2024.04.19 - Los Angeles Magazine - Slash Goes Back to the Blues

Slash Goes Back to the Blues
Guitar god set to play the Greek this summer with new blues album that includes Chris Stapleton, Demi Lovato and Iggy Pop

By Sam Youngman

Slash chuckled from the Czech Republic.

The legendary guitarist's S.E.R.P.E.N.T Festival doesn’t play the Greek Theatre in L.A. for another few months, so he was stumped when Los Angeles Magazine asked him what fans should expect.

“I have no fucking idea,” he said.

One of the hardest working men in rock n’ roll was calling from Brno, where he was performing later that night. He has just released a new single, a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” that he recorded with country singer Chris Stapleton. His new blues rock album, Orgy of the Damned, comes out next month and features other collaborations with artists like Iggy Pop, Demi Lovato, Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.

He recorded the album, which had been “percolating for 30 years,” in just a few weeks while on a break between legs of the most recent Guns N’ Roses tour, and he knows he’ll be playing some of the tracks at the Greek in July. But he doesn’t know much more about it than that just yet.

“And so we’re just winging it,” he said laughing. “We’re just going to put this whole sort of show together and just go out and do it. I don’t really know what exactly to expect, but it’s going to be cool and it’s going to be fun. And I think that the spirit of it, especially in the summertime outdoors like that, is gonna be really really effective.”

For Slash, the new album is a return to an early love that started in part when his grandmother told him about B.B. King.

“I was introduced to a lot of blues music back then, but I remember liking his particular sound,” he said. “And she identified him as B.B. King, and it just stuck with me. But I always really dug the whole vibe and aura of really great old blues music for as long back as I can remember.”

The album took Slash back to the 1990s when he was playing with Slash’s Blues Ball. While on a break with Guns last year, he called up those bandmates, dusted off their old setlist “and said let’s go in the studio and hash out some of these songs and go and record them.”

“And then I had the idea of having all these outside singers come and sing it,” he said. “So we got the songs together in a week, and we went in the studio and recorded them.”

Slash was able to record a couple of the tracks at his studio in Woodland Hills. He did a cover of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” by the Temptations with Demi Lovato in the Hollywood Hills. For everyone else, he would “take the hard drive with me and fly to wherever the singer was.”

“So it was all over the place,” he said. “And after the main stuff was finished, I actually had to go back on the road with Guns N’ Roses so I was flying back and forth from different points to get these vocals done.”

The result is a can’t-miss collection of classic blues rock tracks with Slash’s unmistakable imprint on all of them. In addition to “Oh Well,” there are covers of “The Pusher” with Robinson, “Crossroads” with Gary Clark Jr., “Hoochie Coochie Man” with Gibbons, “Stormy Monday” with Beth Hart and Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” with Tash Neal.

“I picked Living for the City because it was my favorite Stevie Wonder song when Innervisions came out back in 1974, I think it was,” Slash said. “And I was just a little kid, but I loved that song.”

The first single off the album, “Oh Well,” already seems to be opening a new audience for Slash. He said his girlfriend recently told him about a bunch of new Instagram attention that he attributes to Stapleton’s fans learning about him and vice versa.

“I was thinking about the song and I just imagined his voice doing those lyrics and it just clicked in my mind,” Slash said. “But I didn’t know how he was going to react when I called him. But he was really really gracious and really went out of his way to accommodate the session and everything. It was great. And now we’re friends.”

He added: “‘Oh Well’ has always been one of my all time favorite songs and I’ve never really done it properly at any time with any band, and I’ve always wanted to do it.”

Slash’s interview with Los Angeles came, he and the world would later learn, the same day that guitarist Dickey Betts, a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, died. While discussing the Allman Brothers, Slash said he could “name a million guys that have a very big influence on me that I’m sure it shows on my playing.”

“But Dickey Betts and Duane Allman would definitely be up there,” he said.

On July 13, Slash will return to L.A. for the show at the Greek with several other bands. But the guitar hero, who confessed he still gets nervous on stage, said that “hometown shows are only special when they’re done.”

“Especially if your hometown is Los Angeles,” he said laughing. “Because the pressure of playing in L.A., so when your phone doesn’t stop ringing, all your friends who you never hear from all of a sudden want to come down. There’s a lot of distractions that happen when you’re playing a hometown gig.

“But when you have a great night in your hometown, it’s that much more memorable to you because you got through all that and you turned your family and friends and acquaintances at large onto a really good performance. It’s great.”

Orgy of the Damned comes out on May 17. And the S.E.R.P.E.N.T Festival, which stands for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N’ Tolerance, will feature the Warren Haynes Band, Keb’ Mo’, Larkin Poe and Samantha Fish, among others.

“See you at the Greek,” he said.

https://lamag.com/music/slash-goes-back-to-the-blues