Slash names “the heaviest [riff] I’ve heard in my life”
As the 1970s started, rock and roll began moving in a heavier direction. As a reaction to the psychedelic sounds of the hippie movement, many bands began coming to the forefront, boasting a sound that was much heavier than anything that bands like The Rolling Stones were making at the time. Although many artists will follow in the footsteps of hard rock, an impressionable Slash thought one guitar riff couldn’t be topped in terms of raw heaviness.
Throughout his career, though, Slash could claim to have had a more eclectic taste for rock and roll. Outside of being the lead guitarist of Guns N’ Roses throughout most of their classic years, it wasn’t out of the question to see the guitar maestro lending his skills to anyone who would have him, working on projects from the likes of Michael Jackson and Carole King.
Before Slash had even known how to put a basic melody together, though, he was indebted to the early sounds of 1970s rock. Born to two leading figures in the entertainment industry, Slash first found his calling when listening to Led Zeppelin, thinking that ‘Whole Lotta Love’ was the introduction for something much heavier on the horizon.
By the time he had heard Aerosmith’s landmark album Rocks, though, the guitarist knew that this music would become a mainstay in his life, picking up a guitar for the first time and starting to parse out licks to his favourite records. While both Zeppelin and Aerosmith were still rooted in the blues, a darker band was about to emerge from the English city of Birmingham.
Not wanting to go along with the hippy sounds they heard every day, Black Sabbath helped pioneer the sounds of heavy metal, with Tony Iommi twisting the blues into something far more sinister. Although the band had their sound down to a science from their first album onward, it wasn’t until later that they embraced their heavy roots wholeheartedly.
After mining away for ideas in the ruins of an abandoned castle, Iommi was struggling to come up with anything worthwhile until he penned ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’. While the lyrics of the tune evoke the woes of being a young band in the music industry, Slash was moved by the pure evil in the background.
When talking about some of the best guitar riffs he had ever heard, Slash would single out the song’s final moments as one of the peaks of heaviness, telling Louder, “The outro to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is the heaviest shit I have ever heard in my life. To this day, I haven’t heard anything as heavy that has as much soul.”
While Slash would eventually maintain that Guns N’ Roses were nothing but a hard rock band, it’s easy to spot the handful of moments where Sabbath’s influence has rubbed off. From the bad boy attitude of ‘Paradise City’ to the spiralling outro on the band’s epic ‘Coma’, Slash has undoubtedly picked up a few tricks from his idols along the way, along with turning in time with Ozzy Osbourne on occasion. Guns N’ Roses may have been a successor to acts like The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, but every hard rock band since 1970 has held Sabbath’s name looming large in the background.
