During a recent interview with SiriusXM, guitarist Slash talked about Guns N’ Roses reunion, reconnecting with Axl Rose, saying (via Blabbermouth):
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“The most surreal moment was soundcheck at the Troubadour [in April 2016] – that was a very surreal moment. Way before we played the show and everything, just being together with everybody, being in that particular environment, of course stuffing 10 times more gear in there than we had back in the day.
“And then looking over and seeing Axl and seeing Duff, that was a very surreal moment. The rest of it seemed very, very new. I’m with a guy who was a partner in crime with me for many years before we had this, sort of, falling-out thing. And then, obviously, Duff. And we were up there playing these gigs.
“And I know these guys, I know these songs, but something about it was not really reminiscent of, say, the ‘Use Your Illusion’ tour. So it felt really fresh and new. It’s an interesting thing. It didn’t hit those tiny moments of, like, ‘Oh my God! I remember hitting this chord, and he was there back in 1991,’ or anything like that.”
The guitarist pointed out that the original Guns N’ Roses reunion plan was only doing five live shows, saying:
“That’s initially what it was gonna be. We didn’t have a big, long-term thing [planned]. Axl and I got together, and we talked for a while and so on, and we thought it would be cool to these Coachella dates, because we got offered to get back together and do Coachella every year for years, and we obviously didn’t do it [before].
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“So now that we were on good terms, it seemed like a good idea. So that was the basic focus – just to do those two shows and a couple of warm-up shows, so we did the Troubadour, one show in Vegas, in Mexico and the Coachella gigs
“And that went so well, and everything just fell back into place. So we said, ‘Okay, we’ll do this U.S. run that they’re offering us,’ and then everything just snowballed from there.”