After a life of hard driving rock ’n’ roll, the guitar god Slash has found a bit of personal peace. Doesn’t mean he’s quiet though.
Rock guitarist has found some peace and contentment, Keith Bonnell discovers.
After nearly three decades as the cool cat in the hat, Slash has seemingly figured out what he loves about his rock music life and what he doesn’t.
So when the guitarist behind some of the most instantly recognizable hard rock riffs lands in Ottawa next week to play Bluesfest, it will be as part of a tour that he says is “definitely better” for him than some of the wild days of the past.
“I have a lot less distractions — a lot less, at least, unnecessary distractions — in the situation that I’m in now,” he told the Citizen recently from Los Angeles.
What Slash considers “distractions” are likely the stuff of rock legend for many of his fans, from his nasty high-profile split with former friend and Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose, to the dissolution of supergroup Velvet Revolver several years ago. “What I intended to do from the get go was never really that complicated,” he says now, “But success and money and all that kind of stuff, it just makes life complicated.”
He’s been called a rock purist, perhaps a euphemism for an aging axeman’s place in a shifting music landscape. But Saul Hudson, a.k.a. Slash, grew up in this industry.
His mother was a costume designer who worked with John Lennon and others and who was involved with David Bowie for a time after separating from Slash’s father, according to the guitarist’s autobiography. His father, who loved music, would eventually design album cover art.
A young Slash got to see a side of the industry most kids never do.
“I loved music from as early on as I could remember,” he says, a fascination that grew when he moved to the States from the U.K. as a boy. “From Stevie Wonder and Linda Ronstadt to Led Zeppelin and King Crimson. It was so much different stuff: B.B. King to Jimmy Cliff.”
But: “I was never aspiring to be a rock star. I never fantasized about it when I was a kid. I didn’t play air guitar,” he says. “I always loved that moment where the equipment was on the stage and before the band came on, and, you know, looking at the guitars ... that was always really exciting to me.”
Perhaps because of his parents, the bloke recognized first and foremost by his top hat (he says he has one main hat and a couple of old ones he hasn’t thrown out) has an appreciation for rock’s esthetics. He calls album cover art “my thing. The package that you put music in is pretty important.”
Slash was in his early 20s when Guns N’ Roses exploded into a rock act for their gritty sound and for the wild excesses of the era; the parties, the substance abuse, the singer who once dived into a crowd to punch a fan, and the erratic concert performances — the kind that sparked a 1992 riot after walking off a Montreal stage early. “All the craziness, you build up this sort if weird reputation from the public’s point of view,” Slash said.
“I can think of hotels where the cops came and stuff and go ‘Oh yeah, I remember that. ... But in the life itself, it’s not that big a deal.”
He still found himself ... distracted. So, in 1993, with GN’ R’s Use Your Illusion I & II still doing big business, he started a solo project, Slash’s Snakepit.
“Snake Pit was the result of just wanting to get away from all that and just play for the sake of playing and not have all the red tape and logistic stuff going on,” he says.
“That was like a shot in the arm for me. So it really defined simplicity from unnecessary complexity.”
With Velvet Revolver on indefinite hiatus since the departure of sometimes troubled singer Scott Weiland, Slash said he needed to find that simplicity — as simple as rock can ever be — again. Stripping away the drama after his second stint with a headlining rock group was important.
“I just had to sort of grab myself by my bootstraps and (say), ‘OK, I’m going to do something on my own here because I needed it.’ I needed to get away from all the BS that comes along with this rock band stuff,” Slash says.
He met current singer Myles Kennedy when putting together a 2010 self-titled solo release, and they clicked.
“Myles is great. I don’t think I’ve ever met a singer who works as hard as he does.”
Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators are now touring to promote an upcoming second album, World on Fire.
Sounding more artist than rock bad boy, Slash says they’ve found “great synergy collaboratively.”
“That’s rare and often times it just never happens,” he says. “I had that same feeling ... in the first successful band I was in.”
Slash and Kennedy pull liberally from the guitarist’s catalogue of hits in their shows.
“You know there are songs people want to hear, which are fun to do. I never had a problem with playing a song that’s really well received, you know? I think that’s what you’re up there to do in a way,” Slash says.
(Fans will have to wrap their heads around the idea that Slash isn’t headlining. That slot coming later in the evening has been given to the Barenaked Ladies.)
It seems possible that Saul Hudson has simply seen to much at this point to hold a grudge or to carry around baggage from days gone by.
“Really the only people that obsess about Guns N’ Roses is media. I think it’s just lack of imagination,” he says.
“I’m an in-the-moment person. I don’t look too far in the future and I definitely don’t draw on past stuff. Whatever it is that you’re doing right this second, just do that and do the best you can at it.
“And just keep pushing forward, always forward.”