2024.07.16 - Goldmine Magazine - Bonding With The Blues (Slash)

From the Summer 2024 issue of Goldmine Magazine.







BONDING WITH THE BLUES

SLASH RECRUITS SOME NOTABLE VOICES FOR HIS NEW COVERS-THEMED ALBUM.

BY CHRIS M. JUNIOR

There’s been an element of the blues in just about everything Slash has done ever since he first made his mark with Guns N’ Roses. The guitarist’s latest solo effort, Orgy of the Damned, raises the stakes. Instead of winks and nods here and there in solos and songs, the 12-track album is a blues homage. It’s his take on material he likes: Some songs are classics that have been rearranged, while others that don’t qualify as blues standards become bluesy when performed by Slash and company.

Orgy of the Damned (released May 17 on Gibson Records) technically isn’t Slash’s first blues-rock project. In the mid-1990s, he put together Rlues Rall, a self-described “drunken cover band” that played gigs but didn’t record. When it came time to assemble a group for the Damned sessions, he drew from his Blues Ball experience, recruiting two alums: bassist Johnny Griparic and keyboardist Teddy Andreadis. Through his music industry connections, Slash connected with guitarist Tash Neal and drummer Michael Jerome to round out the core backing band. For a producer, he brought in trusted confidante Mike Clink, best known for his work on GNR’s Appetite for Destruction.

Like he did for his self-titled solo album in 2010, Slash tapped some famous voices to sing on Orgy of the Damned — this time around, he’s joined by Paul Rodgers, Gary Clark Jr., Chris Robinson, Iggy Pop and Chris Stapleton, among others. And as Slash’s blues-spirited S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival makes it way around North America this summer, he’s open to the idea of joining forces onstage with his album’s guest stars if they’re available or with the artists he’s curated specifically for the tour.

GOLDMINE: You were exposed to all kinds of music growing up and once described your parents’ wide-ranging record collection as “flawless.” After picking up the guitar, did you ever go through an immersive phase of pure blues? Or was the blues just always there as a connecting thread to all the music you learned to play?

SLASH: I go through different phases. I don’t think I’ve ever gone through an immersive blues stage where that’s all I did for like a year. Rut I definitely go through phases where that’s all I’ll listen to for a few weeks.

GM: As a kid, though, did you -

SLASH: As a kid, I think it was really a mixture of everything. I never stayed on any one thing for that long. So, no — I didn’t go into an immersive blues phase when I was first starting out. It was a mixture of a lot of different things.

GM: The blues is many things - it’s a feel, a sound, a song structure - but for you, what are the qualities of good blues music?

SLASH: The qualities of good blues music for me — it’s almost not even tangible. It’s a sincerity: There’s a certain honesty in the playing and in the vocal delivery and the way that it’s coming across. For me, when it’s really raw (laughs) and sort of stripped down, it always appeals to me the most, even in electric blues. Rut I think [it's] the sincerity... because it’s not even necessarily about the playing per se, like exactly what the notes are. It’s the delivery, and the sincerity and honesty in that I think is the first thing that comes across to me.

GM: And just like other genres of music, it’s probably a “you know it when you hear it” kind of thing.

SLASH: Yeah, definitely, because it’s hard to put into words exactly what that is. It is definitely a thing where you just hear it, and you feel it. The feel·. That’s the thing that’s most important.

GM: The Orgy of the Damned backing band features Johnny and Teddy, and those guys were used to playing gigs with you as part of Blues Ball. What was their immediate reaction to your call about recording an album?

SLASH: (Laughs) I’m sure they were shocked because it’s been 3 0 years [since Blues Ball]. I’ve been in touch with those guys all this time, on and off. I actually had another band with Johnny after Blues Ball; he was in one of the iterations of Snakepit that I had. So we’ve been in touch, and I think before I called to say, “OK, I’m going to be home for a couple of weeks. Let’s go do this record, like, now,” prior to that, I was sort of alluding to wanting to do it at some point soon. I think it was in the back of my mind, and I let those guys know I was thinking about it.

