The Guns N’ Roses classic song Slash wanted to delete from history
When a song takes on a life that transcends the band that created it, the artist faces a choice: embrace its popularity or grow to resent their creation. These tracks often generate enough revenue to allow musicians to retire by 30, but as Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash knows, financial compensation doesn’t override natural emotions.
It’s a rare feat for an artist to view their best-selling song as their most impressive moment in the studio from an artistic perspective. Typically, the two don’t go hand in hand, and very few feel that their defining track deserves such cultural status.
Admittedly, almost every musician would want their compositions to become as prevalent as ‘Stairway to Heaven’ or ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Nevertheless, Robert Plant and Kurt Cobain both harboured feelings of hatred towards their respective trademark tracks. Similarly, Slash guitarist Guns N’ Roses felt resentment towards ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine‘ despite the riches it gave his band. Over 30 years after the release, it’s still a staple of classic rock radio and continues to rack up millions of streams annually.
Nevertheless, it’s a track that Slash would have preferred to have never been born into the world. For the guitarist, it represented everything he didn’t want to be, and frustratingly, the song was the first introduction many had to his band.
Guns N’ Roses had a dangerous aura attached to them throughout the late 1980s. Everywhere they went, chaos soon followed. At the height of their fame, rather than play up to their hellraising persona, the band mixed things up by surprisingly dropping the ballad, ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’. Much to their collective surprise, it became an unexpected hit and remains their only single to top the Billboard 100 chart.
It’s a track cut from the group’s softer side, an element of their DNA that Slash didn’t want to exhibit publicly. Instead, he preferred to revel in Guns N’ Roses having a villainous image, and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ fell outside this remit. “I hated it for years,” he once revealed. “But it would cause such a reaction, so I’ve finally gotten to appreciate it.”
To be honest, ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ was somewhat of a fluke. The song began as a mess around during rehearsals in Los Angeles when Slash started playing nonsensical riffs to amuse his bandmates. Much to his later annoyance, he accidentally stumbled upon the foundations of an international hit single.
“You know, Guns N’ Roses was always a real hardcore, sort of, AC/DC kind of hard rock band with a lot of attitudes,” the guitarist told radio host Kidd Chris in 2014 before somewhat troublingly adding: “If we did any kind of ballads, it was bluesy. This was an uptempo ballad. That’s one of the gayest things you can write.”
Despite Slash’s thoughts on ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, the general public immediately gravitated to the track in their droves. Guns N’ Roses only had Appetite for Destruction to their name, but the single helped push them to a breathtaking level of superstardom. Their debut album has sold over 18 million copies in the United States alone, largely due to the success of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.
During an interview with Australian TV in 2019, Slash looked back on the track and explained how his stance has softened with age, noting, “You know what happens is you come up with something you think is cool, but how it’s going to translate to other people, you never know. I was the guy who initially was not a big fan of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ back in the day. That was more not because of the riff, it was really more about the type of song it was at the time.”
Furthermore, bassist Duff McKagan wrote in his autobiography that Slash always believed ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ was the group’s worst song.
Admittedly, Slash has spoken in more positive terms of ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’ lately. In all likelihood, now that he’s had the benefit of time to separate himself from the mania that once surrounded the song, he can appreciate its impact on Guns N’ Roses’ career. It was a crucial part of the jigsaw that helped the group briefly become the biggest band in the world, which gave Slash enough memories to last a lifetime.
