2001.07.05 - KSHE 95 St. Louis - Interview with Slash

As replayed on "The KSHE Tapes" on Aug. 9, 2019 with the hosts commenting over. Original link:
https://www.kshe95.com/episode/slash-2001-ep-44/#



Transcript of the interview (I have omitted the hosts' comments):
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Favazz: How are you doing, man?

Slash: Hi man. I can hardly hear you.

Favazz: Oh, really?

Slash: Yeah.

Favazz: Is that better?

Slash: Yeah, that’s better.

Favazz: Okay.

Slash: Where’d you get that name?

Favazz: My last name is Favazza with an “a” on the end.

Slash: Oh.

Favazz: So I just cut out the “a” and…

Slash: (Laughs) It’s… from my vantage point it sounds like somebody who gets really dressed up, like real spiffy, and goes to discos.

Favazz: (Laughs) Okay, let’s start here. I’m taping this, by the way.

Slash: Okay.

Favazz: So I’m gonna play it later.

Slash: Oh, that means I can’t say “fuck” and…

Favazz: You can if you like. Like, last time when you were in town you did live on the air, which was…

Slash: No, I’m not that – for some reason I guess, I don’t know, I’m not that bad anymore.

Favazz: (Laughs) All right, here we go. KSHE 95, real rock radio. I got him on the phone, Slash from Slash’s Snakepit. What’s up, dude?

Slash: Oh, not much. I am… what am I doing? I’m recuperating from a pretty uneventful evening last night, so we had to sort of improvise.

Favazz: Yeah?

Slash: So I’m recuperating from that.

Favazz: How can you recuperate from an uneventful evening though?

Slash: Well, one uneventful night that nothing – the town that we were in, there’s nothing really going on, which means you have to make things go on.

Favazz: Yeah (laughs).

Slash: It’s all illegal.

Favazz: Last time you were here, you had a day off and you ended up on the east side over at the strip clubs, and, actually, that’s where you’re gonna be playing, kind off, tomorrow night.

Slash: If I remember correctly, yeah.

Favazz: Yeah, it’s called Pops. Slash’s Snakepit with Conquest tomorrow night.

Slash: Right.

Favazz: Some tickets remain, but not many, it’s almost sold out. And yeah, that’s where you were last time you were here. I think you were out till, like, 6:00 in the morning.

Slash: Exactly. You know, that’s what we do, we pick out all the best places to hang out at. And then, when it comes down to actually doing the actual show, we know – when it comes to booking the gigs we know where to book them.

Favazz: (Laughs) You can just stumble from the gig to the strip club, so that’s a good thing. Hey, are you feeling all right? Because didn’t you have to drop off the AC/DC tour, because you-

Slash: Yeah, it was… you know, it seems a lot harsher than it really was. And what it was, it was a matter of bad timing, you know, all of a sudden getting sick at a time when you had to make a decision as to whether you could leave or not. And it wasn’t really my decision to make; it was my doctors’.

Favazz: Did you have pneumonia or something?

Slash: Yeah.

Favazz: Wow.

Slash: Like sort of an extreme version of it, because I’ve been carrying it around for a long time, alright?

Favazz: Yeah. And probably partying doesn’t help, Slash, does it?

Slash: Um, well see, that’s what you tell yourself.

Favazz: (Laughs).

Slash: And you walk around for about, I don’t know, five or ten years believing that, and then finally it turns around it goes, “No,” you know, “wrong answer” (laughs).

Favazz: (Laughs)

Slash: Thankfully it came at a time where, you know, at least I’m not pushing daisies or anything (laughs).

Favazz: Ah, very good (laughs). We’re talking to Slash on KSHE once again. Snakepit is playing at Pops tomorrow night. And also you have one of those in-store signing things to do at a place called Vintage Vinyl.

Slash: Yeah, that’s gonna be really cool. We’ve only done a couple of those this tour, because of the fact that it can get a little hectic.

Favazz: Right.

Slash: So we’ve managed to put together a strategy – or let’s put it better: a strategic way of doing it, so that we get everything done, we don’t get crazy, the people don’t get too crazy, and everybody walks away happy and it doesn’t take too long. The hardest thing about it, really, when it comes down to it [is that] it takes a long time and it’s usually on the day of the show.

Favazz: Right, right. It’s gonna be-

Slash: I hate it when you have to, like, turn kids away and go, “Sorry, you didn’t make it in time.”

