2003.01.DD - The Power Hour (Much More Music) - Interview with Slash and Duff

Transcript:
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Karina Huber: Hey, welcome to another edition of Power Hour. I’m Karina Huber. I recently caught up with former Guns N’ Roses members Slash and Duff McKagan. In the next hour you’re gonna be able to listen in on those conversations and also check out some classic GN’R videos. Let’s get it started. Power Hour on Much More Music.

[Cut to the interview with Slash]

Karina Huber: Hey, I’m Karina and you’re watching Power Hour. Look who I’ve got with me: Slash, legendary guitarist with Guns N’ Roses, Slash’s Snakepit and the list goes on.

[Cut to the interview with Duff]

Karina Huber: Look who I’ve got beside me: Duff McKagan.

Duff: How are you doing?

Huber: The bassist, former bassist of Guns N’ Roses. How are you?

Duff: I’m good, thanks.

[Cut to the interview with Slash]

Huber: You’re gonna be putting together a new band.

Slash: I’m working with Duff, and Matt Sorum, and Dave Kushner, and we’ve got this amazing band. We’re trying to find this amazing singer to go with it.

[Cut to the interview with Duff]

Duff: It’s really great and it happened very spontaneously. It happened live in front of an audience.

[Cut to the interview with Slash]

Slash: I’ll tell you the whole story in a nutshell. I’ve been doing my various things here and there, but I’d started working on another band. I’d done Snakepit which was the kind of thing that I would – the first one was to kill time between whenever Axl wanted to work and when he didn’t want to work, and all that, and then I consequently ended up quitting the band. So I threw another Snakepit together and toured on that, and I was just looking what am I gonna do next - you know, as I’ve never kept one Snakepit, a permanent thing, so I’ve always made Snakepit like my fuck-around, kind of (?)

Huber: Side project, yeah.

Slash: Anyway. And then, so I’ve been doing all this recording here and there, and I really wanted to start a band. So I was working with one of the guys from the Black Crowes and a couple of other various people writing all this music. And a friend, a mutual friend of all of ours died, which is Randy Castillo.

Huber: Drummer for Ozzy.

Slash: Yeah, drummer for Ozzy. And at his funeral Matt came up to me and said, “We’re going to do a benefit concert in L.A. to help support, like, the bills, the funeral and all that for his family.” So he goes, “You wanna play?” And I was like, “Yeah,” you know, “But what are we gonna do? Who we’re gonna do it with? We’re gonna play with somebody.” So we thought, “Well, let’s call Duff and see if Duff wants to do it.” And I said, “Well, I know these guys from Buckcherry are not doing anything and I’m sort of interested to see if I could work with the singer” – you know, see if maybe that was the start, the starting of an idea. So we threw, like, six songs together and played at this club, the… I can’t remember the name of the club. Anyway, so we played this gig and we were the last band to go on, and we just rocked this place. Seriously, we tore the house down - and with Steve Tyler, he got up and we did Mama Kin. It was just really over the top. And it was the first time I played in a band outside of Guns with Duff. So he called me the next morning and he goes, “Do you wanna do something, like, seriously with this?” I was like, “Yeah.” That was a pretty overwhelming feeling. The chemistry between me, Matt and Duff has always been like a certain – you know, you can’t find that anywhere else.

[Cut to the interview with Duff]

Duff: We’ve all done our own thing and had fun, and we’ve grown up. But after playing this one night on stage together, it was pretty much inevitable that we should be playing together again. We wrote all the songs - all the Guns N’ Roses songs – together, it was never a one-man show or anything close to it, you know? It was five or four, whatever, guys and they were doing it, and that chemistry is fully intact.

[Caption: Izzy Stradlin, original rhythm guitarist for Guns N’ Roses, will also be part of the as yet unnamed project]

[Cut to the interview with Slash]

Slash: Izzy came in the picture later on this. So we started there and we started with the guys from Buckcherry. That didn’t work out, so then the three of us stayed together and we found a guitar player that was in Duff’s band, and so he rounded the band part out. And Izzy came in out of the blue, and we wrote, like, I don’t know, ten – some more songs, and, you know, that was, like, a great thing having us all together. It’s an experience that, if you’ve been in this band, it’s unlike any other kind of band situation. So we had a good time doing that, and then we just kept looking for singers and we kept writing material, so we’re up to, like, 60 songs. So Izzy’s definitely gonna play on the record. I don’t know if he’s gonna go through all that goes into doing of the whole band, and the touring, and the recording of the entire record, and all that kind of stuff. That’s Izzy, he’s sort of burnt on this whole industry.

Huber: Well, it could bring you out.

Slash: Yeah, but I live on it, so-

Huber: [Points at Slash’s t-shirt that reads “I gave up booze, sex and smoking! It was the worst 15 minutes of my life!”] But I see you have given up booze, sex and smoking. I can totally see that, yeah.

