2001.04.DD - Guitarist Magazine - Interview with Slash

Interviews: Slash

As well as guesting with a Who's Who of American talent, the ex-G N'R axe-slinger has also recorded a new Snakepit record...

Since Slash quit Guns N' Roses in October 1996 he's had more recording and performing opportunities than ever. Recently, he's contributed his edgy guitar style to the albums of artists ranging from Iggy Pop to Bob Dylan, and unleashed his incomparable live energy in performances with groovemeisters Puff Daddy and James Brown.

To top it all, on millennium night the guitarist literally rocked the White House before a throng of thousands - and millions more who witnessed the event live on TV.

We caught up with him shortly before the influential axeman hit the road again, this time with his own band, Snakepit, who've just wrapped up their second album, 'Ain't Life Grand'.

Apart from achieving massive success with GN'R and Snakepit, Slash has also done his share of recording sessions and sideman performances, working as a 'hired gun' for artists like Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop and Lenny Kravitz, among others. Not a bad little sideline, eh?

"Well, there are certain people that you admire and you'd give your left arm to play with them," admits the hatted one. "I mean, Michael Jackson calling you up in a hotel room one day, going: 'Would you play on my record?' It's like... 'Yeah, I'll play on your record!'"

Producer Don Was put the guitarist together with Iggy Pop, but Slash knew Iggy from long ago. "Yeah, when I was a little kid. Iggy was friends with David Bowie - and David Bowie went out with my mum. So that was real natural - we did five songs in one day. Bob Dylan was a Don Was thing as well, which didn't totally work out the way I wanted it to. But it was a learning experience - Bob's not an easy cakewalk there (laughs). I'd play with Bob again, but I'd be prepared for it this time; I'd go in thinking a little differently than I did that particular session."

Other recent gigs include Chic, with Nile Rodgers and the late Bernard Edwards.

"I actually played with Bernard the night he died," Slash recalls with genuine sadness. "He's the Big Daddy bass player of all time. Rest in peace. I love that guy. We did three shows in Tokyo and it was cool because I also got to play with Omar Hakim, Stevie Winwood, Simon Le Bon and Sister Sledge - all together.

"It was like a huge 'pop star' orchestra. That was a great experience. In the process, Nile turned me on to this Spanish singer - she's like the Madonna of Spain - and that led to me doing a soundtrack for a movie; an instrumental based on this Spanish song, which turned out to be a huge success for me on the Adult Contemporary charts."

Slash reckons, rather modestly, that getting these sessions is just a case of being in the right place at the right time.

"They're all things that happened by chance, just because I'd hook up with somebody that I like playing with. Like, after I jammed with Bootsy Collins, I ended up playing with James Brown on his birthday. That's how you get the gigs. There's no one rule; it just happens by chance. Either someone likes you or you like somebody else, then one day you meet and you end up working together."

Potential disaster struck while rehearsing with Chic: Slash snapped his Les Paul's neck and ended up in ER.

"I was bending the neck and it just broke where the neck meets the body and hit me square in the face," he grimaces, the event still fresh in his mind. "It was like getting hit with a baseball bat! I broke my gums and it opened up my face. You can't even see it now, but there was hole the size of a half dollar - and blood everywhere.

"I was standing in front of Omar Hakim and everybody stopped playing. I had the neck in one hand, the guitar was hanging off the other and I was just seeing stars! When I finally opened my eyes, I looked down and there was blood all over my shirt."

Too big for stitches, the wound was packed with ice and Slash recuperated in his hotel, rock'n'roll style.

"I anaesthetised myself with Jack Daniels all night. But I got the guitar fixed and made it to Japan for the shows." Does he still bend his Les Paul's neck? "Of course," he grins, "all over the place!"

While admitting to several other strange uses of his Les Paul, Slash readily defers to the genius of Jeff Beck and the innovations of Jimmy Page.

"I do that toggle switch on/off thing, push down on the strings behind the nut, shake the guitar or swing it around (which sounds great if you don't hit anybody). But take Jeff Beck. Now he can take a guitar and turn it into something, using nothing. It could be a shit guitar, that's what really gets me. He can take a guitar that has no intonation and a bent neck, and make it sound awesome, just with his fingers."

So there are a million inventive possibilities for the guitar, insists Slash, without adding any other appendages to it.

"Certainly without Jimmy Page's new tuning contraption," he smiles. "I did that Net Aid gig with Jimmy in New York - well, I didn't play 'with' him, I played with Puff Daddy and Jimmy played with Puff Daddy as well. And Jimmy's got this guitar which you can retune by just pressing these buttons.

"It's an amazing thing. You'd think it would never work, but it works perfectly. It has seven or eight presets; you can select what tuning you want. You can go from open D to one of Jimmy's spaced-out tunings and it's awesome. Puff Daddy's guitar player had one as well, so I checked it out.

"But I'm so 'old school', I'm too stubborn to accept it. I was like, 'Wow. That's a trip'. But in the back of my mind I was going, 'It's cool, but it's just too easy.' I just like to do everything with my fingers."

What about tunings?

"No, I don't use a lot of weird tunings because I'm still trying to accomplish playing the guitar the way it is. I'm trying to use my imagination as much as possible with regular tuning, so I feel like I've accomplished something before I start fucking around with different, spaced-out things.

"I do use them every so often - you stumble onto something cool and go with it - but I'm too lazy to sit there and try to think up a different tuning - it just sort of has to happen. I'm still working on EADGBE!"

Robert Atkins - Guitarist

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