Slash names the best LA punk band: “My all-time favourite”
Every piece of Slash tends to bleed rock and roll. In fact, if you were to take a microscope of his DNA and come through each fabric of his construct, chances are his bloodstream would be a musical staff, and his blood cells would be in the shape of Les Paul guitars. The man exemplifies everything that rock and roll is supposed to be, but in between his worship of bands like The Rolling Stones is a punk spirit that has always loved the sound of acts like Fear.
Even when looking back on Guns N’ Roses’ early days, Slash was as much of a punk as he was a hard rocker. He could play at the most breakneck speeds possible, but there was always a technique buried underneath everything, almost like he was absorbing all of the lessons that he had learned from Jimmy Page and giving them a boost of adrenaline.
If there was one punk amongst the rock icons, though, it was Duff McKagan. Down to him repping the CBGB merch throughout his career, McKagan took everything from The Dead Boys to Sex Pistols into account when crafting his riffs for the group. But even by the golden age of punk, Fear was a bit of an outlier.
Whereas Ramones and The Clash get credit for starting the sound of punk in its early days, Fear was the first time hardcore punk got room in the conversation. From the minute Lee Ving opened his mouth to sing, he sounded like a rabid dog that was willing to bite anyone’s limbs off should anyone get too close to him when he was onstage.
Just look at their appearance in The Decline of Western Civilisation, and that will tell you everything you need to know. Fear were anything but professional and wanted to cause as much chaos as they possibly could whenever they played, and that left a young Slash awestruck when he first laid ears on them.
When recording with his punk idols, Slash singled them out as one of the most dangerous acts that Los Angeles ever spit out, telling Spin, “I actually just recorded something with Fear. That was really exciting for me, because in LA back in the late ‘70s, Fear was like my all-time favourite LA punk band. They’re doing a covers record, so they called me, knowing that I’m a big Fear fan.”
Although Guns N’ Roses were still always after a hook melody to lead the people in, the aggression of Fear’s music is baked into their riffs whether Axl Rose wants it or not. From the swagger of ‘Don’t Damn Me’ to their eventual cover of ‘I Don’t Care About You’, the attitude is pouring out of Slash’s guitar from the minute the song starts, doing everything he can to do his punk godfathers proud.
But punk doesn’t seem to be a broad enough banner to put Fear under. If you take them into consideration, along with all of the other massive punk bands that came out of California, they may as well be the embodiment of chaos.
