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Guns N' Roses legend Slash: I've always been focused about my music - it's the down-time that's the problem..
Apr 21 2010 By Mickey McMonagle
THE term "icon" is bandied about all too easily these days, especially when it comes to musicians.
It seems anyone with a hit or two can be labelled a legend by a world hungry for heroes.
Yet there are a select few who deserve the tag, an @#$%& group who stand head and shoulders above their contemporaries.
And then there is Slash, the top-hatted, axe-wielding, rock wildman guitarist who is way out there on his own at the very pinnacle of just about everything.
While Axl Rose would have us believe his voice was - and is - at the heart of Guns N' Roses, it was Slash's electrifying playing which really drove the songs.
When you think of Sweet Child O'Mine, it's that guitar riff which makes your spine tingle and your hair stand on end, not Axl's Caterwauling.
When Guns disintegrated in a blaze of publicity and name-calling in the mid-nineties, the English-born guitarist - real name Saul Hudson - formed Slash's Snakepit.
The band lasted for a couple of years before Slash became the one of the world's most in-demand session musicians, recording with Alice Cooper, Sammy Hagar, Ronnie Wood, Bad Company, Cheap Trick, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson.
Then in 2003, he launched Velvet Revolver with former Guns cohorts Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum and Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland.
They lasted five turbulent years before Weiland's battle with drug addiction proved too much.
And now, at last, Slash is back - this time with the solo album fans have been hoping for for the best part of a decade.
Again, his guitar licks are the bones of every song, fleshed out by a surprising array of guest vocalists.
They range from the predictable - Ozzy Osbourne and Iggy Pop - to the jaw-dropping - Fergie of Black Eyed Peas and Nicole Scherzinger of Pussycat Dolls.
But with that mass of black curls sticking out from the precariously perched top hat at the centre of it all, somehow it works.
The charismatic rocker admits it all came about fairly coincidentally, after he mentioned in his 2008 autobiography that he fancied trying his hand at a solo record with all the artists he'd lent his skills to over the years.
He recalled: "I was starting to think outside of the box at that point because the Velvet thing wasn't gonna last much longer than that tour.
"We finished the tour and Scott got fired fight after we walked off the stage in Amsterdam
"As soon as I got home, I started compiling material and began looking at a solo record.
"It was really put together so simply and so organically that there wasn't a lot of forethought that went into it.
"They were all great musicians, great singers or whatever you want to call them, so it was very professional. It was very spontaneous.
"There was no pressure because they weren't working on their next hit. It was a very loose, casual kind of vibe, which meant that I got great performances."
One of the big surprises for fans - and for Slash himself - was the performance of Fergie, so much so that he entrusted her with a cover of Guns classic Paradise City.
While the very thought of such a re-recording is sacrilege to many diehard fans, Slash is unrepentant.
And although he can't remember it, he had planned to work with Fergie since first meeting her years before.
He said: "Fergie turns in an amazing performance on Beautiful Dangerous.
"It's such a different sounding, much more rockin' track than she normally does with the Black Eyed Peas. She's great because nobody expects it.
"The Fergie story is pretty cool. I don't remember when we first met but, apparently, it was at the Sunset Marquis hotel in Hollywood - in the whisky bar. She must have been really young in the mid-nineties when I was living at that bar.
"Anyway, I got invited to do this benefit charity event and Will.I.Am asked me to come up and play.
"In the middle of the set, the part that I was gonna do was this little medley that Fergie does. She sings Black Dog, Live And Let Die and Barracuda and I was like, 'This girl has an amazing rock 'n' roll voice.'
"I wrote the music for this song for a movie. Just one piece, one part, but that was one of the things that I wanted to use for my record.
"So I automatically thought of her doing it. I went over to her house one day, played it for her, she kept it and about three days later she came back with this lyric. "It's very dynamic and has some great words. It's very sexy.
"I also had her sing the chorus on Paradise City. I re-did it. It's not on the record. I put it as a B-side for Japan.
