HOLDING DOWN THE FORT

What does it take to be in Guns N'Roses for 23 years and counting? Let's just say that for Richard Fortus, it requires tone mastery, the ability to mesh with his legendary gunslinger partner and a highly desirable signature Gretsch

- ANDREW DALY

AFTER SLASH AND Duff McKagan exited Guns N' Roses in the mid-Nineties, things went kinda sideways for a bit. The band kept rolling, but it was host to a cavalcade of guitar players, from Buckethead to Paul Tobias to Robin Finck to DJ Ashba to Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal.

As you can imagine, all that change did not give rise to new music. It's not that Axl Rose wasn't writing tunes; it's just that honing them proved... difficult. But things shifted for the better - on the guitar side, at least - when Richard Fortus, who at the time was touring with Enrique Iglesias, was drafted into Guns in 2002. Fortus brought immediate stability to a situation that was anything but stable.

Twenty-three years later, GN'R is still wreaking havoc on a stadium stage near you, but things are very different. "It seems to me that we're much more unified," Fortus says today - but that shift only came after Slash and McKagan reentered Guns' orbit in 2016.

"When I first came into the band, it was split into factions," Fortus says. "There was Buckethead, Brain [Bryan Mantia, drums] and Chris Pitman [keyboards/bass] as one little faction. And then there was myself, Tommy Stinson [bass], Robin [Finck] and Dizzy [Reed, keyboards]. That was another faction. And there was Axl, a faction unto himself. [Laughs] It was a different feeling to the band, but now everything feels solidified."