SLASH On AXL ROSE’s Buenos Aires Freakout: “It Got So Blown Out Of Proportion”

Guns N’ Roses‘ recent gig in Buenos Aires got off to a rocky start when vocalist Axl Rose visibly lost his temper during the band’s opening number, “Welcome to the Jungle”. Guns N’ Roses later offered a fairly weak explanation of what happened, and now guitarist Slash is here to offer… more of the same.

In an interview with Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, Slash said the whole situation was blown out of proportion and that Rose’s reaction was because “something fucked up in Axl‘s mix where the only thing that he could hear was the drums.” Which again – technology glitches and hiccups are massively frustrating, but flipping a total shit and throwing a microphone at your drummer probably isn’t the best expression of that.

“Oh, that whole thing, God, it got so blown out of proportion,” said Slash. “Well, we all are on in-ears. So for monitors, instead of wedges on the stage, we use in-ear monitors. And so there was something fucked up in Axl‘s mix where the only thing that he could hear was the drums. And that was it. And it was the first song. So he’s trying to communicate that to the engineers and they don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

“And so it was one of those frantic moments trying to get it together at the beginning of the set. And that was it. And he was pointing out that it’s the drums; it’s not something else. Whatever your myriad of different things it possibly could be, it was the drums, and that’s what he was trying to convey.

Slash continued, noting that people might have misunderstood Rose‘s freakout as one directed at new drummer Isaac Carpenter. Which again, makes sense – Rose launched a mic at Carpenter: “But it got really blown out of proportion. Jesus. I guess people were thinking that it had something to do with Isaac because it was directed at the kit, but it wasn’t about Isaac.”