1995.11.25 - Furio Metal - Interview with Slash and Gilby.

Transcript:

Interviewer: how did you meet each other, like you - I know, but the rest of the guys, did you make any kind of tests? You listen to some tapes and to choose?

Slash: Brian and James were, well, Brian was recommended.

Gilby: Yeah right yeah

Slash: Then he brought James along and then Eric, you know Gilby and I have known each other. And the situation with Eric was his drummer [pointing to Gilby], or from his old band gave us the tape of Eric singing and so I liked his voice and he likes his voice [pointing to Gilby again] and so we said, "sing to this particular song," which turned out to be Beggars and Hangers-On and we just went, "it's cool"

Interviewer: He wrote the lyric like overnight, is true?

Gilby: Oh yeah, Eric was he was put on the spot.

Slash: I mean you should see him now, it's like we were amazed because he sings his ass off every night.

Gilby: He sings so hard.

Interviewer: And he was the guitar player of Jellyfish.

Slash: Exactly.

Interviewer: Was it the first experience singing for him?

Gilby: Well, in Jellyfish it's like you have to be a lead singer just to be a background singer and you know but he, by nature, is a guitar player and this is the first time he's ever been like a front person and he's taken advantage of it, he's having the greatest time with it.

Interviewer: You never thought about singing in the band? Did you?

Slash: I don't have the personality for it. […] I took some vocal lessons because, you know, at the time it was for discipline. Just to do it. But I didn't really have... I mean, when we talked about me singing, it probably lasts about a quarter of a second [chuckles]. I don't like to be stuck to a microphone, for one, and...I can sing but, you know, depending on how I feel that particular moment I could sing one way or the other way and then I'd blow my voice out. In other words I'm not a survivor as a vocalist. [chuckles].

Interviewer: How about you, Gilby?

Gilby: I sing with my stuff when I do my solo record and things, and onstage. It doesn't bother me. I mean, I don't consider myself lead singer, just a guitar player that can sing and it used to start just out of necessity because I hated dealing with lead singers so it was just, "I'm gonna learn how to sing!" [laughter].

Slash: Yeah, and the other thing is like if I was to sing it would be pretty much like very aggressive and I would get bored with it and I'd start walking around playing my guitar and forget that I had to do vocals, you know, I just don't need the pressure. And one of the reasons on top of that is the fact that Eric is a frontman for a band, alright? So in other words I don't need to sing at all because we have a band.

Interviewer: Somewhere you said you were kind of the link of Guns N' Roses, the glue. Is it true like you keep the band together?

Slash: For me, no. I don't want to just, like, put a label on it. With Guns N' Roses I'm just always there, you know take care of it. This is the first time I've never not been there, you know. But I still call, make sure everything's okay, so I take care of business. But when the band's on the road, you know, Guns N' Roses on the road, you know, there's Duff who… you know, we have all our different little gigs where we take care of. If something needs to be taken care of, we take care of it. And then Axl sort of just does Axl. That's his thing, whatever. But the band is always together, you know. So like, on the last tour, like Duff, Gilby, Matt, myself, Dizzy we always hang together real close and we know what's going on. While Axl's on a different thing, you know.

Interviewer: What happened?

Slash: It's always been like that.

Interviewer: [?]

Slash: No, he's always been like that. You see, it's hard to... you'd have to been through this many years of dealing with Axl to understand what I'm saying, you know? In other words, he sings and he relies on the band to be there, so we take care of the band. Make sure the band is functional. When Axl walks off stage or does whatever, we keep jamming [chuckles].

Interviewer: Small gigs? Or what do you prefer, stadiums?

Slash: See, that's the thing, the occasional, the occasional stadium where you go in and you do the big show, on occasion it's okay. But for the most part I'd like to think that you spend most of your time playing where you can be really close to the people you're playing for. With Guns N' Roses the tour that we did together for two and a half years, nothing but stadiums, that gets old. It's okay but, you know, the people that really want to see you are way the fuck back there. So in this instance we can play a stadium here and there and for the most part we concentrate on just doing clubs. And then you really have a good fucking feeling of who you're playing to and the reciprocation between the band and the audience is so tight that...everybody becomes one and I think that's what rock and roll is, you know.

Interviewer: Have you ever thought about making, like, a gig with Guns N' Roses using other name and...

Slash: I tried, I tried. Axl wouldn't do it, so that was that. That's why Snakepit is such a great outlet because there was no future for Guns N' Roses, you know, on my behalf ?] to go and play in theatres or in small gigs...

Interviewer: Not at all.

Slash: Axl was adamantly opposed to it so... When this band came together it just happened out of nowhere, it was, like, just materialized and it was great because, like, "yeah, let's go back and do these," you know. And so I'm happy and I'll go back and deal with Guns N' Roses.

Interviewer: [?] played with all these other people. You've played with Iggy Pop, Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz.. Do you like playing?

Slash: No one ever mentions Motorhead or Carole King or, yeah. It's just working with other people. But, you know, being very humble, just going in, you know, you hang out one night you have a couple of beers and you go, "hey, I'm doing a record," I say, "can I play on it?" and...

[?]

Slash:...and then they say, "there's this one song in particular." Like I played it on Gilby's record, um, when Eric does his solo record and I'm gonna play on that, you know, if they'll have me, you know.

Gilby: [laughter] He's gonna sit at the door, "hey, can I come now?"

Slash: I just like playing and then it makes you sort of, you learn to work with different people in an environment that's theirs, it's not yours, it's theirs and it's cool because you get a lot of experience and then, at the end of the day, you can walk into any recording studio and work and be able to adapt to the situation, whatever, the environment might be like. As opposed to if I only worked with Guns N' Roses then if I walked into a studio and it wasn't, say, Axl and Duff and Izzy, Matt, Steve or you know, I wouldn't know what to do. So you go out and you take your chances and you just play with different people.