Slash's Version Of The Bands Break-Up

NY Giants82

This doesnt rule out anything regarding a reunion. I have heard worse before and then those bands would reunite. Look at Van Halen, look at KISS. They will reunite in the next few years. You can bank on it.

A Private Eye

russtcb wrote:

buzzsaw wrote:
With the extra musicians, according to the book Axl put Slash in charge of finding them and hiring them. There was no indication that he was responsible for wanting them. Every comment he made indicated he loved the huge stage, but wanted a stripped down version of the show from an extra musician standpoint.
I'm reasonably sure he said he wanted them on the Behind The Music. I'd have to watch it again to be sure.

I don't think he does, I agree that I think Slash has said before he wanted them but I think that was still when he was in GNR possibly 94 or 95. On BTM I think, although I'm not certain as this is from memory that Slash says something along the lines of 'we had all these things going on on stage that we as a band didn't necessarily want but Axl so wanted, so we went along with it'. It's at a similar time to the 'Dude what's with the piano?' comment from Matt

sic.

Finally checking out the book.

Sadly, there's not too much new information as to the last years of the old band ('94-96), and Slash's timelines are pretty jumbled (not to make this another 'Errors in Slash's book', but don't take his account chronologically). From what I gathered (from the book and elsewhere), there were some sessions with Paul Huge in '94, after Slash'd turned in his guitar demos for It's Five O'Clock Somewhere. After these sessions, there was downtime and Sympathy for the Devil was recorded - and we all know how that came out. Things were getting bad. In early '95, Doug Goldstein, Axl yes-man bar none, was also managing Zakk Wylde, and was no doubt instrumental in getting Axl into introducing Zakk into the fold as a 'replacement' for Paul. Zakk jammed with the band for a week (Axl included), they came up with three good ideas, one of which would surface on the Black Label Society track Rose Petalled Garden. Zakk blew his chances to tour with Ozzy for a few years as Dougie was apparently trying to rip the old coot Osbourne off by putting Zakk, his client, into a situation which would take a good amount of time to go nowhere - Guns N' Roses, to be exact. In order to get Zakk back, Ozzy would've had to shell out a better offer.

Slash went on tour with Snakepit with backing from Geffen, meanwhile Duff would collaborate with Izzy on a dozen or so demos, written in order to jolt Axl into making the album, to provide him with some guidelines. Axl spent the intervening time of early '95 in litigation with Erin Everly (a direct continuation to his legal disputes with Stephanie Seymour); they sat in a court session together on 04/20/95, the day after Timothy McVeigh had blown his truck in the city of Oklahoma. That's when Axl was hit with a song idea.

08/31/95. By now, Slash'd played his last show with the Snakepit (08/25/95), as Geffen had advised that Axl wants to do a record and Slash's honeymoon with his solo act should thus be considered over. Axl immediately presented him a with welcome home -present, the letter, which unceremoniously declared his intention to disband the GNR musical partnership by 12/30/95, maintain exclusive rights to the band name and form a new group from 12/31/95 onwards. Slash, Duff, Matt and Dizzy were all invited, although in a different capacity than before. Now all the others were essentially session musicians, with Axl having the upper hand on deciding who stays and who goes. This is why Paul Huge was brought back; Axl now had the legal muscle to force him to the others.

On 12/31/95, Axl had became synonymous to GNR.

In '96, Paul Huge and Dizzy Reed likely started working on a studio space on Axl's tab, recording loops and samples, which would be stored and uploaded to Axl's Pro Tools deck. The foundation of a new album, which the grand old punk John Lydon once called "folky nonsense", as he heard the skimmed-down lineup hard at work while he himself was rehearsing for the Sex Pistols reunion tour. Duff and Matt had started hanging out with Steve Jones, another Sex Pistol, and John Taylor from Duran Duran, and were recording an album with them. They'd already toured for the first two months of the year and weren't seemingly compromising their other projects.

