The Chinese Democracy Years – 1995: A Walk On The Wylde Side

In January ’95, the band regrouped for rehearsals with a new candidate for the vacant guitar spot.
Slash: “Now that Gilby’s not in the band, Axl’s like: ‘What about Zakk? You like Zakk, right?’”

Zakk Wylde: “Axl called me up when we were doing [Ozzy’s] Ozzmosis album. They were down in rehearsals – it was me, Slash, Axl, Duff, Matt and Dizzy.” But, Zakk remembered: “There were never any melodies. There were never any lyrics.”

“I’d say ‘Dude, did you come up with any lyrics yet?’” Wylde said later, “And he’s just like, ‘Dude, I got people suing me right now.’ He’s on the phone with his lawyers 24-7. He was, like, ‘I can’t come up with any lyrics right now – they’d be about every other lawsuit I got going’.

“So we jammed together for just over a week, we jammed over a whole bunch of shit and came out with three pretty cool ideas. One of the riffs ended up on the first Black Label Society record [Sonic Brew], [on the track] The Rose Petalled Garden. The stuff that I wanted to do, eventually, would have been like GN’R on steroids, man.”

It sounded heavier, but no-one was sure that it sounded right: Slash later said that it would have sounded “like Judas Priest or something”.

The situation with GN’R caused a rift between Zakk and Ozzy Osbourne. Zakk played on the Ozzmosis album, but remained uncertain on whether he could go on the road with Ozzy (who had a warm-up date on July 9 and a full tour starting in August). Finally Zakk was unable to get a straight answer or any commitment from the GN’R camp and gave up on the idea.

“Once you get all the fucking lawyers involved and that bullshit…” Wylde said later. “I saw Axl [later], and I said ‘What the fuck happened?’, and Axl goes, ‘Well Zakk, I heard you wanted two million up front and your own tourbus’.”

Slash goes, Izzy returns

It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere by Slash’s Snakepit was released on February 14 and Slash embarked on a promotional tour early that month.

Of the new GN’R record, he told journalists: “We’ve been jamming a bit, but there isn’t any actual songs… Right now there seems to be a fucking confusion about what ‘a good Guns-record’ is.”
In April, Izzy Stradlin played with Snakepit in Chicago – and was invited by Duff McKagan to come back to help with songwriting.

“In April, 1995,” Izzy remembered, “Duff calls me again: ‘I’m trying to compose new songs for the guys in GN’R. Come and give me a hand.’ I said to myself: ‘Well, shit, after all, why not?’. Duff and I wrote 10 pieces in the space of week. We even recorded them as demos.”

Izzy told Classic Rock about how he’d stopped off at Axl’s house around that time. Axl was friendly and then “probably a month later, one night he calls me [and] we got into the issue of me leaving Guns N’ Roses. I told him how it was on my side. Told him exactly how I felt about it and why I left… But, I mean he had a fucking notepad. I could hear him [turning the pages] going, ‘Well, ah, you said in 1982… blah, blah, blah…’ And I’m like, ‘What the fuck – 1982?’. He was bringing up a lot of really weird old shit. I’m like, whatever, man. But that’s the last time I talked to him.”

On July 28 Duff and Matt played a benefit show at the LA club Viper Room with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols and John Taylor of Duran Duran as the Neurotic Outsiders. In September, due to popular demand, they begin to play weekly shows there. The way the newly sober Duff told it, he had time on his hands and “I realised I didn’t want to wait until four in the morning to practise anymore”.

In the autumn GN’R rehearsed at Slash’s  home studio with Paul Huge. It only made things worse: “It was so uncomfortable and awkward there that Duff and I actually got into [an argument],” wrote Slash, “which had never happened in the studio, ever.”

On August 31, 1995, Axl sent a letter to Slash and Duff announcing that he was leaving the band and taking the name with him, based on an agreement formed in 1992.

Click here for The Chinese Democracy Years – 1996: Slash goes, Duff remains.