During an appearance on Riki Rachtman’s Cathouse Hollywood Podcast, guitarist Gilby Clarke looked back on his time in Guns N’ Roses, going from the day he found out he was in the group to ultimately parting ways with the guys.
He said:
“On MTV News, that’s the first thing that I found out…
“I’m not a nervous person, but there were so many things I was thinking of. I mean, the reality of what I was thinking of was, ‘I got to learn 50 songs in a week and play an arena show with these guys. Next Monday is my first show with them, I got to learn 50 songs.’
“And by the way, I didn’t rehearse with them, they just said, ‘Learn the catalog’ and left with me with that. It wasn’t, like, ‘Learn the setlist,’ which would be 25 songs. No, ‘Learn 50 songs.’
“That’s what I was thinking of, and I wasn’t nervous, I was just thinking, like, ‘If I want this gig, this is what I have to do to get it.'”
The guitarist added:
“The Guns guys from back then – it wasn’t one of those bands that really talked a lot amongst each other. Everybody was kind of in their own world. I mean, the band, besides Axl [Rose], hung out a lot together, but it’s not like I can go, ‘Hey, Slash, what do I wear tonight?’
“That’s not cool, it’s just not cool. So, it’s just things like that, that was the stuff that was on my mind. ‘What do I wear tonight?’.
“These guys have already been out for a couple of months, you know, and the ‘Illusion’ record was just coming out but, you know, I didn’t have enough guitars, I really only had four guitars to my name. Slash probably had 20 on the road with him.”