According to Alex Grossi, QUIET RIOT guitarist and agent for the BTE Inc. (Bigg Time Entertainment) booking agency, former GUNS N’ ROSES drummer Steven Adler has revived his ADLER’S APPETITE band and is planning to embark on a tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of GN’R’s classic debut album, “Appetite For Destruction”. He is expected to play the landmark LP in its entirety “plus other GN’R classics.”
In a February 2017 interview with the “One On One With Mitch Lafon” podcast, Adler said that he wasn’t interested in making any more albums with his namesake band (ADLER), which released an acclaimed debut album, “Back From The Dead”, in 2012. “Rock and roll doesn’t sell,” he said at the time. “Unless I get into a band that’s already established, there’s no point in doing it, dude. It’s such a pain in the ass to fly all over the world, and you play little clubs or bars… Dude, I am so tired of driving up to the gig and going… I have pair of dice in my hand and I go, ‘C’mon, seven. Let there be people here. C’mon!’ I walk in and I go, ‘Fuck! There’s twenty people.’ It’s not the same. So unless I get in an established band, there’s no point in doing it. There’s no money. And my whole goal is to play for as many people as possible. Don’t get me wrong — I love and appreciate playing for that one or ten or hundred people. I was thankful. But I wanna do it right.”
During a recent appearance on on “Mom, It’s Not Devil Music!”, Adler said that his “heart was so broken” after he was fired from GUNS N’ ROSES that he just “wanted to die.” Adler, who was kicked out of the group in 1990 over his drug use, spoke about his dismissal, saying: “One day you’re on top of the world, and the next day you’re a nobody.”
Adler said that, ironically, he was thrown out of the group while trying to kick his heroin habit. He recalled: “I didn’t realize that if you’re doing heroin and then you stop doing it, you get violently sick… it aches so bad and you just wanna die.” He added, “Four days go by, and [GUNS guitarist] Slash called and said, ‘Well, we’re going in the studio to record ‘Civil War’.’… So I go in at A&M Records to record, and I’m so weak and sick. And I did my best, but I had to play, like, 25 times. So they were getting frustrated. And I kept telling them, ‘I’m sick.’ And they kept saying, ‘No, you’re not. You’re just fucked up.’ And I said, ‘I’m not fucked up. I’m sick.’ And I got kicked out.”
Adler said that after he was fired, he “went from having a management, roadies, a band, agent, accountants — people all around me all the time — that I thought were my friends and had my back to literally, one day, I was all alone. I had nobody. I thought for sure I was gonna be one of those rock stars that, when they’re 27, they OD and die.”
After being fired, Adler resolved to clean himself up, but admitted, “My heart was so broken that I couldn’t even think about doing that. All I could think about was, ‘I just wanna die.'”
Adler published an autobiography in 2010, titled “My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, And Drugs, And Guns N’ Roses”, in which he delved into his depression, suicide attempts, drug-related heart attacks, and the debilitating stroke that left him with muscular paralysis and permanently slurred speech.
Although not part of the reunion that launched in 2016, Adler rejoined GUNS N’ ROSES at several shows on the band’s “Not In This Lifetime” tour, including three stops on the U.S. leg and one gig in Buenos Aires, Argentina, playing drums on “Out Ta Get Me” and “My Michelle”.