Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose has Activision with legal action for using GnR’s music in the Guitar Hero games, although he is “fine” with former guitarist Slash being involved with the series.

“Slash being in Guitar Hero is fine, but not when Activision in using ‘Jungle’ unauthorized,” said Rose in an NME interview – referring to the band’s 1987 hit ‘Welcome to the Jungle’.

The track appears as an unlockable bonus on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock – you get to play along with Slash after beating him on a level comprised of one of his own songs. Rose claims that although Slash has the rights to perform the song, Activision should not have included it – or “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” – in the game without his permission.

“I read about it as it moved along but Activision continually denied it right up to the release,” Rose told NME, “That’s some low life chicanery on all their parts.”

This is probably entirely unrelated, but Axl recently announced that the band’s latest album might be making an appearance on rival music game Rock Band II. Just sayin’.

via MCV

  • Josh

    NME didn’t interview Axl Rose, they like half the world media, reported on a chatroom discussion Axl had directly with fans last weekend. The quoted section comes from that chat, available at mygnr.com, not an NME interview.

  • rabia

    if your insinuation is that Axl just wants to promote Rock Band over Guitar Hero, thats simply false. whoever uses Guns songs, its profitable for Axl as he owns the GNR name and as these songs reach younger demographic through video games, their downloads increase too. Monetarily Axl can only gain from this situation.

    He’s right that Activision did not seek proper authorization and that is why he chose to speak. Also remember that this was a short comment in a much longer question and answer session he was doing on a GNR fan forum. Guitar Hero was certainly not a big focus in that chat at all.

  • Bruce

    So, according to the writer of this article Axl can’t do his own deals on work he owns, nor is he allowed to defend his past work without some snide closing remark.

    Genius. That’s why you’re a snotty writer, Toby.

Hot chat, right here!


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