2022.01.05 - Sirius XM's Trunk Nation/Blabbermouth - Interview with DJ Ashba

n a new interview with SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk", DJ Ashba once again spoke about his decision to leave Guns N' Roses more than six years ago. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I'm a huge GN'R fan. The only reason I joined the band is because I grew up on the music, I have a ton of respect for the guys who wrote the music.

"[Singer] Axl [Rose] called me and said, 'Hey, I just wanna give you a heads up, Slash is coming back, but I want you to be a part of this,'" Ashba claimed. "Which was a really cool phone call to get. And at the time, I was going through a lot of different things with Sixx:A.M. too; Sixx:A.M. wanted to really pick up the pace and go nuts.

"For three and a half years, I played — 85 [or] 90 percent of my parts [with Guns N' Roses] were the Slash parts. So I didn't feel I had the brain capacity to relearn — 'cause at this point, it's muscle memory — to relearn a three-and-a-half-hour show differently than I'd been playing for the last six, seven years, it's gonna take some work. Plus I was, like, if Slash is coming back, man, this is his gig. I can happily step out. Because it's kind of the best of both worlds — I can go be in the band I helped create with [Nikki] Sixx and [James] Michael and go back to what I'm really good at doing, and that's Sixx:A.M.

"I've never been great at playing other people's stuff; it's never been my thing," Ashba added. "But if Slash was coming back, that was like the best of both worlds. It's, like, fuck, we get most of the band back, and I can go do what I wanna do too. So it worked out great. I backed out — bowed out, I should say — and I think Richard [Fortus] was the guy for that slot anyway. That was more the Richard role, I think. He fits that way better than I would have."

When DJ was asked if he ever attempted to work on new music with Axl during his time with Guns N' Roses, Ashba said: "Yeah, I attempted. By nature, I'm a songwriter/producer, so, of course, I'm gonna keep writing. And I wrote probably eight to ten songs with Guns in mind, but a lot of 'em were too 'Appetite [For Destruction]' sounding. To me, as a fan, I'm, like, that's what I'd wanna hear. And so I was, like, 'I wanna write something that sounds like it came right off of 'Appetite'.' I think they hit a little too close to home, but there was a couple where he absolutely… He was, like, 'This song is dope.' For whatever reason — we were touring a lot — we never got a chance to get him in the studio or whatever. But they didn't go anywhere further than just me sending him some tracks and him going, 'Ah, this one's dope,' 'This one's cool.' Sebastian [Bach], though, heard one of them — I played [it for him] — and to this day, even when we were together last week, he's, like, 'I want that fucking song. That song is insane.'"

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/dj-ashba-why-i-bowed-out-of-guns-n-roses/

Respect to DJ. He did the right thing. And not surprised nothing happened to the songs he sent Axl. Axl really wasn't ready to work on new songs, whether it was because he still wanted the old material out, or if he was just burnt out of the whole thing. I don't know.