Guns’n’Roses guitarist DJ Ashba had never seen anything negative about himself online – until he joined Axl Rose’s band.
He replaced Robin Finck in 2009 and remains a part of the lineup that’s said to be releasing new music next year. He’s previously told how Rose had decided that “If he shows up in the room, he has the gig.”
Ashba says in a Q&A session at GearFest in Indiana: “Even after I accepted and everything, I had no idea that the shoes I was stepping into were pretty hardcore.
“I’d never read a bad thing about me on the internet ever – it was like, ‘You’re not Slash. Fuck you!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh shit, this is a whole different thing.’
“That kind of blindsided me, because my head wasn’t even there. I was like, ‘I’m a fan of the band. I’m just trying to help keep that music alive.’”
He reflects: “I finally slowly won some of them over, so that’s good.”
And Ashba says he wasn’t focusing on being given the job when he auditioned. “Me and Axl are both from Indiana. I’d met him – when I was doing a Beautiful Creatures record they were next door doing Chinese Democracy.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll go down. I’d love to see Axl again and say hi.’ I didn’t even know I was getting the gig. I just wanted to say hi to everybody.”
Fellow guitarist Bumblefoot, whose position remains in doubt, this week discussed how he’d never felt settled in GnR.
