Roli recently interviewed Guns N’ Roses keyboardist Melissa Reese.
How would you describe your songwriting process?
It depends if I’m working alone or collaboratively. It sounds funny, but by myself, my ideas usually come to me when I’m in the shower. There are times when I will purposefully take a shower just to get ideas flowing. I have a higher success rate in the shower than my car. I keep my phone in the bathroom with me in case inspiration strikes, and then I have to jump out and record the idea really fast so I don’t lose it. Then when I get out and dry off, I sit down and flesh the idea out.
When I’m working with a partner — Brain specifically — one of us will start something. Then we’ll do this routine where we’re constantly kicking each other out of the driver’s seat and adding our own layer onto what we’re doing. In that case, I handle all the melodic elements, and he handles the percussive side. I handle all the beautiful aspects, and he handles all the dark, gritty, vibey ones.
Can you tell us about your experiences on this historic reunion tour with Guns N’ Roses?
The fans are great. My bandmates are the coolest, most chill dudes ever. They’re like big brothers and mentors to me. For me, the most fun has been playing CenturyLink Field because I’m from Seattle and I’m a huge Seahawks fan, so I dressed up in crazy Seahawks gear. The crowd was totally lit!
TMZ is reporting that Axl Rose is flush with cash these days, which likely played a factor in settling the lawsuit filed by his longtime roadie and engineer Chris Pitman.
TMZ broke the story … Pitman sued the GNR singer claiming he was owed $163,000 for his services from a few years back. He says Axl had promised to pay once he had more cash flow, but didn’t make the 2012 deadline.
Sources tell TMZ Axl and Chris reached a settlement this month and the case has been dismissed. Terms are confidential, but we’re told Axl dropped some dough — though much less than $163k — to make the suit go away.
GNR reportedly grossed about $4 million per show on this year’s tour. Mo’ money, one less problem.
MSL shared more rumors regarding Chris Pitman’s lawsuit against Guns N’ Roses on GNRTruth a couple months ago.
“IF he’s been owed 125k for four years and finally felt there was no way to get paid without hiring a lawyer, the lawsuit would have nothing to do with spite and everything to do with getting paid. There’s no way Pitman has enough money to where he could just let 125k slide. So IF he’s really owed the money, I don’t see how it’s spite. If he made it up, then sure ya it could be out of spite to make the band look bad. But we don’t have the facts and have no way of knowing whether the accusation is true.
We don’t know when it was filed. We just know the media recently found out about it. Could have been filed last week, could have been filed months ago. Based on the available information, we have no idea.
I do know that GNR feels he was responsible for the very costly mistake (or intentional plagiarism) concerning the Riad sample. Could that play a factor in this situation? Sure, it could. We really don’t know.”