Buckcherry singer Josh Todd said he never found out why Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash split the band they’d been working on together for about a month in 2002.

At the time, Buckcherry included just Todd and guitarist Keith Nelson, after lineup issues forced some changes. Slash invited the pair to join him, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a charity performance in Los Angeles.

"Everybody was talking about it in L.A. after we did it,” Todd told the Appetite for Distortion podcast. “There was this buzz going on. Keith and I got back to the rehearsal room a few days later … I was like, 'Man, that felt so good.' It felt like Buckcherry, but with really great players. He goes, 'Yeah, I totally feel the same way.' It was so nice to be in a band, because we had been band-less for probably a month at that point, or maybe longer.”

He recalled that Slash "was thinking the same thing, so we called him … ’Hey, man. Do you guys want to maybe write some songs and put together a band?' He was into it, so we became a band for, like, a month. We were in the rehearsal room writing songs, and we even got the point where we were taking management meetings to find a manager to manage it, and we were trying to come up with band names and all of it.”

Things changed quickly, though, Todd said. “All of a sudden, Slash came in and said he didn't want to do it,” he noted. “He pulled the plug without even letting anybody know. … That really kind of set me off. I didn't like that — I didn't like wasting my time and spinning my wheels and somebody kind of leading me on. I don't even care who it is, whether it was Joe Blow or Slash. It really irritated me, but it was what is.”

He added that Slash went on to form Velvet Revolver while a new version of Buckcherry recorded the 2005 album 15, leading him to reflect that “it was a win-win. It’s like everything was meant to be, but at the time, it was frustrating.” Asked why Slash had decided to end the project, Todd said he didn't know. "I think he had a different singer in mind, honestly," he explained. "What can you do with that? It is what it is, but it all worked out, so that's all that matters.”

Meanwhile, Slash looked back on getting sober in 2006 and how i changed his life for the better. “It was definitely not easy,” he told the BBC (via AntiMusic). “First, you have to come to terms with the fact that you're beyond repair. Your addictions or whatever have gotten to the point where you're not enjoying yourself and you're not really functional, and so on and so forth. And you have to have that clarity, which is hard. … What you want to do is try and have a different kind of existence and it just takes a lot of work to get there.”

He added that he "wouldn't be doing anything like what I have been doing for the last 13 years if I was still going like I was. I probably wouldn't be here, most likely.”

 

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