Slash Is Holding Down The Fort

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By Brett Ratner

The Amplifier recently caught with Slash, the charismatic lead guitarist of Guns and Roses.

En route to Memphis to participate in the B.B. King 80th Birthday Bash, the top-hatted one paid a visit to the Gibson Custom Shop to help lay the groundwork for a hoped "Slash Model" Les Paul guitar. Seeming relaxed and at ease amongst the collection of six strings resting on stands near his feet, the 30 year-old musician greeted me with a firm handshake, a genuine smile and a thoughtful look in his eye. It soon was apparent from our conversation that selling millions of records hasn't softened his affection for as he puts it, "no bulls**t" rock and roll.

"As far as guitar playing is concerned stylewise, and that's why I'm here at Gibson going over guitars, because I don't want to change what originally seemed fine with me," Slash said. "It took from the time I was 15 all the way up until I was about 19 to really establish what I wanted in a guitar and a sound and on records and so on. I went through a lot of trial and error kind of situations to get there, so once I really established something I liked, I didn't want to change it. Even though technology has gone through a million changes since the first Appetite record, I'm trying to sort of hold down the fort on what originally I thought the quintessential rock and roll guitar sound was or even the rock and roll band, so to speak."

According to Slash, playing in Guns and Roses has, at times, put a strain on his musical direction.

"Axl and I haven't really seen eye to eye on musical direction for awhile," Slash said. "When I did Snakepit, that started a lot of heat because at one point he didn't want that to be Guns' material, he didn't want to do that kind of music anymore, and that's my style, that hasn't changed since the early days. When we were doing Use Your Illusion, we started to branch out into a lot of stuff that I didn't necessarily agree with, but for the band all to be happy, you've got to have individual influences so that people are going to branch out and expand in their styles. So that was fine, but it just got to a point where I had to go back to just a real simple rock and roll band, and I happened to be hanging out with all these guys that ended up making Snakepit, which I hadn't planned on, but I did play Axl the demos, and he wasn't into it, then we went into the studio and made a record and all of a sudden, he calls up and he goes 'I changed my mind, I want this song and this song, this song and this song' and I said 'they're gone, dude', and now it's turned into sort of a battle. The word lawsuit crept up and this and that and the other, so we really haven't gotten together and resolved any of our differences at this point. And I think he's still headed in the direction he was headed in."

So will there be another Guns record?

"We're supposed to do a Guns record too at some point, I don't know when it's going to happen, I don't know when everything is going to calm down to the point that we can all sit in a room together and work things out," Slash said. "Duff's got his own band. I just played with them in New York the other day and they're great, so I don't know how interested he is in worrying about the politics of this thing." With or without Guns, Slash continues to love to play."

"All I've been doing is just playing constantly, dragging around a Marshall half stack and my Les Paul, playing here or playing there, I'm in the midst of doing another Snakepit record and that's basically it, it's not much more complicated than that," Slash said.

His motivation for playing is not complex either.

"I think that's one of the reasons I play as much as I do, to keep my chops up, to remain humble as opposed to being established and believing in your own hype," Slash said. "That's an old cliche', but a lot of these guys finally make it and the next thing you know, they don't come out of the house, they don't jam, they hardly practice, they just think they're too cool for school, and they lose it. I've seen alot of guys go through that so I'm constantly wanting to go out and play just for the experience, to work with different people in different environments and just to get out there and play. Not necessarily different kinds of music but to play with different bands so that I have to adjust, a be capable of doing it and feel secure with it. But you have to do it all the time."

But Slash is a successful and financially secure individual, why not hang out?

"I just dig playing guitar and I appreciate the fact that I have the opportunity to do it. Sometimes these phone calls that I get [for sessions or gigs], I have to knock on wood for some of them because this career can come and go so quickly and the fact that I've maintained a sort of presence in this business above and beyond just playing "Sweet Child O' Mine" is nice," Slash said. "I could be totally stuck in a rut and going through the typical musician depression thing where you're not doing anything and you're not adjusted to typical everyday society and so that adjustment in life is already way past you. It's nice to be able to just keep playing and have gigs to do and people to jam with."

Slash caught on quickly to the analogy made between his signature top hat and a caricature of Slash versus Slash the real person.

"I bought [the hat] at a store on Melrose. It was a long time ago," Slash said. "I was in a thrift shop and I went in and I saw a top hat. I always dug a cool lid. I saw this top hat and I thought, 'that's sort of cool' and put it on and looked at it. I didn't have any money at the time. I bought the hat but stole a belt and broke it up and tied it around to the size of the hat and wore it to the Whisky that night. On the Appetite For Destruction LP, there's a page with all these random pictures, and a picture of me with no shirt on and a top hat on and that's the first night I ever had it. I've been wearing it ever since. But now it's like I can't wear it on the street because it becomes sort of a... I look like Micky Mouse. They don't even know who I am, they just say 'there's that guy with the hat!'"

Slash notes that it was a challenge for him and his bandmates to initially make the distinction between hype and reality.

"Looking back on when we first started, I feel pretty much the same way now as I did then, but at the same time I know everything's different," Slash said. "Everything is spread out, it's like worldwide. I know kids have posters in their rooms and there's magazines, I don't follow all that stuff. I take care of the merchandising and say 'this is okay' and it goes out and I never see it again. So I don't walk around in that spotlight image kind of thing where everybody knows who you are. There's times when it's apparent that that's the situation that people recognize you but when I first started out, I think we pretty much looked as weird back then as we do now. I was used to being looked at that way because we just looked odd. Nobody knew who we were. Now we look odd and people know who we are. In the old days we were always scummy and trying to make ends meet, taking a lot of chances, rather taking opportunities and not even thinking about it, just closing your eyes and sticking your right foot in and going for it and seeing what happens, which is what life is basically about."

