GUNS N' ROSES Bassist TOMMY STINSON Talks New Solo Album, 'Chinese Democracy'

Peter Bothum of Delaware Online recently conducted an interview with former THE REPLACEMENTS and current GUNS N' ROSES/SOUL ASYLUM bassist Tommy Stinson about the musician's new album, "One Man Mutiny", which is due out later this month. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On Internet speculation that his gig with GUNS N' ROSES is standing in the way of his reunion with THE REPLACEMENTS mainman Paul Westerberg:

"You know what, the flames are feeding themselves. I'm just the voice. I mean, there's always stuff that gets talked about that I don't want to elaborate on, 'cuz, you know, it either does or doesn't happen. I just hate to be the one that says it's gonna happen, the thing's gonna happen, and then have it not happen.

"I never signed anything with GUNS 'N' ROSES that prevented me from doing anything with Paul. I don't know where that came from. The only one preventing me from doing that really is Paul."

On donating $50,000 to Timkatec, a Haiti trade school for kids left abandoned and homeless by the 2010 earthquake, by auctioning autographed personal items like basses and plaid suits he wore while with THE REPLACEMENTS and his bands BASH & POP and PERFECT and donating half of the proceeds from "One Man Mutiny" to the same school.

"They still need so much help. I mean, they don't even have a ruling government. They're just struggling. Before the earthquake they were the third-poorest country in the world, so I just want to help out as much as I can, and I have the ability to do that with this record."

On "One Man Mutiny":

"I don't really think I strayed too far from my roots in anything. Not that it's a comfort zone, but I like to rock, I like interesting pop structures and things like that."

On joining GUNS N' ROSES in 1996:

"I never really was thinking that's where I'd want to go necessarily. It was almost sort of like the best thing for me at that time. I really just wanted to play bass for someone for awhile and take the stress of being a lead guy off myself, and also it seemed like about the most punk rock thing I could get involved with at the time. Axl [Rose, GN'R mainman] was really trying to do something that no one had done or made a success out of before. Not that 'Chinese Democracy' was necessarily a huge success, but I think in a lot of ways it was, because it came out and, you know, people bought it."

Read the entire interview from Delaware Online.