Favazz: Right. It’s gonna happen at 5:00 tomorrow at Vintage Vinyl on Delmar. And yeah, I would imagine it does get crazy because, man, people definitely want to meet you and get your autograph.

Slash: Yeah. It’s just nice. It’s a compliment, you know, and you feel like really in touch with the people who actually are gonna come down and see you, and they usually have a lot of nice things to say.

Favazz: Absolutely.

Slash: And you can see people face to face in sort of a still rock ‘n’ roll atmosphere, because you’re in a rock ‘n’ roll store. But at the same time it’s outside of the club, it’s more on a street level.

Favazz: You know, what’s kind of funny is that this past Tuesday, Slash, was the ten-year anniversary of the riot at Riverport, and here you are in town (laughs).

Slash: Right? You know what, okay, so then I’m not an idiot.

Favazz: No, it was ten years ago on July 2nd.

Slash: Because, I think it was about two or three days ago, I was on the tour bus and I was going, you know, “It’s ironic that I’m playing in St. Louis.” Which I played St. Louis since then.

Favazz: Right, right.

Slash: And, you know, “Here I am, I’m gonna be completely out in the open having an in-store in St. Louis coming up.” And they’re going, “But they love you in St. Louis.”

Favazz: That’s right.

Slash: I know, but there’s always that feeling that it’s like, “Well, if we can’t get the redhead wherever, we can get the other guy” (laughs).

Favazz: (Laughs) I don’t think that’s gonna happen now. We know what the problem was there, so…

Slash: Yeah, I think it’s all very clear.

Favazz: That’s good.

Slash: We have a tape of that. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it.

Favazz: Oh, a videotape?

Slash: Yeah, a tape of it. And it’s actually pretty uncomfortable for me to watch it. I don’t think I’ve watched it in its entirety, but it was taped by our photographer, who happened to have this video camera. You know how that story goes; “Oh, I just happened to have my PortaCam.”

Favazz: (Laughs)

Slash: Anyway, he taped it in the thick of it, so it’s got all the movement, you know, the way that the camera zooms in on everything-

Favazz: Oh man!

Slash: It’s in the same kind of energy as to what was happening around him. In other words, if somebody shoved him, the camera went this way, and then the camera went that way, and it was up and down and around, and everything.

Favazz: Man…

Slash: And it was just utter chaos. That was one of the really, sort of like, negative way flukes of the entire history of Guns N’ Roses as a band. Because no one would have expected that to happen.

Favazz: Yeah?

Slash: You know, you just don’t think that way. All things considered, we’re not the kind of guys that would incite something, and Axl even-

Favazz: Now wait a minute, you’re telling me you don’t think Axl was the type of guy that would incite something?

Slash: Yeah, it didn’t have anything to do with it. Axl is not the type of guy that would incite – I don’t know how many seats that place has…

Favazz: 20,000.

Slash: 20,000?

Favazz: Yeah.

Slash: Somewhere in there? That he would incite a 20,000-person [crowd] to riot, not to mention destroy all our gear.

Favazz: Right.

Slash: I mean, if he had that in mind beforehand, then I just didn’t know him that well.

Favazz: (Laughs).

Slash: But I think when he got into it, it was a combination of a bad mood, he was having a rough time with security in the front row, which he relates to very closely – which I never pay much attention to, but he did. Slash: And this guy with his camera; it’s like, we’d never seen guys with cameras in front of our audience before. And so he put all that together as a way of postponing the rest of the show, because he probably didn’t want to finish it anyway.

Favazz: Right.

Slash: But he probably would have gone back to the dressing room and chilled out for two seconds, so we would have gone back on. So what happened was, instead, he went out there, caused all the ruckus and then we were forced to go into the dressing room. And I remember sitting with him in the dressing room, and then finally he said – you know, I saw a policeman on a gurney go by, and he wasn’t looking too good, and it’s like one of those things out of the movies where you open the door and it’s like, “aaahh!” and you close your eyes silent, you know? It was really, sort of like, surreal.

Favazz: What scene was worse-

Slash: I was like, “This is pretty heavy, whatever’s going on out there is really heavy.”

Favazz: And you guys got the hell out of there then after that.

