2004.03.29 - SVT2 Studio Pop - Interview with Slash and Duff

Thanks to @Surge for helping with the date of this interview!



Transcript:
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[Host talks in Swedish]

[Clips from Guns N’ Roses videos with caption about the release of Appetite for Destruction]

Slash: I think the only thing that really made us feel like we were a big band wasn’t so much the phone calls from the record company about record sales or how many magazines we were asked to be on the cover of. It was how much response we got from an audience-

Duff: Yeah.

Slash: Which is really what made us fuckin’ the happiest, and fueled us for years. But, you know, there was a point where-

Duff: It was pretty surreal for a while there, when that did start happening. Because in the beginning of this Aerosmith tour we had our hardcore, like, 70 fans up front. And then, we had just released, um, Sweet Child - I guess - and it went from 70, like, in one week... It really happened like this, like 70 from one week to 700 the next week...

Slash: To 7,000...

Duff:  To 7,000, then to 17,000, like the whole place came early to see the opening band, which was us, with banners and everybody singing the words of the songs.  

[Clip from Guns N’ Roses videos – caption about the release of Use Your Illusion]

Slash: I think one of the problems that happened towards the end of the Guns N’ Roses thing was that even the getting on stage part was made difficult (chuckles).

Duff: Yeah.

Slash: And then it started to become not so much fun.

Duff: We would be four hours late for a show or we wouldn’t play the show at all, so it’d get cancelled, or we’d get on stage and Axl walked off stage in the middle of a show, or...

Slash: The actual original members sort of depleted over the years, and [there were] a lot of reasons for that happening and so on. And we kept ourselves going on a tour that went for two plus years, on a record that we did when we were 90% original – you know, we lost a drummer, but we managed to conquer that whole situation and continue on. And in the middle of the tour somewhere, we lost Izzy as a result of all this other negative bullshit that was going on.

Duff: Yeah...

Slash: So, when we finally ended the tour that was a huge feat. You know, we fuckin’ survived this fuckin’ monumental task – and we had a good time, but we had a lot of bad times during that.

Duff: Yeah.

Slash: And then, when we got back and it was time to write a record, it really became apparent how much the original group worked. There was a certain unsaid formula that made us all be able to support one another and also deal with Axl, and this and that. And now that was sort of gone.

Duff: It became just impossible to write a song, you know, from beginning to end. It just became impossible.

Slash: I also came to terms with the reality that I’m not the guy to be able to have to communicate with Axl, and Duff’s not the guy to do it.

Duff: Yeah.

Slash: And the two of us together even can’t [do it]. He just turned into this almost separate entity.

Duff: Yeah.

Slash: It was like, no way we could really communicate on a creative level.

[Clip from November Rain video – caption about GN’R in 2004]

Slash: Anyway, on a lighter note, we were fucking probably one of the best all-time rock ‘n’ roll bands.