GM: How did you hook up with the album’s other two core instrumentalists, Michael and Tash?

SLASH: Well, Tash — I forget the name of the event, but there was a blues event in Los Angeles, [before COVID-19]. A whole bunch of us were playing, it was a bunch of notables all jamming, and one of the guys who got up there that I wasn’t familiar with was Tash, and he was great. And I hung out with him, and he was this cool, sweet, very down-to-earth guy.

So fast-forward to 2019, and I was doing a tour with my other solo band, the Conspirators, and I asked Tash to open. He came and did his thing with his band, and he was amazing. We watched those guys every single night from the side of the stage before our show. So when it came time to do [this] record, I started putting together sort of a modern idea of what the Blues Ball means to me now — and sober. (laughs) I thought Tash would be a great addition because he’s a fantastic singer, but he’s also a great guitar player. And Teddy sings, so between those two guys, we could do this — and then I had the idea of having all the guest vocals.

And then Michael... at some point, I had to look for a drummer, and I asked Jimmy Vivino [Canned Heat] for some names. And he gave me some names, and one of them was Michael Jerome. So I auditioned a few guys, and then Michael came in, and within like four bars, I [thought], Oh, this guy is amazing... [and] when I say four bars, that was literally it.

GM: The list of guest singers is impressive: Some are no-brainers, and others are slightly out of their wheelhouse. I’d put Brian Johnson in the latter category, only because the world mainly knows him as AC/DC’s frontman, singing songs he co-wrote for the band or those from the Bon Scott era. It’s interesting to hear his voice on other material with backing by other musicians.

SLASH: Well, you know, the thing about Brian is nobody really knows anything about Brian except for that he’s in AC/ DC, right? We know he was in a band named Geordie [before AC/DC], but that’s really it. But there’s something about his voice that I’ve always thought had a great soulful quality to it if you ever took it down to this level. And when I was wanting to do “Killing Floor,” he came to mind. He was the only person I thought of; it was almost like I imagined what it would sound like with him doing it, before I even talked to him.

I called him up, and he was excited about it because this [music] has a big influence on him from way pre-AC/DC days, and he covered Howlin’ Wolf and some other blues guys.... When [we got together in Florida], he started singing it, and exactly what I think I imagined, he did. He sang it down in that sort of gritty register where Howlin’ Wolf sang it, and he was really into it. (laughs) It was cool. He was definitely somebody that not everybody would have thought of, but there was an innate thing in my mind that said that Brian would be great for this.

GM: And then you have Demi Lovato - she’s had a lot of success as a pop singer, but anyone with ears realizes she has the pipes to sing just about anything. What was behind the decision to get her involved?

SLASH: Yeah, that’s probably the most left-of-center idea. OK, so “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” was a song that we covered back in the day, and a guy named Rod Jackson, who’s a fantastic singer, used to do a great Temptations vocal version of this song.... Fast-forward to this point: I don’t want to get another guy to sing it just the way The Temptations do it. I [wanted] to get something different, and if I got a girl, it would be a more poignant way — a young girl, a young voice — [to] tell this story about asking mom about the late estranged father.

And then Demi came to mind, a lot because I know her voice but more so just because I know her. I don’t know her that well, but we’ve met and had coffee a couple of times, and we’ve hung out and we’ve shared some battle stories. I thought of her because she’s got this really young voice, but she’s got a great, bluesy, soulful high falsetto. I called her, and it was the same kind of deal [as with Johnson] — really excited about the song. She had a connection to the song, and it meant something to her, which was a major prerequisite for anybody covering any of these tracks.... I went up to the studio, and she put her heart and soul into it, and it came out the way that I was picturing it.

GM: It’s been a while since you’ve worked with Mike Clink. What led to reconnecting with him to produce this album?

