1994.01.29 - Winnipeg Free Press - Sex and drugs and... boredom? (Slash)

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Sex and drugs and... boredom?

Life pretty dull for Guns N’Roses guitar player

Pop Beat
Stephen Ostick

I’M HOPING we’ll be out before next year,” Saul Hudson says of his band’s next recording, "But the best laid plans with Guns, as you know...” Don’t recognize the name? He’s Slash, the guy under the top hats and dark curls, and lead guitarist in the notorious Guns N’ Roses.

And he certainly is right about his group's checkered history. Led by singer Axl Rose—arguably the world’s best-known rock star— Guns N’ Roses has been triggering alarms in the public arena with by-now predictable regularity.

There was the riot in Montreal’s Olympic stadium a couple of years back when Axl cut the show short, apparently suffering from a sore throat. Another time, he jumped into a Missouri crowd, trying to grab a camera from an overzealous fan—riot No. 2.

Made headlines

Last November, the band made headlines again after including a song written by convicted mass murderer Charles Manson on its latest recording, the Spaghetti Incident? (The fuss died down when it was ascertained that Manson would receive no proceeds.)

Clearly, whatever life may be as a Gunner, it's not dull. Right, Slash? Not necessarily.

“Let me tell you: the existence of a multiplatinum selling band is really f--- dull if you’re not working towards doing something else,” Slash says from record company offices in Toronto. “It really is.”

What about all the stories—the band keeping thousands of concert fans waiting for hours for Axl to even show up? Isn’t this the band that was so wild that Axl once stood centre stage in the L.A. Forum and announced he was quitting, because his buddies’ bad habits were getting out of hand?

“I know," Slash, 28, says.

“There’s nothing I could tell you that’s going to change that illusion.

“We’re a very tight bunch of guys, only for the simple reason that the business we’re in, and most of the people we have to deal with on a business level are so full of s— that we really need to be able to keep ourselves close to be able to make our own decisions.”

Only half of life as a Gunner falls into the superstar bracket, he adds.

“When it comes down to it, you get up in the morning, try and find something to eat, and figure out what you’re going to do for the day. You’re not a celebrity.

“Then, when you walk out the door and get into your car to do some errands, and that's when things start to get weird. So we really call on each other and close friends and family to keep everything in perspective.”

Even his mother calls him Slash, he says.

Saul Hudson was bom in England, and moved to Los Angeles in 1971.

Guns N’ Roses was just another hard rock quintet when it blew out of that city seven years ago with its hit debut album, Appetite for Destruction.

Whatever opinions fans and skeptics may have about the group, most admit that, for better or worse, the band’s behavior seems to have changed little since fame hit.

"I could see how that happens to some people, because that’s their whole goal in life,” Slash says.
“There’s a certain kind of confusion that goes on. You’re on tour; you’ve sold so many million records, you’re a pseudo celebrity, and either you can be comfortable just kicking back after that, or you still have the ongoing drive to continue creating. The rest of it becomes much harder work after that.”

The group is so adamant about sticking to its guns that it has been criticized for forgetting where performance ends and real life begins. It occasionally has been likened to Spinal Tap, the fictional heavy-rock group that was the subject of a film lampooning the industry.

Slash happily agrees. So much so that he played on the band’s Break Like The Wind recording two years ago.

"YOU know what was funny about it? I showed up with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and I was like Spinal Tap in real life,” he says.

"The longer you’re in this business, the more sense it really makes. The worst gig we ever had on the last tour was right after we watched Spinal Tap. Even the subtle nuances are so accurate. It hits so close to home it's disturbing.”