She played the best bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones ect.

At least I think it's new. I don't know the story, but some of it at least involves GNR, which why it's in this section.

GN'R Guitarist Explains Strange Reason Why Band Is Playing Pink Floyd Classic Live, Recalls State of Group After Buckethead Left

Richard Fortus also looks back on his 2011 Thin Lizzy stint.

During a conversation with Premier Guitar, Guns N' Roses guitarist Richard Fortus talked about joining the band back in 2002, the ongoing semi-reunion of the classic lineup, his Thin Lizzy stint, and more.

When asked, "Can you tell us about getting into Guns N' Roses?", Fortus replied (transcribed by UG):

    "We spoke back and forth, they sent me songs to learn and then a few days before - I hadn't been hearing back from them for like a week, and so I'm calling, and I wasn't getting any callbacks.

    "So I thought, 'OK, well, I guess that's not happening.' And then I get out, I still go out there to do this album that I was scheduled to do. And on the session was [bassist] Tommy Stinson and [drummer] Josh Freese, who were both in GN'R at that time.

    "So I was like, 'This is crazy, I was supposed to come out and audition for you guys,' and it was the first time I'd met either of them, and they were like, 'Oh, you're the guy from New York. Axl found this guy Buckethead and called off all the rest of the auditions.'

    "And I was like, 'OK, cool.' Tommy and I went out that night and became best friends, and we've been super close ever since then. So that was my first experience.

    "A couple of years later - maybe a year and a half later - they were looking for somebody again because there was a guitar player that played a couple of shows with them that was named Paul [Tobias, member of the band from 1994 to 2002], that was Axl's childhood friend that had come in, and he left.

    "So they were looking for somebody to fill that role; they called me again, and I was actually in the middle of a tour in Europe. I had two days off, so I flew into LA and did the audition, got back on a plane and went back, finished the tour - but yeah, that was my entrance."

I believe you're the only person who survived both the Axl-only version of GN'R with Buckethead and Brain [Mantia, drums] and Tommy, but then also played in the proper GN'R where you're the only new guy among the all-original band. Can you compare the experience?

    "No, you can't. [Laughs] I mean, literally, you can't; it's two completely different things - completely different things. Just the overall vibe, everything about it is different.

    "The experience of playing, of being on stage and that chemistry - there really wasn't much of a chemistry. There was for a brief moment with Robin [Finck], after Bucket left [in 2004] for a minute there.

    "It was just Robin and myself, and we were doing rehearsals and Brain, and it was phenomenal, I mean, absolutely amazing. And literally, I think it was two days before we were supposed to do our first show, the energy was palpable.

    "Everybody that was in the room was like you knew something was happening, it was electric, it was really outstanding, and I'd never had that feeling before of, 'Oh my god, this is incredible.'

    "Axl came down, he was like, 'This is the band I've always wanted.' The next day Bumblefoot comes in [in 2006], and I guess, they found this guy and he came in, and the whole dynamic just completely shifted.

    "But the vibe in the band now is even beyond what that ever was, it's really incredible. Slash is just such an incredibly natural musician, and there's a reason why he is the legend he is."

What was your favorite Guns song to play live?

    "You know, generally it's the newest one. [Laughs] Newest to the setlist, to us. Slash and I did this duet for a long time while they would get the piano in place to do 'November Rain.'

    "The two of us would do it, and this happened at soundcheck of the first show, and Axl had a broken leg, so it's the first arena show - we played a club show where he broke his foot and was in a cast and in a chair.

    "And we were at soundcheck trying to figure how the hell we were gonna do this, 'How are we going to pull this off with our frontman in a chair? How we were going to pull this off?'

    "And the question of, 'OK, how do we get the piano up?' And this is gonna take time, to wheel him out to the piano, and at that point, he's like, 'You guys got to do something while we get this all in place.'

    "Slash looks at me; he's like, 'What do you want to play?' And I'm like, 'I have no idea.' He's like, 'What about [Pink Floyd's] 'Wish You Were Here'?', and I'm like, 'Sure, let's try it.'

    "So the two of us, at soundcheck, he started playing it, and I played the vocal melody - it's got to be there - and then we just went back and forth over the progression, trading solos, and the band comes in, and we did this just off the cuff at soundcheck.

    "And the crew, which is the most hardened bunch of pirates you'd ever come across, they are incredibly unimpressed by anything, stopped and applauded. It was just magical. And so we did that for two or three years in the show, and that was my favorite thing because it was different every night.

