Izzy Stradlin was offered ‘five figures’ for Guns N’ Roses reunion

As we saw in Billboard‘s boxscore recap last week, the Guns N’ Roses reunion was lucrative for everyone involved. Of course they weren’t going to get back together to not get paid. Steven Adler even got up and played at a handful of shows. Ultimately, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin was the only holdout, and while conventional wisdom said that he was an independent person that just kinda did whatever he wanted, in a tweet last week, Stradlin stated the only reason he didn’t participate was that they didn’t want to split the money. That’s admirable that he stuck to his guns (or didn’t – ha!), but a new report says that Stradlin was offered a pretty sizable amount of money. A ‘band insider” simply going by “MSL” clarified on a message board GNRtruth.com:

“We know Izzy was in rehearsals at one point and was negotiating to appear at a few of the April gigs. Equal pay was never discussed. A 5-figure fee per cameo is what was being negotiated. But there is a lot of room for negotiation on a 5-figure fee. 10k? 99k? Whatever it was, they were far apart and Izzy bailed. He doesn’t need their chump change and they don’t need to throw away a bunch of money on a guy that isn’t gonna sell many tix.”

That’s a lot of money either way, but as the post states, there’s a lot of disparity between $10,000 and $99,000. The April shows included the Troubadour warmup, and six other shows including a pair in Las Vegas, Mexico City and Coachella. Even on the low end, $70,000 for a handful of shows isn’t particularly chump change, and he stood to make far more than that if he actually did the dates. Ultimately, if the band do wind up touring more, they can always make it more special by doing it with him. Stay tuned.