Not one to shirk from stirring the pot, when it came to recording "Sympathy for the Devil," he wasn't afraid to let everyone know just how it should be done, including telling bandmate Slash how he should be playing his guitar. In his autobiography, Slash recounts:
I was told that I needed to re-record my guitar solo so that it sounded more note for note like the Keith Richards' original. Now, that really pissed me off, most of all because the message reached me three times removed like we were playing a game of telephone.
Ryan McVay/Photodisc/Getty Images
Yep, people still played that back then.
Still unhappy with the outcome, Axl had his childhood buddy Paul Tobias play over the original solo Slash had recorded. While the tension between Axl and Slash had been growing for some time, this blatant jerk move prompted Slash to leave Guns N' Roses. And he wasn't the only casualty. Guitarist Gilby Clarke also figured out he was getting the boot in the wake of the song:
I knew that that was the ending, because nobody told me about it. Officially I was in the band at that time, and they did that song without me. That was one of the last straws for me, because nobody had said anything to me and they recorded a song by one of my favorite bands. It was pretty clear I'm a big Stones fan, and they recorded the song without me. So I knew that was it.
Charley Gallay/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
Don't worry: he ended up on VH1 also!
625 Comments