Former Stone Roses guitarist Aziz Ibrahim revealed in a new Stagelift Podcast interview that Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash almost joined The Stone Roses in 1996 when John Squire quit the band around the same time Slash himself left GNR. Alternative Nation transcribed the quote.
“I know there had been auditions, Slash had offered to play. There was a lot of bitterness and anger and so forth, maybe they wanted to piss him off, so they thought let’s get the greatest rock icon of all time. Slash was in England, he was in Snakepit, the management knew the Roses and wanted to manage the Roses. Goldstein wanted to manage the Roses, so Slash had offered Manny or Ian, I’m not sure, one of them said. Afterwards they thought, ‘Yeah yeah, we’ll get this big rock icon, that would really annoy John.’ Then [they] said something to the affect of, ‘We’re not going to work with a guy with leather pants, are we?’”
Slash quit Guns N’ Roses in October 1996 and ended up focusing on Slash’s Snakepit for the remainder of the 90’s before forming Velvet Revolver in 2002. Stone Roses split up in October 1996 and reunited in 2011.
