Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Hey all,

I'm a huge Guns fan.  One aspect of their history always irks me, the firing of Steven Adler.  I was wondering how it all went down?  I read some stuff here and there.  I also read quotes from Izzy saying that Steven was a vital part of the sound and after him "things didn't swing the same" or something to that nature.  Izzy was the principle song writer.  You would think that he would have a major say whether Steven would be let go.  The drugs excuse also sucks because everyone was loaded and to my knowlegde it took Axl forever to rehearse on Illusion.  Matt Sorum was ok at best, but I would have loved to have heard Steven on those records because his parts on Civil War are what classic Guns is all about.  Does anyone know why Izzy, Duff and Slash supported the decision to get rid of Adler?  Seems to me that it was record company pressure and they just fired him to buy some time. Listen I don't feel bad for Adler as he still makes a ton of money from royalties (unless he signed his rights away) but I'm a huge Steven fan and he was a huge inspiration to me growing up being a drummer.  Let me know what you know!

Guigsdaddy

According to the band, they couldn't get anything done with Steven. He just coun't play.

The drum track for "Civil War" had to be edited from over 60 takes.




/jarmo

By 1990 Adler was pretty much strung out and worthless live and in the studio. What a shame.

is Civil War the only track on UYI with his drum parts?

Yep.

None of the members have spoken fondly of Steven through the years, I think they did play together last year (Slash and Izzy with him?)

I think Slash and Izzy played with him this year, either that or time goes really fast! :confused:
plus, he went and Izzy recorded like 4-6 new songs in studio earlier this year.

So Adler is the drummer for Civil War on UYI2?  I didn't know that.  I always felt that the Live Aid Performance of Civil War was one of the coolest because it was one of Steven's last.  I will always prefer the original 5 GNR members to any new GNR or Velvet Revolver.

Why was he fired? Well look at "Behind the music",drugs made him worse than Ozzy,and he's a lot younger.

I can see you didn't see Steven play right now, well i did and let me tell you this: he's not worse!

Plus he almost killed Axls girlfriend at the time by ODing her.

Isn't this a
(http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mnh/nature/sableisland/images_im/nature_na/horses_ho/dead-horse_ho.jpg)

just out of curiosity, why didn't you look intot the booklet?

ex-gunner maybe

axl kicked him, 'm lookin forward to adlers appetite debut,  their singer rocks :peace:

Overdosing Erin Everly +  bad drug habit, couldn't really play...and yeah it's being said that he also fucked Erin before or while she was blackout. I think these causes got him to the point that he was kicked out of the band.

if steven fucked erin and after nearly killin her he is lucky he just got fired!!!

here is what slash has to say about the situation taken out of guitar legends magazine page 30.


GW: when you started the album, was steven adler still on drums?

SLash: Yes, that was the summer before last (1989) although those sessions didnt last long mainly because of Steven.  See, he never quite made it to that growing up period that the rest of us when through.  It was always just a big game for him - fun all the time.  Thats a rock and roll attitude, which i've always appreciated, but steven was just out there (on drugs) and i had just come back from that. so he couldnt like to me about it. but he kept tryin to lie.
 
  I didnt want to go into the studio because his playing was so far off. He'll argue with me even now and say "I played great." But he didnt-he couldnt.  the guy was nodding out all over the place. that went on for a couple of months, and then i cancelled the studio time cause it was a waste of money. o the only song on the album that steven played on was "civil war" he thought he was great, but we had to edit the drum track like mad just so we could play along with it. even then, i had to remember where the drum mistakes were to keep the guitar in time with them.


you know steven tyler asked me the dumbest question one time: "is there gonna be another welcome to the jungle on the new album?" of all people to ask something like that! why would we want to do that again? But steven adler would have been happy just to do the same thing again on the new album. He wouldnt have made it through the record. And i dont mean to knock him. Im just pissed off at him. I havent said anything public about it so far, though he's slandered us like crazy and is tryin to sue us about stuff thats total bullshit but i know for a fact that steven's scared to death of me. because ive known steven since we were 13 and i know him too well, so im like "Steven, what do u think u are doin? but he's not doin it, someone else is pushin his buttons.



i think steven needs to take some responsibility for his problems and stop blaming the band so much for "takin everything away from him" to me it sounds like he fucked himself.


like i said in another thread he missed the illusions and the tour but he wouldnt be in GNR today anyway so it doesnt matter now anyway.

