The musician Slash thought would never join Guns N’ Roses: “The chemistry worked”
The long, slow disintegration that plagued Guns N’ Roses’ classic line-up would rear its head in earnest even while they were still on a roll during the early 1990s.
We all know that frontman Axl Rose remained the sole remaining member from the Appetite for Destruction era by the decade’s end, soldiering on to realise his long-gestating Chinese Democracy project, keeping the Los Angeles hard rock on the road, in name at least.
But the fragmentation had been a long time – across the preceding years, guitarist Izzy Stradlin decided to walk away in 1991, with Slash finally calling it quits in 1996 and bassist Duff McKagan following suit the next year.
Back in 1989, Guns N’ Roses were still hard rock royalty, basking in the stature as the meaner, harder alternative to the hair metal buffoonery hogging the day’s MTV – Seattle’s grunge upheaval was yet to explode onto the mainstream, and G N’ R Lies had sailed to number two on the Billboard 200 only several months earlier.
Yet, Slash knew changes were needed. A scourge sinking its fangs into many of Sunset Strip’s bands at the time, heroin began to stick its opiate hook in drummer Steven Adler, resulting in a constant yo-yoing between going clean and shooting up that was seriously affecting studio sessions. Playing his last show in April 1990 for Farm Aid IV, Adler was finally given the official boot.
They needed a drummer, fast. Prayers would be answered when Slash caught UK post-punk stompers The Cult during their Sonic Temple tour, after testing numerous potentials that didn’t cut the mustard. Standing by the soundboard at the venue, the band’s newcomer drummer struck Slash as exactly what Guns N’ Roses were after.
“I initially didn’t contact him because he was with The Cult,” Slash reflected to Guitar World at the time. “But I was at an all-time low, and I knew that the Cult were off the road, so I decided to give Matt Sorum a call. I went through all these different sources to get in touch with him.”
“Finally, we hooked up, he came down to a rehearsal, and things immediately clicked. It was great, and he was a great guy – the chemistry worked.”
Slash
The alchemy proved so successful that Sorum ended up cutting Guns N’ Roses’ take on Bob Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ pretty much from the word go and sitting on the drumming stool for both Use Your Illusion records until being fired in 1997, long after everybody had jumped ship. The two would offer each other creative sanctuary, joining forces for Slash’s Snakepit and the Velvet Revolver side-hustle, with McKagan roped in too.
Sorum’s recruitment injected some revitalising into Guns N’ Roses that kept some gas in the tank for a few more years at least. “The difference is insane,” Slash furthered on the new dynamics at play in the studio.
Concluding, “At one point, Duff thought it was his fault. We couldn’t get a decent groove going, and we couldn’t figure what was going wrong. Then we thought it was the whole band! You should’ve seen us! Y’know, long faces and shit…”
