Gilby Clarke missed out on lucrative dates with his former Guns N’ Roses bandmates because he couldn’t miss his daughter’s first Lollapalooza festival gig.
Clarke has revealed he was invited to join Slash, Axl Rose and Duff McKagan on the road when the trio decided to put the band back together in 2016, but he already had an important date on his calendar that he couldn’t scrub.
“When it first started, they did reach out to me to come and play,” Clarke told Eddie Trunk on his SiriusXM Trunk Nation show. “I’ve said that they did ask me before. I’ve never said why I didn’t do it.
“The real reason is, they asked me, but you know my daughter Frankie has a band (Frankie & the Studs)… and they (Guns N’ Roses bandmates) asked me the same day my daughter’s band was playing Lollapalooza, which was, like, the biggest break for her band and stuff. It was the same day they were playing Lollapalooza and I had to be there, and I couldn’t really give that up to go be the third guitar player in Guns N’ Roses.”
Clarke has no regrets but admits he was surprised by the reunion’s success: “I think we all expected great things,” he told Trunk. “I think we all thought that they were gonna sell out everywhere. But, to be honest, I didn’t think that it was gonna last this long and do this well. I definitely didn’t expect that.”
And he’s not averse to joining his old bandmates on tour in the future, adding, “I’m still cool with everybody. I have no ill feelings or anything… I have nothing against it (your). It’s just that didn’t work out for me (at that time).”
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