    "There's a few things like that, like 'Heaven's Door' is different every night, there's this big open section, we don't know what's gonna happen. And one thing - and this is a real testament to the legend that is Slash: he never plays the same thing twice in situations like that.

    "As a guitar player, you sort of fall into your ruts, you get into your lead, your licks that you feel comfortable in that song... He doesn't, and I love that. So that's why I buy that competitive thing - we push each other, we don't want to fall back and rest on our laurels.

    "I'll say this: he comes out every night and does a guitar solo. Axl introduces him, and he just plays by himself - walks to the front of the stage and just plays. I've never heard him repeat himself.

    "I'll be honest: sometimes, the hair on my arms is standing up, and it's hard not to because sometimes we'll come in with a progression behind him and he'll sort of lead it, and there's times when it's very hard for me to focus on what I'm doing because I'm listening to him.

    "And it's just awe-inspiring. Some nights are not magical; some nights you're just like, 'Ooh!' [Laughs] But overall, his musicality, I think that's the sign of real genius.

    "You listen to Jeff Beck, and one night he is the greatest player ever, and then the next night it's not so great, and Hendrix, like, every show was so different. They released a box set of four different concerts with Hendrix over the course of four years, and each set was a lot of the same songs, but completely different versions.

    "He played completely different - that's genius. You listen to bootlegs of Hendrix on the same tour and within different nights he just completely play different things - he approached the song completely differently, I love that."

I think Slash is a very underrated improviser, that kind of output you only really see when you're seeing him night after night and seeing him constantly creating.

    "You know what? He can't improvise the solo to 'Sweet Child,' right? Because when we play South America, every person of 80,000 people is singing the guitar solo. You know, you can't improvise that. There are sections when he does, but hat's not the time to experiment."

Elsewhere in the conversation, Richard talked about his 2011 stint in Thin Lizzy, saying:

    "The hardest, biggest honor for me was when I was asked to join Thin Lizzy because that was a band that I grew up listening to and was very important to me and really helped develop my ideals of what the perfect rock guitar tone was.

    "I was very indebted to them, and it was a great thrill to be able to play guitar harmonies with Scott Gorham. That was a huge thing for me, and in that instance, I really wanted to because it's so intricate, the parts and how they play.

    "I really spent a lot of time copying Brian [Robertson]'s vibrato, as well as Gary Moore, and really sort of honing that in because they really would match their vibrato, which I thought was really cool, and I wanted to nail that.

    "And then I showed up to a rehearsal in Ireland with those guys, and Scott had a Les Paul with a Floyd Rose on it, and he was doing his vibrato with the bar, and I was like, 'Dude, you're messing up the whole thing here.' [Laughs]

    "It was difficult to adapt on the fly to that, but what a blast was to do that tour."

Source: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/ge … _left.html

GN'R Drummer Explains Why He Told Buckethead He Should Refuse to Join the Band, Talks Why He Left to Join A Perfect Circle

Josh Freese also talks about wriing the song "Chinese Democracy."

    "I worked there for two years. In October '97, I auditioned for Guns N' Roses, kind of halfway against my will, but I did it, and I got the job, and I worked for them for two years in the studio: '98, '99."

Freese added that he had "kind of" "gotten Buckethead the job," saying:

    "Robin Finck, the guitarist for Nine Inch Nails, was playing in Guns N' Roses at the time [from 1997 to 1999, and then again from 2000 to 2008], and we were in this new configuration of Guns N' Roses.

    "And towards the end of the two years that I was there, Robin ended up leaving and rejoining Nine Inch Nails, and we needed a guitar player. We auditioned a bunch of guys, and Axl was like, 'Do you know this guy Buckethead?'

    "I was like, 'Yeah, I know Buckethead.' And he came down, and that's a whole long story, but I will just tell you - let's say you moved out from Iowa to LA with your buddy. Let's say you lived in LA and your buddy from Iowa was gonna move to LA and right when you moved to LA, you end up being somewhere else.

    "I told Buckethead, 'Listen, man, I want to let you know that I don't think I'm going to be here too much longer, my two-year contract is up soon. I don't see these guys leaving the studio anytime too soon, as much as I like everyone down here. And I'm totally cool with Axl.'

