STEVEN ADLER On GUNS N' ROSES Reunion: 'I Personally Would Do It For Nothing'

Steve Newton of Straight.com recently conducted an interview with former GUNS N' ROSES and current ADLER'S APPETITE drummer Steven Adler. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On whether he's totally off drugs now:

Adler: "Well, yeah, yeah. You don't have a future on drugs, and for 20 years I had no future. Now I'm starting to have a future. There's only one person who's had a future on drugs, and that's Keith Richards. And that's Keith Richards, okay. I keep waking up as Steven Adler every morning not Keith Richards, but me. I take medication, but it's prescribed medication. I mean for so many years of abusing myself and my mind, I made myself chemically imbalanced. So now I take prescriptions that don't get me high or anything occasionally I wish they would, I'm still an addict but they don't. They're basically just to put back the things that I smoked and shot outta me. So they're good medication. I'm feeling wonderful. Things have been just fabulous. Hey, if I woulda known I would have been this happy 20 years ago, I would have got off drugs 20 years ago."

On the possibility of a GUNS N' ROSES reunion:

Adler: "I mean, I personally would do it for nothing! I'm not going to, but I would, for nothing. For two reasons: 1) we owe it to the fans. 2) I just want to finish what I started with those guys. I cut myself short. For 20 years I was saying to myself that they cut me short, but once I started workin' with Dr. Drew and took responsibility for my life and my actions, I realized I threw that away. So I just want to finish what I started with them. I want to go to heaven, and I don't want to come back. I don't wanna come back and be a baby, and be a teenager again. Oh my god, no! No, I don't want to be a teenager again. It's too awkward. When you were a teenager, you'd get a boner and you're ashamed to walk around. Nowadays I realize, dude, if I woulda realized what I know now, then, I woulda walked around with my boner straight out, and rubbed it against every girl. But these are things I realize now. So forget it."

On how it's not "special" to be in a rock band any more:

Adler: "It used to be somethin' special to be in a rock band, and to pay your dues and to work hard and rehearse and work for that record deal. That was like the goal, to be the best so you can get a record deal. Nowadays people are just making records in their bedrooms; it's not special any more. And the world needs a new rock and roll band. Like every ten years a hard-rock band comes along. I know that band BUCKCHERRY that came out after GN'R, they tried to be that band, they gave a good effort at trying to be, after ten years, the next rock and roll band. But it looks like God kept me on this earth for a reason, and I'm gonna put that band together."

On how he responds when someone ends an interviewing by teasing him a bit and suggesting that he's led a charmed life after all:

Adler: "Charmed, yeah. Is that what they call pain now? Is 'charmed' a new word for painful? Nah you know what, you know what? I saw this show on the, whaddya call it, the Medical Channel, of these two young girls that were attached at the head. And they were so happy and content. I mean, they would talk, they would say the same thing at the same time and they were just happy and content. And I saw that and I thought about my life and I said: 'I got nothing to kvetch about!' And if you don't know what kvetching means, it means complain! I got nothing to complain about! 'I'm so thankful I'm alive! And pretty healthy! You know, I'm still walkin' and talkin'. Still rockin' and rollin'. So I got that goin' for me."

Read the entire interview from Straight.com.