Tracii Guns Offers Hilarious Insight on L.A. Guns Legal Battle

I highly recommend you give L.A. Guns founder and namesake Tracii Guns a Twitter follow even if you were never a fan of the band. The dude posts vicious political takedowns on the regular, and he’s got a surprisingly self-aware sense of humor about himself and his band.

It’s that last topic that’s the subject of today’s headline, because truly, how many people are that invested in the lawsuit between warring factions of L.A. Guns (two of them run this website)? Guns is well aware of the absurdity of the whole thing in the grand scheme of bands people actually give a shit about, and you gotta love the guy for taking a self-deprecating shot at himself.

Speaking to Sonic Perspectives, Guns elaborated on the legal battle between he and former bandmate Steve Riley, who now has the rights to tour under the Riley’s L.A. Guns moniker as a result of a settlement. He explained:

“I will never understand why a professional musician would choose to use someone else’s name other than their own. It’s so humiliating. It would essentially be like me going out and using the name Guns N’ Roses. [Laughs] To take something that someone else created for a very minimal gain. You are completely selling your soul. It was so expensive, boring and a waste of time and energy to end up with what was mine.”

But it’s the next part that makes me wanna hug the guy. Tracii went on to say that Riley is “locked into” using the name Riley’s L.A. Guns for his new band, elaborating:

“That’s how the license works. He can’t do anything else. The running joke in our camp is, you pull into a truck stop, and someone asks, are you musicians, and what band are you in? You respond, ‘L.A. Guns’ and they go, ‘Okay. Whatever.’ [Laughs]. A least we have closure.”

At least the guy’s honest, ya know?

L.A. Guns will release a live album, Cocked and Loaded Live, on July 9 on Frontiers Music Srl. Pre-order it here and stream “Malaria” from the effort below.