Guns N' Roses: The Phone Call That Reunited Axl Rose and Slash After 19 Years

For nearly two decades, Axl Rose and Slash were rock music's most publicly bitter former partners. Slash left Guns N' Roses in 1996, a departure that Axl Rose confirmed through a formal one-page fax sent to MTV News. The distance between the two rock legends was on full display in 2012 when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Slash, Duff McKagan, Steven Adler, and Matt Sorum attended the ceremony, but Axl Rose submitted a letter declining the induction. However, behind the scenes, a thaw was beginning. In 2012, Axl Rose confided in Ricky Warwick of Thin Lizzy that he wasn't completely ruling out a reunion. By the summer of 2015, formal conversations were underway between the lawyers and business managers of Axl, Slash, and Duff. The true turning point, however, came down to a single, unexpected moment. As reunion discussions grew serious, Axl Rose asked his manager, Fernando Lebeis, for Slash's personal phone number. Rose made the call himself, reaching Slash while he was on tour in Peru in 2015. Slash later described the conversation as cathartic, noting that the unbreakable bond they shared as musicians was exactly what had made their years apart so difficult This single phone call paved the way for the historic Not in This Lifetime tour, which launched in April 2016 and featured Axl, Slash, and Duff performing together for the first time in over twenty years. The tour became one of the highest-grossing of the decade. Even in a 2026 interview, Slash admitted that he had no initial inclination that rejoining the band was ever in the cards. Discover the real, documented history of how rock's most damaged relationship was repaired—not by lawyers or managers, but by one man asking for a phone number, and the other picking up. #GunsNRoses #AxlRose #Slash #GNRReunion #RockHistory #NotInThisLifetime #MusicDocumentary #GNR2015 #GunsNRosesHistory #ClassicRock