SLASH: Mike Clink is a great producer, but more importantly... he’s one of the most fantastic, real-deal engineers. He knows how to get a great sound out of a guitar or drums or a bass or whatever. He knows what he’s doing. He’s almost one of the last of the Mohicans because it’s a dying art to be able to record a guitar through a cabinet. A lot of producers don’t even know how to do it properly anymore. Mike was the guy that I knew could get these analog sounds that we were producing and get them on tape properly and make it sound really good, which is exactly what he did. He’s also a great guy to work with, too.

GM: Clink is partially responsible for “Metal Chestnut,” the album’s lone original, making it on Orgy of the Damned. How did that instrumental come together?

SLASH: When he hit me up about having an original for this, I was dumbfounded. It hadn’t crossed my mind. I’d been so busy getting these arrangements done in such a short amount of time that it didn’t occur to me. So I thought, Yeah, I should really do something cool like that. And I went home, and I wrote this bit ... relatively quickly, the parts came.

I brought it to the studio, and you have to try to imagine, I’m sitting in a room full of great session guys, real blues guys that have doing blues stuff for years. I mean, forever — that’s their career. And I’m introducing this fingerpicking thing to them... and I’m really nervous, so I’m playing it really fast and awkward, but they hung in there with me (laughs) until I finally got the idea across. Then it came together during rehearsal, the last day of preproduction. We’d recorded all of the music for the whole album, and this was the last thing that we recorded. And it was only a couple of takes; it came together quickly.

GM: Of your many guitars, which ones were used to record this album?

SLASH: I used a ’63 [Gibson] ES-335 for more than a few songs on the record. I had a ’56 [Gibson Les Paul] Gold Top, a ’59 go-to [Les Paul] Standard that I like to use in the studio a lot, and a ’58 that I acquired a couple of months prior to the sessions that’s really nice named Bridget. I bought her in France, and she sounds like a Bridget. [Other guitars I used included] a ’54 [Fender] Tele on “Living for the City” and I wanna say a ’68 Strat or something like that for “Oh Well.”

GM: The Orgy of the Damned cover art is similar to the Ernie Barnes painting used for the cover of Marvin Gaye’s I Want You. That can’t be coincidental.

SLASH: No, no, no — it was totally inspired by that. That was the idea that came to mind when I was thinking about a cover for the record, but obviously the Ernie Barnes one is too old and probably too expensive. So I commandeered an artist [Toni Greis] who I was familiar with that I really like [who’s] on Instagram. I hit him up and gave him this idea. He wasn’t familiar with the Ernie Barnes picture — he’s from Germany — so I had to paint him a picture of it (laughs), no pun intended, and explain it to him. We had a couple of back-and-forths, but he got it pretty quickly, and it came together pretty fast.

GM: You’re going all-out to support this album - and the blues in general - with the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival. Can you shed some light on how you went about putting this together, and also talk a little about the charitable component to it?

SLASH: Obviously I wanted to support the record and go out and play live with this great band, so we sat with my manager and we ended up coming up with this idea of doing a festival. He said there were some promoters who would be interested in the idea. So we went around checking out what that would look like and started talking about different bands that I’d like to put on there and so on, and it just came together. The concept sold.

And so once we had that, then I thought it would be great to take some of the proceeds and be able to give to some charities — you know, people who have been marginalized and having a hard time of it. I mean, people are always having a hard time of it, but especially since 2020: It seems like things have been really divisive.... So I thought, let’s grab a bunch of different charities and try and give back to the community a little bit — make this a tour of bringing people together as opposed to the opposite. Make it all-inclusive and make it open to people of all colors and creeds and genders.

GM: Can fans expect to see some brandname singers from the album or from the festival’s lineup to perform with you and your band during the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. shows?

SLASH: You know, this is one of those kind of blues things... I did a lot of sitting in over the years, jamming, and there’s no real predictable way of knowing how things are gonna go. But all of these musicians love to jam; it’s what we all love to do. So I would expect that along the way, there will be a lot of popping up with different people — within the lineups themselves and then also [with] whoever happens to be in town in any given city. I’m totally open to bringing people in.