The 10 worst things Guns N’ Roses members have said about each other
Eddie Vedder was never hesitant when speaking his mind about how much he despised the band Mötley Crüe. “’Girls, Girls, Girls’, and Mötley Crüe, I hated it. I hated how it made the fellas look. I hated how it made the women look. It felt so vacuous,” he said. His attitude towards this kind of music was representative of many people at the time, and it’s why Guns N’ Roses‘ rise to fame was well-received by so many. As Vedder himself said, “Guns N’ Roses came out and, thank God, at least had some teeth.”
Granted, to suggest that Guns N’ Roses don’t have songs with problematic lyrics for all genders is reckless; however, the band wasn’t as formulaic as many of the other hair metal acts who were making music at the time. People were growing bored of the same old tired routine, and while Guns N’ Roses may not have been perfect in hindsight, they had an incredibly enticing sound that took the LA rock scene by storm.
It wasn’t just the sound of the band that people liked, but their attitude as well. They looked cool and didn’t give a fuck what anybody thought about them. It was big hair and bigger egos, which led to some incredibly exciting shows but also led to some hot-headed arguments within the band. The latter would lead to a number of different line-ups, with various members leaving and rejoining before an eventual eruption that saw the musical outfit split altogether.
Throughout these tumultuous periods for the band, the one consistent thing was aggressive comments. Band members would frequently rip on one another, taking shots whenever they saw fit and not worrying about holding their tongue. Here are some of the most spiteful things that members said about each other during their dark periods.
The worst things Guns N’ Roses members said about one another:
“Cancer”
It’s hard to imagine now, given the band has recently headlined Glastonbury and made their reunion tour look incredibly successful, but when they were broken up, the jabs that members and former members would take at one another were truly horrible. After the band’s new line-up wasn’t as successful as the former iteration, Axl Rose released his frustration with insults at the people fans wanted to see back.
One of his worst comments was when he considered his former guitarist, Slash, a “cancer”. “Personally, I consider [Slash] a cancer and better removed, avoided,” said the hot-headed frontman, “And the less anyone heard of him or his supporters, the better.”
“Spineless”
One of the worst things about the comments made by so many of the Guns N’ Roses team was that it was hard to confirm whether or not they were true. The band became a borderline reality TV series as the beef erupted into a cacophony of he-said, she-said.
After Slash visited Rose one morning in 2005, Rose started revealing what he and his former guitarist had been talking about. According to Rose, Slash had called their bassist and longtime collaborator, Duff McKagan, “Spineless”. Rose also said that Slash had confirmed he “hates Matt Sorum,” their drummer. Whether these comments are legitimate or not is unknown.
“I’m done”
Slash once said that Steve Adler was Guns N’ Roses most underrated member. “Steven was always underrated in Guns N’ Roses because of the obvious,” he revealed. “But he provided a type of groove and a type of energy, and the Appetite record particularly, that is half of its fucking charm. A lot of people don’t even recognise that.”
Adler was always outshined by the flamboyancy of Slash and Axl Rose when he was in the band, so it’s no surprise that he grew tired of talking about them even after he had left the band. “That’s it, I’m done with him,” he said when asked about Axl Rose. “I’m never mentioning him or talking about him again.”
Sabotaging Izzy
Axl Rose has never spoken too fondly of the band’s rhythm guitarist, Izzy Stradlin. He said that when the band started their rise to fame, he struggled to keep up, and this led to his sound falling short of the standard that the band had set themselves. Rose admitted that when his sound had started to dip, he would turn his amp down so the audience didn’t need to be subject to it.
“Our roadies would stand behind Izzy’s amps, ’cause Izzy would be so whacked of his mind that he would basically be playing a different song in a different key, and the only way we could do the songs is, every time he would go to his amps, he would turn his amps up and he would turn around, to the crowd,” said Rose. “When he would turn around to the crowd, the roadies would reach around and turn his amps back down so that we could play the song.”
“13 years”
When Guns N’ Roses split up, or when various members left the band, they veered off and started a number of different solo projects. Arguably, some of Slash’s best music came from the period when he had total creative freedom and worked with a range of different vocalists. Sorum picked up on members’ work ethic and Rose’s apparent lack of it when addressing rumours of a reunion in 2007.
“That’s been 13 years I’ve played in that band, and I’ve done five, six albums since I played in that band and ten tours,” he said. “And Axl hasn’t done shit, so I don’t know what to tell you.”
“He’s insane”
While Sorum might have picked up on Rose’s apparent lack of ambition following the Guns N’ Roses split, the lead singer eventually started the band back up with a totally different line-up. It wasn’t the most successful reigniting of the band, and former members thought the move was chaotic.
Adler spoke about Rose and his new lineup but didn’t hold his tongue when doing so. “He’s insane – that’s it. The bottom line – the fucker’s insane. I said it. Ok, fine, fuck me. I said it – he’s insane,” he said. “I try to be fucking so cool about him … I swear to God, he’s a nutball.”
Declining the hall of fame
One of the biggest achievements that any rock musician can have is being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, Rose declined his induction as he didn’t feel like the honour reflected him. He also didn’t want to be associated with the Guns N’ Roses line-up that the institution wanted to honour.
“Neither former members,” he said, “Label representatives nor the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should imply, whether directly, indirectly or by omission, that I am included in any purported induction of Guns N’ Roses.”
“Fickle”
When Rose announced he was reforming Guns N’ Roses with a different line-up, he also announced that he planned on making new music. The album in question was Chinese Democracy, which Rose spent much longer on than anticipated.
When McKagan was asked about the apparently elongated writing process, he spoke about Rose being fickle and difficult to work with. “Well, you know, spontaneity and rock ‘n’ roll go together. And chemistry. It comes back to the old adage: If it takes you more than five minutes to write a song, then just scrap it,” he said. “I don’t know. Axl Rose is a very fickle guy, and he changes his mind all the time. So, who knows?”
“Asshole”
Another example of Steve Adler being fed up with people talking to him about his former bandmates. It became a routine for Adler to simply focus on whatever music he was making and then prepare to bat away whatever inevitable Guns N’ Roses questions were hurled his way in the process.
You can see him growing increasingly tired of the questions in his responses. They range from hot-headed and anger-infused responses to bored, cast-away remarks such as, “I don’t see Axl, though. I don’t see ‘Asshole’.”
“He’s in my ass”
Naturally, once Guns N’ Roses split up, a number of fans were left disappointed. One of the biggest missing pieces from the band was Slash. His cool look, the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth paired with the sunglasses, and amazing guitar skills were enough to impress anyone who was watching. When he left, needless to say, fans were sad.
When Axl Rose performed in Leeds in 2002, one of the fans in the crowd was wearing a T-shirt that read, “Where’s Slash?” If they were looking to get a rise out of Rose, they were successful, as the frontman responded by saying, “He’s in my ass – that’s where Slash is.”
