The musician Slash called “impossible to work with”
Ever since his stint with Guns N’ Roses, Slash has moulded himself into the embodiment of rock and roll guitar. No matter who he takes the stage with, the top-hat-clad guitarist has become the signature look of what guitar players are supposed to be, looking out of place without a Les Paul in his hand and hair hiding his face. Although Slash has been able to work his magic in the studio for many different people, he thought one specific rock legend was one of the hardest to work with personally.
Then again, Slash didn’t have it easy working with Guns N’ Roses. Throughout the band’s tenure together, every member had to deal with the antics of Axl Rose, either tolerating his schedule when he didn’t show up for a show or having to cower to his every whim to make sure a show went off without a hitch.
By the time Slash left the fold in the mid-1990s, he desperately needed a shakeup. Outside of the dangerous rock and roll band, he took his time working in every single band that would suit him, lending his skills to Michael Jackson tracks like ‘Black Or White’ and contributing guitar parts to artists like Carole King.
Even though Slash had been carving out his name as a go-to session guitarist, Bob Dylan asking him to perform on one of his songs was a strange choice for him at first. While Dylan was on the precipice of making late-career masterpieces like Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft, he called Slash in to work on tracks for the album Under the Red Sky.
Still in the mould of the traditional Dylan works, Slash was called to lend his skills to the track ‘Wiggle Wiggle’. Even though Slash could play any type of lead guitar as long as he knew its key, he wasn’t entirely thrilled with how the final product turned out. Rather than consult him about where to take the guitar part, most of Slash’s lead lines ended up on the cutting room floor, with Dylan and the producer taking bits and pieces from his original takes and arranging them how they saw hit.
Looking back on the experience, Slash said that trying to get what he thought they wanted was a chore, telling Guitar Player, “I came down to the studio and met Bob. He was indifferent as indifferent gets – impossible to work with. On top of that, I did one of my best one-off solos ever, one take – it was killer. When the advance cassettes went out, it was still on there, but he took it off on the official release. He said it sounded too much like Guns & Roses. I was like, ‘What the f*ck was I there for?’”.
While Slash was unsatisfied with how the session worked out, that didn’t dissuade him from working on even more adventurous projects in the future. He has kept up his solo career with Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge and has brought his guitar back into the mainstream as of late with his lines of ‘I’m Just Ken’ from the soundtrack to Barbie. Even though Slash might thrive off of a creative environment, Dylan may have been the one artist that he could never fully grasp in the studio.
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