1996.07.11 - New York Daily News - Axl Rose to the occasion

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Axl Rose to the occasion

For quite some time now, Geffen Records has reported that Guns N’ Roses was, perhaps, going to cut its long-awaited next album sometime in late 1996. But with one guitarist, Gilby Clarke, leaving the group and suing his former bandmates, and another axman, Duff McKagen, too busy with his new band, Neurotic Boy Outsiders, and Slash apparently just too damned lazy, you’ve got to wonder who the as-yet-unnamed guitarist might be.

Well, what if we told you that unnamed guy is the band’s frontman, Axl Rose? How do you like that? It has come to our attention that Axl — now sporting short hair, by the way — has taken matters into his own talented hands and has spent his downtime very wisely, taking up guitar and making himself rather proficient.

Suddenly we don’t care if Slash takes up the tambourine and joins Up With People.

“Axl figures he’s going to play some guitar on the next album,’’ Geffen’s Bryn Bridenthal told us. “Though I don’t think he’s up to lead-guitar quality.”

So there will be another album from the rock gods?

“It’s possible to have a Guns record this year,” Bridenthal said. “But it’s also unlikely.”

Slash's response to the article:

https://www.a-4-d.com/t4295-1996-07-24-new-york-daily-news-slash-and-burn

In the August MTV interview, the interviewer (her name keeps alluding me despite me being a big fan of Headbanger's ball.... and her) implies Slash has had lots of downtime lately to which Slash bristled and started listing all the things he had been doing: https://www.a-4-d.com/t3451-1996-08-dd-mtv-headbangers-ball-interview-with-slash

Obviously, that was a sore spot for him