“I think it was a hostile take-over. I think Phil (Lewis) and Tracii (Guns) wanted control of the band.”
— Kelly Nickels on his former band L.A. Guns
June 8th 2026 — Rock bassist Kelly Nickels was a recent guest on the Hair Metal Guru podcast and the French native who grew up in New York City shares plenty about his history in music.
Nickels talks about time in Sweet Pain, moving to L.A. and his life changing motorcycle accident which ultimately saw him lose his gig in Faster Pussycat… but it simultaneously resulted in him landing a spot in L.A. Guns.
Nickels also talks about what he did outside of music over the years and eventually the L.A. Guns off-shoot project Riley’s L.A. Guns that he did with the late Steve Riley.
The Guru asks if he got along with the other members of L.A. Guns to which Nickels says: “Yeah, we never had a problem man. We had a couple little issues here n’ there, but we never had a steady problem. I always felt like Tracii gave me a chance, you know… without that phone call who knows, I would have missed it all.”
Nickels continues: “At least I got a great experience. I got to see the world like I always wanted to and met some cool people… we all got along like really fairly well. I never thought there was an issue. We laughed a lot. We were a team, you know… we had cool crew guys that were with us for a long time. We were a good solid team.”
The band’s biggest hit song “The Ballad of Jayne” comes up and Nickels says: “You know it’s hard to say man, you don’t know which ones going to hit you know.”
There seems to have been some past scuttlebutt over who really wrote the song, and according to online searches about “The Ballad of Jayne“… it notes the song was primarily written by Kelly Nickels and Phil Lewis, though songwriting credits were officially shared by the entire band including; Tracii Guns, Mick Cripps and Steve Riley.
Nickels on L.A. Guns after drummer Steve Riley was no longer involved: “I knew it was going to fall apart once Steve was gone though,… I knew it was going to fall apart, cause these, you know these 2 knuckleheads (Tracii and Phil) ain’t going to keep this together”
Nickels adds: “I think it was a hostile take-over, I think Phil and Tracii wanted control of the band.”
Watch the full 90+ minute interview with Kelly Nickels on the Hair Metal Guru as seen below.
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