Mmmmm...strange Dizzy hasnt post a loooong post, yet. :hihi:
I didnt know he ODed Erin.And I dint know he fucked her!!!Actually I dont belive this last one is true, because if it was, now there would be a grave with the writings:Steven Adler 1965-1990







Baby Slash//

I wonder why the band didn;t have matt redo the drum tracks if they were so awful.  I read somewhere they had Gilby redo Izzy's guitar on some Spegetti Incident tracks (not because they were bad).

Here's Steven's side of the story:

"When you guys recorded ?Civil War? did you record any other songs during those sessions? Was there really problems with you and the recording of "Civil War"?"

We rehearsed all the Illusions songs! We had studio time in Chicago for three months. On like the last day, Axl shows up and all he wanted to work on was ?November Rain?. So that set back the recording process. As for ?Civil War? I had to play it like 25 times until it was useable. My timing was so up and down because I was so weak. The whole time I kept telling the guys, ?I don?t feel good, I?m really down? and they kept saying ?You're just fucked up?, ?I?m not fucked up!" I was sick from an opiate blocker I got from a doctor that Doug Goldstein took me too. I think he knew what effect it would have on me...I wanted to wait another week or so before we went in to the studio to record. Slash says that we couldn?t waste the money, and we had to do it that day. They all knew I was sick....it?s a great song, it came out great, but I?m sure had I not been in the position that they put me in I would have nailed it in one take. Slash called me on a Thursday, knowing that I was sick, and said, ?We?re going in the studio this weekend? I said ?dude, you know I can?t go, I?m sick from this bullshit medication?. He said we can?t waste the money, an I said don?t even tell me about wasting money, we know somebody who wasted plenty of fucking money! If one of them was sick, it would have been postponed! We just weren't a team anymore.

Also Izzy said it was ridicolous, he was fired from the band cause of drugs while the whole band was using drugs...
Axl gave the rest a choice, it was either Steven out or him out

but the bands drug use didnt hinder their playing, thats the main reason. he couldnt play so they had to find someone who could.

I swore I'd never post again, but this thread lured me out of seclusion....

I won't bother arguing with anyone.? I'll just post quotes from the band members.

They told me I had a drug problem, well, who the fuck were they to tell me that?? A couple alcoholics and heroin users?? Did they take some time in between fucking strippers to decide they were going to throw me out of the band?? Doug Goldstein took me to have an opiate blocker, which made me very sick.? I told them [Slash & Duff] that I felt sick and couldn't record.? Slash told me we had to, because we couldn't waste the money.? I said "Money?? What about the money we wasted last year [referring to the 1989 Chicago rehearsal/recording sessions, in which only Slash, Duff, and Steven attended] when Izzy was cleaning himself up, and Axl was nowhere to be found?? Why was it okay for those guys to waste the money, but not me [in order to] get well?"? So anyway, they bring me into the studio and I feel like shit.? It took me forever to get the song [Civil War] right, and they got frustrated with me.? So next thing I know, Doug has a stack of papers in front of me that I could never fucking read because they were about five inches thick!? He's telling me 'sign here, sign there' and telling me I was signing an agreement saying I was on "probation", meaning I was going to detox in time to record, or else.? But it turns out, those papers weren't really giving me that chance.? So I don't hear a fucking thing from anyone for awhile, then I got these notices saying 'you're out of the band'.? Through my lawyers, I discovered that the "probation" papers that Doug had me sign were actually the rights to my partnership and all my royalties, which I was unknowingly signing away!? They completely screwed me out of everything, these guys, [who were] my friends, my family.? It hurt more than anything.? My royalties were from playing, writing, and [use of] my image such as t shirts and shit.? When we recorded [Appetite for Destruction], Slash came up with this system where whoever wrote got credit.? But then when it came time to actually divide them up, suddenly everybody was getting credit but me.? I mean, [for example] Izzy wrote the song "Think About You" by himself before we started playing it, yet Slash, Duff, and Axl were also going to be receiving royalties for it, since they supposedly "added to it".? I said, "well what about me?? Did I add nothing?"? I mean Izzy wrote the fucking song, I thought that's how the writing credits were determined, but the other guys were getting credit for something they didn't write, and I wasn't.? Same thing for all the other songs, Axl would get credit for songs such as "Brownstone" [written by Slash and Izzy] and "It's So Easy" [written by Duff and West Arkeen], even though he didn't write anything on them, and the other guys [who didn't write also got credit] too.? So why not me?? So Axl gave me a portion of his [to compensate for not being included], and my name was put beside the rest of theirs [in the writing credits] and that was that.? But now they've screwed me out of those royalties and my other ones too.? Two fucking albums that I played on are still selling and they're collecting money from them, and I'm not.? Guns N Roses T shirts with my face on them are still selling, and they're collecting money from them, and I'm not.? That's what they did to me, people I thought were my friends took it all away and said goodbye as if I never existed.? Fuck that!? That's why I sue them, and I'm confident the jury will see it my way.

