Slash names the movie composers that inspire him most
Whilst Slash might be most famous for being the lead guitarist in Guns N’ Roses, creating the iconic riff for ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ and countless other hits, he’s also a lifelong movie buff. Naturally, the musician has a lot to say about the world of the silver screen.
As fans of the hard rock hero will know, Slash has been directly involved in the movie industry for years and has featured in, produced, and scored various titles. Notably, in 1988, he and the rest of Guns N’ Roses starred in The Dead Pool, where his character attends a fellow musician’s funeral and shoots a harpoon. His most recent effort in the business was writing the soundtrack for the 2022 horror title The Breach, a project in which he also served as executive producer.
When speaking to the NME, Slash discussed Guns N’ Roses’ headline set as this year’s Glastonbury and other things, including his love of movies. At one point, he was asked about writing the score for The Breach before the attention turned to his favourite soundtrack composers. In his answer, Slash cited some of the best to do it, including John Carpenter, Jonny Greenwood and celebrated Tár composer Hildur Guðnadóttir.
Asked to name the movie composers that inspire him, Slash said: “Well, John Carpenter is great. I love Danny Elfman, he’s a genius. Hans Zimmer can be great too. John Williams and all these guys are super brilliant, but then there are some smaller names that maybe people only know for one movie. I mean people like [Icelandic musician] Hildur Guðnadóttir who did Joker – that was an amazing fucking score. I also think [Radiohead guitarist] Jonny Greenwood is a great fucking composer. There Will Be Blood was one of the best scores of the last 20 years.”
Asked if he’d ever met Jonny Greenwood, who wrote other excellent soundtracks such as Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread, and The Power of the Dog, Slash replied: “No! I’ve been to a couple of Radiohead shows but we’ve never been introduced.”
Discussing the moment his love of horror began, Slash told the interviewer: “Here! In England! When I was really, really little, living in Stoke-On-Trent, there were only two TV stations and they only played at certain times during the day. But there were the Hammer horror movies. People like Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Charles Laughton – all those British horror icons. I just fell for it 100 per cent.”
The guitarist’s parents encouraged his love of horror, which started with the genre’s literature. He recalled: “My dad taught me to read before I even started going to school. He saw that I had an affinity for the horror genre and he had me reading H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe.”
It was his mother who introduced him to the classic horror films like Dracula and The Wolfman: “Yeah, she’s American, so when I moved to the States [at the age of six] she turned me on to all the classics that I hadn’t seen like Dracula, King Kong, Frankenstein and The Wolfman. Then, when it came out [in 1973] I went to see The Exorcist.”
An avowed horror genre fan, the Guns N’ Roses legend also once listed his favourite movies from this area, naming classics such as Psycho, The Omen, and The Exorcist among them.
Watch the trailer for The Breach below.