Slash: Well no, it says for 5 minutes.

Huber: (Laughs) 15 minutes.

Slash: Oh, is it 15?

Huber: Yeah.

[Clip from 1988 Much Music interview]

Huber: Hey, welcome back to Power Hour, Slash with us. All right, lots of things are going on. First of all, you’re up for a Grammy Award-

Slash: Oh, you know that.

Huber: For the Love Song from The Godfather.

Slash: Yeah.

Huber: One of the best movies I’ve seen, The Kids Stays In The Picture. I love Robert Evans.

Slash: Isn’t it great? He’s a good friend of mine, funnily enough. He and I hooked up, my girlfriend – my wife now-

Huber: (Laughs).

Slash: My wife introduced me to him, like, six or seven years ago. I played the Godfather live in the set when I was still in Guns N’ Roses, so she played him a tape of that. So we became instant friends. So I recorded The Godfather real quick in Matt’s garage for him, just as a present. And then he had a stroke and all this major shit went down. And, five years later, he puts out this movie called The Kid Stays In The Picture and he asks me if he can use The Godfather for the soundtrack. And he calls me up about a week ago, and he goes, “Congratulations.” I was like, “Congratulations on what?” - it was, like, 9:30 in the morning. And he goes, “On your Grammy nomination.” I was like, “What Grammy nomination?” A million things went through my head what I could possibly be nominated for. The last thing I thought of was the thing I recorded in Matt’s garage.

Huber: [It’s nominated for] best rock instrumental, yeah.

Slash: So we’ll see what happens. I’m up against a lot of tough guys, but we’ll see (laughs).

[Caption: “Unfortunately, Slash lost out to The Flaming Lips in his Grammy category. Neither Slash nor Guns N’ Roses have ever won a Grammy Award”]

Huber: Do you care about that stuff?

Slash: Do I care? About being up against…?

Huber: The Grammys, awards…

Slash: I mean, you know, it’s nice to be recognized. I can’t say that being awarded a Grammy is a bad thing. But to be nominated as of itself is really an honor. So I want, you know, to sort of shine the whole Grammy thing, because it’s very cool.

Huber: You also appear on The Yardbirds’ album, which is coming out this year.

Slash: You did your homework!

Huber: Well, you know, it’s Slash. I’m not gonna speed up now.

Slash: You know, usually people don’t know anything (laughs).

Huber: But this is… you know, they haven’t done anything since the ‘60s.

Slash: I know…

Huber: And this is a band that launched the careers of Clapton, and Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck…

Slash: In essence, in hindsight, it sort of helped launch me.

Huber: Because they were an inspiration?

Slash: Yeah. And all the guitar players that I was inspired by were inspired by – I mean, not all of them, but some of them are either in The Yardbirds or some of the guitar players I was inspired by were inspired by The Yardbirds.

Huber: Yeah (?).

Slash: You know, it all comes full circle.

Huber: Yeah.

Slash: So I was honored to play with them, too. That was cool.

Huber: Do you see yourself as, you know, one of the best guitarists out there? Because you are, as voted by our viewers, one of the top guitar gods of all time.

Slash: We don’t go there (chuckles). I love guitar playing, that’s my thing. So to get recognized here and there for being half decent has always been great and I just sort of stay clear of trying to give myself any pat in the back for being good or better than anybody else (laughs). I’m still working on it, you know?

Huber: You were just talking to me about doing some voices, I guess for cartoons. What’s that all about?

Slash: Well, no, I actually have an animated character that walks around the house and does whatever - I don’t know, as of yet I haven’t really seen it. I had to go over there to Robert’s house and had pictures taken of me to do the whole animation bit. So I had my hair down in the whole (?). And we’ll see what it turns out to be.

Huber: So it will be on Comedy Central?

Slash: Yeah, it’s on Comedy Central. So I guess they’ve been sort of plugging it, alright? I don’t know when it comes out, but it’s not too long from now. I’m working on the music for it.

Huber: You’re doing voices for it as well?

Slash: I think I’ll have to do voiceovers for my character. It’s gonna be hilarious though, because you’d have to know the whole family at Robert’s house and really be around it. So it’ gonna be a hilarious cartoon, because it’s going to take the reality of it, which is funny enough, and embellish it because it’s TV, and it’s gonna be way… it’s just one of those sort of cynicism, kind of – and dark.

Huber: So there’s so much going on. I guess the biggest thing is becoming a dad.

Slash: That’s a pretty big one, yeah. That is the biggest thing.

Huber: That’s in 2002 you had your first baby?

Slash: I got his first guitar for him recently.

Huber: Already?

Slash: Yeah, at Christmas (laughs).

Huber: What kind of guitar?

Slash: It’s a little Epiphone Gibson Les Paul.

