“It Was Really Hard” — Axl Rose Shares the First Time He Met Slash After 15 Years and How Many Hours It Took to Resolve a Vendetta

For years, it was the reunion rock fans thought they’d never see. The fierce fallout between Axl Rose and Slash — two of the most iconic figures in music — had become legendary, symbolizing both the brilliance and volatility of Guns N’ Roses. But after 15 years of silence, the once-feuding bandmates finally sat down to talk, and as Axl reveals, it wasn’t easy — but it was worth every second.

“It was really hard,” Axl confessed. “When we finally sat down, there was this silence that felt like the weight of every year we hadn’t spoken. Fifteen years of stuff just hanging there.”

The Call That Changed Everything

The reconciliation didn’t happen overnight. It began in 2015 with what Axl calls “a call I almost didn’t make.”

“A mutual friend kept saying, ‘You’ve got to talk to him. You don’t have to be friends — just talk,’” Axl explained. “I didn’t want to. I thought too much damage had been done. But eventually, I picked up the phone.”

What was supposed to be a brief, cautious exchange turned into a two-hour conversation that began thawing years of tension. “We didn’t even talk about the band at first,” Axl said. “We just talked like people — about life, about everything we’d been through. It was awkward, but it was real.”

That call led to something fans had long stopped hoping for — a face-to-face meeting that would change rock history.

“We Talked for Five Hours”

Weeks later, Axl and Slash met privately at a house in Los Angeles. Neither knew what to expect.

“We just sat there for a minute — didn’t even know where to start,” Axl recalled. “Then he cracked a joke, and that was it. The ice broke.”

What followed was five hours of conversation — raw, emotional, and unexpectedly healing. They revisited their earliest days as struggling musicians in Los Angeles, the rise of Appetite for Destruction, and the eventual breakdown that tore their friendship apart.

“There was anger, sure,” Axl admitted, “but mostly sadness — because we’d wasted so much time.”

By the end of the night, something shifted.

“We didn’t fix everything,” he said. “But we remembered why we started this in the first place — the music.”

Reunion and Redemption

That emotional reunion laid the foundation for the band’s long-awaited Not in This Lifetime… tour — a global phenomenon that brought Axl, Slash, and bassist Duff McKagan back together for the first time since 1993.

The tour went on to become one of the highest-grossing in history, earning more than $500 million and reintroducing a new generation to the band’s timeless sound.

“Playing next to him again felt like coming home,” Axl said. “We’d fought like brothers — and in a weird way, it made the music stronger.”

For fans, the sight of Rose and Slash sharing a stage again was more than nostalgia — it was proof that even the deepest fractures can heal.

“You Can’t Rewrite the Past — But You Can Play Through It”

When asked whether he regrets the 15 years of silence between them, Axl didn’t hesitate.

“Yeah, it hurts to think about all that time we lost,” he admitted. “But if we’d met sooner, maybe it wouldn’t have worked. We needed to grow up separately before we could come back together.”

He now describes their relationship as “solid, honest, and built on respect.”

“Slash will always be Slash,” Axl said with a grin. “And that’s a good thing. I don’t want him any other way.”

Brotherhood Restored

The tension, the time apart, the missed years — all of it, Axl believes, was part of the journey that led them back to each other.

“We’re not pretending the past didn’t happen,” he concluded. “We just decided to play louder than the pain.”

And when the first notes of Sweet Child O’ Mine rang out on that reunion stage, it wasn’t just a concert — it was closure.

After five hours of honesty, 15 years of silence, and one unforgettable handshake, Axl Rose and Slash didn’t just reignite a band — they rediscovered a brotherhood that had been waiting all along, just behind the music.