

Blackstar wrote:

Soulmonster wrote:I suppose the guitarist Slash wanted in GN'R must have been Ryan Roxie?

Yes, that's what I've figured, as well.

I am quite confident about it since Slash would go ahead and recruit him for the second Snakepit album. It also fits with them meeting when Roxie played with Alice Cooper.

Soulmonster wrote:

Blackstar wrote:

Soulmonster wrote:I suppose the guitarist Slash wanted in GN'R must have been Ryan Roxie?

Yes, that's what I've figured, as well.

I am quite confident about it since Slash would go ahead and recruit him for the second Snakepit album. It also fits with them meeting when Roxie played with Alice Cooper.

Yes. Roxie was also Gilby's friend and part of his band during the Pawnshop Guitars tour, but it seems Slash didn't know him at that time and met him when he played with Alice Cooper.

Unedited audio (recorded Aug. 11, 1996) of this interview that was published in two parts in this Kerrang issue and the next one:
https://www.a-4-d.com/t1606-1996-09-21-kerrang-we-ain-t-dead-yet-slash

(There is a second part of the audio but it's for subscribers only)