--Steven Adler, 1991 press release on his lawsuit against Guns N Roses.


[After the trial, in which the jury voted in Steven's favor] The jury members were giving me hugs and telling me how sorry they were, because they could see what these guys did to me was wrong.

--Steven Adler, VH-1 Special "The Secret History of Rock n Roll"


I knew it was the beginning of the end when Steven was legally voted out of the band for doing drugs.? This from a band that spent five years doing groupies and acting like idiots!

---Izzy Stradlin, 1993


When Axl began to gain some money and to get laid, he wasn't controllable any more.? Then I saw Steven, Slash and Duff literally killing themselves before my eyes.? I don't even know any more if Steven was still in the group in fact: what was that bullshit anyway?? A musician is fired from Guns N' Roses because he's on drugs while the group spent all of their time on drugs?

I did the [1993] shows and I didn't enjoy myself a lot because Duff and Slash were always still wasted.

--Izzy Stradlin, Hard Rock magazine, June 2001


Even Slash implied that Steven's termination was a big mistake...

[Guns N Roses] already went wrong when original drummer Steven Adler was kicked out of the band.  Because Steven was gone, Izzy also [eventually] left.  But we had a whole tour planned so we kept the whole thing going.  When it was time to record a new album, though, we missed those guys a lot [Izzy did not play much on the UYI albums].  Look, nothing was right about our little band, but we were very successful.  Without Steven and Izzy, though, it really turned into Axl's trip.

--Slash, Aloha magazine, June 8, 2004

maybe he was the scapegoat for the other members problems, its possible.

"We turned him onto drugs? My f?!king ass!" Slash say about Adler's allegation. "That's so pathetic. Steven is scared to death of me. If he sees me in public, he just turns into a grovelling heap of defeatism. He just doesn't know what to say. He mumbles. I ask him a straightforward question, 'What's your motivation behind this?"' and he doesn't know what to say. Until now I haven't said a word about Steven to the press. I haven't attacked him; I haven't insulted him. I felt sorry for him. I didn't want to hurt him. 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.

----

"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 magazine March 1992


AXL: The misconception is that we kicked him out for the hell of it, and that I was the dictator behind it. The truth is, I probably fought a little harder to keep him in the band, because I wasn't working with him on a daily basis like the other guys were. They grew tired of not being able to get their work done because Steven wasn't capable of it. I've read interviews where he's saying that he's straight. Most of the time he isn't. He's the type of person who wants everything handed to him, and he did get it handed to him. He got it handed to him from me. At one point, in order to keep this band together, it was necessary for me to give him a portion of my publishing rights. That was one of the biggest mistakes I've made in my life, but he threw such a fit, saying he wasn't going to stay in the band. We were worried about not being able to record our first album, so I did what I felt I had to do. In the long run I paid very extensively for keeping Steven in Guns N' Roses. I paid $1.5 million by giving him 15% of my publishing off of Appetite For Destruction. He didn't write one goddamn note, but he calls me a selfish dick! He's been able to live off of that money, buy a shitload of drugs and hire lawyers to sue me. If and when he loses the lawsuit he has against us, and he has to pay those lawyers, if he has any money left, it'll be the money that came from Guns N' Roses and myself. At this point I really don't care what happens to Steven Adler, because he's taken himself out of my life, out of my care and concern. I feel bad for him in ways, because he's a real damaged person, but he's making choices to keep himself in that damage. There's nothing we can do at this point. We took him to rehabs, we threatened his drug dealers, we helped him when he slashed his wrists. I even forgave him after he nearly killed my wife. I had to spend a night with her in an intensive-care unit because her heart had stopped thanks to Steven. She was hysterical, and he shot her up with a speedball. She had never done jack shit as far as drugs go, and he shoots her up with a mixture of heroin and cocaine? I kept myself from doing anything to him. I kept the man from being killed by members of her family. I saved him from having to go to court, because her mother wanted him held responsible for his actions. And the sonofabitch turns on me? I mean, yeah, I'm a difficult person to deal with, and I'm a pain in the ass to understand, and I've had my share of problems, but Steven benefited greatly from his involvement with me - more than I did from knowing him. Steven had a lot of fans, but he was a real pain in the ass. I need to keep him in my life for you? F?!k you!

