DJ Ashba Says Joining Guns N’ Roses Gave Him First Experience With Online Haters

For a lot of us, dealing with negative comments is just part of online life, and you never know when something you say or do will provoke an angry outburst from a stranger behind the safety of a keyboard. But guitarist DJ Ashba says he had no idea how negative the internet could be until he joined Guns N' Roses.

Speaking with attendees at this year's Sweetwater GearFest in Fort Wayne, Ind., Ashba — as captured in the video above — looked back on the days after he joined the GNR roster in 2009 and admitted, "Even after I accepted and everything, I had no idea that the shoes I was stepping into were pretty hardcore."

Obviously aware of the accomplishments of the classic Guns lineup, Ashba says he was nonetheless caught off guard by how vehemently opposed some fans were to the idea of anyone trying to pick up where an original member left off. "I’d never read a bad thing about me on the internet ever – it was like, ‘You’re not Slash. F--- you!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh s---, this is a whole different thing.' That kind of blindsided me, because my head wasn’t even there," he continues in the clip. "I was like, ‘I’m a fan of the band. I’m just trying to help keep that music alive.’"

But all's well that ends well for Ashba, whose low-key approach to the Guns gig started with an audition where he insists he didn't even know he was trying out and "just wanted to say hi to everybody." Now that he's been in the band for awhile, he says he's felt some of that early online hatred subside: "I finally slowly won some of them over, so that’s good."

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