L.A. Weekly reporter Art Tavana was recently interviewed on Appetite for Distortion, and he revealed that he is writing an in-depth piece on Stradlin where he’s interviewed enough people close to Stradlin to write a book. He said that he even went to Stradlin’s home and dropped off a note requesting an interview, but he never heard back. He did reveal though that Stradlin will give his first in-depth interview on his lack of participation in Guns N’ Roses’ reunion in a few weeks.
Tavana offered his analysis on why he doesn’t believe Stradlin will ever be a full time member of Guns N’ Roses again.
“He doesn’t go by a schedule, he doesn’t follow orders, he doesn’t really work with business people, he doesn’t do stuff when he doesn’t want to do stuff. He’s just his own guy, he’s a lone wolf, he lives like a fucking outlaw in the desert of California. Let’s put it this way, Ju Ju Hounds could have been one of the biggest bands in the country, and you can guess why, but they went nowhere, and they broke up really soon, within like two years they had broken up, because Izzy Stradlin doesn’t want to be a rock star, Izzy Stradlin just wants to be a dude.”
He just wants to hang out, and whenever he wants to play a show, he’ll play it, and whenever he wants to record, he’ll record. That’s what Axl was saying, and that’s 100% accurate, and that’s probably the reason why they didn’t want to give him equal percentege of the GNR equity. He quit in 1991 for the same reasons he isn’t going to be a full time part of the band ever again.”
He also said, “I don’t think it was just equal pay, I think it was equal equity in the band. That’s what I think people are kind of not talking about, it’s merchandise, decisions on things, decisions on venues and setlists, future album work, videos, promotional strategy, this is all stuff Slash and Duff are part of the decision making process, and I don’t think he wanted to deal with that shit.”
