2018.12.08 - The Courier Mail - Too Much Rock is Never Enough for Slash

Need a subscription to get this interview where Slash presumably talks about juggling his work in GN'R with his Conspirators band.

Here is the link to the interview: https://tinyurl.com/yahng2sr

I will put in it our archive even if it is missing, maybe it will be freely available at some later time.

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Edit by Blackstar - the article (also edited the date):

Too much rock is never enough for Slash as he juggles Gunners and his solo project heading to Australia next year

Before Slash heads to Australia again, the world’s most famous top hatted guitarist shares how his touring life has changed from the rock’n’roll excesses of his early Guns N’ Roses days.

By Kathy McCabe
National Music Writer

The world’s most famous top-hatted shredder Slash enjoys a unique perspective on the rock’n’roll touring life.

You would imagine there is a chasm of difference between travelling first-class with Guns N’Roses as compared to his solo-not-solo excursions with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators.

For the past two years, Slash has been playing the biggest sports stadiums in the world as the Guns N’ Roses reunion tour rolls on far beyond initial expectations, with Slash hinting there will be more activity from Axl and company in 2019.

He rejoined the Kennedy and the Conspirators crew in September for a series of club, theatre and casino gigs and will hit Australian arenas with the band in late January next year.

According to the 53-year-old musician, whose well-stamped passport identifies him as Saul Hudson, the two musical adventures “aren’t really that different” now. But back in the ’90s, it was a very different scene and not one that throws up a wealth of memories.

“There’s definitely things that are different about it on the surface; I am nowhere near as wasted,” he says, chuckling.

His sober life, since 2005, was mostly dictated by the damage done by his well-documented alcohol and drug excesses.

Slash was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in 2001, at the age of 35, and had a defibrillator implanted to keep his heart firing.
The other remarkable change from the wild west ‘90s days when the Gunners were the biggest band in the world and embraced all of rock’n’roll’s cliches is fidelity.

Since splitting with wife Perla Ferrar, Slash has been in a relationship with Meegan Hodges, who he also dated in the ’90s.

“Because I have been in a seriously committed relationship for a long time, that other element has changed dramatically,” he says.
“But all of the rest is the same. You travel, get to the gig, do soundcheck and travel to the next gig.”

Even as Slash insists that size doesn’t matter when it comes to touring, he admits that his natural style of playing and performance, alongside that of the men who do the singing, dictates a finely-honed spatial awareness.

When the Gunners performed club shows to herald the return of the seminal core line-up in Los Angeles and New York, there was some adjustment required in terms of the onstage proximity of Axl Rose to the guitarist responsible for some of the most memorable solos and riffs in rock history.

Apparently, both men maintain quick reflexes in their middle age.

“You have to watch out for the other guys when you’re on a smaller stage,” he says.

“There have been a lot of really, really close calls, almost trainwrecks, between me and Axl but I don’t think we have seriously collided in 30-odd years.

“I think you would be amazed by how we can jump out of each other’s way at the last second.”

Juggling Slash’s schedule for the past couple of years must have been a nightmare for his team.

As the Gunners’ world tour stretched into its second year, Slash was reconnecting with Kennedy — who also has another day job as the frontman of American rock outfit Alter Bridge — and his Conspirator bandmates to work on their third record Living The Dream.

Since the “band” formed around the guitarist in 2010 after he found a worthy vocalist collaborator in Kennedy, they have characteristically gone out on tour for about 18 months and then recorded an album before repeating the cycle again.

“I managed to find a window during the Guns tour to record the third record,” Slash says.

“You have to look a little bit ahead because we have to juggle what Myles and Alter Bridge are doing as well.”

Like most musicians who possess a supernatural gift when it comes to playing an instrument, Slash is never not playing guitar. While he sits on the bed in his Hong Kong hotel room chatting, he has the guitar on his lap. When we finish chatting, he will noodle around with it, hoping some kernel of an idea for his next record springs out of nowhere.

Most of the songs on Living The Dream, just as they have with his contributions to the Guns N’ Roses songbook or his previous solo records, start this way. It’s the only way he knows how to compose music and he isn’t about to change up his modus operandi now.

“What does come easy is I always have the guitar with me and play it all the time,” he says.

“Over the course of a tour, I will come up with ideas to play for the band or jam at soundcheck. At the end of the tour, you have accumulated a lot of stuff.

“As we are talking, I have the guitar next to me and hopefully by the end of tonight, I will have come up with something new.”

That restless quest to conjure something new out of those six strings and 12 notes is also evident on the stage. In an era where most stadium and arena concerts are so tightly scripted they may as well be a Broadway musical, Slash and his rock brothers and sisters are trying to keep spontaneity and unpredictability in the rock’n’roll experience. Improvised jam sessions and solos, unscripted banter and unexpected covers make the shows unique in each town.

“That’s always a major part of the live rock performance for me, to have the ability to be able to do that without worrying about it,” Slash says.

“That’s pretty much the spirit of (The Conspirators). Even with Guns N Roses, as much as we have a big production, we do change sh** around whenever we feel like it. That show is not that choreographed to begin with.

“Bands who have been on the road for a long time can do that. Look at the Rolling Stones. We would with a lot of the same people and I know they rehearse for a month or more so they can do that and throw in the odd new stuff here and there.”

Slash with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators play Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney on January 28, Brisbane Convention Exhibition Centre on January 30, Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne on February 1 and Perth’s RAC Arena on February 3.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/entertainment/music/too-much-rock-is-never-enough-for-slash-as-he-juggles-gunners-and-his-solo-project-heading-to-australia-next-year/news-story/82aa62ddb85581ecf2a070f93c951956

i hate paid subscriptions. just like i'd pay to read one article. yea, rite

whatashame wrote:i hate paid subscriptions. just like i'd pay to read one article. yea, rite

Sometimes they allow you to read a certain amount of articles per month. That's a much better system.