The Sex Pistols went on tour in the summer, and since Steve Jones was a good sport, Neurotic Outsiders dates were strategically placed in the vacant between various legs of the tour. The closest call came in the summer. Three dates into Filthy Lucre, Sex Pistols had just played their first London show in decades on 06/23. Neurotic Outsiders played a stand-alone date, also in London, on 06/25 - with the Lucre tour marching on to Stockholm the next day. Jones does seem to have a strong connection to his native city.

On April 18th, Slash played at the Budokan in Tokyo with Nile Rodgers and his reformed band, Chic. The show also featured another Duran Duran member Simon Le Bon; it would end tragically with the death of Rodgers' collaborator, Bernard Edwards. Following the tour, Slash continued to work with Rodgers and recorded the soundtrack of Curdled in Madrid, as the film itself premiered before he'd officially left the Guns.

By the fall of '96, Axl announced he was ready to work again, which resulted in all absent players in the Guns camp to be called back into the fold by order of the almighty Geffen. The Neurotic Outsiders had firm time-locks in their touring itinerary; Filthy Lucre would go on consistently from early October to early December, which would make Matt and Duff very much available in any case. But the Sex Pistols were having a break during September, which was when the dutiful Steve Jones wanted to tour with his other band.

In August/September, Axl, Slash, Duff, Paul Huge, Matt and Dizzy convened for three weeks worth of jams - or rather, appeared sporadically, if one takes Slash's version into account. Slash, Duff and Matt were all excited about the material, they had around seven songs in the ready, mostly Axl's material, which he'd no doubt built during the band's downtime during the past months. Sometimes Axl was on guitar, other times it was Paul. The material was hard-rock; short, angry songs, which does seem to reflect the atmosphere of the studio at the time. A tour was talked about to begin in January '97, with a record following suit in the coming months.

Once everything was superficially going well, everybody made the blunder of a lifetime - Axl and Slash were left to their own devices to write the remaining seven songs to round up the next GNR studio album. Slash, Axl and Paul didn't mesh, which is why Slash finally left The Complex feeling completely miserable. Matt and Duff came from their tour in late September, aware of the situation. Slash never came back to work with the band after those initial three weeks, and would confirm this in an online chat two weeks before Axl sent his fax over to MTV.

Since the fax is scarcer then hen's teeth nowadays, I'll copy it here for the time being.

******************************************************************
The fax Axl sent to MTV to tell Slash's out, October 30, 1996.

LIVE!!!! From "Burning Hills", California...

Due to overwhelming enthusiasm, and that "DIVE IN AND FIND THE MONKEY" attitude....

#1. There will NOT be a Guns N' Roses tour.

#2. There will NOT be an official Guns N' Roses web site.

#3. There will NOT be any NEW Guns N' Roses videos.

#4. There will NOT be any new Guns N' Roses involved merhandise.

#5. There will NOT be a Guns N' Roses Fan Club.

#6. There will be a new Guns N' Roses 12 song minimum recording with
three original "B" sides.

NOTE: If all goes well this will be immediately repeated.

#7. However*******Slash will not be involved in any new Guns N' Roses endeavors? as far has not been musically involved with Guns N" Roses since April 1994 with the exception of a BRIEF feel period with Zakk Wylde and a 2 week initial period with Guns N' Roses in the late fall of '95. He (Slash) has been "OFFICIALLY and LEGALLY" outside of the Guns N' Roses Partnership since December 31, 1995.

***************************************************

Nothing here is Subject To Change
Without A PERMANENT SUSPENSION
Of the "Pseudo Studio Musician Work Ethic"

SINCERELY,

W. Axl Rose

Michael "Duff" McKagan
Big FD Ent., Inc.

And that's about the size of it. I wasn't there, but that's the story I picked up.

Mikkamakka

Yeah, I think the same about the story of the break-up, although I wasn't aware of the NO thing that didn't seem to be too important. hmm

sic.

The one thing that's painfully obvious around that era is that Slash had, by then, developed into a full-blown alcoholic; drinking just to get past the days. It's something that should be kept in mind whenever considering his relationship to Axl at the time. Think about it, how many times he must've confronted Axl without reddened eyes or a slightly slurred speech? Axl, who'd become a health zealot at some point, would've no doubt been further aggravated by Slash's condition, considering himself the one who should plan ahead and lay the future game plan for GNR. To him, Slash would've been too much in the moment, too much of a drunken drone to actually accomplish the very goals which, in Axl's mind, would've already been reality.

