AXL ROSE: 'I Don't Have An Excitement' To Work With 'Illusion'-Era GUNS N' ROSES Lineup

Randall Roberts of the Los Angeles Times has posted more excerpts from his recently conducted interview with GUNS N' ROSES lead singer Axl Rose. A few of the highlights from the chat follow below.

On a possible reunion of GUNS N' ROSES' classic lineup:

Axl: "You can get guys from the 'Illusion' thing, but the only thing that would make it would be Duff [McKagan, bass] and Slash [guitar], really. It's nothing against Izzy [Stradlin, guitar] and it's nothing against Steven [Adler, drums], or anything like that. Steven may want it, but these guys I'm working with right now, they work really hard and it's hard work. I've toured with the other guys and I've also seen what they've done since, and I just know the difficulties.

"I don't have an excitement to work with people that joined in the 'Illusion' time. There's behind the scenes that was really, really difficult there with different ones. So it's not really even a full reunion. And these guys have been here a long time, whether the public knows it or not because we haven't done the media like that. Tommy's [Stinson, bass] been on 14 years, Richard's [Fortus, guitar] going on 11. That's as long as Duff was in the band. Chris [Pitman, keyboards] has been in going on 11, Dizzy's [Reed, keyboards] on since 'Illusion', Frank's [Ferrer, drums] going on six, and so's Bumble [Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal, guitar]. These guys have been here. And DJ's [Ashba, guitar] going on three.

"Plus, we can have our differences, and everybody in the band can be like, 'I don't understand that guy' and point at one of us, you know? But at the same time, we get along. I don't have to tell these guys what to do onstage. I can suggest something at times, but that's very little."

On tonight's GUNS N' ROSES concert at the Forum in Los Angeles:

Axl: "Well, L.A. will be interesting. I'm looking forward to it. We had a great time in '06. We did three nights at the Gibson. But this year was very weird because the industry was trying to force us into a smaller show — just one, and then make it two. But the real thing about it is that the sound's not that good at the Palladium — and why are we going down, when we can draw more? So we're doing the Forum, but it really wasn't done right. We had to fight for that. [Rose goes into a long tirade about specific industry executives.]

"This whole tour is part of — it's not like there's a lot of money going to Live Nation or anything, but it's part of how we worked out the settlement [with former manager and Live Nation exec Irving Azoff]. And I could have gone on to court, but that was going to block other things, so Live Nation's not getting paid, we're not getting paid, but we're putting it out of the way, so we did this tour. Then we get on the tour and find out that everything that was supposed to be done wasn't done, and managers and agents are selling a show that was supposed to go on at 8 o'clock. They knew I was never going to do that."

Read more from the Los Angeles Times.