Former-Guns N' Roses manager Alan Niven revealed that he went to great lengths to prevent Axl Rose talking to the press by himself during the band's formative years. Metalheadzone.com transcribed Niven's recent chat on Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon, in which he explained, “Axl would talk about Axl more than he would talk about Guns N’ Roses. And in the early days, if you go back and look at this, I’d never let Axl do an interview on his own. I always made sure there was somebody with the band there — if not the entire band there — to keep the interviewer intimidated a little bit maybe. Y'know, try taking on four or five in one go if you want to be a wiseass.”
Niven, who managed the band from 1987 to 1991 explained, “I can see the artist’s point of view that it’s sometimes a pain in the ass to do the interviews. However, with that said, I think it’s incumbent on the management and the label and the artist to choose who you want to talk to and avoid the dummies, the wiseasses, the ‘gotcha’ guys, the snarky guys, and just brush them off and just talk to people who are going to give you an intelligent conversation.”
Slash told us a while back how his relationship with Axl disintegrated during the final years of the original Guns lineup: “His sort of M.O., as far as the band was concerned, over time got so exaggerated in the rock star sense or whatever and he became such a dictator and this and that and the other, that it was impossible for me to work with him, because I'm not the kind of person that takes orders, y'know””