GN’R Drummer Reflects on Being Fired

Nearly 30 years after his was fired by his former Guns N’ Roses bandmates over his struggles with substance abuse, Steven Adler says his ousting was unfair.

While the drummer doesn’t deny his “addictive personality” got in the way of his role with the band, he says he was on the road to recovery when he was unceremoniously dumped in 1990 – and that made his addiction worse. “I could have got myself better, which I was doing before they fired me,” Adler says. “I could have got better or went over the edge. There’s two ways to go — up or down — and I went way down. It was heartbreaking. It was just too much. Overwhelming anxiety and depression, being thrown out like that.”

Still, Adler insists he’s not bitter that his time in the spotlight was cut short – even though he returned for a handful of performances in 1996 that went flawlessly. “I thought for sure that Axl [Rose] and Slash and Duff [McKagan] were gonna go, ‘We’ve gotta bring Steve in more often,’” he says. “But they didn’t. And that’s OK. Like Freddie Mercury said, ‘One year loved is better than a lifetime alone.'”

Did Adler get the shaft, or did his bandmates do the right thing?