RIP October 1992




/jarmo

Thta was pretty clear.........






Baby Slash//

I have never seen that article before where Axl speaks about Adler.? Damn that is quite blunt and to the point - my hopes of a reunion of the original five have just vanished. ? :'(

You had hopes for a reunion? Ha, I laugh in your face!

 :yes:

fucked up guitar players are easy to work around, thats why we have keith richards  :hihi:

fucked up drummers on the other hand are a pain in the ass because their timing is shitty, and a drummer is the heartbeat of a band. a guitarist with funky rhythm can sort of dance around a solid beat. dancing around a fucked up beat is just a clusterfuck.

Yes I did smart arse and I unless I am mistaken I am free to believe that.? So why dont you take your stupid comments and stick them where the sun dont shine.? ?:rant:

By the way how do you know that they wont ever reunite - are you a personal friend with any of the original five??? Didnt think so.? :hihi:

Oh, getting angry are we? All the members said that a reunion is out of the question, no matter how much money people gave them. Also Axl is happ with full control of the band and he is not going to give up something that he fought 19 years to achieve.

Really - well if you bother to read any of the articles, Steven and Slash both said that a reunion was not out of the question but they have issues that they have to work through with Axl.? And I am betting that if these two agreed to do a reunion, then Duff and Izzy would too. ? ;D

Monday, January 03, 2005 :smoking:

Steven was very traumatized by being thrown out of Guns and Roses. No matter what I am glad he is playing again. I saw him the first time he played with Slash and Gilby after many years of not playing out and he fucking rocked.

No matter what one artist thinks of another taking away their right and ability to perform their art is the cruelest most inappropriate behavior I can imagine.  Men have a particularly difficult time rebounding from this type of rejection, no matter how tough they think they are. Men also seem to have some difficulty believing the unbelievable and with Guns and Roses, the truth was always unfucking believable. Trauma makes it very difficult to communicate, Stevie will be all-right, he is a great drummer.

ALL of these Guns have wicked wicked tongues, they are not nice to each other, much less people that do not speak the mean streets language.  In the end no one could speak everything was so fucked up. It appears that after a brutal run of no communication abilities, civility is trying to return to Rock N Roll. The lawsuit, it is necessary. It is a long way to the top after having the collective conscience put in the toilet by the ever encroaching forces of Hollywood.

I never thought much of Ax?s cruelty except I would like to change it. It seems it?s the bad boy formula (Mick Jagger, etc?) hopeless cause.  Girl wants to fix bad boy. Mother goose of Drug abuse would say Wise up, cannot be done... Wells been pissed in. Bad Boy wants to kill sweet girl, turns her into the wicked witch of the west, Amazing Dorothy, freaking amazing. Granma take me home....


 Keep smiling Peanut. We love you.

It was not Erin that Ax said Steven overdosed it was a chick named Angela. With any drug situation KNOWING is just the same as SPECUALTING.
That takes some balls, any one of them casting a stone at another, and believe it or not, that is what they do for sport.

 Steven was a sweet guy, drugs, will fuck anyone up and steal there dreams?. Music can take you back when you wise up enough to choose to be HAPPY? His driver is full of shit and they twist information in his head??. Pisses me off?.Some info for the boys...Something to think about..

Sorry, stupid question but who is the Dizzy poster above?  And why did he/you swear never to post again?

good call duffsgal!  : ok:

guess you got it there ursurper :hihi:

You know after reading all of this crap alder has gotten on with he should shut his trap and count his lucky stars that he was associated with 4 superstars.

They carried him on their coat tails for far too long,  gave him a ton of money and yet he still milking the G n' R name.This monkey didn't write a single note. Nevertheless,  he's been touring for the past couple of years nip picking at every penny he can get from the guns name. It would be the same thing if Mike Clink got a band together and tour playing G n' R songs.