Slash: And then Axl, all of a sudden, turns around and he goes, “Let’s go back on.” And Izzy had left the building by then, right? So me and Axl actually did attempt to walk out there to see if it was possible to go on. My amps were out on the grass way past the concession stands, the lighting trust was down, you know, my guitar tech got hit in the head with something and he was in the hospital, and so on and so forth. So our management stuck us in a little van, we just put our heads down and we went all the way to Chicago.

Favazz: It’s funny now, man, but at the time I know you were freaking out.

Slash: It’s not even funny now.

Favazz: It’s funny how you got out of there, not the people getting hurt-

Slash: Right.

Favazz: But that you had to be, you know, sneaked out of there-

Slash: Yeah, then we had to cancel a couple of shows after that.

Favazz: Right, you sure did.

Slash: Because we didn’t have the equipment.

Favazz: Which scene was worse though, that one or the one in Toronto when-

Slash: No, the one in – it wasn’t Toronto, it was Montreal.

Favazz: Montreal, that’s right.

Slash: That one was a little bit more… a little mellower. That was like, when that one happened, I was like, “Christ” – you know, “not another one of these.”

Favazz: Right.

Slash: And we were in the dressing room, and you could hear – the dressing room was on a lower level than the stage level. So you could just hear, everybody was pounding on the ceiling.

Favazz: Wow.

Slash: So that sound made it sound really scary. And so at one point I went out a back door and it’s like, this place is a hockey arena, so they got shops and all this on one level. There’s a stage level and there’s a place where you can get, like, food, and there’s hockey gear and, you know, all this kind of stuff that hockey people buy.

Favazz: (Laughs).

Slash: And what happened was, I peeked through this door and looked at them looting the hockey shop.

Favazz: Right.

Slash: And that was pretty much the extent of it. Once they got to that point, they didn’t break anything on the stage or beat anybody up. It was fucking the first guy who threw a rock and broke the window at the hockey store, and then he stood there for a while to see what the reaction would be, and nothing happened, so he ran in there, grabbed a piece of clothing, and then ran back to where the crowd was.

Favazz: Wow.

Slash: And then, once he’d done that and nothing happened, he ran back and did it again and got two pieces or two articles of clothing. And then everybody started doing it. It was like mice in a pet store (laughs).

Favazz: Right (laughs).

Slash: And then, slowly but surely, they emptied out the concession stand. But it wasn’t as violent, you know-

Favazz: As the Riverport. And of course that’s the gig-

Slash: All I know is just don’t ever mess with people in St. Louis.

Favazz: (Laughs) Of course that was – the gig that we were talking about – when James Hetfield of Metallica caught himself on fire.

Slash: Yeah, that was just a bad thing.

Favazz: That was a bad… yeah.

Slash: I don’t want to dwell on it.

Favazz: Okay.

Slash: For one, you know, we were supposed to cover for them and go on early, and instead we went on three hours later than we were supposed to. So that was something… it made it really hard for me to even talk to James for a while after that.

Favazz: Yeah, I bet.

Slash: Because, you know, it’s never really my fault, but it’s one of those things that still…

Favazz: Kind of like guilty by association, in a way.

Slash: Yeah, yeah (laughs). Guilty by association. Perfectly put. Anyway, enough dwelling on all that stuff-

Favazz: Okay.

Slash: So, in case you were going to ask me any more Guns questions-

Favazz: I wasn’t. Actually, I wasn’t going to at all.

Slash: Okay (?)

Favazz: And I was surprised that you… because I know you don’t like to talk about it, but you just started talking about the riot and it was the ten-year anniversary.

Slash: Yeah, that was sort of the beginning of the end.

Favazz: (Laughs) We’re talking to Slash on KSHE. What’s gonna be different about the show tomorrow night, Slash, than when you opened up for AC/DC back in September – other than you’re going to play longer, probably?

Slash: Oh, this is definitely different. That was a great tour opening for AC/DC; it was a great way to really break the band open and get us out in front of an arena audience, and see how well we go over with the record that wasn’t really out that long.

Favazz: Right.

Slash: I actually did that tour before the record even got out.

Favazz: Yeah, I don’t think it was out yet.

Slash: So that took a lot of balls on our part, just to go out and do it, and see if we could pull it off, because in my memory, in all the years that I’ve seen AC/DC, I never could remember one opening band they ever had. So after we signed the deal and said we were gonna do this thing, I also knew in the back of my mind that we could walk out there and it could be, you know, a big disappointment for the guys and, at the same time, just sort of like a reality check for me. But instead it turned out that we were really well received.

