Was Nu Guns a really toxic environment?

[jacdaniel]

I didn't follow the band closely during that period at all but I've read quite a bit that suggests it was a really toxic environment. 

Bucket has never spoken about his time in the band. It seems like it was a really negative experience for him. It seems he didn't get on with Tommy for definite. 

Bumble also seemed to have a really negative experience. People didn't want him in the band, nothing productive happening etc

Tommy had bad things to say about DJ. Pitman sueing for wages etc. 

Even the fact that so many people left is a good indication that things weren't good. 

The whole thing seems to have been a bit of a trainwreck.

[drlaban]

The real problems seems to have started when Sean Beavan was replaced by Roy Thomas Baker with the unnecessary re-recording of the drums & bass.

[weaponsnflowers]

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Maybe there were good things and bad things. We can only speculate based on what people have said. It really doesn't matter anymore as it is in the past. What is now is now.

[rumandraisin]

Buckethead caused problems. Left the band, was hard to get hold of, realised he could take the piss and still get paid eg having a chicken coup filled with dog shit in the studio. The guy must've laughed himself to sleep each night knowing how far he could push things. 

Axl is to blame though, you can't hire people and leave them to their own devices and expect them to all get along. 

[Lies They Tell]

Tommy always seemed like something of a bully. The environment probably had some toxic elements, but I don't want to speculate too much. I don't know enough about the subject.

[twistoflemon21]

Not sure about toxic but I'd say frustrating. Finck, Bumblefoot, Ashba, Fortus, Tommy, Brain, and Frank were replacing some pretty massive names in Slash, Duff, Gilby / Izzy and Matt / Steven. New music is the only way to prove that they were worthy of replacing those former band members. Until then, they're all just cover musicians. With the supposed three planned albums, they would have plenty of music to show the world. Instead they toured for ten years and released one album (to be fair, they've released more music than the reunion lineup). It'd be even more frustrating to spend so many hours in the studio then in 2022, those songs they worked on are finally released but played by different people. 

Edited August 24, 2023 by twistoflemon21

[Karice]

Some Fans have implied that Axl should have disbanded Guns N'Roses when EVERYBODY from the original Guns N'Roses and Matt who replaced Steven was gone and only Axl was left. The Fans were like,"Guns N'Roses last album should have been The Spaghetti Incident in 1993. That would have been a good run. Appetite For Destruction as the Debut,  GNR Lies as the Sophomore, Use Your Illusions Part 1 and 2 as a Junior and a Senior album,  The Spaghetti Incident as a "Fun," album/final Cover album. A 6 year and five album  wouldn't have been so bad." 🤔 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Karice

[Stay.Of.Execution]

19 minutes ago, Karice said:

Some Fans have implied that Axl should have disbanded Guns N'Roses when EVERYBODY from the original Guns N'Roses and Matt who replaced Steven was gone and only Axl was left. The Fans were like,"Guns N'Roses last album should have been The Spaghetti Incident in 1993. That would have been a good run. Appetite For Destruction as the Debut,  GNR Lies as the Sophomore, Use Your Illusions Part 1 and 2 as a Junior and a Senior album,  The Spaghetti Incident as a "Fun," album/final Cover album. A 6 year and five album  wouldn't have been so bad." 🤔 

That's not remotely relevant to this topic. Plus nobody cares what random people said somewhere else

[janrichmond]

I didn't follow that era either, I have read stuff about it on @SoulMonster site. It seems like a pretty shambolic time for all. A lot of time and money wasted.

[Seb91]

Dysfunctional for sure, I mean band members would work on stuff with no release date in sight and also have no idea when the bat signal would go up during the off periods. I'd say toxic is more attitudes/bullying etc. than anything else so I don't know enough to comment. I mean, I've made jokes about DJ but the other band members ripping on him during shows doing that sarcastic clapping must have gotten to him after a while. I mean, I don't know what he was thinking with that Patience solo he cooked up though. I mean, dude was playing like he thought he was doing the solo in the middle of Heartbreaker (and Jimmy Page he aint!). 

I got a sense that things started to go south band member relationship wise towards the end. Bumble obviously wasn't happy and there was that passive aggressive DJ tweet that seemed to be directed at Ron. Then the slow clapping Ashba stuff. I mean, I think re DJ he certainly grated more as time went on. In 2009/2010 he seemed fine and Robin used to get some flak for not being able to cover Slash's parts perfectly. Ashba seemed to get worse as time went on. I think part of it was me getting older as well though - I was a teenager when he joined the band but I look back at his antics now in videos and cringe. 

I'd still say it was more dysfunctional than toxic - people seemed to be having a decent time but the main question they would eventually ask themselves is 'do I want to cover classic GN'R stuff my entire life?' I think the band members that made peace with the fact it was obvious that was the gig after a while seemed to have a happier time. I think it was the classic money vs artistic expression dilemma. I mean, I did a course at a music college as a kid and one of the tutors turned down being Robert Plant's first guitar player post-Zeppelin because he decided he'd rather work on his own stuff.  

