Following his recent performance alongside the vast majority of his former bandmates, former Guns ‘N Roses guitarist Slash has revealed that he has no intentions of playing in the band ever again.
Speaking with Rolling Stone magazine, the revered axeman said that the performance gave him and his bandmates some much needed closure. “I didn’t have any illusions or delusions of G’NR getting back together for anything. I maybe tried to see it happen for this one particular event, I didn’t have high hopes for that, I didn’t feel confident it was going to happen, but having done this one gig, and for the event itself, when it was all said and done, it really felt like closing the book on the whole thing.”
While Slash had hoped that frontman Axl Rose would perform on the night, he remained realistic on the matter. “My whole thing was that I really, in my heart of hearts, wanted to have the whole original band get together and actually perform, which I sort of knew was wishful thinking. When the whole thing first came up, that’s basically what I wanted to do. It became apparent that that wasn’t going to happen. I was like, ‘Oh fuck,’ and I was sort of disillusioned with the whole thing, but there was that commitment that was sort of made that I was going to go, and I thought Axl was still going to go, and it wasn’t until the last minute that I heard that he wasn’t coming, and that’s when we all decided we were just going to go ahead and play anyway.”
With Axl ruled out, Alterbridge frontman Myles Kennedy stepped up to the plate and delivered a near flawless performance, sparking rumors of a possible reunion of the original G’NR lineup with Kennedy on vocals. However, Slash quickly dusted the idea aside. “It’s way too complicated an idea at this point, but it was fun doing it.”
Slash added that while he had mixed emotions leading up to the event, once it got underway, he began to understand its significance.“It was definitely a special moment for everybody involved, going up there and jamming those songs. I wasn’t totally sure, you’ve probably heard this a million times, the sort of whole concept of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction prior to doing it, it was like there’s so much bad blood that’s gone on over the last 25 years, it was hard to appreciate it. So it was hard to get excited about it, but once we were actually there, it was a really, really cool event, and there was a sense of accomplishment at that point, doing the actual acceptance and going out and playing.”
Click here to read the full interview.
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