By Josh 
Guns N’ Roses were always a band on the brink of self-destruction. Their meteoric rise in the late ’80s was fueled by raw talent, reckless energy, and an unfiltered rock-and-roll attitude. But as their fame skyrocketed, so did the excess, and the cracks started showing long before Use Your Illusion turned into the sprawling double album that signaled their decline.
The first real casualty of GNR’s internal chaos was drummer Steven Adler. He was the heartbeat of Appetite for Destruction, his loose, swaggering groove giving tracks like Rocket Queen and Paradise City their unmistakable feel. But his heroin addiction made him unreliable in the studio, and by the time the band started recording Use Your Illusion, he was barely able to function behind the kit.
Axl Rose, despite the band’s own indulgences, was firm about cutting him loose:
“He just couldn’t leave his drugs, but there are other things besides the band that he was involved in with his drugs that are very dangerous and scary, so I want nothing to do with him.”
With Adler gone, the band lost more than just a drummer. His replacement, Matt Sorum, was technically solid and helped polish Use Your Illusion into the more refined (if bloated) project it became. But that swing, that natural looseness that made Appetite so iconic, was gone.
Adler’s firing was just the beginning. Over the next few years, Guns N’ Roses unraveled completely—Slash, Duff McKagan, and Izzy Stradlin all left, leaving Axl as the last man standing. By the time the dust settled, the band that took over the world in the late ’80s was unrecognizable. And for many fans, the magic had disappeared the moment Adler was shown the door.