Former Guns N’ Roses manager Alan Niven has filed a lawsuit against the band to stop them from attempting to block the release of his new memoir, Sound N’ Fury: Rock N’ Roll Stories.
Sound N’ Fury was originally scheduled for a July 2025 release. It was delayed until September and is now scheduled for a March 31 release on Amazon. But in a lawsuit filed on Nov. 3 in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Niven claims that Guns N’ Roses — particularly frontman Axl Rose — have made threats to Niven and publisher ECW Press to thwart the release of the book.
Details of Alan Niven’s Lawsuit Against Guns N’ Roses
Niven — a music industry veteran who worked with Motley Crue in their early days and managed both Guns N’ Roses and Great White — summarized the contents of Sound N’ Fury and detailed the reasons for its delay in his lawsuit.
“Sound N’ Fury consists of anecdotes about [Niven’s] career, including distributing the first Sex Pistols singles in the U.S., cooking a dinner for guitarist Robert Fripp, going to bat for a scruffy musician named Frank Feranna (later known as Nikki Sixx) and reinventing Great White twice,” the complaint reads. “It also includes stories involving the members [of] GNR, while he represented the five individuals who made up the classic lineup of the band.”
It continues: “Now, however, due to GNR’s threats, Sound N’ Fury languishes in a warehouse. In a letter written in May 2025, GNR invoked the confidentiality clause in its 1991 buyout Agreement with Niven (the ‘Agreement’) and has blocked publication of the book through repeated threats to Niven and contact with ECW [Sound N’ Fury‘s publisher].”
The lawsuit says that “GNR takes this position despite the following facts (among others): the Agreement was not signed by all of its members (a material term); GNR’s members have commented publicly on Niven; one member encouraged him to write the book; and he has been speaking about his time in GNR for over a decade. Sound N’ Fury‘s publication has been delayed for months, even though it received a favorable review from the Los Angeles Times and has received many preorders.”
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Niven often butted heads with Rose during his tenure as GNR’s manager, which ended in 1991. “It was Axl’s battle to take complete control and most of the money. The more control he gained, the less they were productive and the worse the material got,” Niven writes in Sound N’ Fury. “Whatever, it’s all in the rear-view mirror.”
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