FTV: Guns ‘N’ Roses Ver. 3.0

 

     If you are wondering about my numbering system for the band Guns N’ Roses, let me count them off.  Version 1.0, the original line up that found fame with their debut album, included Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagen, Izzy Stradlin, and Steven Adler on vocals, guitar, bass, second guitar and drums, respectively.  They came up through the Los Angeles club scene and gained a local following until their 1987 Appetite for Destruction album flew up the record charts after the breakout single Welcome to the Jungle was released.  The album moved more than 30 million copies worldwide while becoming the best selling debut album of all time.  Hits like Jungle, Paradise City, and Sweet Child ‘O Mine pretty much guaranteed the success of their next album (G N’ R Lies (1988)) which sold a respectable 10 million copies. 

      Adler’s drug problems saw him exit the band in 1990 to be replaced by Matt Sorum (late of The Cult).  Keyboardist Dizzy Reed also joined the lineup at the same time and they took part in the recording of and subsequent tour behind the twin albums Use Your Illusion I & II.  This was a minor enough change in the lineup that we will consider it Ver 1.1 of the original band.  After the extensive Illusion I & II tour (1991-93) and the recording of a punk covers album (The Spaghetti Incident? (1993)), turmoil and discontent fractured the band.  By 1998, only Rose and Reed were left from Ver 1.1.

     Axl spun the ‘Yes, I would like to buy a new guitar player’ wheel and vowed to keep the band going.  Guitarists came and went, among them Gilby Clark, Robin Finck, Buckhead, Tommy Stinson, Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal, Richard Fortus, D.J. Ashba, and Chris Pitman.  If one wonders what Rose’s vision for the band was at that point, one can only guess their record label had similar thoughts.  The one and only album created by this Ver 2.0 band (Chinese Democracy (2008)) is thought to have cost $14 million to record.  No, you did not read the release date or cost wrong.  It was billed as the most expensive rock album ever recorded and the release of a Greatest Hits album in 2004 was probably the only reason the band and their label didn’t sink to the bottom of the ocean.  The Greatest Hits album became the longest charting record in the history of the Billboard 200 allowing Rose to fiddle around longer with Chinese Democracy than any other label would have tolerated.  The Hits album owes its success wholly to the Ver 1.0 & 1.1 band’s catalog.  It also kept hopes alive for a reunion of that iteration even while Axl’s erratic behavior and equally unsteady hand on the band’s steering wheel made G N’ R seem DOA.

     Democracy debuted at No 3 on the Billboard 200 no doubt helped along by the mystery built by the long, expensive recording process.  Studio time spread across 14 studios and 3 producers all combined to drive up the production costs.  Rose’s refusal to promote his own record drove another wedge between the band and the label.  The band toured after more ‘band member roulette’ and Billboard called the lack of promotion, “A colossal blunder that undermined  the most anticipated album in history.”  Then the lawsuits and counter lawsuits began to fly.  Touring drummer Dave Abbruzzese even claimed the label executives wanted the album to fail to pressure Axl into reuniting with Slash to resurrect the Ver 1.1 band.  It also did not help that all but 3 or the album’s 14 tracks had been leaked a full year ahead of the LP’s release.  

     As Ver 2.0 slowly but steadily underwent ‘disassembly through lawsuits and neglect’, nobody really gave much credence to the rumors about the label suits trying to get Axl and Slash back together by torpedoing Chinese Democracy.  The singer and guitarist barely spoke after they parted ways in 1996.  Slash went on with his own projects (Slash’s Snakepit, Velvet Revolver, and his most successful line up, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators) while Axl  went about being Axl.  

     Slash told Guitar World (Vol 46, NO 12 – December 2025) that the whole Ver 3.0 regrouping happened because of Coachella.  As Slash told GW’s Andrew Daly, “It sounds crazy, but when I first got involved again, it was just to do a couple of shows, one of which was Coachella.  We had been getting these offers to do that event for years, so Axl and I got together, sat down and hashed out a lot of stuff that had built up over the years.  That’s when he said, ‘We get these offers to do Coachella.  Do you want to do it?’  I said, ‘Yeah, that would be fun.’”  He went in thinking they would do a few gigs in 2016 and that would be that.  It turned out, they had so much fun that they are still going on with Ver 3.0 nine years later.  A lot has changed since the bad old days, namely no hardcore drugs, no more infighting, and no more binge-drinking benders.  In other words, they moved on from all the things that tore Ver 1.0 & Ver 1.1 apart.

     Slash continued:  “Other than changes in the way things were handled back in the day, it’s just maturing . . . and maybe the lack of massive substance abuse on my part.  [Laughs]  I can’t speak on everybody else’s behalf, but all those things play into it.  It’s a perfect storm of a lot of things.  We did Coachella, and then we just kept going.  It never really stopped.  The only thing that [temporarily] stopped it was Covid, because we were just going from tour to tour and having a great time.”  During the Ver 2.0 years in the early 2000s, Axl’s G N’ R went through guitar players like crazy.  Since then, the band has settled into a degree of stability that didn’t seem remotely possible.  There is a third piece of the Ver 2.0 band that is still in the band.  His name is Richard Fortus and he has been hanging out in G N’ R land for 23 years.

