2015.10.16 - San Bernardino Sun - Rock Guitarist Slash Stays Busy On The Road, In The Studio

Rock guitarist Slash stays busy on the road, in the studio

By Wes Woods II

It seems like rock ’n’ roll guitarist Slash is performing more these days.

Now 50, the musician famously known for his work with Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver and his own material, is a regular on the road and in the studio.

“I definitely work harder now than I did in the early days, just because the opportunities to play and play and play I take advantage of more so now than I did back in the day when there was less availability,” Slash said in an email interview. “I’ve just always really dug touring though, so I don’t view it as hard at all. It just gets taxing when you do a lot of flying or three (concerts) in a row or whatever but it’s not something you complain about, you just do it.”

Slash with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators have an 8 p.m. Friday engagement at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. The next night, they’ll be at Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula for an 8 p.m. show.

While British rock act RavenEye will open in Los Angeles, the show in Temecula will only have Slash and company.

The two dates will conclude a 15-month U.S. tour that started July 9, 2014, in Hampton Beach. The group will then head overseas for performances through Nov. 24.

“The whole tour itself has been pretty much a blast,” said Slash (real name Saul Hudson). “I can’t really say one leg was better than another; they’ve all been really great. Europe was fun playing a lot of arenas, same with Australia doing Soundwave, Asia, South America — all of them.”

The hardest part of touring for the iconic guitarist is the travel.

“It’s not a matter of overcoming so much as just grinning and bearing it,” Slash said. “We do a LOT of traveling and it’s pretty taxing but you learn to pace yourself and just get on with it.”

The demographic of the tour has been “pretty broad,” Slash said. “We have little kids, the GnR fans that are my age or a little older and everything in between. It hasn’t really changed much since the beginning, just gotten bigger.”

As far as whether he prefers a live performance or recording in a studio, Slash said he feels like they lend themselves to each other.

“I live for live performing but I can’t perform live if I don’t record, ya know?” he said. “I like writing and I like composing, seeing an idea through from beginning until it’s a complete song and all that, but at the end of the day, it’s all a means to get out on the road and play in front of an audience.”

The writing for the next record, Slash said, is 90 percent completed. It would be his third album with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators (the others being “Apocalyptic Love” in 2012 and last year’s “World on Fire”).

“The stuff for the next record is really great,” Slash said of the material. “One of the cool things about this band is that instead of peaking early and burning out is we’ve started at one place and escalated in terms of our creative inspiration.

“It keeps getting better from record to record which is a really nice thing to have happen so yeah, we just seem to get more in a groove the longer we stay together and the harder we work on the road and so on. It just seems to come out in the new material.”

Always looking ahead, Slash has planned his moves after the tour ends.

“Next is finishing pre-production on the next album and going into the studio in the spring,” he said. “I’ve also got ‘The Hell Within’ to shoot sometime in the beginning of the new year so that’s the immediate stuff.”

Want to go?

When: 8 p.m. Friday in Los Angeles; 8 p.m. Saturday in Temecula.

Where: Hollywood Palladium, 6215 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles; Pechanga Resort & Casino, 45000 Pechanga Pkwy., Temecula.

Tickets: $37.50-$59.50 in Los Angeles (and show features RavenEye). Sold out in Temecula.

https://www.sbsun.com/2015/10/16/rock-guitarist-slash-stays-busy-on-the-road-in-the-studio/