There’s no denying that Guns N’ Roses manager Alan Niven had his work cut out for him with the antics of Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler during their wildest days. Now, in a new interview, Niven revealed that he actually paid big bucks to have nothing more to do with Rose after the frontman fired him in 1991.
“Did I see it coming? No. Was I surprised? No,” Niven said regarding the phone call from Rose in an interview with Louder Sound published on July 13. “It would have been classy to have had dinner and agreed to go our separate ways, acknowledged with honor what we achieved together, but Axl is Axl. Thank God he gave himself to rock’n’roll and he’s not a despot running a country.”
He continued, “I paid millions to get Axl out of my life. And here’s how: I had a 17 percent commission in perpetuity. That means that anything released, mastered or negotiated during the term of my contract was commissionable forever.”
Niven added that his contract, which began in 1986, was renewed for three more years in 1989. However, his relationship with Rose began to deteriorate and Niven was let go in ‘91.
“At the time it was renewed I was offered a raise to 20 percent. I turned it down. Axl fired me in ’91. That means that the sales of Appetite for Destruction, Lies and Use Your Illusion were all commissionable – forever,” Niven explained. “To get Axl out of my life, I sold those rights back to the band for $3.5 million. I did not want to deal with him again. Now that’s a decent chunk of change, but Geffen [Records] had only paid royalties on about five million albums total at that time. Imagine how much I had still coming.”
He concluded by saying that the settlement was “not anywhere close” to what he was truly owed, but “that’s how burnt out and disillusioned” he was by then.
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