Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash offered his thoughts on his ex-bandmate, Guns singer Axl Rose, during an interview on Thursday morning (March 11th) at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Ontario as part of Canadian Music Week. According to the Toronto Sun, Slash was more complimentary toward Rose that he's been in the past during the interview, despite Rose lashing out at Slash as recently as last year in several online chats and interviews.

Slash said about Rose, "You have to attempt to understand him as a human being and where he's coming from. I see things very black and white. That's just me. And that doesn't necessarily mean that that's right. And he sees things in a very colorful kind of way, and I can't really knock it, 'cause that's just him. So I try not to sit there and say derogatory things about his personality, because it's his personality that makes him so f***ing great, and just difficult to deal with."

Slash left Guns N' Roses in 1996 and told us a while back why he finally found it too difficult to work with Rose: [ Click to listen if you have a backstage pass] "Something with Axl was very insecure and it just kept the band from sort of functioning properly. Although he was wanting to do things, I never to this day really understand exactly what he was getting at, and because it took so long to ever get anything done, I always attribute it to some sort of fear factor."

Slash also spoke in the interview about being sober for only three-and-a-half years despite having two sons aged five and seven. He said, "When Perla (Slash's wife) announced that she was pregnant, I was loaded on Oxycontin going to an Aerosmith gig, and I was out-of-my-mind high that night. And I was like, 'Okay, so now it's time to start taking care of this issue,' but I thought I could juggle it, which I did up until about three-and-a-half years ago."

He also spoke about the late Michael Jackson, for whom Slash laid down some guitar parts on the album Dangerous. Slash said, "When all that stuff happened in 2001 or whenever it was, he got all of those (accusations) and stuff, the one thing that Michael really wanted, and the one thing that made him happy, was he wanted everybody to like him. And so all of the sudden he was completely ostracized, pretty much by North America, for all these accusations (even) though he was acquitted, and it sort of just killed him."

Slash releases his self-titled solo album on April 6th.

Pink Floyd won an unexpected victory against record label EMI on March 11th when a British High Court judge ordered the company to stop selling downloads of individual tracks -- which specifically follows the band's agreement with EMI. The Associated Press reported that Floyd's lawyer Robert Howe had expressed to the court that the band had agreed to only sell "bundles" -- or their albums in their entirety because each work was a singular "seamless" piece. How defended the band's late '90s contract with EMI stating that in protected "the artistic integrity of the albums."

Judge Andrew Morritt ruled in favor of Floyd stating that the contract protected "the artistic integrity of the albums." He went on to say the EMI was "not entitled to exploit recordings by online distribution or by any other means other than the complete original album without Pink Floyd's consent."

He ordered that EMI must pay the band's legal costs, and will rule at a later date at how much the label will be forced to pay the band in damages. A second ruling on the band's royalty rate was made in private.

Violence and chaos broke out around Simon Bolivar Park in Bogota, Colombia on Wednesday night (March 10th) as hundreds of fans tried to crash Metallica's first concert in the South American country in 11 years. According to Colombia Reports, three people were stabbed, a policeman injured, and more than 50 people were arrested, while property was vandalized and destroyed.

A local radio report claimed that there were posts on Facebook before the show urging fans to crash the gig.

Heavy security blanketed the show itself, including 1,500 police officers, four tanks and several police trucks. Estimates of the paid crowd at the show varied between 20,000 and 70,000.

120 people were arrested when rioting broke out outside a Metallica concert in Santiago, Chile in January. Most of the arrests were made when hundreds of fans who did not have tickets attempted to force their way into the concert.