Slash said that their rise to fame was strange because they were directly involved, yet separated from the situation.

"We toured for two and a half years on the Appetite record," Slash said. "For the first year it was out, nobody knew who we were, nobody bought the record. It was really strange, all of a sudden, a year after the album was released and the tour started that the band started becoming bigger. But we didn't notice it, at least I didn't. Axl's ideas where Guns was headed is way different than mine and so me and Duff were sort of digging playing, just winging it. When the tour ended, we sold like eight million records at that point. We got home, they dropped us off at the airport, Axl had somewhere to go, Duff and Izzy and I didn't live anywhere. It was really strange to come back to Hollywood and find that everybody's perception of what Guns and Roses was about was completely different because we were big stars. You don't know when you're touring. Everyday you get up, go to the gig, have a good time, pick up some chicks, go back to the hotel, and we did it for two and a half years that way. The only thing that we did maintain was musical integrity, it was a real band, it wasn't just us out trying to be some sort of phony glamour band. We were really who we were. So when we came home and found out that we were one of the more popular bands of the time, it took a lot of adjustment. Me and Izzy and Steven all went the drug route. Axl got into the stardom aspect of it and Duff just sort of stayed Duff, you know he just kept drinking and waiting for something to happen. And so we went through a really bad period where I was so strung out and Izzy was so strung out that we couldn't get anything done. So Izzy and I both cleaned up. We lost Steven. Steven never came back. Still to this day, he's out there somewhere. We all had a hard time adjusting to that sort of high profile sort of existence."

The obvious question that comes to the mind of those who dream of stardom is 'why that would be so bad?'

"You just can't walk around and hang out in the same clubs and just like one of the boys as much as you'd like to," Slash said. "Everybody else treats you differently. If it's guys in the crew and guys in the band, you're comfortable, but say you walk into the Troubadour on any given night and you just want to have a beer, and everyone around you is like whispering this that and the other, and you feel really uncomfortable, especially if you are like me, I don't like to feel really aware of myself. It's almost like claustrophobic."

Slash says that his current projects allow him to get back to just playing music.

"Now at this point, I just really like going back and hanging out in clubs and jamming all the time just to feel a level of normalcy as opposed to walking around, putting my shades on knowing that everyone's going to be looking from the front door to the car," Slash said. "I don't want to live that kind of life. I spend more time out than hiding away at my house. I hate being at home anyway, so I spend most of my time on the road."

The need to stay on the road helped spawn the Snakepit project.

"The Snakepit tour was cool because it gave me a chance to really appreciate why the f**k I got into this business in the first place," Slash said. "It's nice to get grounded and to really have contact with an audience. Stadiums are fun, but you need to balance it out a little bit, otherwise, you're living a fantasy. It's really disconnected from reality when that's all you do is stadiums. You lose touch with your audience. It puts you on a pedestal that I don't think you deserve to be on a permanent basis. I think you have to come back to earth."

The current Snakepit lineup features drummer Brian Tishee and bassist James Lomenzo. Lomenzo is formerly from the band White Lion. According to Slash, Lomenzo shares his enthusiasm for bare-bones, glam-free music.

"I didn't [originally] know that [Lomenzo was from White Lion]," Slash said. "He was originally, as far as I was concerned, from Zakk's band. I never asked any questions where he was before that. But now I tease him about White Lion on a constant basis."

Slash stopped joking when the topic of Shannon Hoon from Blind Melon came up.

"I have a lot of f**kin' thoughts on that," Slash said after a long pause. "I'm really pissed off at him right now because in this business the way it is at this particular point, there's a lot of musicians who finally make it and then all the stuff they write is really depressing and it's like they're whining all the time. The current trend in music these days is to be almost like singing the blues about s**t that you shouldn't even be singing about because it's not the same kind of upbringing that the original musicians had to sing the blues about in the old days when they were really going up against obstacles that none of these kids are going up against. I mean that was the real s**it. So with everybody crying and moaning... and I've ODed enough times, I know what that's like, but it wasn't on purpose and somehow I'm still here and I've stopped doing that at this point because it was never my intention to just leave this earth because I'm so f**king bummed out because I have a record deal."

Slash then proceeded to talk about one of the aforementioned purveyors of "the real s**t".

"I played with [B.B.King] on his Birthday a year ago," Slash said. "I went to go see him play with no intentions of getting up and jamming and it was at his club that he just opened in L.A. and I'd gone to the bathroom, and I was coming out of the bathroom, and this guy comes up to me and goes 'are you jamming tonight?' and I went 'not as far as I know' and all of sudden B.B. introduced me and says 'we have Slash in the house, why don't you come down and play' and I was scared s**tless, I went down there and I stayed up and played with him for about four numbers and it was really cool and I was very shy about doing it because playing with the likes of B.B. and Les Paul and Jeff Beck, guys like that, I get really intimidated because as far as I'm concerned, I'm just a kid and I'm trying to get good, but these guys are like my heroes. So when they asked if I wanted to come to this particular thing I figured, 'well I've done it once, I could try it again' I'm still nervous about doing it a second time, but I'll do my best."