Former Guns N’ Roses manager Alan Niven criticized Axl Rose when comparing him to the late Muhammad Ali in a new interview with Mitch Lafon (via Ultimate Guitar).
“I’m looking at what Ali stood for and what he was prepared to give up and the spirit of the man, and at the same time I’m really disappointed to see Axl playing in AC/DC and running around under a pair devil horns.”
“There’s an old maxim that I’ve always tried to follow, which is: ‘Never defend the devil.'”
“So why celebrate going in his footsteps? The superficial thing is that while Ali is obviously ascending his stairway to heaven, I think I’m watching Axl really unfortunately on his highway to hell, and that’s really sad to me. I always thought he was on a spiritual quest, but I don’t think it ends up with being on stage with someone like Angus Young.”
Alan added about Axl later during the chat: “There was once upon a time when I though he was going to become a great rock ‘n’ roll statesman. When he wrote ‘Civil War,’ I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled. I thought this was a major step to him joining the pantheon of the greats who inspired me to be involved in this. Your Dylans, your Lennons, your Marleys. And I thoroughly believed that my friend from Lafayette was going to join that pantheon.
“So it disappoints me to see him running around the stage under devil horns. He wasted his prime, he could have been of great significance in guiding people’s states of mind.”