     The rotation of guitar players during the Ver 2.0 phase was enough to make one’s head spin.  It also did not help Axl get the songs he was writing recorded.  Before he joined up in 2002, Fortus was touring with Enrique Iglesias and his presence offered a sense of stability that had been missing.  As Richard told Andrew Daly in December 2025’s GW interview, “When I first came into the band, it was split into factions.  There was Buckethead, Brain (Bryan Mantia) on drums, and [multi-instrumentalist] Chris Pitman (on keyboards and bass) as one little faction.  And then there was myself, Tommy Stinson (bass), Robin [Finck] (guitar) and Dizzy [Reed, keyboards].  That was another faction.  And there was Axl, a faction unto himself [laughs].  There was a different feeling to the band, but now everything feels solidified.”

     After the infighting, substance abuse, and drama of the Ver. 1.0/1.1 years, it is difficult to understand how Rose, Slash, and Duff were afforded a second chance.  Maybe the Ver. 3.0 would not have been possible without the intervening Ver. 2.0 grouping.  Certainly, Richard Fortus’s entry into the band at that unstable nadir acting as a connecting thread to the Ver. 3.0 G N’ R is one of those serendipitous things.  The proof lies in one simple fact – Fortus is now the longest tenured guitar player in the band so he has seen both sides of that coin:  “The band is very united,” he told Daly.  “That’s the biggest difference, it’s night and day.”

     Of course, it does not hurt that he and Slash blend so well together:  “Sometimes Slash and I will play the same thing in harmony or an octave part that we’ve never played before or not worked out at all.  It’s freakish to me how similar our approach is.  It sounds a little metaphysical, but it’s really strange how in-synch we are.”  Even at their chart-topping peak, one would never have used the word ‘harmonious’ to describe how Guns ‘N Roses functioned.

Richard’s role in Ver. 2.0 was to fill the shoes of Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clark.  When Slash returned to the fold, he had to redo what he had been doing.  “It’s always fun,” he says, “But when Slash came in, I had to rethink everything because I needed to be able to support his tone, the way he plays, and the way he creates.  So it’s been about me going back to the chalkboard.”

     How does Slash feel about things now that the band has been touring without incident and are even toying around with the idea of making a new album?  “We’re fortunate to be a band whose material has stood the test of time,” he told Daly.  “And we’re fortunate to be appreciated this far out.  To be able to maintain that much interest, you have to consider yourself really (expletive deleted) lucky, and that’s the way I see it,  It’s been quite a ride.”  Slash also gives their fans a lot of credit:  “Every show is contingent on the audience.  That sort of reciprocal energy is what drives it, and that has been solid for this whole run since I’ve been back in it, that’s how it was from our inception back in the day, up until I left in 1996.”  Of course, Ver. 1.0 had that magical singer / guitar player thing going for it but it died in 1996 when things went south.

     Ver. 3.0 seems to have rekindled the magic.  Slash continued, “I constantly have to stop and be thankful that we’re able to do something that I love so much.  There’s really nothing like it.  To be able to go out there and play for three hours is really a blessing.”  When asked about the chemistry between band members, Slash pointed out that many of the issues that tanked the band in the 90s were generated by management issues that put Axl and him at odds.  “Without that element, Axl and I get along great.  Duff and I have always gotten along great, and I love working with Richard Fortus.  He and I make a really great guitar team, and he’s just a good guy.  We all get along really well and we have a good time doing what we do.”

     Asked if there was any thought of bringing back original member Izzy Stradlin in place of Fortus, Slash said it was discussed, but it never went beyond that.  Richard was there when they started rehearsals for the Not In This Lifetime Tour.  He was given the opportunity to see how he meshed with Fortus before the Izzy idea petered out.  According to Slash, “I don’t know where Izzy would have fallen in at that time.  I have no idea because we never really got a chance to jam at any of those initial rehearsals for the tour.  So I don’t know what it would have been like.  Everybody has been constantly working this whole time and growing as musicians.  I don’t know what Izzy’s been up to on the musical level.”

     After reminiscing about how some of the classic Ver. 1.0 riffs and songs came together, Daly and Slash turned their attention to guitars.  Although he has been associated with the classic Gibson Les Paul models he played back in the day, he has expanded his collection.  His first professional level guitar had actually been a B.C. Rich Mockingbird stemming from his days working at a guitar store in Hollywood.  The store was an authorized B.C. Rich dealer so he had a lot of inside knowledge about the brand before G N’ R got big.  He reconnected with the company when they were recording the Use Your Illusion albums when he had enough money to buy a used Mockingbird 1981 model that he still uses on the road.  Slash admitted that he picked up a lot of guitars in the twenty years between Ver. 1.0 and Ver. 3.0 as he branched out by using various versions of Les Pauls, B.C. Riches, and Guild guitars.

     Daly wrapped things up by posing the same question he had asked Fortus:  “Is there a new album in G N’R’s future?”  “There’s so much material at this point – it’s a matter of having the discipline to sit down and get into it.  But the thing with Guns is, in my experience, you can never plan ahead.  You can never sit down and go, ‘We’re going to take this time and we’re going to do this.’  Every time we’ve done that, it falls apart,  It just spontaneously happens through some sort of inspiration that triggered it.  And the next thing you know, it’s off and running .  So it’s coming.  It’ll just happen when it happens.”

     As long as G N’R Ver. 3.0 guys are enjoying themselves, I get the feeling there won’t be any major changes in personnel or interband drama.  If they set their minds to recording, Slash’s habit of pumping out his solo work at a good pace hints they won’t spend a Chinese Democracy amount of time getting it sorted out.  Stay tuned as we see what other surprises G N’ R Ver. 3.0 may have in store for us.

Top Piece Video:  Which ever version was playing in Tokyo in 1992 . . . .