2022.03.15 - The Tennessean - Slash In Nashville: Interview With The Guns N' Roses Guitar Legend

Slash 'had a blast' making an album in Nashville. Now he's coming back for a live show

By Matthew Leimkuehler

Slash, a bona fide guitar legend and ... Nashville guy?

Don't start sweating, hard rock faithful. This longtime Los Angeles axeman hasn't traded his Gibson Les Paul for pedal steel licks, and he isn't packing up his California home for acreage in the Tennessee hills.

But in Nashville last year, Slash — the Guns N' Roses musician known for some of the most recognizable riffs in rock canon (who can't recite the opening notes to "Sweet Child O' Mine" on command?) — struck a creative chord unlike any strummed before in his nearly four-decade career.

"I haven't been able to find a producer I can record totally live with in my whole (expletive) career," Slash, born Saul Hudson, told The Tennessean. "No headphones. Just off the floor. The band in a room."

Enter: Dave Cobb, a Grammy Award-winning Music Row producer — known for cutting albums with Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell, among others — and keeper of the keys to Nashville's formidable RCA Studio A.

In Cobb, Slash found a producer ready to capture an unfiltered energy often reserved for live performances. Listeners hear the final product on "4," Slash's latest album with tenured rock cohort Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer released "4" last month via Gibson Records, a new venture from the Nashville-based guitar brand.

And this Wednesday, Slash brings songs from "4" back to Nashville for a one-night show on his "River Is Rising" tour featuring Kennedy and the Conspirators at the Grand Ole Opry House.

"I like to do things where it feels right, sounds right," Slash said. "Don't overthink it. Get it done and get out. Dave is of that same vein. The important stuff is taken care of: Make sure it sounds good, make sure the groove is locked in. Let's not spend a lot of time tweaking it.

"Because it was live, there's not necessarily mistakes, but it's loose. There's stuff that [as] a guitar player, I might be inclined to fix. Dave dissuaded me from that. Now that I've left it alone, I'm much happier than if I would've tweaked this note or that note of a guitar solo."

On the floor

The group moved quickly, Slash said — locking in arrangements before cutting about two songs a day. They finished recording the bulk of "4" in less than a week, but not without an unwanted visit from COVID-19.

Despite health precautions (including traveling to Nashville via tour bus instead of airplane and quarantining between sessions), the virus spread through much of the band toward the end of studio time.

They needed to improvise. For backing vocals, Kennedy and bassist Todd Kerns tracked from the band's Airbnb guest house.

"Everybody got better and we went back to the studio and mixed it," Slash said. "COVID aside, we had a (expletive) blast."

'A people's music'

Slash entered the studio without a major stake in Nashville's most celebrated export — country music.

Growing up, he heard the occasional Johnny Cash record and watched Roy Clark on "Hee Haw." His country influence didn't extend much beyond famed fingerpickers Merle Travis and Chet Atkins, he said.

But after time inside Studio A, Slash jumped down a self-described "rabbit hole" of artists from the Carter Family to steel player Lloyd Green and revisiting Kris Kristofferson.

"[The studio's] got this great photographic history of all the artists that've recorded there," he said. "There's something really inspiring about that, because old school country music to me, it's very similar to rock 'n' roll and blues. It's very much a people's music. It's down to earth and it's got a lot of soul."

He added, "I have a thing for the old school stuff. Being in that studio and seeing all these artists that worked there, it definitely had a big influence."

Despite his newfound penchant for Nashville players, "4" doesn't veer into twangy territory. On the album, Slash delivers on a collection of unflinching hard rock riffs that showcase his tenure as a world-class guitarist.

For Gibson Records — a partnership with BMG launched in 2021 by the guitar company known for Slash's Les Paul Standard, the SG and other notable instruments — Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators proved the "perfect candidate" to debut the label, said brand president Cesar Gueikian.

"It's very refreshing to be able work with somebody who's achieved everything he's achieved," Gueikian said. "[He's] one of the most successful and biggest guitarists of all time, and yet he's one of the most humble guys I know."

And when he brings the band back to Nashville for an Opry House performance, Slash said to expect a night that's "high energy [and] very rock 'n' roll."

"I'm really honored to be playing at the Opry [House]," he said. "That was one of the things I read about, all the different artists from the beginning of the Opry days."

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