AXL ROSE SAYS HE OR SLASH WOULD 'DIE' BEFORE REUNION

Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose says there is no chance for the original lineup to reunite unless he or ex-bandmate Slash dies.

The outspoken lead singer told Billboard magazine that the longstanding rift between the pair could not be healed, though he hinted at a possible tour for the current Guns N' Roses lineup.

"In regards to Slash," he said, "I read a desperate fan's message about, 'What if one of us were to die, and looking back I had the possibility of a reunion now'.

"My thoughts are, 'Yeah, and while you're at the show your baby accidentally kicks a candle and burns your house down, killing himself and the rest of your family.'

"Give me a f*****g break. What's clear is that one of the two of us will die before a reunion and however sad, ugly or unfortunate anyone views it, it is how it is. Those decisions were made a long time ago and reiterated year after year by one man."

He went on: "There are acts that, once committed between individuals, they are what they are. To add insult to injury almost day after day, lapsing into year after year, for more than a decade, is a nightmare.

"Anyone putting his own personal entertainment above everything else is sickening."

In reference to a possible Guns N' Roses tour following the release of the long-awaited Chinese Democracy last year, he answered: "No plans, but there's talk.

"Management and our promoters are really excited with the offers coming in both here and worldwide."

Green Day Album Debuts #1 On UK Charts

Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown has debuted #1 on the UK charts, knocking Bob Dylan's Together Through Life out of the top spot. The Green Day album just came out on Friday but two days of sales was enough to put it at #1 for the week.

Here's the top ten:

1. Green Day – '21st Century Breakdown'
2. Lily Allen – 'It's Not Me It's You'
3. Lady GaGa – 'The Fame'
4. Prodigy – 'Invaders Must Die'
5. Pink – 'Funhouse'
6. Maximo Park – 'Quicken The Heart'
7. Beyonce – 'I Am Sasha Fierce'
8. Bob Dylan – 'Together Through Life'
9. Jim Reeves – 'The Very Best Of'
10. Kings Of Leon – 'Only By The Night'

Velvet Revolver Bassist Duff McKagan Talks About Loaded, Economy

Plus, Duff talks about the search for a new VR singer and their "Zeppelinesque" new songs...

Ex-Guns N' Roses and current Velvet Revolver bassist Duff McKagan is busy with a pair of side gigs lately. One is his band Loaded. The other is a pair of financial columns for a Seattle paper and Playboy.com.

"If you're like me, you get kind of sick watching guys talk about market-to-market and aggregates and...'What the hell did you say to me?'," McKagan explains. "I actually know what they're saying, but I know that 99 percent of us don't. We're getting all this information, and people don't really understand what happened to our economy, why it failed, what the credit crunch actually meant, what predatory lending practices were."

"People ask me, 'Is now a good time to buy a house?' so, OK, I'll write about that. Or I'll get an email, 'Hey Duff, can you tell us about' this or that, then I'll write about those things. I just want to give people solid information so they can get some knowledge and get prepared for when this economy turns around."

Duff's band Loaded, which has been together since the 90's, is also set to release a new album, Sick, this Tuesday.

"We got together and these songs started coming, and we were having such a good time," McKagan says. "I was saving myself, really, and it worked. I didn't know if Loaded was going to be the thing to save me or not. I was just kind of swimming around, but this was so much fun, and [Sick] is one of the most inspired records I've been a part of."

McKagan also took a few moments to discuss Velvet Revolver's ongonig search for a new vocalist.

"We will find a singer at some point," he predicts. "We just have to find the guy. There's bee a couple guys I thought were perfect, but everybody's got to be 100 percent into it. We have an albums worth of material -- great, big, huge songs. Zepplinesque. Once we find the guy that can complement those and take it to another level, that'll take off. But I can't give any sort of timeline at all."

Velvet Revolver STILL Looking For Vocalist

Duff McKagan says VR dropped the guy they almost hired...

Velvet Revolver said not long agao that they were very close to naming their new lead singer. Unfortunately, things fell through.

"We thought we landed on the singer. We all did," Duff McKagan says. "We played with him and we said, ‘OK, we got our guy. He's great.'"

In the end, VR had second thoughts.

"Maybe if we would've got there and had gigs booked right then and there it would've been a different story," McKagan says. "But we didn't have gigs booked. We were given too much time and we were able to go, ‘Ah, fuck, I don't like that about the guy.' "

"When things got rough last year with Scott there was, not directly from Scott, such bullshit and drama surrounding the band," McKagan says. "I started really getting beat down."

McKagan says those tough times have affected the new vocalist search.