    "I was, on the weekends, moonlighting and starting A Perfect Circle with Billy [Howerdel, guitar] and Maynard James Keenan [vocals], and I was like, this seemed like a tangible thing - these guys wanted to go out. 'Let's play gigs tonight, let's go to a club and play a set.'

    "Whereas there was so many other moving parts in the Guns N' Roses thing, so much second-guessing that it seemed like, 'This isn't going to leave this room anytime soon.'

    "I told Buckethead, 'Listen, I don't want you to take this job. Me being your friend out here, as soon as you sign a contract, a month later, I'll go, 'See you guys.' I might not be here in a couple of months. I don't want you to think that I'm abandoning you, I'm giving you this information upfront.'

    "And so of course after I left, Buckethead and Bryan being super-tight, and they're like, 'Who should we get on drums?' They already auditioned so many people in LA two-three years prior when I auditioned, they've already gone through all these drummers - who else are they going to call?

    "So Bryan comes in, and they end up having him, I think Axl wanted him to feel a part of the band, a part of this project, so he had to re-record the drums.

    "So it's him on the record, but he ended up doing every last open hi-hat and every last ghost note on the snare drum, where like, 'Oh my god, he's playing exactly what I just recorded,' which is totally fine, and I don't mind at all, doesn't matter to me.

    "I also understand that world where they were coming from with it.

    "One thing that I really took away from it, that I like - and I always think it's kind of funny when people are discussing 'Chinese Democracy' - this record that supposedly cost so much money, it took so much time: I wrote the title track, I wrote the song 'Chinese Democracy' and actually wrote the lyrics.

    "And so, the one thing I take away from it is like, it's always funny, I walk into a room full of people and I'll go, 'What are you guys talking about?' They'll be like, 'We're talking about 'Chinese Democracy.' I go, 'I wrote 'Chinese Democracy.'

    "I know some people in the room and other people are like, 'What the hell is this guy talking about?' 'Not the album, but the title track.' I normally rattle off to everyone I hang out with, but I'm not embarrassed by it.

    "I think it's - actually, I like the song, it's just three chords, there's nothing special about it other than that it's just a cool groove and it's kind of dirty and rocking. It's simple, which I like."

Shortly after GN'R, you're starting up A Perfect Circle with Maynard. Take me through a brief little period of A Perfect Circle up to the latest release, which was by the way fucking incredible.

    "I met Maynard in '97 - summer '97. I was playing with Devo [the band, also the name of Maynard's son] on Lollapalooza, back when it was a touring entity. Anyways, Devo was on the tour, Tool was on the tour, and I became buddies with the Tool guys.

    "Everyone else on the tour said that they were kind of like grumpy and didn't really hang out. We were only on the tour for two weeks, but they were all fans. So when Devo popped up on the main stage for two weeks, they were on the side of the stage, every night.

    "And the same guys that were kind of not giving the other bands the time of the day - we'd finish the show and they'd be like, 'Dude, can I get part of your yellow suit?' Adam's [Jones, guitar] got taste. They're all super-cool, and I love those guys.

    "Then what happened was, literally four or five months later, I go audition for Guns N' Roses, I get the job with Guns N' Roses, and I'm now in this recording studio five nights a week with Guns N' Roses.

    "There's guitar techs, there's drum techs, there's engineers, Pro Tools, all those extra people and employees working on it. So the guy running the Pro Tools rig was this guy Billy [Howerdel]. I didn't know him, and he knew the Pro Tools inside and out.

    "This was 23 years ago back, not everybody knew it, so Billy shat the shit wired, and he said to me one day, 'Hey, you know my roommate.' I go, 'Yeah? Who's your roommate?'

    "He goes, 'You know, Maynard from Tool. He lives out in Arizona, he rents a room from me and we're buddies. And I've got a house in North Hollywood, so he's in LA, we share a house together in North Hollywood, but he's only here part-time.'

    "And I'm like, 'Oh, that's cool. Well, tell him hi.'

    "A couple of weeks later in the studio, I'm with this guy Billy every night, and we're kind of becoming friends. We're in the studio one night, I'm walking through the kitchenette area at the studio, Billy's on the phone, 'Hey Josh, here.' 'Who is this?' 'Maynard.'

    "I go, 'Hey, what's happening, man?' He goes, 'That guy you're hanging out with right now, Billy, he's way too modest and cool. He writes awesome fucking songs, and I want to start a band with him, and you should be the drummer.'

