The 1980s guitarist Slash called the fastest ever: “The best”
Slash wasn’t in the music industry trying to compete with everyone in Los Angeles.
The entire glam scene may have been interesting for people who wanted to have hits, but when he took the stage at those early club dates, he and the rest of Guns N’ Roses felt like the perfect answer to what every other glam band was supposed to sound like. He wasn’t afraid to bring rock and roll back to its roots, and while he was already one of the greatest guitar heroes, he never forgot about the kind of speed that someone needed to impress the average six-stringer on the Sunset Strip.
You have to remember that this was the era when Eddie Van Halen was being regarded as one of the greatest guitarists to ever live, and there wasn’t a soul on Earth that wasn’t trying to beat him at his own game. Everyone had tried their hand at making those insane tapping solos work in their tunes, but when listening to Slash’s approach, there was a lot more nuance to what he was doing that didn’t cater to playing a million notes per second on every one of their songs.
Guns were into making the greatest tunes that they could, and that revolved around Slash making his guitar sound lyrical to a certain degree. Anyone who’s ever heard ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ can practically sing all of those interlude solos every single time they come on, but if you look through the deep cuts in the band’s catalogue, it’s not like Slash was ever afraid to bust out some of the real chops he had, either.
The back half of ‘Paradise City’ features some of the most blazing solos that he had ever laid down, and a lot of that came from him harnessing the energy that he had working off the rest of the band. He was into making the most noise that he could after hearing people like Rory Gallagher play guitar, but there were always going to be people like Yngwie Malmsteen who could give anyone and everyone a run for their money every time he played through one of his classical pieces.
Malmsteen was regarded as one of the greatest of all time, but he was also one of the more pretentious guitarists in the world. Despite having the kind of insane chops that anyone would die for, there were also a handful of alternative guitarists who hated what he stood for. His songs almost seemed too bright for anyone to latch onto for too long, but it’s not like Slash was going to jump on the hate train just because someone was playing miles faster than he could ever play on the guitar.
Malmsteen had clearly put in the hours, and Slash was ready to give him his just due whenever he could, saying, “It doesn’t matter whatever technique it is that they’re using, as long as it’s theirs. I mean, Yngwie? Yngwie means it. He fucking owns that shit, whether you like it or not. Yngwie literally blew my mind when he came on the LA music scene in the early ’80s. the fastest & most articulate, fluid, melodic, classical-based rock guitarist I’d ever heard. Still the best at what he does all these years later.”
Slash wasn’t necessarily going to start sounding like a neo-classical guitarist by any means, but there were a couple of songs that showed that he was at least interested in expanding his craft. Some of his finest solos sound like they could have been part of a classical composition, and even when the band slowed down, he was able to make a flamenco guitar part sound absolutely seamless when making tunes like ‘Double Talkin’ Jive’.
It wasn’t what everyone expected out of him, and there were more than a few times when people weren’t as thrilled with Malmsteen as they were with him, but Slash was willing to give the greats their flowers. There was no way that someone could work that hard at their craft and be treated like a punchline, and while the rest of the world didn’t seem to care nearly as much, Slash knew that he was looking at the gold standard for what rock and roll guitar could sound like.
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