1988.05.30 - The Province - Fast 'N Loose Style (Slash)

Fast ’n loose style

By TOM HARRISON
Music Critic

Normally the personals section of the classified ads handles this kind of thing, but Slash, guitarist for Guns N' Roses, is desperately seeking ... Gwynn.

“She'll know,” he says. “Just tell her to contact our manage¬ment's office."

Sure. Why not? Gwynn, Slash wants to see you. Contact his manager.

Slash met this person when Guns 'N Roses opened for The Cult last August. This was the show in which The Cult’s lan Astbury brawled with a couple of PNE security staffers and landed in jail for the night.

It was his hour of shining glory, the moment in which he finally achieved the notoriety to which The Cult aspired. The funny thing is that Guns 'N Roses are every¬thing to which Astbury only pretended.

“That was our first tour and we were real naive," Slash recalls. "There was nothing we could do to fake who we are. So we would go to all these places assuming that they (The Cult) were a really big band. They lost a lot of money on the whole tour and ended up bitter about it. They’re not as happening as I thought and their goals have really changed.”

Guns 'N Roses return to the Coliseum tonight as opener for Iron Maiden. In the nine months since the fateful meeting with Gwynn (whoever she is), the Guns 'N Roses album Appetite For Destruction has taken a long, curious rise to the top five in the U.S.

"We re the first hard- rock band since Led Zeppelin to crack the Billboard top 10 without a single,” Slash claims. "That’s a pretty prestigious piece of information.”

Yup. And it shows once again that, despite the tendency of radio to live in the '60s, the public still has an appetite for new hard rock.

In the case of Guns 'N Roses, Appetite For Destruction portrays a fast and loose lifestyle which is genuine although the implications of a song such as Mr. Brownstone, introduced last year by singer Axl Rose as a song about heroin, is guaranteed to create shockwaves.

“That was written during a time when a couple of us were all strung out and we might have written the song that night about being strung out,” the guitarist confesses.

"But now, now that we're playing to 15,000 people every night, it's taken on a different light. I wouldn’t want to influence anybody to take drugs. That would make me feel guilty. The song is a statement, neither for nor against."

Remember, this is the first band to play Vancouver to demand multi-color condoms in the rider to their contract. If nothing else, Guns 'N Roses are outfront about everything they do. Or don't do.

"We always are. This is who we are, this is what we think. It seems to shock everybody everywhere we go, but it's just what we say, and it’s all true.

“We do it because we like being in a rock and roll band. We don’t do it to get laid or to be stars."

They also must do it because they get to meet a lot of great people.