The bands Slash was proud to destroy: “I fucking hated the whole scene”
You’ve never heard a statement of intent quite like the first 30 seconds of Guns N’ Roses‘ debut album, Appetite for Destruction.
It starts with guitarist Slash playing an eerie, closed and open note run on the G and B strings of his Gibson. Four on the G, open on the B, a touch of reverb and delay, the feeling is unsettling and yet something that pricked rock fans’ ears everywhere. Here was something new, where would it go?
Well, from there, we listeners were thrown into one of the heaviest introductions that rock music in the 1980s would ever be graced with. The rhythm guitar was laced with distortion, and the drums were equal parts aggressive and bouncy. If you wanted to throw your hair around and start a mosh pit, you could, but equally, dancing was also an option. Slash once admitted that these drums are what gave the debut album its edge.
“One of the reasons Appetite for Destruction is so great is the energy that he brings to the table,” said Slash when discussing the contribution of drummer Steve Adler. “It was great to get in a room with him and start playing, and just to recognise that sound that he has.”
Whatever the secret behind the album was, it was a rock record that the scene in Los Angeles had been desperate for. Rock had always been built on a few different pillars, one was the music, of course, but there were other factors which in the eye of the consumer were equally as important, these included a band’s overall look and their sex appeal. Rock stars were supposed to be untouchable and awe-inspiring, essentially meaning that if people didn’t want to be you, they wanted to be with you, and vice versa.
It’s all well and good making great music and having people flock to you as a result, but problems emerge when bands prioritise the reaction to the product instead of the product itself. The music took a back seat, and they focused predominantly on how they looked, how marketable they were, and how they could tailor their act so that people would want to sleep with them. There are many corners of music where this mindset exists, but one of the most prominent periods was during the hair metal era.
A lot of people don’t realise just how important a band like Guns N’ Roses were. Sure, you can look at them now and say they merely made hard rock, some of which has aged poorly, but at the time, the Los Angeles rock scene was on its arse, and it took a band with the vigour of Guns N’ Roses to force it up again. Without that band and without that debut, a lot of acts which formed shortly after may have sounded totally different.
Slash always took great pride in what Guns N’ Roses managed to do to the metal scene in Los Angeles. Sure, his band might have been just as reliant on cans of hairspray, but the music came first.
“I fucking hated the whole scene, man […] In Los Angeles, it was just bullshit. And we were coming up in the midst of all that,” he concluded. “Everybody was fucking converting to the industry standard to get a record deal and get girls, this whole thing. Where our band was coming from was the antithesis of all that, and it’s something I’m really proud of.”
