The Guns N’ Roses song Slash described as “angelic”
Like many of his peers, Slash considers musical harmony to be a drug. “Once you get going on it, you’re constantly jonesing for it,” he once said.
Incidentally, that’s also precisely how he sees Guns N’ Roses – this entity with the biggest “fucking hunger and attitude” and an insatiable force that never stopped. It’s also why they made it as far as they did, from the struggle of the initial Hell Tour to the top of their game: because they had the passion and the drive to reach out and grab it for everything it was worth.
On paper, it shouldn’t have worked. Not only were Slash and Axl Rose two completely different musicians, but all odds were also against them in the beginning, and yet they still managed to push past the point when most people would have given up, because instead of letting their differences get the better of them, they allowed it to inform the music, using their different backgrounds to their advantage.
In 2011, Slash told Esquire that he recognised how rare and unique their dynamic was, saying that “there are no words” for how they worked, other than “otherworldly”. There was just this magic to it that worked, like “when a painter gets the right combination of colours together”, and it just flourishes in all its impossible glory.
For Slash, it was the guitar that pushed them to greatness; everything else just sort of fell and found its place around that, which is also sort of his approach to life. The guitar is one of the only things that makes complete sense, even when he struggles to reach the level of technicality or harmony he’s constantly striving for, because that mess is a source of comfort for him, even if it’s challenging.
This is also a mindset that carries him through different musical progressions and developments, especially when certain shifts could be seen as experimental or ones that could attract criticism from loyal fans. To Slash, these risks are precisely the point of creativity, and he knows better than anybody how important it is to keep moving forward.
After Appetite for Destruction and Guns N’ Roses, the band released a handful of acoustic songs in the form of their G N’ R Lies EP. During this time, the guitarist was asked by Rolling Stone whether the following project would include more musical departures from their previous material, to which Slash confirmed that there would be a lot of “different instruments” doing “all different kinds of sounds and things”.
He also discussed the use of horns on their cover of Wings’ ‘Live and Let Die’, and how Rose was at the time working on a “rack of synthesisers” in substitute for an orchestra. On ‘November Rain’, he mentioned the young background singers they were considering to make it sound even more euphoric, as that was how they intended it to sound when they first started working on it.
“It’s that kind of song,” he said. “It’s very angelic. We’ll do whatever it takes to make the songs as powerful as possible.”
Initially referred to as “the ‘Layla’ song” because of its long instrumental section, ‘November Rain’ created a legacy of its own, capturing the ambition at the band’s heart all those years ago. They could have stuck to their roots, but they never really fared well sitting in one place for long, not when they knew they were capable of pushing rock somewhere it had never ventured before.