There's one slight notion in Slash's book that can be interpreted this way. Slash and Axl have a conversation about Paul Huge, and Slash (referring to how he has nothing in common with Paul) says he "can't even have a beer with him". Axl stops dead on his tracks and asks "Why do you have to have a beer with him?"

Slash never got that response, or if he did, he didn't reiterate. Without knowing either of the two, I do maintain Slash's excessive drinking (to which he admits) had become a serious problem with Axl, who was very serious about GNR and the next album and was hoping for everyone else to back him up with whatever cause he'd have in his sleeve. Enter Paul Huge, presumably a tee-totaler, or atleast a more controlled consumer than Slash. If there was any advice Axl would've given Paul regarding Slash, I wouldn't be all that surprised if it had been "don't drink with him".

Axl can be blamed for being megalomanic, but in his own mind, more times than not, he would've thought he was acting out in the best interests of the band. Because Slash was inarguably in a poor state after the years of touring and rocket-like success, that alone would've been the only excuse necessary for Axl to justify himself for taking sole control of the group. If the alternative would've been to crawl into the bottle and shout woe to the world, Axl's decisions might've not been the most efficient (or best-informed) ones, but he certainly had more effort in the big picture.

I admit to being biased in a sense that I've seen similar alcoholism from a bit too close for a bit too long, and have no sympathy for people indulging themselves in such ways. I couldn't care less if some of them would be undisputed guitar heroes by their own right.

monkeychow

"Take a look at what everyone is doing now. Duff and Matt and I are part of a really successful band. Izzy's content doing his thing; Steven too. And Axl is touring with the "new Guns." No one is making phone calls to see when we can get the band together again.'" - Slash

Now I love Slash but i sort of feel like this comment is a bit of spin.

VR is a very successful band true, but it's one with 3 members of the UYI tour line up. Add axl and that band would be called GNR. (no disrespect to izy/gilby). Obviously they have moved on, but still - its not like GNR is all that far away - especially if scott was to go AWOL for good.

Steven's set list is always 95% GNR, and often with an actual GNR cover band on stage with him.

Axl's new guns, even if we ignore the lineup changes, have been unable or unwilling to release an album for over a decade and in the rare times they get out of the paralisis mode and do something, like tour, they play 95% old GNR with slash material and hardly any of the 'new direction' stuff.

The only one who really does seem content and removed from GNR is Izzy, and even he seems to show up now and again on the GNR radar.

I think the real reason is basicly the first half of his comment: " if they knew the real story, they'd already know the answer." What it comes down to is that no one makes the call because of pride and stuborness. Slash won't come back to GNR without an appology from Axl and or a guarentee that what he perceives as the Axl Bullshit (Cancelling Shows, the drama etc) will stop and things will be democratic. Likewise Axl won't call slash without an appology from Slash and or a guarentee that what he percieves as the slash bullshit will stop (Drug use, insensivitity, maybe Not wanting to incorporate synth and other ideas, whatever Axl was pissed at).

So that's what it comes down to to me. Neither of these men will back down, and I suspect neither has any desire to at this stage. And the sad bit for fans of the old GNR is that we have to live our days watching all the members - in seperate bands, still performing the old songs and all screaming loudly in the press about how far they've moved on from the old band, convincing no one but themselves I think.

That said, I have the uttermost respect for Axl and Slash and their music. Its just a shame it had to work out like this, as it's insane to think that ANY of the old band could ever top what they have done before at this stage with a new lineup.

Re: Slash's Version Of The Bands Break-Up

Re: Slash's Version Of The Bands Break-Up

Re: Slash's Version Of The Bands Break-Up

Re: Slash's Version Of The Bands Break-Up

Re: Slash's Version Of The Bands Break-Up

Re: Slash's Version Of The Bands Break-Up

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