"A lot of people are like, 'Fergie - oh, my god.' That's because it's very pop and there are die-hard Guns N' Roses fans who don't want me to do anything except for Guns N' Roses. There was this reaction. Either they loved it or hated it."
The other shock was Pussycat Doll Nicole, who again sang on a track because Slash fancied the idea.
He said: "There's an Alice Cooper track called Baby Can't Drive with Flea and another singer who you would never know is an amazing rock singer - Nicole.
"It's about this girl who drives with her knees while she's doing her nails and is always on her cellphone. I wanted to have a girl be that character and I thought of the girl from the Pussycat Dolls.
"I had no idea she could sing as good as she does.
"She changed it from this brat teenager character to this counter-balance for Alice. It's really awesome."
Incredibly, Slash reveals he considered even more controversial singers - his old enemy Axl Rose and king of pop Michael Jackson.
"Axl did cross my mind a couple times. Another one was Michael Jackson. I'm not sure if he might have done it because dealing with Michael is so complicated. So I just never pursued the idea.
"Then I was in the studio and I got that phone call that he was in a hospital. He wasn't even dead yet.
"Then all the press started calling before we even knew, to see if I had something to say. But that was a weird moment in general because Michael was awesome and it's sad."
Then, of course, there are the less surprising inclusions on the record - the fellow rock legends who were queuing up to record with one of the great guitarists, such as Ozzy Osbourne, who invited Slash into his home studio to record.
Slash said: "I've known Ozzy for a while. We met in the eighties. He's one of those icons I grew up with and I've had defined experiences listening to Black Sabbath.
"It's like the background music to my life. To be sitting next to Ozzy working on one of my songs and him singing into the microphone, to have that voice just sort of casually singing right next to me was definitely an experience."
And then there was Motorhead's Lemmy, who sings Doctor Alibi. "That was another great moment, having Lemmy come down," said Slash.
"Because Lemmy was one of those guys that I looked up to and I still do. When I was a kid, I was one of those fans that would bow in his presence.
"We got to be friends and he's always sort of taken me under his wing and he's always been really cool."
Want a more modern rock star? Try Dave Grohl, former Nirvana drummer and now Foo Fighters singer... so Slash recorded an instrumental with him.
"I'm not the instrumental kind of person. I like to write songs. It wasn't until the very tail end of everything where that I had this one riff and I actually approached Dave to sing it but it didn't really have any arrangement.
"He didn't necessarily want to sing. He wanted to play drums. I didn't have anybody else in mind and I had pretty much done everything else so I thought, 'Maybe this could be an instrumental.' Grohl played drums and I called Duff and it took maybe six takes."
So, musically, life is better than ever for the rock god but Slash - as anyone who read that autobiography will be all too aware - has always been pretty much OK when he's playing music.
It's when he's on downtime that the problems start - the drugs, the vanishing for days on end, the girls, the booze.
But on that front, too, Slash feels things are looking up for him at last.
He said: "I've had my periods of lost weekends. I lost half a decade in there. I pushed it really hard. I was so sort of self-destructive and hellbent on not knowing where I was gonna end up by the next day.
"I was really on a mission. But I ended up living through everything and I think the music part just keeps me very together.
"Even at my worst, that's always been the one thing that I could go back to and it's helped me to resuscitate myself and get my s*** together. But also having kids and all that stuff and being able to get a perspective on things.
"When it comes down to it, I've always been pretty focused and the music's always been a stronghold. I would get it together because I had to go tour or had to go make a record. It was only the off-time that f***ed with me.
"I've been home for two years since the inception of this to this point where we're at right now; it will be two years when the record comes out. And I've had to still learn how to adjust.
"It's weird if I'm sitting around the house and I'm not doing something - if I'm not busy, I can go bananas. So my way of dealing with that in the old days was live to endanger.
"But, yeah, I'm doing all right and looking forward to going out and doing some shows and all that kind of stuff."
