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Fri 23 January 2026 21:45, UK
You’re not going to find a more easygoing rock and roll legend than Slash during this lifetime.
As much as many people like to get up on their high horse and treat themselves like God’s gift to musicians everywhere when they first get that taste of fame, Slash has always been the consummate musician who is almost embarrassed over the fact that he is treated like some king of rock and roll. He only wanted to be good at his job, but he did have the odd moment where he found himself in some hot water with his friends.
And that’s not just talking about Guns N’ Roses. The tension between him and Axl Rose has practically become a piece of rock and roll history at this point, and while they have made amends, it’s not easy to forget the massive pot shots that they would throw at each other in the press around the time that Rose was planning to release Chinese Democracy. But they seemed to be coming from two different worlds already.
If you think about it, Slash would have been just as happy playing to bars of people every single night as long as he was able to play loud rock and roll, but there was more to Guns N’ Roses than a bunch of heavy riffs. Rose wanted to be the next Elton John, and while that made for some epic moments on Use Your Illusion, it wasn’t like Slash was in love with the idea of the piano taking over for his guitar parts.
That might have been where it came to a head, but Appetite for Destruction was no walk in the park, either. ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ started off as an annoying guitar lick for Slash, but when it started to take shape, there was nothing else on the record that could compare with it. All they needed was the right person to wrangle them in, and while Steven Adler was one of the biggest Kiss fans in the world, getting Paul Stanley in the room wasn’t exactly going to work.
The band were only entertaining the idea of having Stanley work with them, but when he started suggesting adding more drums to Adler’s kit, they knew it wasn’t going to work out. They wanted a stripped-down style that was reminiscent of what their favourite bands had, like Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones, but as soon as Slash ran his mouth too much after the record came out, he realised that he might have overstepped his bounds a little bit when he called Stanley again.
Controversy might help sell a lot of papers, but Slash remembered his relationship with Stanley turning ice cold after that, saying, “I said something derogatory about him and he said something along the lines of ‘you shouldn’t air your dirty laundry in public’ or something along those lines. And I said ‘okay’. And we didn’t speak to each other for years. It wasn’t until around 2006 that we got reacquainted and we let bygones be bygones.”
Then again, Stanley might have been in a position where he could have learned a thing or two from what Guns were doing. Kiss’s makeup-less sound had pretty much been solidified by the time he was working with Slash, but if you listen to what the band was doing on a record like Revenge, the darker side of their sound did have a tiny bit of sleazy flair from Appetite, like the riffs in a song like ‘Take It Off’.
But even if Slash did tear him through the mud for no good reason, there’s hardly any justification for anyone to be that mad at Slash. Say what you want to about Guns N’ Roses music or otherwise, but his easygoing attitude has made him feel like a friend to pretty much any rock and roller he comes in contact with.
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