guitarists Zacky Vengeance and Synyster Gates were interviewed for the September 2011 issue of Guitar Worldmagazine .
A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Guitar World: Do you believe it was Mike's [Portnoy, ex-DREAM THEATER drummer who played on AVENGED SEVENFOLD's 2010 album"Nightmare" and toured with the band for the latter part of last year] intention to stay on with [AVENGED SEVENFOLD]?
Gates: I think he definitely wanted to. And it would have been really nice. He's a great guy and a great drummer, and we consider him family. But it's just… He's "Mike Portnoy." He's established. He makes a lot of money. More than we can really dish out, especially at this point. And my whole thing after Jimmy ["The Rev" Sullivan, AVENGED SEVENFOLD's late drummer] died was if we were ever going to do this, I wanted to give a young kid a chance. That would have been a dream come true, to breathe some new life from a death. And so this feels right. And unfortunately,Mike made some decisions that I don't know if he's super happy with at this point, and that weren't very conducive to his well being.
Source blabbermouth.net
Read full interview here
