The 1987 Guns N’ Roses classic Slash wanted to delete from history: “I hated it for years”
Bands turning their back on their most popular songs is not as uncommon as you may assume, even if most artists don’t do a Radiohead and remove it from their sets as they did with ‘Creep’.
Instead, musicians, on the whole, tacitly understand that they must perform those songs at every single concert for the rest of their lives, even if it’s the last thing they want to do. Fans have paid significant money to see them, and it’s an unspoken rule that part of the admission price includes hearing their biggest hits live.
When a song takes on a life that transcends the band that created it, an artist can either embrace its popularity or resent the hit and wish fans cared about another song to the same degree instead.
For Guns N’ Roses’ Slash, it was ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ which he couldn’t stand for many years, despite it being the only number one of their career, and likely generating enough revenue to mean he’d never have had to work again.
Despite the riches it has given him, Slash long harboured feelings of resentment towards the classic rock track, and would have preferred for it to have never been born into the world. In his mind, it represented everything he didn’t want the band to be, yet served as the first introduction many had to Guns N’ Roses.
Before ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine‘, Guns N’ Roses weren’t viewed as having a tender side to them, and were seen as true rockers who cut their teeth in dingy clubs. Then, they released a ballad, which presented them in a wholly different light, which Slash didn’t want to exhibit publicly.
Instead, he preferred to revel in Guns N’ Roses having a villainous image, and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ fell outside this remit. “I hated it for years,” he once revealed.
However, while it’s still not his favourite Guns N’ Roses song by any stretch of the imagination, he did concede, “But it would cause such a reaction, so I’ve finally gotten to appreciate it.”
With ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, Guns N’ Roses didn’t set out to top the Billboard Hot 100 with a radio-friendly ballad, and somehow fluked their way to it. The hit started life as a joke during rehearsals in Los Angeles when Slash started playing nonsensical riffs to amuse his bandmates. Much to his later annoyance, he accidentally stumbled upon the foundations of an international hit single.
“You know, Guns N’ Roses was always a real hardcore, sort of, AC/DC kind of hard rock band with a lot of attitudes,” the guitarist told radio host Kidd Chris in 2014 before somewhat troublingly adding: “If we did any kind of ballads, it was bluesy. This was an uptempo ballad. That’s one of the gayest things you can write.”
Despite Slash’s thoughts on ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, the general public immediately gravitated to the track in their droves. Guns N’ Roses only had Appetite for Destruction to their name, but the single helped push them to a breathtaking level of superstardom. Their debut album has sold over 18 million copies in the United States alone, largely due to the success of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.
During an interview with Australian TV in 2019, Slash looked back on the track and explained how his stance has softened with age, noting, “You know what happens is you come up with something you think is cool, but how it’s going to translate to other people, you never know. I was the guy who initially was not a big fan of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ back in the day. That was more not because of the riff, it was really more about the type of song it was at the time.”
Slash isn’t just pretending to have hated ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ to bolster his rock ‘n’ roll image either. In his autobiography, bassist Duff McKagan wrote that Slash was even more damning about it in private, labelling it as their worst song.
While it’s unlikely to be one of his favourite songs anytime soon, Slash does seem to be warming more and more to ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ with every passing year. The fact that he’s finally letting go of his hatred towards it is a blessing too, as there’s no doubt that ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ will continue to follow him for the rest of his days, whether he likes it or not.
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