Izzy speaks!
Stradlin explains his absence from GN’R’s reunion tour.
Izzy Stradlin has offered some insight to his absence from Guns
N’ Roses’ Not In This Lifetime reunion tour. Co-founding guitarist Stradlin is the only member of the band who recorded the Appetite For Destruction album not to have returned at all for these dates.
Back in February, former GN’R manager Alan Niven claimed that Izzy had considered taking part in some shows but decided to walk away, revealing: “He got as far as flying out and doing a soundcheck and then he left. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”
“The current GN’R tour has been a great success for the guys,” Stradlin said in an email to America’s Wall Street Journal. “My non-participation was simply not being able to reach a happy middle ground through the negotiation process. That’s life, sometimes things don’t work out.”
Since walking away from GN’R in 1991, Stradlin has kept a low profile, and has rebuffed tour offers from Keith Richards and Bon Jovi. His then-manager Niven says: “Bon Jovi chased him high and low. Izzy’s attitude was, very bluntly,
‘I’d rather play clubs.’”
According to former Georgia Satellites guitarist Rick Richards, a regular Stradlin collaborator, Izzy wakes up early, mountain bikes, surfs and travels with his long-time girlfriend. “He likes to be untethered,” says Richards.
Meanwhile, having played two shows with GN’R in 2016, drummer Steven Adler has revealed that he would be ready, willing and able to do so again should the call come.
“Tomorrow I will have four years and four months [of] no drinking and I haven’t done drugs since 2008,” he told the Lucas H Gordon Show. “I’ve never been happier. My health is fabulous. After, like, the ninth month of not drinking, everything changed. I became happy again. I love life again. I enjoy the sunsets, I enjoy the sunrise. It’s beautiful.” DL