The 2002 Guns N’ Roses performance Slash still can’t bring himself to watch: “I refuse to see it”
When Guns N’ Roses originally started making music, they did so with venom in their blood, fully intending on ripping the lukewarm rock scene in Los Angeles to shreds.
Hair metal was the new style of music that everyone was listening to, and Guns N’ Roses couldn’t stand it. They felt that it was all style and no substance, as bands were essentially making themselves look good, churning out subpar music, and then waiting for the money to roll in. The scene needed its bite back, and Slash and co had teeth aplenty.
“I fucking hated the whole scene, man […] In Los Angeles, it was just bullshit. And we were coming up in the midst of all that,” said Slash, “Everybody was fucking converting to the industry standard to get a record deal and get girls, this whole thing. Where our band was coming from was the antithesis of all that, and it’s something I’m really proud of.”
Their debut album was a complete success, and that hot-headed nature is something which carried over into records and tours to come. It all sounds pretty good, right? Well, in theory. The issue was that Guns N’ Roses’ hectic approach to music also impacted their personal lives, and that, in turn, led to a great deal of friction within the band.
Friction is putting it lightly, actually. Some of the things that the different band members said about one another are pretty vulgar. Axl Rose called Slash a “cancer” who was “better removed, avoided”, and Slash had allegedly called Duff McKagan, the band’s bassist, “spineless”. Meanwhile, other band members said they turned rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin’s amp down during gigs because they couldn’t stand the way he sounded.
Towards the back end of the ‘90s, the band split, but Axl Rose was keen to continue making music and performing as Guns N’ Roses. As such, while the rest of the band went on to work on other musical ventures, Rose hired a bunch of new members to attempt to keep the name Guns N’ Roses alive, and this new iteration of the band was controversial, to say the least.
One of the most watched performances that the new band did was during the MTV Awards in 2002, when they made a surprise appearance and played a three-song set of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, ‘Madagascar’ and ‘Paradise City’. They didn’t necessarily sound bad; Axl Rose’s screeching vocals were fighting fit, and the whole thing was pretty tight. The controversy came in just how silly the band looked.
At least when they were the original Guns N’ Roses, there was some level of cohesion there. The hair was big, and the denim was unwashed; it was low effort, as the group let the music do the talking over their image. But now, with this new line-up, each member was trying incredibly hard to perfect a look that didn’t align with the rest of the members. Meanwhile, you had the inclusion of Buckethead, the band’s new lead guitarist, who performed wearing a mask and a KFC bucket on his head. It was a tough watch, and, dare I say, style over substance.
No wonder, then, that Slash has never brought himself to watch the show. When he left Guns N’ Roses, despite there being a lot of friction between members, they at least still had the respect of the musical community. With that gig, he worried it had gone, and so he refused to watch at risk of ruining the memory of the band he helped form. Thank the Lord, since the 2002 awards show, the band have managed to make up, and the majority of the original line-up has been restored.
“I didn’t see it […] I refuse to see it. It was one of those things where I got a bunch of phone calls one morning and [people] leaving me messages going, you know, ‘What was that whole thing about on TV’, and I didn’t know what it was,” recalled the guitarist.
He continued, “When it finally ended, it was like a no turning back kind of thing. And so when I heard what it was, it was the MTV Awards, and I heard the reaction from the people that saw it, I didn’t wanna see something, I didn’t wanna leave, you know, that memory of whatever Guns N’ Roses was. When I left, it was still sort of cool.”
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