Favazz: Yeah, you were.

Slash: And the AC/DC guys loved us, and wanted to keep us on for the duration of the tour. [AC/DC] called recently and asked if we’d fly out to Europe and do some shows there, but we couldn’t.

Favazz: So how long of a tour are you on right now with Snakepit? Is this, like, all summer or what?

Slash: Well, actually, we’re getting towards the end of it. We wanted to do two months, so I think the 18th of this month we’re going to – it’s July now, it’s what, the 4th or the 5th… it’s the 5th, right?

Favazz: Right.

Slash: So we’re gonna stop on the 18th and then we are going to South America, and there’s some European dates being discussed, and some other stuff. At this point I really want to go and do another record, because, you know, in October it’ll be a year since its release, so I should go and try – “Hey, let’s try that,” you know? (laughs) It’s a great concept.

Favazz: When you played with AC/DC though, basically the bulk of the material was from Ain’t Life Grand. Will we hear more stuff from It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere?

Slash: No. You know what, times have changed. There was a time when you used to be able to go out and test new material. I know we don’t have forever on the radio to talk about this stuff, but when we were doing Ain’t Life Grand – way, way, way before the record came out, when we were writing the material – I would book gigs around the southwest, you know, southern California, like to the very edges of southern California, almost to Mexico, and we would play songs that are on the record and some songs that aren’t on the record, and do it just to test out new material in front of an audience. Because that is really the hardest way to go out and see how good your music is, how good the band is and, you know, basically how positive the overall vibe is. But, at the same time, in this day and age, when you go out and start playing new material, someone out there is ripping at us on Napster in a second.

Favazz: (Laughs) Right.

Slash: It’s not like in the old days where you bootlegged something and then you could pick it up in the store – you know, like a small record store or something – and I always thought that was sort of cool. I always thought bootleg stuff was cool.

Favazz: Yeah.

Slash: But now it gets all over the internet and your record is out a year before it’s even released.

Favazz: (Laughs) Right. That’s not right.

Slash: So we decided to hide the new material and keep it till the release of the album. So we’ll play all of Ain’t Life Grand, which we weren’t doing during the AC/DC tour or just some of it, plus some of the other stuff that we do. Plus it’s our own gig, so it’s just completely Snakepit environment (laughs).

Favazz: Yeah, cool. And everybody is the same guys in the band?

Slash: Yeah, same guys.

Favazz: Okay. And once again, Slash will be at Vintage Vinyl signing stuff. You’ll sign Guns N’ Roses stuff, won’t you Slash?

Slash: Yeah, I sign the Guns N’ Roses stuff. The other guys sort of, you know, they go, “I wasn’t in that band.”

Favazz: Right. Vintage Vinyl tomorrow at 5:00.

Slash: The coolest thing to do as far as just good etiquette is concerned is, you know, whatever Guns stuff you have it’s cool and I’ll sign it, but always bring a Snakepit thing with you, so that the whole band can sign that. It means you have actually bought a Snakepit record.

Favazz: Right. They can buy it right there.

Slash: To anybody who goes, “Well, I didn’t buy a Snakepit record”: they have them at the record store (laughs).

Favazz: (Laughs) And it’s called Ain’t Life Grand, and, Slash, can’t wait to see you tomorrow night, man. It’s gonna be a rocking show.

Slash: Oh, it’s gonna be killer. It’s gonna be so killer.

Favazz: And it’s always good to talk to you, and once again happy anniversary (laughs). And we’ll see you tomorrow night.

Slash: Happy anniversary?

Favazz: Yeah, the riot.

Slash: Oh, is this exactly the day?

Favazz: No, no. It was Tuesday, actually.

Slash: It was Tuesday, okay.

Favazz: It was this Tuesday (laughs).

Slash: When you said that I was thinking, “Yeah, it’s like really close, close, close to it.”

Favazz: Yep, that was it.

Slash: Anyway, sorry. Again I sound stupid about that, but I just don’t have a good time clocking my head from one thing to the other.

Favazz: That’s okay, buddy, that’s why I’m here talking. I’ve got the clock in there.

Slash: That’s what you are there for. Alright.

Favazz: (Laughs). Alright Slash, we’ll see you tomorrow night, dude.

Slash: Oh thanks, man. I’ll talk to you later though.

Favazz: Alright Slash, thanks a lot, man.