How did Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash get his name?
Saul Hudson spent his childhood between Stoke-on-Trent, in the heart of England, and his adopted home city of Los Angeles. It was in the latter corner of the world that he met singers Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin, who invited him into their band Guns N’ Roses in 1985. But it was several years prior to joining the band that he received his mononymous rock and roll moniker, Slash.
That Slash’s first guitar hero was Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood is no accident. Not only were the two guitarists born within a few west London miles of each other, in Hampstead and Hillingdon, respectively. Slash grew up hanging out with Wood from the age of 13.
“I had a friend named Matt Cassel at school, and his dad is an actor named Seymour Cassel,” Slash told Wood on his podcast in 2014. “We used to ditch school and hang out at Seymour’s”. Cassel was actually a big-name star at the time, well-known in Hollywood as a longtime collaborator of director John Cassavetes with many famous friends, some of whom were members of The Rolling Stones.
“When the Stones were coming to town, they’d come by Seymour’s house,” the guitarist explained. “And that’s where Ronnie and I met.” Slash remembers Wood as the most “outgoing and nice” of the Stones, who would willingly “hang out” with him and his teenage friends. At the same time, he’d picked up a guitar and started learning to play.
“And so I used to pay attention to whatever Ronnie was doing guitar-wise at that point,” he said.
What’s Wood got to do with his name?
During the many hours a teenage Hudson spent at Cassel’s house, trying to play the guitar like Ronnie Wood, he picked up a nickname from the actor. “Seymour used to call me Slash, and that’s where that nickname started,” he explained/
This explanation hardly sheds light on the meaning behind the name. However, in a previous interview with Swindle, Slash elaborated on the reason for Cassel’s choice. “He used to call me Slash because I was an aspiring guitar player, always hustling, never stopping to hang out. I was always in a hurry,” he said. Perhaps Seymour was thinking of the comic-book hero Flash, who’s capable of travelling between places at inordinate speeds. That nickname might have made a little more sense.
But Slash is sanguine about the name he’s ended up being known by, to millions around the world. “He started calling me that,” he added, in reference to Cassel. “And it stuck.” Now, he wouldn’t be the same guitarist without it.