Edited August 24, 2023 by Seb91

[Its Tino]

Axl created the toxic environment way before the CD era

[Mikey Whipwreck]

It seems like you had various cliques. Richard, Robin and Tommy are all still friends 

Paul and Dizzy were Axl guys but Dizzy seems the type to get along with everyone 

Brain and Bucket were close friends before Guns and still are 

Pitman seemed very close to Axl and worked directly with him in the studio more than most 

Add in Tommy and Pitman seeming to have issues with alcohol. Buckethead existing in his own world. And Axl absent a lot of the time. It's no surprise there were some toxic dynamics there 

Ron was not welcomed with open arms by Tommy, Richard and Robin, that's for sure. They probably thought he was unnecessary. Seemed like that calmed down though. The biggest thing with Ron that  is now overlooked is he got severely messed up in that car wreck. He was in an incredible amount of pain and started self medicating with painkillers and booze. That's when he seemed to get very bitter and negative. I think he felt like he was coerced into returning to the road earlier than he wanted to and then taken for granted. Can't say I blame him, he was put in a bad position that was probably a nightmare for him to deal with 

 

[AtlasShrugged]

You also wonder how involved Axl really was. Obviously he was in the studio and did the live shows but no doubt a lot of time where it was just the band without him.

[Cosmo]

There's no way to really know if it was toxic or not based on what we have. The ex-members are the only ones who could affirm that. My bet is - Axl was (and is) a terrible leader, who got a bunch of incredible musicians to join his project, put them in a room and said "okay to your thing now", without much regard for anything, really.  You can't just put people with such different personalities and working habits in a room and except them to love each other and write the most incredible songs ever. It's not gonna happen. I bet these guys grew tired of it all as time went by, and I'm sure some of them didn't really get along - like Bumble and a few of them, as well as DJ and a few more. When I met Bumble, he already seemed a bit frustrated with the band, even though he was a class act with fans, you could see it. When I met Tommy, though, he seemed like he was treating this gig like it was his day job, and he was sick of it. 

[ronartest2004]

It seems as if Axl went in opposite directions with nuguns as opposed to old guns. With old guns he did try to control the band but was labeled a controlling asshole, so he went the opposite direction with nuguns and basically just hired a bunch of musicians and really only told them “make some music and I’ll decide when/if to add some vocals”.

Either way neither of the directions Axl tried to steer the band didn’t work.

[Voodoochild]

4 hours ago, jacdaniel said:

I didn't follow the band closely during that period at all but I've read quite a bit that suggests it was a really toxic environment. 

Bucket has never spoken about his time in the band. It seems like it was a really negative experience for him. It seems he didn't get on with Tommy for definite. 

To be fair, Bucket has never spoken about anything other than that weird podcast interview. Ultimately, seems like there was a lot of bad blood between Bucket and Axl - supposedly because of management at the time, according to Axl. 

Thing is that every ex-member mentioned Axl as being not as the media pictured him, with an easy-going behavior and all. I don't know how much of this is actually true, but I doubt it's too far from it. I'd say he was a good person to work with, but everything surrounding him was toxic and bizarre - be it his late hours work or inconsistent behavior in both studio and live settings. In other words: a good friend, but a terrible boss.

[Rayno]

3 hours ago, Lies They Tell said:

Tommy always seemed like something of a bully. The environment probably had some toxic elements, but I don't want to speculate too much. I don't know enough about the subject.

Bully or the guy who took the responsibility, some sort of father figure. Depends on the point of view.

[bmus1]

4 hours ago, drlaban said:

The real problems seems to have started when Sean Beavan was replaced by Roy Thomas Baker with the unnecessary re-recording of the drums & bass.

Can you expand on this?

[Rayno]

16 minutes ago, Cosmo said:

 I bet these guys grew tired of it all as time went by. 

This.

[Mikey Whipwreck]

3 minutes ago, bmus1 said:

Can you expand on this?

Tommy had an interview about this a while back. Basically that the band thought the album was ready and any additional work or cleanup could be handled in post production. But the label thought it should be more epic or something, so RTB was brought in and he had everyone meticulously re-record all their parts, which seemed to hurt morale as everyone in the band thought it was a huge waste of time 

[Free Bird]

4 hours ago, rumandraisin said:

Buckethead caused problems. Left the band, was hard to get hold of, realised he could take the piss and still get paid eg having a chicken coup filled with dog shit in the studio. The guy must've laughed himself to sleep each night knowing how far he could push things. 

Axl is to blame though, you can't hire people and leave them to their own devices and expect them to all get along. 

I read that more than once but c'mon, that surely is just a rumor that can't have anything to do with reality. 

[Lio]

9 minutes ago, Free Bird said:

I read that more than once but c'mon, that surely is just a rumor that can't have anything to do with reality. 

Seems to be confirmed by at least Zutaut and Goldstein. Seems to be an odd thing to make up.

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/manager_recalls_bucketheads_insane_demand_for_guns_n_roses_recording_a_chicken_coop_in_the_studio_for_him_to_play_in.html

[Mikey Whipwreck]

Here's the Tommy interview I mentioned where he talked about the negative impact Jimmy Iovine and RTB had on CD

https://slpmode.com/a-v-club-interview-tommy-stinson/

[Stay.Of.Execution]

27 minutes ago, Free Bird said:

I read that more than once but c'mon, that surely is just a rumor that can't have anything to do with reality. 

It's true. 

[Blackstar]

Although some of the members joined after being recommended by another member (Josh Freese recommended Tommy, Buckethead recommended Brain, Tommy recommended Richard, Richard, mostly, recommended Frank), those guys were, for the most part, "forced" to work together. Some of them had very different backgrounds; Tommy is a rock 'n' roll guy, has been in a band since he was 12, Buckethead and Bumblefoot are more the guitar nerd types (and with Buckethead's "weirdness" being on top of that).

So it was inevitable that there would be conflicts (when that happens even in bands that are formed more organically) and the long delay in completing the album made it worse. In some cases they did manage to get along well (e.g. Robin and Tommy), in other cases they didn't (e.g. with Buckethead). Brain was one who somehow managed to get on with everyone, although he was friends with Buckethead.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Blackstar