Former GUNS N' ROSES Drummer Defends AXL ROSE

March 28, 2009

Nearly 10 years after leaving GUNS N' ROSES to become a founding member of A PERFECT CIRCLE, drummer Josh Freese tells Spinner.com, "Everyone always baits me to give them a crazy Axl [Rose, GUNS N' ROSES frontman] story. I don't really have any. I spent two years in a studio with him [and] I never saw any mood swings. He was never not cool to me. So, I am always quick to defend the guy, even though I know his reality is different than mine. Then again, everyone has a different reality."

Freese auditioned for Axl's new version of GUNS in 1997, albeit a little reluctantly. "I was pretty busy at the time, so I didn't really need the job necessarily," he says. "Then I decided that I should go down there because I wanted to meet him. At the time, no one had seen him for a couple of years and there were all these rumors. He had become the Howard Hughes of rock 'n' roll and I wanted to see it. I went down and I liked him. He wasn't the monster that was painted of him."