Forget What You Know – Here’s What REALLY Sparked Guns N’ Roses’ Demise…

The Truth As Told By A Former GNR Manager…

For years and years, fans have speculated what exactly caused Guns N’ Roses to break up the first time. There have been many different theories as to why, but the majority of them boil down to tensions between singer Axl Rose and guitarist Slash. That much is true, but where did those tensions root? A former manager for the band has the answers…

Former Guns N’ Roses manager Doug Goldstein recently did an interview with Guns N’ Roses Central and talked about a great many things regarding the band including how Slash’s collaboration with Michael Jackson was essentially the beginning of the end. Here is some of what he had to say…

“So he (Axl) does that huge interview, he bears his deepest, darkest secret, and Slash comes to my room two months later and says, ‘Hey, I’m going to play with Michael Jackson.’ What?! No!”

“So everybody in the industry knows that Eddie Van Halen got $1 million for ‘”Beat It”‘. I said, ‘At least let me negotiate the deal.’ ‘No, it’s already negotiated.’ ‘What do you mean? You’re not going to let me do my job?’ I said, ‘Look, I need to go to Axl with some ammunition to explain why you’re going and hanging out with a pedophile.'”

“Slash said, ‘It’s already negotiated.’ So I said, ‘At least give me some ammunition to go to Axl and tell him, ‘But yeah, he’s getting X amount of dollars.” He said, ‘He’s giving me a big-screen TV.’ ‘Hang on, what?!’ ‘Yeah, he’s going to give me one of those big 72-inch screen TVs.'”

“‘So that’s what I get to go with Axl with? You’re going to go play with a pedophile after he just bore his soul, for a big-screen TV?!’ ‘Yeah…'”

“That was the beginning of the end right there, that sealed the fate of the band. Axl never again thought Slash was his brother. Like I said earlier, the greatest thing I ever did was let Axl know what they thought of him, because he loved those guys. He thought they understood how damaged his own life was.”

Luckily, Guns N’ Roses are back together, well, three of the original members, anyway. But nevertheless Axl and Slash have moved past their issues and are touring the world. This is a story with a happy ending!

You can listen to the full interview below.