2022.02.23 - The Travis Mills Show (Apple Music) - Interview with Slash

Excerpts from Ghost Cult Magazine:
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Slash Tells Apple Music What He Thinks About The Current State of Rock…

I don’t know about the whole rock star bit. I’ve never really… I mean, I totally get it because as a kid growing up, I mean that was during the period when rock stars were rock stars and it’s changed a lot over the years. So I couldn’t say anything about the actual term rockstar. But as far as music is concerned, there’s definitely a ground swell of young bands that are doing it for all the right reason. It’s very raw. It’s very much influenced by the old style of doing things, believe it or not, because technology ring king for so long in that everybody was using a lot of the new sort of technological breakthroughs as major crushes. But now I think kids have discovered sort of the old school way of just getting together and playing and having a good time doing it. And there’s a lot of bands out there, and they’re not in the mainstream so not everybody’s really hip to the fact that there is this massive movement going on but it’s definitely there. So that’s exciting.

Slash Tells Apple Music About The Excitement To Returning To Playing Live Shows…

it’s great. It’s the combination of us, our sort of wanting to get out and play and that kind of anxiousness, and then there’s a crowd of people that have been dying to get out and see live music for a couple years. So it’s pretty explosive.

Slash Tells Apple Music About Making ‘4’ During The Pandemic and Working with Dave Cobb…

I guess it was March of last year. We got it done mixed and mastered in April. So yeah, it was a quick process. I mean, we did the couple weeks of pre-production, we went in the studio, we recorded two songs a day for five days, and that was the record. And then we got COVID and we got stuck in Nashville for about 10 days, quarantining, and then came out and mixed the record and came home. Well, I mean, it was really cool working with Dave Cobb. He’s the first producer that I’ve worked with that has afforded me the privilege of just setting up our backline and playing live and just recording us as is. I have never really been able to do that as far as making a record is concerned, so he was great. We had a great time there. We worked in this amazing studio, RCA Studio A over there, which is a legendary studio, and it was a blast. And then right the day after we finished recording, the COVID thing happened and we had to sort of adjust to that and quickly reminded that life is not always a bowl of cherries. But we all went through that together and then came back and it sounded really good in the mixing. We mixed it manually too, on an old API board.Yeah, man, it’s no automation. It was great. It reminded me of the first record I ever did back when Guns N’ Roses did Appetite for Destruction where you actually put your hands on the faders. Yeah, and you just press play and everybody does their bit. And if you miss your thing, you got to go back and do it again. So it was a great experience.

Slash Tells Apple Music About Releasing ‘4’ in Spatial Audio and His Thoughts on The Technology…

Well, Atmos is what it’s called, and it is a whole different sort of level of mixing really when it comes down to it because you have… I don’t know if people understand exactly how it all works, but you have basically a surround sound thing where you have instruments in different places in the stratosphere that you’re listening to it from, so it does allow you to be able to put things in different places and be able to give it a certain kind of spacious quality. So it’s a really interesting approach, especially… I mean, for rock bands is one thing, but if you’re doing a multi instrumental thing with a lot of different instruments and a lot of different, like a soundscape, you can do amazing stuff with that.and the guy’s standing in this space, and it really sort of spreads everything out. It’s pretty cool. I dig it.I mean, this is the kind of technology that they’ve been trying to do, trying to perfect for a long time and now they’ve finally done it. So yeah, every record you want to be able to have that option to be able to do that.

Slash Tells Apple Music About Embracing TikTok…

I just think that because of the major changes in sort of the norm as far as the industry is concerned, a lot of the old school ways have sort of been kicked to the side. TikTok and a lot of the other sort of social platforms are great vehicles, great new vehicles for people to be able to get some eyeballs on them. Eyeballs and ears. It’s great for exposure. When people take notice and you go viral, it’s a huge thing. So it’s actually, in some ways, better than it was in the old days because you just have to know how to utilize what we have available at the moment. But I think it reaches a lot of people so I think it’s great. I play stuff from old cats. I play stuff from new guitar players that I catch online and stuff that I would never even know about if it weren’t for some of the social platforms that we’re using. Anyway, and I post all that stuff and it’s great because it exposes a lot of people who might not otherwise have seen it.

Slash Tells Apple Music About Releasing The Album on Gibson Records…

Gibson has taken on new management and has done an amazing job with the company and so I’ve been really excited with working with them. We’ve done a bunch of new guitars. There’s just a lot of cool stuff going on over there. So when I was heading to Nashville to go record this record, I got a phone call from management saying that Gibson was interested in making this record their first release, and I had no idea they were working on a record label. And I’m pretty tight with those guys so it was very much under wraps that that was a concept that they were entertaining.Anyway, so when it came to me, I thought about it for like three seconds, I was like, “This is a brilliant idea,” because I do sort of shy away from corporate labels because they’re so not musical. There’s something very materialistic about them these days. But with Gibson, it’s very much a grassroots totally based in music company coming from a different point of view, and I thought, “Yeah, that would be a perfect home.” And it’s not just because of the Les Paul, it’s just because I have a great relationship with them and they’re all about the music in general and I really like that idea. So we went for it and they’ve been doing an awesome job

Slash Tells Apple Music About His Custom Slash Les Paul Standard…

I haven’t even gotten mine yet…I’m still waiting to get my prototype, but I have one exactly like it out on the road with me right now. We’re playing a song called Bad Rain and that’s the guitar I’m using.

Slash Tells Apple Music What’s Next…

Well, there’s a lot going on. I mean, there’s a lot of making up for 2020 right now because we’re able to go out and play. So I’m out with the Conspirators in the states through March and then I’m out with Guns N’ Roses from, I guess end of May or early June all the way through the end of the year doing a European tour in Australia and South America. And then doing the international tour with the Conspirators at the top of next year, so that’s Europe and Australia and Asia and South America. There’ll be a lot more stuff written for both bands during that long trek, so sometime, I would say probably new music would be coming around 2023, 2024.

https://www.ghostcultmag.com/slash-predicts-new-music-will-come-from-both-guns-n-roses-and-his-solo-band-after-touring-in-2023/