This is the first interview you've done in a long time. Why have you been so reluctant to do press now that the album is out?

Lots of reasons I've gone into elsewhere, but I can say why I'm doing this one. First, because in all this time it's one of the first actually formally presented: I was asked to consider it, I liked the questions and I felt it was a good time to address some of these issues publicly. Also, because it's my understanding that these answers may be "considered" for use with Billboard.com and Reuters [with which Billboard has a syndication deal] and this seemed like a wonderful opportunity to express myself accordingly.

With Reuters, I get their reach. That said, they've been particularly ugly toward me and this band for years, with nearly everything they've written being condescending or negatively judgmental with the cute little press trick of using negative adjectives across the board whenever they've written anything. In our regard they're one of the media outlets that appear to continually attempt to set a tone for a negative mainstream public perception regarding either us or myself, at least in the United States, if not the world.

I get freedom of the press, but I'm not clear in regard to their writers or those who choose to run their spin, why someone who no one's ever heard of with so little "real" information is deemed qualified -- let alone allowed so much corporate backing -- to promote negative and often completely inaccurate and purely opinion-based (at best, if that) shots in forums with so much exposure at the public's and our expense.

Billboard.com has generally taken a pro-Slash and -old Guns position as well, and I don't recall having been particularly negative toward them previously either. In my opinion it seems a bit less professional than tabloid in nature. This is an attempt to begin sorting these things out when more than shots across the bow have been taken by both of these organizations -- but obviously much more so with Reuters -- if not a deliberate public stating of both position and intention, in my opinion.