2006.05.11 - Contact Music - Stone Roses Turned Down Slash

Stone Roses Turned Down Slash

GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Slash offered to join British band the Stone Roses after their guitarist left, but was knocked back by scathing frontman Ian Brown. After John Squire announced his departure from the Manchester rockers in 1996, the band were stunned to receive an offer from guitar great Slash. However, Brown refused to entertain the idea of employing a rock rival - and has been regretting it ever since. Brown says, "I wish we'd taken him on. But at the time we were like, 'No, we hate Guns N' Roses, f**k off. Is he going to bring his python with him?' "But now I think it would have been amazing." Slash currently plays with rock supergroup Velvet Revolver.

https://www.contactmusic.com/guns-n-roses/news/stone-roses-turned-down-slash_11_05_2006

The original source of this was a feature in Uncut Magazine, June 2006 issue (released in early May):
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The Resurrection of the Stone Roses

By Stephen Dalton

IAN'S STORY

[...]

Late 1994, and Ian Brown stands at the helm of a rock’n’roll Titanic. The Roses have spent five years in limbo, working through legal battles with their former label, sacking their manager, and slowly losing the plot during mammoth recording sessions for their second album. They are now signed to Geffen Records, and negotiating with Guns N’ Roses manager Doug Goldstein. But icebergs loom on the horizon.

John Squire overrides his bandmates and writes most of the songs on Second Coming, which sounds way too much like Led Zeppelin for Brown’s taste – since punk days, Zeppelin are “the enemy”. The album is released to lukewarm reviews. Meanwhile, fatherhood, drugs and internal power struggles rip the Roses apart.

[...]

That last Roses show at Reading ’96. What went wrong?

“I keep reading reports that everyone was leaving in tears because this beautiful thing had been destroyed. But, at the end of that show, there were 60,000 people with their arms in the air. I didn’t see anyone crying, or leaving. But my friend Cressa came running up to me afterwards and said, ‘You have to sack it, that’s not the Roses.’ Cressa had been there from the beginning, so I needed to listen to him. But it was only when I listened to it on cassette the day after that I realised, it wasn’t that I was out of tune, I was in a completely different key to the rest of the band. It sounded terrible.”

It could have been worse. Didn’t Slash from Guns N’ Roses offer to play with you?

“Slash offered to play guitar for us, through Doug Goldstein. I wish we’d taken him on, but at the time we were like, ‘No, we hate Guns N’ Roses, fuck off! Is he going to bring his python with him?’ and all that. But now I think it would have been amazing.”

https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/stone-roses-resurrection-ian-brown-john-squire-mani-reni-speak-74175/

The story would be confirmed a few days later by another member of the Stone Roses, Mani. Hotpress, May 23, 2006:
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Slash was up for the Stone Roses, confirms Mani

It sounds too outlandish to be true, but Mani has confirmed that Slash once came close to joining the Stone Roses.

“Mental, isn’t it?” he cackles. “We’d been close to shaking hands on a deal with G N’ R’s manager Doug Goldstein to look after the Roses as well, so when John (Squire) copped a walk Slash was in the frame for a while.

“How would it have worked out? Who knows? It could’ve been great or it could’ve been shite. Personally, I love to play with anybody who’s going to bring something to the party, and Slash is cool, man.”

As for the hoary old question of a Stone Roses reunion, Mani is adamant that, “It’s never going to happen, mate. Ian Brown’s the big fish in his own pond and doesn’t want to do it. In one way it’d be nice to close the book, and in another why dig up all the old shit? I’ve been ten years in Primal Scream, which is longer than I was in the Stone Roses.”

https://www.hotpress.com/music/slash-was-up-for-the-stone-roses-confirms-mani-2865707

As a huge fan of The Stone Roses and Slash, I think this could have worked out really well. There are similarities in Squire's guitar work and Slash, with great note selection and blues-based riffs, and on Second Coming Squire's lead guitar became really in the front just like Slash likes it. So I think it would have worked out really well, musically.

Soulmonster wrote:As a huge fan of The Stone Roses and Slash, I think this could have worked out really well. There are similarities in Squire's guitar work and Slash, with great note selection and blues-based riffs, and on Second Coming Squire's lead guitar became really in the front just like Slash likes it. So I think it would have worked out really well, musically.

Yes, it really might have worked.

Slash thought so too, by the way, although he denied the story ever happened. The Guardian, May 8, 2010:

Did you offer to replace John Squire in the Stone Roses only for Ian Brown to say no as he was worried he'd get eaten by one of your snakes?

Slash: I'd heard of the Stone Roses, but I'd never met them. I think I was probably too busy in Guns N' Roses at the time. Maybe it might have been a good idea. Someone told me we tried to recruit the lead singer into Velvet Revolver. That's not true either.

And later on his twitter:

Slash was definitely not busy with Guns N' Roses when he allegedly offered to join the Stone Roses. Squire officially quit the Stone Roses on April 1, 1996. He was eventually replaced by Aziz Ibrahim for live gigs in August 1996, and then the band broke up in October 1996.

In 2016, Ibrahim would also say that Slash had been considered as Squire's replacement. StageLeft podcast via NME, August 4, 2016:

Aziz Ibrahim, who served a brief stint as guitarist in The Stone Roses, has claimed that Guns N’ Roses axeman Slash once offered to join the band.

Ibrahim served as replacement live guitarist in the Manchester band after John Squire departed the group in 1996.

The rumour of Slash reaching out to the Stone Roses has long circulated, with Ibrahim now claiming it to be true.

“There had been auditions. Slash had offered to play,” Ibrahim recently said on the StageLeft podcast. “There was a lot of bitterness and anger and so forth, maybe they wanted to piss [Squire] off, so they thought, ‘Let’s get the greatest rock icon of all time.'”

“Slash was in England and his manager wanted to manage the [Stone] Roses,” Ibrahim continued.

“They thought, ‘Yeah yeah, we’ll get this big rock icon, that would really annoy John.’ Then they said something to the affect of, ‘We’re not going to work with a guy with leather pants, are we?’ So Slash wasn’t in”.

https://www.nme.com/news/music/the-stone-roses-2-1197357