2016.03.DD - Steve Rosen - Interview with Slash

About guitars - no GN'R mention.



Transcript:

YouTube faithful Steve Rosen here with another tail.With another audio tail for all you guys to dig on.This interview was Slash I did back in March 2016.Um.I got a phone call from Guitar World magazine and they wanted to do a cover with Slash and Ace.Um, revolving around Aces Origins, volume One. Record his.Record of cover songs.So they sent me to the photo shoot. Where?Ace and Slash were, you know, doing photos for what would be the Guitar World cover. It was pouring rain that day. I mean, it was insane. So I got there a little bit early to make sure I, you know, I was all cool and and and set up and everything.And.Slash was already there.And Ace showed up just a few minutes late. So they come in and you know, I'm. I'm watching the photo shoot.And I I feel somebody tapped me on the shoulder and it is slashes.Manager or publicist or some?Flunky Gopher handler guy, you know, And he says, hey man, you, you know, you shouldn't really be in here while they're doing the photo shoot. Why don't you go in the other room and I look at this guy and I tell you, man, I was ready to *******.Cut him down big time. It's like.Sorry guys, my camera slipping there like.Right, Like slash is so important, such a big time dude that he would not want me in the room with him while he's shooting. So that left a bad, bad taste in my mouth.So after it's over with, I'm trying to get the two guys upstairs to sit down for the interview and the publicist says, oh, slash can't hang around, he's gotta leave.I said, excuse me, I said I'm here to do the cover, so I for guitar rule with both. Guy goes now slash can't do you have to do it later?So I broke that off and I did sit down with Ace, who was incredibly cool, and we talked for 45 minutes. And then for the next several days, I'm calling emailing this piece of garbage publicist. Hey, I need to get this done. I need to get this done, Guitar. We'll just breathing down my neck. When are we going to do this, you know?The guy kept putting me off and finally I was able to arrange a phone interview with Slash. SO.What you're reading, if any of you ever read that.Cover Story and Guitar Real with Ace and Slash is 2 separate interviews that I put together to make believe that it was one interview done at one sitting and actually a lot of the guitar will covers were done that way. When you see photos of, I don't know, Tony Iommi and.James Hetfield.Those guys were probably not in the same room and in any event, I I really like this interview. Slash talks all about hanging out with Ace and you know, being a KISS fan and talks about Cream and his guitar heroes.You know, early appetite days, very cool interview. The one drawback is that for some freaking reason, this.Interview came out in mono, so the quality might suck a bit, but if you can get past the quality I I think you really dig on what Slash is talking about.And again, people, Please remember to like and subscribe. Like, subscribe, subscribe, like, like, subscribe, like, subscribe. I really appreciate it man.Everybody's doing good, I hope.You take care of yourselves and I hope you enjoyed the interview bye. And you're a KISS fan and all that kind of stuff. So I mean, what was that like when he when he gave you the shout to play, to play on that song?It was good. I mean, it was great. I love, I love that song and I've been.Threatening to play on an ace record for the last two records.Schedules haven't lined up properly and so I've heard of on the out that you know.Not having done it. And so they're finally this particular record. You know, I, I they've worked out and and it was, it was a great song. It's a ******* great record. I don't know if you heard that. Yeah. No, I have. It is really good. To be honest. I was surprised how good that stuff came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks up to do it. It was a fun little.And like that. Yeah, so, so, so it was actually your idea, I guess a said initially kind of, you know, done like every other kind of little solo thing in that little section and he was going to kind of slot you in, but that didn't quite work. So you had suggested, you know, both you guys kind of just doing it live in the studio.Well, I you know, I don't know if I know what we did was.So I went down there and and it was just this little house in the Hollywood Hills.And after Long Canyon actually where the studio was and I went over there and I.He wouldn't. He had.Record the song with this really extended solo section and he wanted he was gonna put down a.His solo, right? Yeah. All the way across the whole section. And then so when I got there he wanted me just to do an extended solo all the way through. Ohh I see. Oh thing. And I was like, wow. And then you're gonna cut it all together. It just didn't appeal to me that, you know they say that that that concept of doing it.Not to mention I didn't have a lot of time. So I said why don't we just do it live?Where, you know, we just played back and forth right here at the moment and do it like that. And so that's how we did it and we did it in about, I don't know, a couple of things. Oh really? Yeah, it could probably 3 takes of him and me just jamming back and forth and they probably just sliced together the best of that. You know that that that's calling you mentioned you were kind of a fan of.That song and kind of Thin Lizzy in general, I mean, I I think that's probably how Scott Gorham and and Brian Robertson must have done it, you know, kind of those.Yeah, well, you know, the old school way is always the way that I try to.Force it still, you know, I mean, sometimes even modern recording, you know, it's just the way that it's set up. You have to sort of.Do it in a more modern fashion, which is really peacemeal, Yeah, whenever I