on the Slash/Axl thing....in the end, creative differences. Period.
FROM CHINESE WHISPERS...some funny shit in here:

"But there was a point there where Axl goes: 'I'm gonna do a solo record, and I'm gonna get Trent Reznor and Dave Navarro, and the drummer from Nirvana...' and so on. And it's like, he doesn't even know half of these people. He's just pulling them out of the sky. And I was like, 'Cool! Do your thing. That way you'll get it out of your system, and when you get back we'll just be Guns N' Roses.'" (Slash, Metal Hammer, 11/95)

"At one point he said he was gonna a solo project, then he decided his solo-project he could do with Guns, which I was like, after doing all those videos and this and that and the other, I was like: "No". [laughs] No, I don't wanna get involved in any kind of Stephanie Seymour ballads or any of that shit." (Slash, Canadian Radio, 04/20/95)

"Aftonbladet: You, Duff McKagan, Gilby Clarke... The most people in the band have made records outside Guns. Isn't Axl going to do a solo-record soon?
Slash: Axl thinks that Guns is his solo-project." (Slash, Aftonbladet, 04/02/95)
 
Snakepit - Rejected!

In early '94, Slash met with Axl on the demo songs that would eventually surface as Snakepit songs.

"I started hanging out with Matt and recording demos of that stuff just for fun, and Mike Inez from Alice in Chains and Gilby started to come around and play with us. The three of us just got into a groove of jamming and recording every night. We didn't know what it was going to be. At some point I played it for Axl, who took a pronounced disinterest in it." (Slash, Autobiography)

"On the first Snakepit-record I used some ideas which were really planned for the next GN'R-record, but Axl and I disagreed on the future direction of the band. I played Axl a demo with some of my ideas for songs, and all he said was: "I don't feel like playing this kind of music." I answered: "But this could be a excellent Gunner-record, hundred percent in GN'R style." He didn't really care 'cause he only wanted to play industrial and Pearl Jam-sounding crap." (Slash, 'Rock Hard' Magazine, 03/00)

"The Snakepit album could have been the new GNR album, but Axl didn't think it was good enough." (Matt, 1996)

"Kerrang!: How's the next GN'R album progressing?
Gilby: "There is no 'next GN'R album'!"

K!: EVER?!
G: "I don't know about ever. For now. We started working on one, and it got canned."

K!: How come?
G: Well, it's an Axl thing. He just wasn't into what we were doing, so he's kind of rethinking what he wants to do. He just kind of threw a wrench into everything that me, Slash and Matt had worked to. And then Duff came in. Duff and Axl have an idea what the album should be, and the rest of us have another idea." (Gilby, Kerrang, 05/24/94)

"What people don't know is, the [Slash's] Snakepit album, that is the Guns N' Roses album. I just wouldn't do it. [...] Duff walked out on it, and I walked out on it, because I wasn't allowed to be any part of it. It's like, 'No, you do this, that's how it is.'" (Axl, MTV, 11/08/99)

"I didn’t walk till several months after having 3-4-hour phone conversations nearly every day with Slash, trying to reach a compromise. I was specifically told no lyrics, no melodies, no changes to anything and to sing what I was told or fuck off." (Axl, MyGNR, 12/14/08)