2011.02.17 - ROCK 104.5 - Interview with Slash

I made a transcript. Feel free to edit.


2011.02.17 - Jake from ROCK 104.5 interviews Slash

JAKE: Hey Slash! What’s happening brother?

SLASH: Hey! What’s happening? How are you?

JAKE: Oh, man. I’m great! I’m very honored to be talking to you!  One of my childhood heroes on the phone with me right now: It‘s Slash! You know him from Guns n‘ Roses, Slash’s Snakepit, the supergroup Velvet Revolver and he’s got a brand new album out: Slash. It’s a bunch of collabos and he’s gonna be here in Jacksonville this tuesday night with Ozzy Osbourne.

SLASH: Yeah.

JAKE: Oh man. I’m terribly excited about the show. I loved the new album! You’re like this generation's Carlos Santana. It’s really a brilliant album. All the working with those people, was there anybody that you saw like that maybe you’d like to form the next supergroup with?

SLASH: No, I think that was pretty much a one-off. I was sort of inspired to do this one thing. I don’t have any plans on doing another one, but that doesn’t mean I won’t do sessions with other people and stuff like that. I’ve been doing that for years. But I don’t have anything set up at this point that I‘m looking forward to doing at the moment.

JAKE: I don’t want throwing a spoiler for the concert, because I want people to come out because I think it’s gonna be a great show! And the Veterans Memorial Arena is a great venue, ‘cause there’s not a bad seat in the house. On the album there’s a song you do with Ozzy. Is that going to be done live at the show?

SLASH: We haven’t done it yet. Um. I, you know, working with Ozzy on tour he… like… I definitely have our set together and he has his set together. You know what I mean?

JAKE: Sure.

SLASH: We go really hardcore, so it’s… we haven’t really gotten to that point where we’ve been able to relax enough to go:“Hey, do you want to jam on this thing? When can we rehearse it?“ And so tada tadada… So we’ll see if it happens, but we haven’t done it up to this point. It’s a cool song, though.

JAKE: No, it’s a great song! The whole album! I thought the album was really fantastic and you know, not to minimalize what you did with Gn’R, but I think that the things that you’ve done since Gn’R have almost been more musically, I don’t wanna say important, but it’s definitely been sonically a little bit more diverse.

SLASH: Oh well, I mean… I… you know… I appreciate that. I mean… I  think probably all it is, is you just striving to do stuff that’s interesting or taking some risk or whatever. You know, when Guns n‘ Roses was together, sometimes I look back on it and look at how cool it was, because we were really young and we were really, um, sort of outcasts in this business and we managed to pull it off. And then, you know we did a lot of really interesting stuff along the way. And then so after that, you know, I did Snakepit, which is very straight ahead sort of dirty Rock n‘ Roll kind of stuff. And then you start looking for different ways of expressing different things and whatnot. So you try and keep it interesting as you move along.

JAKE: Now, You’ve worked with everybody on this album. From Fergie to Chris Cornell, Ozzy Osbourne. You even made an appearance at the Super Bowl this year. What was that like?

SLASH: That was a trip, man. You know, to get a phone call to come play the Super Bowl was… was pretty surreal in and of itself. And so I went down there and this production that they put together, you know, I mean I sort of catch the halftime shows here there, but… um.. this production they put together was mind blowing and so, you know, I got up and did my bit, which was I literally I think two and a half, three minutes long at best, but you know just everything else that was going on around it. There were so many moving parts, it was so coordinated. It was really an experience, to say the least.

JAKE: It’s such an amazing thing, because you know there’s 105 000 people in the stadium watching you and then another 116 million watching on TV.

SLASH: I didn’t even think about the people that were watching on TV. If I had, it probably would have been a little bit more, you know, overwhelming. But, I mean, just being in the stadium was… and I played, you know, to big audiences in excess of a hundred thousand in my career, but something about the intensity of a Super Bowl audience, probably, also because it was one of the best matchups, you know. I mean it was a really classic matchup. So, the overall vibe was just really exciting.

JAKE: You could see it in the production. And then you came out and did your part and people blew up. That has to feel amazing?

