Steven Adler says his former Guns n’Roses bandmates Slash and Duff McKagan don’t believe he’s stopped drinking.
The drummer’s drugs problems saw him kicked out of the band in 1990, and he’s struggled with addiction issues ever since. In 2013 he put his solo band on hiatus while he returned to rehab to “continue working on his sobriety.”
Adler tells Eddie Trunk: “Duff doesn’t think I’m cool – this is what people tell me. And Slash doesn’t believe that I have 21 months sober.
“They forget that, at one time in their lives, they were doing drugs, drinking and fucking up. They forget they were like that too.
“Duff has got 20 years sober or more. Slash has got 11 or 12, and I’ve got a year, nine months and 21 days.
“Everybody gets it at a different time. I’m just thankful I got it.”
He believes McKagan formed a negative opinion after inviting the Adler band to share a show in 2013, before he’d stopped drinking. “I made a beeline for the bar and I started doing shots of Jager,” the drummer recalls.
“The whole trip I was sick, and just a mess. Duff’s very sober, very judgemental and forgetful of where he came from. He was so bummed and pissed at me.
“The shows went all right, but everything else – I ruined it and gave him the excuse to say, ‘He’s not cool and he’s not that good.’”
He continues: “I stopped doing that. They stopped doing that. Just because they stopped before I did doesn’t make them any better.”
Rumours of a classic-era Guns n’Roses reunion resurfaced recently when guitarist Slash revealed he’d settled his differences with frontman Axl Rose, and that the pair were “cool” again.
But Adler says he knows nothing about it, adding: “Even if it was happening I don’t think Slash would tell me. He knows how excited I get, and that I’d probably say something before I should. I’d be the last one to know.”