Huber: Really? (laughs)

Slash: Yeah. I don’t know, we’ll see if he turns out to be interested in guitar. He loves watching me play.

Huber: What if he wants to be a lawyer or something?

Slash: Fine. We all need some good lawyers (laughs).

Huber: (Laughs).

Slash: There’s never enough lawyers, right? (laughs). I love all this and recognition is great, but it’s recognition for the playing that really makes you appreciate all the other hassle that goes with it. So, I mean, I love the life, but I love it if I’m jamming, not if I’m just trying to look fancy for some… whatever they call it – you know, doing functions that really don’t add up to anything musically.

[Cut to interview from 1988
Slash: There's a certain vibe that I think we brought back which is sort of like - you know, it's not predictable. It's very dangerous for the most part and that's what's fun about it.

Duff: People come up to one of us to say, “Oh, that's a really good PR scare you guys got going.” It's like, we didn't do anything, you know? We were just a band, and we went – you know, we just played, recorded a record, and played more.]

Huber: Hey welcome back to Power Hour. we're hanging out with Slash.

[Cut to the interview with Duff]

Huber: Hey, you're back with power hour and Duff McKagan.

[Cut to interview with Slash]

Huber: We're gonna find out about -  as we promised - the band that they're forming called The Project, but it's not.

Slash: No, we don't – we never called it “The Project;” somebody else did. We actually do have a name, but I just…

Huber: What’s the name?

Slash: I'm not gonna tell you.

Huber: You gotta give us a clue.

Slash:  No we won't tell you-

Huber: You gotta give us a clue.

Slash: Because it might not… It's only - the main out of all the names we've thought of it's the one I think we all like the best. But we won't let it out until we find a singer and we all agree that's what it's going to be.

[Cut to the interview with Duff]

Duff: We're not going to replace Axl Rose and that's probably the biggest misconception we've had in this search for a singer. We'll get a lot of guys who will come in thinking that's what we want, and they'll come in and sing Welcome to the Jungle. And, you know, all of us have progressed. I mean, if I were to play you a song of ours right now, you you'd be able to tell it was us - especially if I just handed it to you and said this is us. But there's familiarity and there is a chemistry that is there. But we've also grown and we're a timely band where, you know… we're relevant – that’s the word I’m looking for.

[Cut to the interview with Slash]

Huber: As far as the audition process for the singer, what are you looking for?

Slash: Well, I'll know it when I hear it. I'm just looking for a really good… a genuine rock ‘n’ roll singer, which is so few and far between in the last 10 years it's not even funny. But I know there's one out there who's really good at what he does; and so we're looking for the next sort of rock star.

Huber: Do you think he's going to come out of the… (?)

Slash: I have no idea. We get a hundred and some odd CD’s a week of people auditioning for this thing. So what we do is we pick maybe one or two. The formula so far has been one or two out of a hundred, right? And then we take that tape and we send them a tape of, like, two or three songs, have them put vocals on it and send it back to us. So, like, one out of 200 and then maybe one out of 20 we actually audition in the studio.

[Text on screen: Sebastian Bach, Josh Todd from Buckcherry and Canada’s Todd Kerns (Age Of Electric) are among the many singers who have auditioned for “The Project”.]

[Cut to the interview with Duff]

Huber: The Project is gonna tour-

Duff: Yeah.

Huber: … Isn't it?

Duff: Oh, absolutely!

Huber: We can't call it anything but “The Project,” because that's what it is (laughs).

Duff: Yeah. We’re gonna tour, yeah. I'm just thinking how's it gonna be different.

Huber: Yeah. the lifestyle.

Duff: I mean, what it always came down to with Guns - or anything I've done, but Guns especially was that hour-and-a-half we're on stage, you know? That's when the focus was there and that's when the focus will be here with this. So, as far as how we're gonna tour… I'll be able to wake up in the morning without… you know, I'll wake up - you know, I will have gone to sleep, which is probably a lot different than before. But other than that, that hour-and-a-half on stage will be that same intensity.

[Cut to interview from 1988:

Slash: We're a live band, basically, anyway, so… and we feel comfortable when we're up there. We don't go out there just like to blow away the headlining act - that's not the point. But some of the headlining acts are sort of boring (laughs).

Duff: When we go out on stage it's really very much uncontrived. You know, we just go out there and wing it every night.]

Huber: We're hanging out with Duff McKagan on Power Hour. You guys have been through a lot.

Duff: Yeah.

Huber: I mean, you know, ups and downs, drug problems, getting through that…

Duff: Yeah, it was pretty worse. Don't play the Believe In Me video.

Huber: (Laughs).

Duff: You were talking about it. Don't play it - speaking of problems.

Huber: Yeah, from your solo career. Why is that, because it horrifies you?

Duff: Yeah… yeah. That was a - you were saying ups and downs; that was a down.

