Slash Tried To Steal Guns N’ Roses Member For Solo Band

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Richard Fortus revealed in a recent KHSE interview that Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators wanted to recruit him to join their band.

“I had actually been asked to join Slash’s band a while ago, at a Thin Lizzy show. We were playing a festival and his manager came out to me and said, ‘We’d love to steal you.’ I couldn’t do that to my friend. That would be such a slap in the face, y’know?”

He also discussed Guns N’ Roses’ current live show.

“[The current live show] is definitely different than anything I’ve ever been involved with. Every night’s different, on some nights we throw in more or less [CD songs], but we always play at least a couple. Chinese Democracy and Better, off that album, get played every night – and This I Love, actually.

So, three songs every night and then there’s four songs off that album we’ll sometimes do… Almost every song on [Chinese Democracy] was done before I came into the band. And there was one section [in Better], that [Axl] was like, ‘Hey, do you have anything for this?’ And that just happened.”

“Touring with GNR is supereasy, because when you’re playing stadiums, you have to have a few days in between. So we only play three to four shows a week. That gives us plenty of time off.”

Fortus discussed Izzy Stradlin in a recent KSHE interview. Alternative Nation transcribed his comments.

“On my way back to the U.K. to finish that tour, I was sitting at LAX, and this guy comes up to me and says, ‘Excuse me sir, are you who I think you are?’ Of course I said, ‘Probably not.’ He said, ‘You’re not Izzy Stradlin?’ Nobody had ever said that to me before, and I looked around like, is this a joke? I said, ‘No I’m not, but I think I just took his gig.’ He just sort of looked at me like, thanks for being a jerk.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. It was just a funny thing that happened.”

He also told the full story of how he joined Guns N’ Roses.

“I was actually on tour, believe it or not, with Enrique Iglesias. I was in the middle of a tour in Europe, I had gotten a call. Tommy Stinson was a friend of mine, Brain was a friend, or was it Josh Freese [at the time]? Anyways, I had played with those guys, and worked with them doing studio work. They had called and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in auditioning?’ I said sure. So I found a three day window, after I finished our last show at the Albert Hall, I had a car waiting, went straight to the airport, flew to LA, did the audition.”

“Everybody in the band, Axl was there. Then I hung out with Axl all night, talking, listening to music in his car and stuff like that.”

“He pretty much told me that night [that I was in the band]. We spoke about it, and he said, ‘Well, we’re going to start rehearsals in two weeks.’ I was like, ‘I can’t start in two weeks, I’m in the middle of a tour.’ He looked at me like, are you kidding me? He thought about it for a second, and he goes, ‘Well, we’ll wait for you, because I know you won’t do it for me.