Guns N’ Roses have been successfully touring the globe since original members Slash and Duff McKagan rejoined frontman Axl Rose. But for several years there was a rift between the singer and the remainder of the group.
In a new interview on the “Appetite For Distortion” podcast, the band’s former manager Alan Niven talked about Rose’s erratic behavior in the past and how the band almost canceled a 1987 tour with Aerosmith.
“Axl was always threatening to fire people or quit,” Niven said. “He had me banned from the Aerosmith tour for three weeks at the beginning of it because I refused to cancel the tour. The problem was, Axl, I didn’t sign a contract just for you and your whim. I signed a contract with five individuals, collectively known as Guns N’ Roses, and I have a responsibility to five people, not just one. The other four wanted to go on tour.”
Niven continued: “As it was, I chose a very strange way to – off the wall way – to get out of that conundrum. When he called me and said, ‘Cancel the tour’ because I’ve got Izzy in the room, he said, ‘Niv, we gotta go.’ And everybody else wants to go and do the tour, but Axl says ‘Cancel it.’ So I picked up a pair of dice and threw them.”
Niven said he attempted to make peace with the singer at Axl’s birthday party. “It’s Axl’s birthday,” the former manager continued. “And I actually go around to his apartment that morning, and I take him a really nice white Ovation guitar as a birthday present. And then I had a dinner for him at Le Dome – the dump, as we used to call it. (A few of executives associated with the band) went up to Axl’s apartment to pick him up and bring him down to dinner. Everybody else is there. We were all there, all seated at the table.”
“I sat at the end of the table, and I felt a hand go on my shoulder, and then Tom’s head was right here, and he whispered in my ear, ‘Doug Goldstein is not your friend,’ which was the first time I had a third party tell me that he is putting poison in Axl’s ear all the time. Slash, in his own book, said it was obvious to him that Goldstein wanted to snatch the brass ring. He was a treacherous individual.”
