The story behind why Slash left Guns N’ Roses: “It was a really hard time for us”
If the world had gone differently, we may have talked about Guns N’ Roses the same way that the Woodstock generation talks about The Rolling Stones.
Their brand of hard-edged rock and roll was a breath of fresh air the minute that the hair-sprayed pretty boys on MTV started to become oversaturated, and looking at Appetite for Destruction, they already had a perfect record under their belt the first time around. But a band with that much talent was only matched by their excessive tendencies, and it only took a few years before Slash grew tired of that lifestyle.
Granted, it’s not like Slash ever ran away from his dream of being a rock star. He always felt right at home at the side of the stage playing the most insane guitar solos anyone had ever heard, but for someone who is known as a rock and roll icon, he’s also a man of few words. He wanted to play music and ask questions later, but as soon as the band started getting some money, the street vibe of their sound started slipping away.
GNR Lies had its fair share of great moments despite ‘One in A Million’ bringing everything to a halt, but Use Your Illusion was when everything started collapsing on itself. The double record is beautiful for what it is, but as soon as they hit the road, Slash began to realise that his dream of being a musician looked a lot different.
If you think about Slash’s heroes, he wasn’t looking up to people like Elton John in the same way that Rose was. He wanted Guns to always be a badass rock and roll band in the same way that he looked at acts like Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, so when he was now being forced to shoehorn in guitar parts amid softer material, it’s not like he was thrilled about it.
And while Axl Rose was the perfect frontman for them in the early days, the road started to get a little out of hand as well. Izzy Stradlin quit midway through the tour because he couldn’t take it anymore, but judging by Rose’s habit of not showing up and throwing lavish parties after shows didn’t exactly endear himself to the rest of the band. While anyone can get over an overbloated tour, things started to unravel when Rose made the rest of the band sign an agreement saying that he owned the name Guns N’ Roses should the band ever break up, which may as well have been making them sign a musical pre-nup.
And as much as Slash tried his best to put the pieces back together, it was clear listening to “The Spaghetti Incident” that they were all trying to put a bandage over a gaping wound. Too many members of the original lineup had gone at that point, and while Slash was the one constant throughout all of it, he knew that he was never going to be satisfied trying to make the same extravagant music that Rose was aiming for.
Whereas most people would automatically jump to conclusions and blame Rose for everything, Slash knew it was a case of everything moving way too fast, saying, “It was a really hard time for us trying to navigate this whole thing. It was internal stuff and it was business stuff and it was management stuff and there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen and all these different factors that helped bring things to a head.”
By 1994, Slash knew that there was no point in him continuing on, and so began one of the most vicious feuds in rock history. While there had been petitions to get the group back together for years, Rose wasn’t even entertaining the idea and calling Slash a “cancerous” presence in his life ever since he quit.
It’s not like he was itching to get back together with his old band for a while, saying a few years after he quit, “No matter how much money they stick in our face, there’s no reason for us to get together to do anything unless there’s some mutual understanding and respect, and we’re well past that.”
And even if he was leaving a lot of money on the table, it’s not like he was going to be out on the streets by any means. Slash’s Snakepit was far from the overnight success that Guns were in their prime, but even if he spent most of his time on side projects and guesting on other people’s records for the greater part of a decade, it was worth it to know that he was having fun living outside of the fame bubble.
Velvet Revolver may have brought its own fair share of issues when he eventually formed the supergroup in the 2000s, but thanks to his own solo band, the fame machine has become much easier for Slash since he joined Guns N’ Roses. Any hope for new music is still up in the air, but while there’s no way that their new material will live up to what they did back in the day, it’s better to at least have Slash among the living than watch him bury himself in a band he no longer liked.
