Guns N' Roses Fired Their Own Drummer in 1990 — While Slash and Izzy Were Still Using

Guns N' Roses fired their own drummer for doing drugs. While the rest of the band was still doing drugs. Every single word of that sentence is true. In 1990, the band that had sold thirty million copies of Appetite for Destruction — the best-selling debut album in American music history — handed Steven Adler his walking papers. The man whose drums were the heartbeat of Welcome to the Jungle, Sweet Child O' Mine, and Paradise City was out. Done. Gone. But here is what nobody talks about. Steven Adler did not arrive at heroin by accident. He arrived at heroin the same way he arrived at everything else in Guns N' Roses. He followed his gang. He followed Slash. He followed Izzy. He said it himself, in his own words: he started doing heroin because he wanted to be part of what his bandmates were doing. The first two hits made him the sickest he had ever been. The third time was the charm. In this video you will discover the full story. How Axl Rose stopped a concert mid-song in front of tens of thousands of people and publicly called out his own bandmates for their heroin use. How Steven was fired once, signed a contract promising to get clean, and was brought back — only to fall apart completely during the most important recording session of his career. How the Civil War drum track required twenty or thirty attempts from a man who was violently ill from withdrawal and opiate blockers given to him at the wrong moment by a doctor who got the protocol catastrophically wrong. You will learn what Izzy Stradlin said about replacing a drummer whose style was baked into the DNA of every song the band had ever written. What Slash said when the lawsuit settled for over two million dollars — a comment so cold it became one of the most quoted lines in the history of rock journalism. And what Steven Adler said when it was all over: that he was stunned. That they were a gang. That he had fought for these people in bars. That he had his dream taken away. The drums on Civil War are still there. Edited together from dozens of desperate attempts. A man trying one more time. The sound of everything falling apart, pressed into vinyl forever. This is not a story about excess. It is a story about belonging, and about what happens when the culture that created you decides you are no longer useful. #GunsNRoses #StevenAdler #RockHistory #AppetiteForDestruction #GNR #RockAndRoll #Slash #AxlRose #DrummerStory #CivilWar #RockDocumentary #BehindTheMusic #HardRock #80sRock #RockStories