Bibek Acharya
Virtually all successful rock bands have at least one egotist within their ranks, and while sometimes this is easily managed by someone with a level head, other times it can blow up in the members’ faces and cause significant damage to their reputations and relationships. Despite being one of the most successful rock bands in the world during the 1980s when they were at their peak, Guns N’ Roses certainly had periods where relations were fractured, and arguments and disputes significantly hampered the band members.
Axl Rose, the band’s frontman and sole continuous member, was notoriously tough to work with and never shied away from publicly letting his true feelings about those around him be known. The trouble is, his true feelings about his own brilliance were always going to eclipse his feelings towards other band members, and the size of his ego was often the obstacle that prevented some members from sticking around with the group for the long haul.
After the commercial failure of their fifth album, “The Spaghetti Incident?”, the band were somewhat disillusioned by the lukewarm reception they had received, and while rehearsals and writing sessions for its follow-up did take place, things immediately got off to a rocky start. Rose would complain about the lack of collaboration between members, and the creative and personal differences between members would begin to rear their heads in a dramatic way.
Lead guitarist Slash and then rhythm guitarist Paul Tobias never seemed to see eye-to-eye, which led to the former choosing to part ways with the group, and bassist Duff McKagan would join him in his departure soon after citing similar differences. This didn’t get in the way of Rose choosing to continue with the band, but the fact that their next album, Chinese Democracy, was stuck in the development process for well over a decade caused even greater frustration within the ranks.
It coming as another failure 15 years after the release of their last dud didn’t do Rose and his ever-rotating cast of bandmates any favours, and the myth surrounding Chinese Democracy and its prolonged rollout has always gone down as a dark period in the band’s history. The disappointment caused Rose to publicly lash out at some of his former bandmates, something that he’d been doing for some time since their acrimonious split the decade before.
In an interview following the release of their underwhelming sixth record, Rose would take things out on Slash in perhaps the harshest way that he had ever levelled insults at his former colleague. “Personally, I consider him a cancer and better removed, avoided,” Rose claimed, “And the less anyone heard of him or his supporters, the better.”
While this might suggest that the two were far from being on speaking terms or ever likely to get the original band back together, the two clearly buried the hatchet seven years on, with him and McKagan both rejoining the group in 2016 for all subsequent tours. They may not have entered the studio to work on new material again, but Rose has clearly opened his eyes to the importance of having two of his most reliable companions by his side once again – until it all blows up again, that is.
