Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash discussed Izzy Stradlin and Matt Sorum having no role in the Not In This Lifetime tour for the first time in a new Rolling Stone interview. Stradlin accused his former bandmates in 2016 of ‘not wanting to split the loot equally.’ Sorum has said he was not asked to join the reunion.
My sense is that maybe Matt Sorum always knew that he was never going to be involved with this reunion. That it just wasn’t in the cards.
I never really talked to Matt about it. I’ve seen him, but we haven’t talked about it.
What can you say about the Izzy situation on this tour?
Uh, I’m not gonna go anywhere near that. I thought what he had to say about it, from what I saw – I didn’t read the whole thing – but the basic come away, I thought, was well handled.
You’ve tried to get him involved with various things in the past.
I mean, there was a point there, well before Velvet Revolver started where he was interested in doing something with that. But, we were looking to get a front guy, and he didn’t want to deal with the frontman kind of thing. And we were definitely headed into the get-a-front-guy direction. But it wasn’t a big issue, you know. There’s never been any kind of disappointment or anything like that. At least on my end.
Are these the only Guns shows you’ve played sober?
From ’86 to ’94, there was definitely not a day or a show that I was sober. The interesting thing, and I talk to Ax about this too, is there haven’t been any moments onstage that take me back to the past. It’s the same people, for the most part, and a lot of the same songs, and it still seems like a new experience. Which is probably a testament to the frame of mind I was in back then.
