SLASH Blames Media For Causing 'Unnecessary Conflict' Between Original GUNS N' ROSES Members
Published: August 21, 2014
Ex-
GUNS N' ROSES guitarist
Slash blames the media for causing "unnecessary conflict" between him and his former bandmates, particularly singer
Axl Rose, who famously called
Slash a "cancer" during a 2009 interview.
Slash, who continues to get asked about his former band despite the fact that he hasn't spoken to
Rose since his 1996 departure, tells the
Irish Examiner: "I'm not bored with the fascination with [
GUNS N' ROSES music]. What I'm bored with is all the brouhaha with stuff the media have no idea what they are talking about.. the causing of unnecessary conflict between the original members. It's just a lot of drama and sensationalism everyone is trying to capitalize on that. I'm sick of it."
Slash and
Axl's former
GUNS N' ROSES bandate
Duff McKagan seemed to echo those sentiments in an interview from several years ago when he told the
Irish Examiner: "You don't talk to the media... the media starts running a little crazy with things. There was a
Rolling Stone story about [
Axl] a few years ago that painted him as a
Howard Hughes sort of figure. And everybody used that as the template to write about
Axl. None of it is true.
"You know, he's just a guy caught up in events. He was the singer of that band. And that band got bigger than anybody could have imagined. And being the singer, you are the focal point, rightly or wrongly. You are. There is nothing that can prepare you for that. If you call it 'reclusive' that's one person's angle on what it was. Or if you want to say, he saved himself, that's another story."
The sole remaining original member of
GUNS N' ROSES,
Rose seemed to rule out any possibility of working with
Slash again in a 2009 interview with
Billboard. "What's clear is that one of the two of us will die before a reunion and however sad, ugly or unfortunate anyone views it, it is how it is," he said.
Slash told
The Pulse Of Radio a while back how his relationship with
Rose disintegrated during the final years of the original
GUNS lineup. "His sort of m.o., as far as the band was concerned, over time got so exaggerated in the rock star sense or whatever and he became such a dictator and this and that and the other, that it was impossible for me to work with him, because I'm not the kind of person that takes orders, you know," he said.