can try and do things in a sort of more spontaneous.The live setting I I do and this is one of those situations it interesting. So it's no problem Yeah yeah I'm I mean certainly I I mean I would think that that's how Ace kind of approaches things as well kind of that old school that kind of that organic thing. You know certainly in his solos you know Asus talked about having this this very unorthodox.Approach to his, you know, guitar playing in his solos and the strange little vibrato that he does and those.Kind of weird Jimmy Page sort of pull off things, I mean. I mean, would you describe your own style slash as kind of an unorthodox approach, I mean.Do you think you well, I mean, I, you know, I I I really don't know what to compare it to. I mean I just sort of do what I do and have been doing that.First, long as I've been playing, yeah, and I'm aware of what guys do.You know, sort of nowadays, which is, you know, in a way it's it's great because you get all that technical showmanship together and they rehearse everything out, they write everything out. That's all very calculated. And it just sounded really pitching on the record at the other day, but I just never have have prescribed that method.Here, so scratch that method, you know, I just sort of like to do it and if if if the if the inspiration is there, it's great. And if it's not, you know, hopefully you're good enough player to sort of put it together as best as you can in the moment as opposed to thinking it out, you know? So I I do see that a lot of guys do that these days and then the guitarist.That influenced me for the most part. I'd like to think that that most of that stuff is, is improv and not, you know, totally calculated. Actually, I don't ask a lot of questions. I never read a lot of guitar magazines coming up. So I'm not really sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I absolutely agree with you. I mean, if you had the list kind of those, you know, I mean, I think that you share.Well, I know you share a lot of the same kind of influences that that ACE does, but I mean if you had to kind of.You know, listen, you know six of the kind of the biggest influences on you. Who would you, who would you say at this moment?And.There would have to be, you know.Earlier Clapton, early Jeff Beck.Early Jimmy Page.Uh.Early Aerosmith.I wanna say it's it's a concept. I mean, I want to say Jimmy Hendrix because that was a really big one. Mm-hmm. So different guitar players. So I'll say off the top of my head, those were the guys that, you know, Angus Young all through, you know, pretty much all the CDC.He's always been pretty consistent. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I mean, unless you go on and on.Of course you know and and and it's interesting also that you know I mean most of those guys are either you know less Paul or kind of Gibson guys. I mean obviously Hendrix isn't but I'm I mean I think I've spoken to you before and and you really weren't aware of the kinds of.Guitars, these guys were getting kind of guitars. These guys were playing when you sort of got your first Les Paul and it was a Les Paul copy.Is is that true? I mean, you just knew that you kind of dug the sound, but you weren't really weren't quite sure what they were playing.Well, I I remember whole lot of love being the biggest Sonic influence on me way before I ever thought about picking up a guitar and I was a kiss.My parents had sampling 4, #1, two and four and I think off the first four records one through 4 and and and I remember, you know, like.Certain songs have a certain sound to it, that's that and I never thought about it at the time. I just remember those appealing to me. So when I pick up the guitar, II sort of gravitated towards what you Metage was doing as far as guitar sound and it even style was concerned and and I found that a lot of the stuff that I liked.Later on I found out these were all humbucker type deals and less Paul type deals. Umm, But I think visually the less Paul technically not knowing much about the difference between a strap to the left ball, visually the less Paul appealed to me. I've seen Jimmy Page with this. So you put that those two things together.Definitely. It was always that kind of a sound that appealed to me, and as I started experimenting with different guitars, I discovered what a Strat was all about. And I love, I think actually straps are the best rock and roll guitars if you find a good one. But I just feel comfortable on the left ball and I've always gone back to that and at this point.You know I I very rarely will ever pick up the strap if I'm in the studio. I mean it would have to be something very specific that that is so interesting. I mean I know that obviously you and Ace are kind of you know less Paul Marshall guys. I mean what I thought was so wonderful about the Emerald track was you know both you guys plugging into I'm assuming Marshalls with the less polls and.And just how, how different your tones were, I mean is there any way to kind of describe you know, kind of the difference in tones or how is it that, I mean that wasn't neither one of us that wasn't our gear, it wasn't your gear struggling that day if for some reason he at this session, he didn't have any of his?So these these were marshals that were laying around the studio, and I can't say that either one of them really sounded that great. Oh, really, Just had to make do with what we what we have at hand. We did have our own cars.I bought mine from my house and he had his but but the amps we we said, you know it was really like I'm so used to doing such as with whatever resources that are available. I just sort of made the app sound as best as you could possibly make it sound. I was like OK we're done and then any sort of like fun can you make it sound like you know what we just have to get on.yeah