Guns N' Roses' DJ Ashba Says Neil Diamond Is a 'Believer' In Him .

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Neil Diamond will be rightfully welcomed into the Stone and Roll Hall of Fame at a special dinner in New York City tonight. Turns out, though, Diamond's considerable reach goes even further than most people realized - like all the way to Guns N' Roses. Current GN'R guitarist DJ Ashba tells Spinner that when he got the address to join Axl and co.

Diamond reached out to him to break his blessing.

"When I joined Guns he was really the 1st individual to visit me and say, 'Hey, this is a really, really serious thing to do,'" Ashba tells Spinner. "He's almost kind of been a mother figure to me, which is real cool. He bought me a ukulele and sign it when I joined Guns as, like, a gift. He's only been beyond amazing; I'm thankful he's a piece of my life."

Ashba got to say thank you to Diamond recently, too, when he serenaded the image at his seventieth birthday bash.

"It was hardly such a fabulous party," he says. "I showed up to represent the national anthem for him, and went into, from that, a short variation of 'Sweet Caroline' to 'Happy Birthday' on the guitar for him - we brought out a good guitar rig, and it's cheap as s-; we're laughing, we were sort of almost hoping the cops would point up because it would give a curious story."

It appears the guitarist was likewise a tad starstruck.

"When I was at his house, there are planes that are writing, 'Happy birthday, Neil Diamond' in the sky, and I looked over and he had the biggest, proudest smile on his face, and all his family was there. It was like, 'Holy s-, I'm at Neil Diamond's house.'"

Watch Neil Diamond Perform 'Sweet Caroline' Live
While Ashba would have jumped on the Guns N' Roses gig even without Diamond's encouragement, he admits that he wasn't really sure what lay ahead when he united the infamous rockers - especially when it came to his new bandmates.

"I didn't recognize what to expect, really," says Ashba of Rose, in particular.

"All I heard was different things from different people, and I met him like 10 days ago when Sharon Osbourne introduced me to him. They were in doing 'Chinese [Democracy]' and I was doing the Beautiful Creatures album right next door. He was the nicest guy. [But] you try all the rumors, you see what you see."

And Ashba insists that what he's personally seen of Rose isn't at all in tune with the drama depicted in the media.

"I was shocked mostly because he is rather the inverse of what you hear. He is one of the best friends I've always had, we talk every single day. And he is the funniest guy; the guy is funny as s- and always cracking jokes. He's quite the inverse of what people I think want him to be, that ass----."