Remember when Slash, the guitar hero for hard rock outfit Guns N' Roses, joined forces with Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, in the early 1990s? The pair collaborated on "Black or White" and "Give in to Me" for Jackson's 1991 album Dangerous. Former GN'R manager Doug Goldstein recently revealed that Axl Rose did not much care for the brief partnership, and it may have been one of the reasons the rock band dissolved.
According to Rolling Stone Brazil, via Consequence of Sound, Rose did not like the fact that Slash played a tribute concert with Jackson a few years after the collaboration. In multiple books about the GN'R frontman, including 2009's W.A.R.: The Unauthorized Biography of William Axl Rose, details about the singer's childhood were revealed, including the fact that he was molested during his youth.
"I told him not to do it because Axl was molested by his father when he was 2 and he believed the charges against Michael Jackson," Goldstein said, referring to the 1993 child abuse allegations against the pop singer. "So I asked Slash, 'How much are you receiving?' ... and he said, 'I'll just receive a big screen television.' When Axl found out Slash was going to play with Michael Jackson and that the payment was a big screen TV, he was devastated. He thought Slash would support him and be against all abuse. From Axl's point of view, that was the only problem. He could ignore the drugs and the alcohol, but never the child abuse."
Slash never apologized to Rose, which Goldstein thinks may be one step on the road to a reunion.
"I really believe that for how much I love the band, I'd be the manager to reunite them," he added. "I don't think anyone else could do it."
Jackson was never indicted for the first round of allegations. He settled financially with the victim's family out of court. The singer was acquitted in 2005 of charges stemming from a different incident.
