It was the tour that nobody imagined would ever get off the ground, but yes, Guns N’ Roses did manage to put their personal differences to get the old band back together and head out on a massive world tour.
Well, most of the band, anyway. Original guitarist Izzy Stradlin refused to join the reunion tour, but original drummer Steven Adler was simply left our of the action in favour of current touring drummer Frank Ferrer – although that hasn’t stopped him petitioning for another tour with he and Izzy on board.
Still, being good sports, the current lineup (or maybe just Axl) told Adler that he could join them at select gigs and play a few tracks for old times’ sake. Adler did just that in Argentina and, while he was clearly stoked to be playing with the old band again in front of a massive crowd, things got very awkward very fast.
As reported by Ultimate Guitar, despite his clear desire to go another round, Adler was unceremoniously booted from the stage after his single allocated song. The footage of the gig (around the 1hr 45m mark) shows how they basically pulled the plug on the poor bloke, leaving him sitting alone on a dark stage until he shuffled off and let them get on with it.
By his account, his treatment by management and the band wasn’t particularly gentle, either.
“I’d start playing another fucking song, and they’d tell me to get off,” he told Eddie Trunk on his podcast. “They’d say, ‘Okay, you’re done.’ And I’d start playing another song, and they’d just turned the sound off. ‘Beat it. You’re done.’ I was, like, ‘Okay. Cool.’ I got to do that. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, and I got to rock with those guys.”
Despite the seemingly harsh treatment of one of the band’s founding members, he doesn’t seem to be holding much of a grudge, and is ready to jump at his first chance to play more tracks – even if it means sharing the stage with Ferrer.
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“If we split it, I wouldn’t mind sharing the stage with him at all,” he said in the same interview. “I mean, if that’s what it came down to, I’m cool with that. He’s a great guy. [But] I can’t [just play one or two songs per show anymore]. It’s just too hard. It’s too hard. I wanna play more, and I want Izzy to be there.
“It was the five of us that made magic, and I know we can make that magic again, ’cause it’s just who we are. Even though we’re twenty-five years older, I know if we got in a room together and started playing, it would be fucking magic.”