Then there's the Axl situation. I mean how classy is Axl for giving him a share of his publishing rights.  And then this below average drummer turns around and sues the band for loyalities and such.  Seriously, how many people actually bought a t-shirt b/c cry-baby alder was on it.

I know for sure as hell I didn't.






 

Whatever Deadhorse - that band was five guys who completly rocked together.? They all contributed to Appetite either lyrical or musically and all deserved an even share of the profits. ? ?:rant:

i guess any drummer in the world would say that that the drumtrack is 25% of a song when it has two guitars a bass, vocals and drums.... i don't know...

yeah exactly, there's no difference in playing a guitar chord and doing a drum track with regards to music writing. adler  himself says he thought that if izzy wrote a song then it should have been  izzy, but if it was going to be everyone else then why not him. and to be honest, i do agree with him on that one.

as for all the other shit, yeah, drugs make you into a wanker basically, hopefully he's better now but basically each member is as bad as each other with regards to dragging each others name through the muck. it's understandable adler is pissed  off i suppose. izzy seems quite level headed about it though which is cool

I haven't seen this little piece posted here before and thought it would fit nicely in this thread.


Source: contactmusic.com (http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/former%20gnr%20star%20portrays%20rose%20as%20.insecure.)

he would knock what out of axl?

this guy really must still be on drugs

fuckin pathetic : ok:

Sounds you've been listening to Axl too much.? All you do is quote him.  you know nothing about what Steven wrote. 


....or Axl Rose using the GNR name playing old GNR songs.


Axl Rose, a classy guy who beats and rapes his wife and another girlfriend afterwards.? yep, that's classy.? ?::)

Besides, axl gave Steven a portion of his rights for songs Axl didn't write either.? As Steven said, Axl didn't write "Think About You" or "Brownstone".? So Axl got a healthy dose of writing royalties for songs he didn't write either, that's where Steven's portion came in.? Axl bitches about giving steven publishing credit when he got a shitload of it for writing nothing on some songs to begin with.? That's the pot calling the kettle black if you ask me.


Seems every member of gnr disagrees.? Slash, Duff, and Izzy all said what a mistake it was to fire Steven, and that Gnr went haywire without him.


I did.? And Steven has many fans who did too.? Don't speak for them.

This was a misquote. 

The entire quote is missing, and what Steven actually said with that last statement was something to the effect that he didn't know why Axl is the way he is, but if he could find it he would beat it out of him.  It wasn't meant as a "I'll kick Axl's ass" kind of comment.

Slash and Duff have said so many different things which is it?

one year kicking steven out was the right thing to do and they dont likehim for suing them

next year they are so sorry they kicked him out

next year they hate it

at least axl sticks to one thing

I bet Slash and Duff supported Kerry for president, they have a lot of flip flopping in common.

They felt they were doing the right thing at the time they fired him, now they realize it was a mistake.  Nothing wrong with that, it happens in life.  But I guess you've never done something you felt was right and realized in retrospect it wasn't. 

I just cant understand after all these years how he all of a sudden can change his tune, sure they were all on drugs or whatever but they claimed the man couldnt play drums at all.

You make decisions, you live with it for better or worse.

I've made a lot of wrong turns in my life but i can honestly say i dont regret any of it, whatever mistakes ive made have shaped me into the person i am today and i am more than ok with that.

I refuse to live in hindsight and refuse to think of woulda,shoulda,coulda's when it comes to my life.  The things ive done happened for a reason, they moved me from station to station in life leaving me valuable life lessons that will continue to help me and get me through.

So, no i have no regrets about anything ive ever done in my life. : ok:

Maybe he couldn't, but if they had known that firing Steven would be the beginning of the end of Guns N Roses (which it was), they would've treated the situation differently, no matter how that would've been.  Maybe they would've waited for Steven longer, maybe they would've taken him out of the city where he had loads of drug dealers.  But whatever they could've done, that's what they realize they should've done because maybe Guns N Roses would not have gone to hell so quickly.

I dont agree with that though.

i dont think the firing of steven was the beginning of the end of GNR.

The end of GNR was Axl's ego getting out of control, coupled with Duff and Slash's intoxications.

