The gig that made Slash form Velvet Revolver
Rock was in a lull before Guns N’ Roses came along. It was a genre that found its feet in the 1960s, when musicians had permission to experiment with their sound and play around with different styles and song structures. After that decade, people seemed to stop pushing themselves within the movement, and instead, the bands operating within the scene became a lot more formulaic.
As Eddie Vedder noted when speaking about Guns N’ Roses, many people felt that they injected some much-needed venom back into guitar music. Slash played like his life depended on it, and while some of their lyrics are looked back on as quite problematic, there is no escaping the fact that they were sung with emotion and aggression, which made for a perfect combo.
Their hot-headed nature didn’t just resonate within their music, though. Guns N’ Roses is a band that was never able to escape some form of friction; in fact, the band that made their debut album wasn’t even the original lineup, as arguments had started before they had a sniff of success.
As such, while Guns N’ Roses certainly had plenty of success, they were also a ticking time bomb. The band was never destined to last long, as friction throughout the creative process led to strong disagreements no matter what album they were making. The band officially broke up in the ‘90s for a period before Axl Rose came back with a different line-up.
Slash had proven throughout his time at Guns N’ Roses that he was a guitarist capable of tapping into a range of different sounds. Appetite For Destruction was a pure hard rock album, but the records that came after, such as Use Your Illusion I and II, saw the band write complicated ballads that were layered and operatic in their construction. As such, when Slash was cut from Guns N’ Roses, he was keen to continue making complicated music with like-minded artists.
Velvet Revolver was one of the first bands he formed outside of Guns N’ Roses. He formed the band with fellow Guns bassist Duff McKagan after a haphazard band was put together to play a benefit for the drummer Randy Castillo. Castillo had passed away and a lot of bands he had worked and toured with over the years came together to play a show which would raise money to help with funeral bills and expenses. The band that Slash ended up putting together was everyone’s first glimpse at Velvet Revolver, and it became clear the minute they took to the stage, they were onto something special.
“We played this gig and we were the last band to go on, and we just rocked this place. Seriously, we tore the house down – and with Steve Tyler, he got up and we did Mama Kin. It was just really over the top,” recalled Slash, “And it was the first time I played in a band outside of Guns with Duff. So he called me the next morning, and he goes, ‘Do you wanna do something, like, seriously with this?’”
