Slash Recalls Axl Rose's Tantrum Over Grandmother's Sofa
Rocker Slash had to treat his Guns N' Roses bandmate Axl Rose with "kid gloves" or risk the singer jumping out of moving vehicles. The guitarist learned early on that volatile Rose wasn't a fan of criticism - when he threw himself out of a car after Slash reprimanded him for being rude to his mother.
Rose was living with Slash in the mid-1980s and upset the guitarist's family after taking offense to a polite request to move off a sofa he had fallen asleep on.
Slash recalls, "One morning, I took off to work, and in the afternoon I guess he woke up and passed out on my grandmother's couch. I came home from work and my mom said, `You know, that guy Axl, I came home and he was asleep on the couch and grandma had nowhere to sit.' I told him he had to get up and whatnot, so he went downstairs.' I thought I had to confront this issue.
"So we got in the car and I very delicately put it that that was sort of rude. His reaction was to jump out of the car at about 35, 40 miles per hour on Santa Monica Boulevard. I realized what I'd said to him had offended him. So from that point on it was kids gloves (with Axl). He had a different way of looking at things."