The Real Reason Guns N' Roses' Original Guitarist Left The Band

So Tracii Guns went back to L.A. Guns, which has enjoyed a successful career if not mainstream success, and Guns N' Roses hired Slash as their new lead guitarist, a move that laid the foundations for their extreme mainstream success. Even Guns agrees that this difference made Guns N' Roses. In a 2017 interview with Ultimate Guitar, he talked about how important the Slash-Rose dynamic was: "I think the way Slash plays and his tonality with Axl's voice is way more compatible. When Axl and I play together, unless we're playing a straight up rock and roll ballad that's one thing but when I write heavy stuff, it's heavy... Had I been in the band, I don't think Guns N' Roses would have had the mass appeal." 

Still, he felt it was a bit much to call the band Guns N' Roses without the Guns, even if the name sounded cool. When he first left the band, Guns asked them to change the name. Izzy simply said "It's just a band name." And that was that.

He doesn't seem to have any animus towards the band however. "I think I'm more proud of it than anything," he told The Quietus and while it would be nice to have some more money to raise his son, he wasn't going to go about raising a fuss against a band he was with only for a few months before they actually released anything.