The Guns N’ Roses incident that Slash never forgave Axl Rose for
Every partnership between a frontman and lead guitarist is notoriously volatile, whether it’s Mick Jagger and Keith Richards or bands emerging in grassroots scenes. Guns N’ Roses, often likened to The Rolling Stones for injecting gritty swagger into the polished rock of the 1980s, perfectly embody this dynamic. Their vocalist, Axl Rose, and lead guitarist, Slash, have long shared a relationship as tumultuous as it is iconic.
The relationship between Axl Rose and Slash has been marked by countless flashpoints, with a multitude of factors fueling their friction. However, tensions escalated significantly in the late 1980s, following the release of their 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction. Like many bands of the era that suddenly found themselves thrust into global fame, Guns N’ Roses embraced a lifestyle of extreme excess. Their newfound wealth and the privileges of A-list celebrity status only amplified their hellraising to unprecedented levels.
Despite the group delving headfirst into excess, the success of their debut required a quick follow-up. They released their second, self-titled EP in 1988, and not long after, released their sophomore album, G N’ R Lies. Despite only being 33 minutes long, the record was a tremendous success, just like its predecessor, with the only single being the acoustic ballad, ‘Patience’. During this period, the band was on top of the world, and both albums were sitting in the top five of the charts.
They might have been critically and commercially flying, but all was not well within the group. The song ‘One in a Million’ had attracted a heavy amount of controversy for Rose’s racist lyrics, and rightly so. Despite his friend and bandmate Slash having a Black mother, the lyrics contained a string of shocking moments. They include the lines, “Police and [N-words], that’s right / get out of my way / don’t need to buy none of your / gold chains today” and “Immigrants and faggots / they make no sense to me / they come to our country and think they’ll do as they please / like start some mini Iran / or spread some fucking disease”. Unsurprisingly, this was the start of Rose becoming one of the most hated men in rock.
While Rose denied that the material was racist, providing strange reasoning for using the ‘N-word’, and cited NWA and John Lennon’s use of it, he did later concede that he used the word to insult the Black people who once tried to rob him. Strangely, he also claimed that his gross homophobia had to do with his “pro-heterosexual” stance and “bad experiences” with gay men.
Regardless of Rose’s insubstantial explanations, the song made Slash feel deeply uncomfortable, with his singer’s flagrant use of the ‘N-word’ around him deepening this sentiment. With this instance, drugs, Rose assaulting security guards in Atlanta, and the tragedy of two fans being crushed to death at the Monsters of Rock festival compounding the ill feeling, the wheels started to fly off. In February 1989, the group decided to take a break from touring and recording, and during this down period, each man’s condition began to slide.
They were later offered to open for The Rolling Stones, a group among their ultimate idols, at four shows at the Los Angeles Coliseum in October. However, this dream would enter uncomfortable territory on the opening night. While on stage, Rose proclaimed that the shows would be the band’s final outings unless a certain member didn’t stop “dancing with Mr Brownstone”, a reference to their song of the same name. While most of them were using, it was very clearly directed at Slash, whose addiction was really bad at the time.
In the 2004 VH1 Behind the Music documentary, Slash revealed this was something he never forgave Rose for. He said: “I know it was directed at me because I was all strung out at the time. That was one of the things that probably made me hate Axl more than anything, something I probably never ever forgave him for, without really even thinking about it.”
Rose would later say that he was serious about his position, as he didn’t want to watch his bandmates die, and claimed that Slash’s mother and brothers even shook his hand after the announcement. However, ‘One in a Million’ and other moments over the ensuing years contributed to a growing resentment, and Slash acrimoniously left the band in 1996. He didn’t rejoin until 2016.
