Former Guns N’ Roses manager Doug Goldstein discussed the publishing splits between original Guns N’ Roses members Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin, and Steven Adler in a new Guns N’ Roses Central interview. Alternative Nation transcribed his comments.
“Publishing splits that were 20/20/20, Duff, Slash, Izzy, and then 25 Axl, and 15 Steven. That was a gift to Steven, I mean Axl used to say that all the time. I wasn’t around for the writing, but he was like, ‘Look, they were trying to force me into even splits.’ Steven never wrote anything, so he considered that a big gift to Steven.”
Goldstein also discussed Adler suing the band, and how that hurt the possibility of him coming back after his dismissal in 1990.
“I think that had he not sued everybody, it would have been a possibility, but once that was thrown out there, it’s amazing, once you have to reach into your own pocket to spend money for legal defense, and those are big numbers. I personally spent $500,000. We settled on the court room steps, which means we didn’t wait for the jury to comeback. When you do that, they do what’s called a jury debriefing, so my attorney, god rest his soul, Howard King got to go first and the jury foreman stood up and said, ‘The only question we have is, is your client married?’ My lawyer said, ‘I don’t understand the relevance.’
He said, ‘This guy didn’t do anything wrong, we want him to marry our daughters. All he did was try to save the guy’s life.’ Then [Alan] Niven’s attorney came up, and they were going to crucify Niven, because he was at the helm of it. The band didn’t know, the band was following the lead of the manager and the attorney. Literally all I was doing was taking Steven to different rehabs and trying to get him clean.”
https://youtu.be/6i3CScY1gjY