I read somewhere that Axl had the vision of what he wanted GNR to be from the beginning and slowly transformed it into that, *epic ballads,horn players etc etc*

I dont think Steven one way or the other wouldve influenced the outcome as to what is taking place today.
If Slash and Duff couldnt prevent it, i really dont see what Steven couldve done about it.

Steven said that after they kicked him out, he was trying to kill himself which led to the stroke but who is to say that wouldnt have happened anyway?

Its not like he was sober and started doing those things after they kicked him out.

I remember Def Leppard kicked out one of their original guitarist for pretty much the same reasons, he was so messed up he couldnt carry his weight and a lot of other bands had similiar scenarios.

actually slash built the band up re: the dancers and so on. it's in an interview with Axl in RIP mag in 92 so before any real nastiness sprung up. axl talks about how it's unbelievable what slash did with the band or something to that effect.

i suppose if you don't believe axl then you could say he's lying, but i'm fairly sure it's true. what i imagine is that slash got in dancers and shit, then decided he wanted to just "rock" and got sick of it so blamed axl when axl liked it all and decided to try keep it

slash went off and did snakepit...which i'm glad as hell axl DID reject 'cos it ain't nowhere near what GNR could/should/were doing. it's not bad, but imagine if it were a GNR album

Without Steven and Izzy, it really became Axl's trip.

Slash made that statement last year,

Steven and especially Izzy were the two that kept the other guys grounded, especially Axl.  So Steven's firing was one thing that caused Izzy to quit, which in turn led to nobody being able to control Axl's ego and nodoby to control Slash and Duff for their drugs/alcohol.  So steven was indeed the first straw.

thats a valid point but i just believe it was inevitable. I think Axl wouldve became this way regardless.  I think he had a grand vision all along

had slash and duff followed axl's vision, they would still be in the group.  I think Axl is a personality that no one can control.

Axl was acting that way long before Izzy quit which is what led to Izzy quitting in the first place.

Let me list one point. By 1990 Steven was so addicted to cocaine and heroine that his was was beginning to turn pink and fat, just look at the Farm Aid photos and you will see for yourself. Dont defend him, it was his choice to do the drugs. He was so addicted there was no turning back. Oh and Steven also tried to kill himself in 1999 by overdosing on sleeping pills and some other shit. Oh yeah he surely is better off now  ::)

While Adler was always the best drummer for the old band and the loss of him certainly a blow, it was by no means the death of Guns N' Roses.

If you want to wittle it down to any single member's departure in regards to the demise of the old lineup, it was Izzy. 

The band was still able to do the Illusion albums with Stradlin' at least half-heartedly involved, and Sorum on drums.  But they were runnin' on fumes mid-way through the tour...

You could at least try and spell me name right numbnuts.  :hihi:

I agree with this post . Steve leaving was the end of an era of sorts, Matt coming in did change the sound of the band quite dramatically..

However, I believe the real 'shift in power' if you will, occured when Izzy left the band - he was such a vital cog that the band seemed to be merely obliging duties thereafter and their demise after the world tour was somewhat inevitavble.

I think that most bands will rotate members at some point, or members will leave.  Steven happened to be the first to go.  It wasn't necessarily right or fair.  But it happened the way it happened.  When you're abandoned like that, you learn some hard lessons.  I'm sure Steven has accepted what happened to him and come to terms with it.  Who knows, maybe he would've left anyway if he hadn't been kicked out.  Everyone else left, after all.

I just found the EXACT quote of Steven's that contained the "I'd knock it out of him" comment.  Read and you'll see how much Steven was misquoted...

"God bless Axl if he puts a record out, and when he plays live you?re gonna hear those songs because he?s so down on that time in his life.  Why I don?t know and I wish I could knock it out of him..."

ok that sounds cool! : ok:

if steven had never have been kicked out of Guns maybe theyd still be together today or maybe steven would be in VR insead of matt. I do however think that had seteven never left, the illusions would have sounded alittle more like appetite because thats what his style of drumming was.

Been getting boring over at Steven's fansite Dizzy?

Sorry but have to disagree with you there.? Had Steven not been fired then Izzy would not have left the band, he always said that he felt Stevies firing was unjust and after that hapening was when the problems started.? ??

With the benefit of hindsite, Izzy may very well feel that Steven being fired was yet another good argument for his leaving Guns N' Roses.

However it really isn't the reason why he left initially.