“I understood what life was about”: The Aerosmith album that changed Slash’s life
The eccentricity of rock’s greatest characters is ultimately what has made them parodied figures in later years. The permanently worn sunglasses and top hat of Slash renders him somewhat of a fancy dress figure for fans and comedians, but underneath the costume stands one of music’s most influential guitarists. It’s easy to forget that.
Guns N’ Roses may have typified a brand of BBQ rock that high-brow fans may turn their noses up at, but the simple fact is, it was rooted in a deep sense of technicality. But perhaps more importantly, we have forgotten the context of the period in which the Californian band rose to prominence.
In the mid-1980s, America was a tale of two stories. Booming capitalism and burgeoning bright lights commercialism were either a source of disillusionment or fulfilment. If you fell into the latter, slick cars, glossy Hollywood films, and stirring hair-rock were the three pillars of existence. They all fed into this sun-kissed idea of American life that was being drip-fed through government narratives and for many, it was an ideal time to be alive.
Their 1987 debut album, Appetite For Destruction, was an appropriate soundtrack for those days, with lyrics like “Take me down to the Paradise City / Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty” becoming the mantra upon which hyper-masculinity could be harvested in that decade.
But from Slash’s perspective, that wide-eyed outlook was informed by a band from the previous decade, who laid out a blueprint for his guitar playing to follow. Aerosmith inspired a feel within Slash for that style of raucous yet sentimental rock to flourish. He recalled, “When I moved to the States, aged 13 or 14, I started rediscovering music for myself. I was chasing this girl who was twice my age. When I finally got into her apartment, she played me Rocks for the first time.”
He added, “And that record just fucking transformed my whole life. It almost felt like it was written for me. Once I heard that, all of a sudden I understood what life was about. It was this loud, riff-heavy, screaming thing with this really sexy groove. That record just fucking spoke to me so directly.”
Aerosmith brought a soundtrack for kids at somewhat of a societal crossroads in the late 1970s. While Slash was a self-confessed misfit, and “punk who didn’t fit in anywhere”, there was something universal about the band that allowed him to fit into the world around him. It wasn’t just music for the alley-dwelling loners, pushing back against pop. Instead, Aerosmith were misfits themselves, who became global megastars by embracing their punk-rooted aesthetics and riding the vehicle of rock to get there.
The essence of those societal dregs grew into the slick brand of outdoor rock that Slash would go on to define in the following decade. Misfits would become rock icons and what Slash described as Aerosmith’s “raunchy, barely-holding-it-together, loud, boisterous, frenetic sound” developed into something more culturally relevant in an 1980s America desperate to celebrate its booming world presence.