SLASH: Yeah, it felt good at the time. I actually haven’t seen it on your regular, you know… I haven’t seen a tenth o fit or anything like that. But I watched… after I came off I went straight back to the dressing room and I watched the feed on the monitor in the dressing room.  And it was pretty, pretty intense to look at. I didn’t get… they didn’t have any audio on the feed, so I didn’t actually hear it, but it looks really cool.

JAKE: Sounded great! You sounded amazing. Uh, did you get to watch any of the game?

SLASH: Yeah, no, I stayed for... I watched the game beforehand and after. I mean all things considered, it, in a way, you know, not to undermine the actual performance part, but just getting invited to go down there and play was also a huge excuse to be able to be in person at the game, because I’ve never been to a Super Bowl.

JAKE: Well and you know, you gotta think the people that they’ve had to do this before. We’re talking about, you know, The Rollong Stones, The Who, Paul McCartney. The Black Eyed Peas are one of the biggest groups in the world and they say:“Slash!“. And, you know, that solidifies your iconography as far as I’m concerned.

SLASH: Well, I hadn’t […] really looked at it in that way. I always felt pretty humbled about the whole thing, but okay… there you go.

JAKE: Well I mean it’s so funny. I‘ve got Appetite for Destruction. I’ve got everyone oft the Guns n‘ Roses albums. I’ve got ‘em framed in the records and everything like that and to be talking to you and to be looking, you know, five days out from seeing the concert. I mean, that’s a pretty great feeling for me and probably for everybody in Jacksonville.

SLASH. Okay, Well, that‘s… you’re embarassing me. I don’t know. It’s gonna be a killer gig. That’s what… I wanted to stress that. We’ve been touring together, Ozzy and myself, for the last, I guess it’s been about a month. And it’s just a killer double bill and it’s probably one of the few sort like rock events like that there are going, you know, at the moment. And it’s just… it’s been really exciting that… The fans have been insane and the bands have just been on top of their game. And it’s just a lot of fun.

JAKE: What do you guys have planned for the show? Who do you have singing the tracks from the new album?

SLASH: Well, okay, this is what I’ve been doing: When I put the record out, one or two of the songs on the record are sung by a guy named Myles Kennedy. And so when he came down, I didn’t know who he was and I had two songs left over. I’ve done the whole album and I had two pieces of music that I thought were really good and I’d been planning on getting vocals on ‘em. And I made the whole record before I figured out who was going to sing those two songs. And I couldn’t think of anybody. And then I’d been hearing the name Myles Kennedy around and I knew that Zeppelin had tried him out so and so forth. And so I just took a shot in the dark and called him up. And he sang these two songs. One is called Starlight and the other one is called Back from Cali. [I was in] the process of putting a band together to go out on the road. And I asked him if he wanted to sing. And so he was on a break from his band, which is called Alter Bridge. And so, you know, we put it together and we’ve been touring since last march. So, that’s what’s gonna… thats what we’re gonna be doing at Fort Lauderdale, or Jacksonville rather. Sorry.

JAKE: You know, we get confused all the time. Uh, you know what’s funny is that Starlight is actually my favorite song on the album.

SLASH: I will let the cat out oft the bag, that we’re gonna actually play that. At first we didn’t play it for a while on the tour, because we were expecting… um... I know, I didn’t know if that song was going to be a little bit too ballady for the Ozzy sort of audience. But it turns out we have a lot of our own fans at these gigs. So we threw it in the set. And it goes over really well.

JAKE: I’m really looking forward to it! Our time is running short with you Slash. I just want to say: it’s gonna be this tuesday, the 22nd, Veterans Memorial Arena. I’ll be there. You think that maybe during Starlight after a solo you can tip your hat as like a symbol as like a signal to me?

SLASH: Yeah, I’ll try to remenber that, but in the meantime I really appreciate all the compliments and I’m not pulling your chain, when I tell it’s gonna be a killer show!

JAKE: Oh no, I believe it and I think everybody listening believes it too! So thanks for your time, Slash!

SLASH: Alright.

All things considered this was a fun little interview.
It's got Slash playing it cool (Super Bowl:" Yeah, it felt good at the time."), some Gn'R talk and @Soulmonster's favorite phrase.

"THANK YOU" is my favorite phrase. THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!!

Thank you so much, @lilacmess!