    "I was like, 'OK, well, I'd like to hear it.' And so Billy played me some stuff; it was cool, it was different, and he was really passionate about it. He was kind of going through one of those things where he was tired of the Tool guys taking too long - I can't judge any of that stuff.

    "So anyway, 'I want to make a record with Billy, you got to be the guy.' And so we all started hanging out, and it was kind of this thing I did on the weekends; working Guns N' Roses through the week, and then Saturday or Sunday we'd go rehearse.

    "And there's some demos... And then we're going to play a gig, a couple of club things here and there. And also in the beginning - because I was still tied down to the Guns N' Roses situation, I had a contract with them, they did a few gigs with Tim Alexander from Primus.

    "He's an original and a unique, awesome musician, and he's playing with them as well. He and Maynard were friends year before Primus and Tool played shows, I think he was living out of the States too.

    "I started gelling a little bit more with Billy and with Maynard, and that kind of blossomed into that project, which is A Perfect Circle. And that first Perfect Circle record [2000's 'Mer de Noms'] - a lot of that stuff on it, I think it's a great record, and I feel proud of it.

    "I always feel OK patting myself on the back for certain projects because there's tons of projects I played on that I don't like.

    "I know other people that, musicians that would be like - whatever they've done is better than the last thing they did all the time, it's always incredible. At least for me, that's not the case.

    "There's plenty of crap that happens and isn't as good as the last thing, and then when things do pop up that are special. I used to not feel OK saying, 'Oh man, I love that record,' or, 'I think that song I wrote is great. I think those drums I did are really great.'

    "I used to feel funny saying that, and if you do it about everything then people stop taking you seriously, and you just sound like an egomaniac, but yeah...

    "What I like about it is that a lot of it was: we would be somewhere on the weekends, I remember we had a friend at a studio in the Hollywood Hills, and he kind of did us a favor, 'Oh yeah, you guys use my studio, but only until 4 PM because I got someone that's coming in.'

    "So we do these drums, and we'd have 15 minutes left, and Billy would say, 'OK, I got this other track. I just want you to play anything so I can go home and write to it instead of the dumb drum loop that I have on there, just crap something out real quick and I'll fix it, I'll do this and that...'

    "So I do these drums knowing that we're gonna re-do it when we get signed and when we go to make the 'real' record, but some of these things were so spontaneous and off the cuff, fresh, like, I only heard the song once and then played it only once or twice.

    "It wasn't like that for every song, there's a couple of songs on the record where like - you listen to it and go, 'Good, there's a really strange drum fill on the first verse...' Normally, you're not supposed to do that;

    "There's some shit that is kind of like, technically wrong about it, you know, thematically, arrangement-wise, but in the end, we kept it, and we had this great mixer that mixed the album, Alan Moulder.

    "So some of the stuff, we cut some stuff when we got the deal with Virgin, but there's plenty of other songs they just said, 'You know what? These drums are great.' I'm like, 'Dude, that's that song that I've never heard before. You had me play twice, I spent eight minutes on it.'

    "And they're like, 'We love it, we're not gonna change it.' And then I listen to it, 'This is kind of fucking cool...' And there's something about it in the way that it is pretty off the cuff, and it is spontaneous and a little reckless, and definitely not too safe, but there are certain things that were just kind of a little abstract to me.

    "I was taking a shot in the dark on it, and you didn't have time to kind of second-guess yourself or get too precious about your shit. I think that I'm sure you can relate too.

    "It's like depending on the project you're doing or the record you're making, sometimes it's difficult to be able to commit to something or have everyone else in the room all agree with you or commit at the same time to something that might be a little bit too like, 'Dude, you got to punch that, you can't have that, there's a wrong note, you can't leave it.'

    "Or the drums are rushed way too fast, you have to fix that... The other stuff that's perfectly locked and perfectly in time at all times becomes kind of a little bland, and it's the knees and the elbows that get thrown in there, you go, 'Holy shit.'

    "Just like any genre too, it depends on the band. You can listen to this punk band over here might really suck, this band over here is weird, the drummer's really good, you know?

    "Punk rock's always kind of had that stamp on it, and that kind of misconception with other 'real' musicians or guys that are a little more formally-trained that just because it's aggressive or loud or crazy-sounding that it can't be good, and that's not true."

PLEASE NOTE: This is a transcription from Ultimate Guitar and not that great. Josh says Axl wrote the lyrics for example.

Source: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/ge … ircle.html