“It’s a different kind of playing”: the band Slash always avoided playing with
No artist should try to put parameters on who they should play with. The entire mentality of being in a band means adapting to whomever walks in the room, and it’s hard to get anywhere when someone insists on only playing a certain way whenever the count-in comes. When it comes to Slash, though, he usually didn’t have such parameters, but he did know when things were working and when he couldn’t add to a specific song.
Given his resume, though, the Guns N’ Roses guitarist could easily put an electric guitar into any setting. On a slow ballad sung by Adam Levine? Sure. In the middle of a Carole King song? Why not? In the midst of Ryan Gosling declaring his love of being one of the biggest Kens in the world? Well, it may not have been everyone’s first choice, but he still made it work with flying colours once Barbie came out.
That’s because Slash has reached the point where he feels comfortable in his own skin. He may not have the same kind of music theory knowledge that made legends like Ray Charles the biggest stars in the world, but when he sits down with typical blues licks playing with someone like BB King, it’s easy for him to tell where to go next without having to look at a chart halfway through a song.
Looking back at Guns N’ Roses’ catalogue, that’s half the reason why they worked as well. Some solos in their repertoire are as essential as any Zeppelin guitar break, but listening to the way that Slash internalises the tune, he’s always interested in making something that has its memorable moments but also gives him the opportunity to fly off the handle once he reaches the second half.
“Great lead guitar players usually don’t need another lead player around.”
Slash
Every guitarist would want that golden ticket, but that’s not how some Southern rock acts felt when sculpting their guitar parts. When it comes to groups like the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd, there were moments where they could experiment, but whether there were two guitarists playing in harmony or Ronnie Van Zant insisting that the band compose their solos, there was little room for them to stray from the formula all that much.
Slash could always appreciate what they were doing for guitar, but it’s not like he was itching to play with them the same way he was with a group like Aerosmith, saying, “Great lead guitar players usually don’t need another lead player around. The multiple lead guitar sound of bands like the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd is cool, but it’s a different, very structured kind of lead playing, and that’s something I don’t really strive for.”
That’s usually why he worked so well with having someone opposite him filling out the rhythm tracks. Both Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke were the perfect foils to Slash whenever he got onstage in Guns N’ Roses, and one of the reasons why Velvet Revolver worked so well was because of how Dave Kushner helped balance out the guitar sound while he tore through as many scales as he could.
It’s easy to like bands like Skynyrd and the Allmans from a distance, but Slash’s approach was a much different animal from how they operated. Those acts were keeping the spirit of guitar playing alive, but that kind of symbiotic vocabulary that they had on albums like At Fillmore East wasn’t what he was striving for.