Huber: (Laughs).

Duff: That was a big down.

Huber: You know we're gonna play a bit of it, like, as you're speaking about it, right? (laughs)

Duff: Fine, fine. Whatever, yeah.

Huber: How hard was that time for you - I mean, getting over your addictions? Was it an easy thing to kick or not?

Duff: Well mine was pretty abrupt. My pancreas blew up, so… mine was pretty black and white. You know, stop now or you'll be dead tomorrow. I was in the hospital and that was my ultimatum, and once you're faced with that, it was really, really scary. So I faced it and I’m glad it happened, you know, or else I probably wouldn't have lasted another six months. But, you know, getting to that point, it was just a natural progression, and the band got so big and there was nobody around. It was condoned, what we did. It was absolutely condoned. Our band was cool to be, you know, fucked up.

Huber: Yeah.

Duff: And a lot of bands at that point, you know, even to Nirvana's. Right after that it wasn't cool, but now I think it's gone back to – it’s getting there. But the media covers it up a lot better than when we were around.

[Text on screen: Heavy substance abuse and rumours of turmoil enveloped Guns N’ Roses as they became more and more successful.]

Huber: When Nirvana came out with Nevermind, did you guys have some kind of premonition that it was going to be a hard road for hard rock and metal?

Duff: Well, see, we were so detached from, like, what metal was. For us, our band was so huge and so we had grown so far away from, like, the L.A. scene that we had actually originally come from. You know, we were playing stadiums and stuff, and it wasn't gonna affect us. We affected us, you know? Nirvana…

Huber: So you were your biggest enemy, you'd say?

Duff: Absolutely.

Huber: In what way?

Duff: Just inner turmoil, you know. We got so big and there's no how-to video or how-to book on how to deal with that stuff, what to look out for…

Huber: You opened up for Aerosmith at one point.

Duff: We did.

Huber: But then… Tell me the story, because then you had quickly almost taken over their beat.

Duff: Well, I would never say that. That was just a good time for us because it was when… we had been touring, and touring, and touring for well over a year on Appetite For Destruction and it took that long for the record to break. Aerosmith were gracious enough to have us open for them and we were a relative unknown. We were on our third single, which was Sweet Child O’ Mine - we'd already released Welcome to the Jungle single and video, Paradise City, and then Sweet Child O’ Mine. It was during the second or third week of this Aerosmith tour that our third single came out. Our usual 70 people were up front - you know, out of 17,000 - and those were our fans and we knew it. You know, we knew we weren't gonna – it wouldn’t apply to everybody that was there. But the next week there were 700 people that were, you know, raising their fist to us, and the next week there were 7,000. And, to us, to see that - you know, from one week to the next, and the week after that it was all 17,000 people with Guns N’ Roses banners and everybody standing up when we came on. And it was absolutely magical, that week when everybody was standing, when we we'd finally broken through our single and our record went to number 1 in America, which, you know, it’s the biggest thing you can do.

Huber: Well, what did you do to celebrate when it went to number 1?

Duff: We got back on our tour bus and went to the next city. I mean, those things, you can sell a ton of records, but for a band you don't see any dough from it for a long time and we didn't – you know, I think the record company, like, sent us a cake or something stupid. We weren't interested in a cake at that point (laughs). If they would have sent us some drugs, that would have been something else.

Huber: Was Aerosmith pissed at all?

Duff: No! No, they were great, you know. And I think at the last the last gig of that tour they had us come on and play with them, and Steven Tyler said, “Rock ‘n’ roll has a grandfather and their name is Rolling Stones, and they had a son and their name is Aerosmith, and Aerosmith has now had a son and they’re Guns N’ Roses.”

The interview from 1988 is this one:

https://www.a-4-d.com/t3774-1988-05-dd-much-music-interview-with-slash-and-duff

But there are a couple of additional clips from it included in the 2003 program (the ones I have transcribed here).

About Slash's collaboration with Robert Evans (already posted Notes):
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In 2002 Slash's rendition of the Godfather theme was featured in the movie The Kids Stays in the Picture. KNAC.COM, June 19, 2002:

Guitarist Slash (ex-Guns N’ Roses) is scheduled to make an in-store appearance with film producer Robert Evans and composer Jeff Danna, in support of the release of the movie The Kids Stays in the Picture, in which Slash contributes his rendition of “Love Theme from The Godfather” by Nino Rota.

The in-store event will take place on August 6th at the Tower Records Sunset store in Los Angeles, CA beginning at 7:00pm. Slash, Evans, and Danna will be signing only copies of the Milan Records movie soundtrack. The film will be released in New York City and Los Angeles on July 26th, followed by an August 2nd release in Orange County and then select cities on August 9th.

Later article about Slash voicing his own character in Robert Evans' animated series "Kid Notorious". The Sacramento Bee, October 22, 2003: