SLASH Blames Media For Causing 'Unnecessary Conflict' Between Original GUNS N' ROSES Members

Ex-GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Slash blames the media for causing "unnecessary conflict" between him and his former bandmates, particularly singer Axl Rose, who famously called Slash a "cancer" during a 2009 interview.

Slash, who continues to get asked about his former band despite the fact that he hasn't spoken to Rose since his 1996 departure, tells the Irish Examiner: "I'm not bored with the fascination with [GUNS N' ROSES music]. What I'm bored with is all the brouhaha with stuff the media have no idea what they are talking about.. the causing of unnecessary conflict between the original members. It's just a lot of drama and sensationalism — everyone is trying to capitalize on that. I'm sick of it."

Slash and Axl's former GUNS N' ROSES bandate Duff McKagan seemed to echo those sentiments in an interview from several years ago when he told the Irish Examiner: "You don't talk to the media... the media starts running a little crazy with things. There was a Rolling Stone story about [Axl] a few years ago that painted him as a Howard Hughes sort of figure. And everybody used that as the template to write about Axl. None of it is true.

"You know, he's just a guy caught up in events. He was the singer of that band. And that band got bigger than anybody could have imagined. And being the singer, you are the focal point, rightly or wrongly. You are. There is nothing that can prepare you for that…. If you call it 'reclusive' — that's one person's angle on what it was. Or if you want to say, he saved himself, that's another story."

The sole remaining original member of GUNS N' ROSES, Rose seemed to rule out any possibility of working with Slash again in a 2009 interview with Billboard. "What's clear is that one of the two of us will die before a reunion and however sad, ugly or unfortunate anyone views it, it is how it is," he said.

Slash told The Pulse Of Radio a while back how his relationship with Rose disintegrated during the final years of the original GUNS lineup. "His sort of m.o., as far as the band was concerned, over time got so exaggerated in the rock star sense or whatever and he became such a dictator and this and that and the other, that it was impossible for me to work with him, because I'm not the kind of person that takes orders, you know," he said.