Rate: Civil War studio (minus Izzy) vs Farm Aid w/ Izzy

[LA_0013]

All I know is - I’d probably donate at least my left nut to attend a show where Axl sings the whole gig on a par with the first Civil War chorus on that Farm Aid video

[ludurigan]

4 hours ago, Fashionista said:

The story about CW has been consistent over 25 years. 

We gave him a year to get his shit together. He couldn't play any of the new shit anyway. It got to a point where the material was way beyond him. I can't believe this little f?!ker. I read the shit he said about us in Circus (...) He said in that article he's sober now, but every time I've seen him, he's been wasted. I don't know what he's wasted on; I don't even care. I lost all concern and feeling for the guy. And I know a drug lie when I see one. We couldn't get any work done at Rumbo [the original studio where the band started work on Use Your Illusion three years ago]. He cost us a fortune. We had to edit the drum track to 'Civil War' just so we could play to it. At Rumbo, Steven would nod out to the point where he would be on a stool, but his head would be touching the floor. He'd say, 'I'm tired. I'm sleepy,' and he couldn't play. That was basically it. We gave him so many chances to turn around. We took him to Indiana, to play Farm Aid, and he jumps on the drum riser and almost breaks his f?!king neck. Look, Steven was a part of what made Guns N' Roses happen. He had a great energy. He wasn't an insanely great drummer, but he had tons of attitude. When the sex and drugs and the whole bit started to get out of hand, he went right along with it. But there's a certain time when you really have to control your life. I'm not preaching - I'm in no position to preach - but you must be aware of your own existence and take care of your own business. You just can't be loaded all the time and expect everything to be okay. Trust me, I know. As far as the rest of us, we bounced back, we straightened up. Steven never did. We always told each other when it was getting real bad. Everybody was there for the individual who needed help. That's how we're survived as a band. But Steven would never cop to anything, as far as telling us how bad it was. And now he's suing us. Thank you very much [Slash, RIP March 1992]

At this time I had nearly managed to get clean up, from everything. When I was looking at the band, I would see Stevie, who was a good guy, who's been struggling with us during all these years, but couldn't handle it anymore. He was a real millstone, he needed to clean up! Fuck... We all tried to help him, to support him. But no, finally, we'd been on the road with this guy for years and we lived this dilemma: "OK. We leave him six months doing nothing without any guarantee it gets better, or we forget about the double album and we burry the band?" Actually, the industry's machine woke up and the answer was: "We take someone else to cut these records." It's wasn't an easy decision. [Izzy, Rock & Folk, September 1992]

When we started rehearsing the material [for Use Your Illusion] that's when Steven's house of cards came crashing down. He was utterly useless when put to the test: most of the time he'd fade away from the proper time signature somewhere in the middle of the song or just forget where he was altogether. He was just incapable of locking in with Duff or me like he used to do. It was pretty dire; something had to be done . [Slash, autobiography, 2007]

Farm Aid was the last show we ever played with him. When we got back to L.A., Steven got even worse - I don't know, maybe because he knew the end was near, or maybe because heroine is that shrewd of a devil. There were a few more rehab stints, but they were short-lived, maybe twenty-four to forty-eight hours at a time. The last straw came when we were asked to donate a track to a charity album called 'Nobody's Child,' (...). By then we were completely alienated from Steven. In that session, there was us and there was him. After it was finished, before Mike Clink could mix it, he found that he had to cut and paste the whole drum track together [Slash, autobiography, 2007]

When producer Mike Clink and I had pieced together the drum track for 'Civil War' earlier that year, it was clear Steven was not going to be able to perform with us if he didn't turn things around. When we had played a couple songs to a huge crowd at Farm Aid in April, he was a mess onstage. After that we thought we could scare him straight. We told him we were auditioning drummers and figured he's snap out of it as soon as he heard that. When that didn't work, we hired a professional sober coach, Bob Timmons, who had helped Aerosmith get clean, to talk to him. [Duff, autobiography, 2011]

Man, I was fucked up, and I have never denied that, I couldn’t really deny it because it was pretty fuckin’ obvious…But I wasn’t the only one. I remember one day Slash called me to go to the studio and play Civil War, I think it was. I’d been given an opiate blocker by a doctor. I still had opiates in my system and it made me so sick. I must have tried, like, 20 times to play it, but I couldn’t. I was very weak and I didn’t have my timing. Slash and Duff were shouting at me and telling me I was fucked up. [Steven Adler, Classic Rock, 2011]

 

Also:

We tried for the longest time to give Steven a vision and a function. There was a combination of factors going on. One was that he could just not connect to the kind of material that Axl was writing. “Coma”, “Estranged” … he’d just roll his eyes. And, of course, the fact that he had no control over his heroin habit. [Alan Niven, quoted in Mick Wall, Last Of The Giants, 2016]

Also, from Steven's own mouth: "It took me forever to get the song [Civil War] right, and they got frustrated with me."

 

He couldn't play any of the new shit anyway

LIE. LISTEN TO MATES

 

It got to a point where the material was way beyond him

IN SLASH AND AXL'S OPINION. THAT'S HIGHLY DEBATABLE

 

i dont discuss the fact that he was unable to play because of the drugs

what i dont buy for a second is that "he couldnt play that material"

thats slash and axl opinion

if he wasnt fucked up, if he was allright, its pretty obvious that he could play it