“Do you have what it takes to fill this spot?” was written on a piece of tape there on the floor of North Hollywood’s Third Encore Studios. The tape was in the spot in Guns N’ Roses’ backline where Izzy Stradlin’s guitar amplifier had once been.

That sums up the vibe in the room that day in 1991, when Gilby Clarke brought his Les Paul and Marshall amp in to try out for GN’R’s vacant rhythm guitar slot, as Clarke recalled in our 2020 interview for a Guitar World feature on “The Spaghetti Incident?” and “Live Era ‘87 – ‘93,” the two albums Clarke appeared on during his three-year-stint with the world’s biggest and most dangerous band at the time.

Clarke, formerly of Hollywood bands Candy and Kill for Thrills, got the call around midnight from Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Slash to come in to audition that afternoon. To answer the question on that piece of tape, Clarke had what it took to land the juiciest guitar gig in rock, after Stradlin left the band early into the tour for GN’R’s twin “Use Your Illusion” albums launched.

Clarke’s tasty guitar playing, backing vocal skills, team attitude and classic rocker look made him perfect for GN’R. After learning 50 songs in just two weeks or so, Clarke toured the world with the band. He played guitar on 16 of the 22 tracks on concert double-LP “Live Era” – including “It’s So Easy,” “Nightrain,” “You Could Be Mine” and “Estranged.”

“I was never once told what to play and not to play. Ever,” Clarke told me in 2020 of his GN’R stint. “But I could always tell if it didn’t work. Slash would just look over like, ‘What the hell was that?’ [Laughs] You could tell if it caught his attention in a good way or in a bad way.”

Clarke also guitared on GN’R’s 1993 studio album “The Spaghetti Incident?”. The collection of punk covers was a clever 180 from the epic “Illusion” LPs. In ‘94, Clarke released his first solo album, “Pawnshop Guitars,” boosted by cameos from all his GN’R bandmates, including, on a rollicking cover of the Stones’ country rocker “Dead Flowers,” Rose.

When Slash launched his side-project Slash’s Snakepit — with songs Slash wrote for the next GN’R album but Rose rejected — Clarke was the rhythm guitarist on Snakepit’s ‘95 debut album, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.”

Alas, with Guns N’ Roses, Clarke soon found himself on the outside looking in. Rose wanted to take the band in a more modern sounding direction than the Aerosmith-inspired sleaze and majesty GN’R made their name and millions on.

In a story Clarke has told in many interviews over the years and recently retold in a new Guitar World Q&A, “I was never fired from Guns – my checks just stopped coming, and it was very odd. I don’t know… Axl just wanted to go in a different direction, and that was it.”

Things still worked out better than OK for Gilby Clarke. Since his GN’R days, he’s been part of latter-day lineups of legendary bands like Heart and the MC5. He’s also worked with classic-pop icon Nancy Sinatra.

In 2012, when Guns N’ Roses was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Clarke played with Slash, McKagan, “Appetite for Destruction”-era drummer Steven Adler and “Illusion”-era drummer Matt Sorum and Alter Bridge singer Myles Kennedy at the induction ceremony after Stradlin and Rose declined to attend.

Clarke playing that night with his former GN’R pals was gracious because he wasn’t being inducted, just the “AFD”-era members plus Sorum. Like many of the Rock Hall’s decisions, Clarke’s exclusion is dubious at best. Especially when considering how many non-peak-era members of bands like the Grateful Dead and Red Hot Chili Peppers were inducted.

Regardless, Clarke has always been all class when it comes to his time in — and out — of Guns N’ Roses. As he told me in 2020, “It was obviously Axl and Slash’s band, there’s no question about that,” Clarke protests. “But it still felt like a band – like Slash would ask me questions, ‘What do you think about this?’ and he listened. Same thing with Axl. I knew my place in the band and how long I’d been in it compared to everybody else… but it really felt like it was yours.”

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