The 1980s singer Slash never wanted to become: “Careful what you wished for”
It’s easy for anyone like Slash to get a massive head the minute that they become famous.
Even though music isn’t supposed to be the most serious job in the world, the amount of time that Guns N’ Roses spent as the biggest rock and roll band in the world was already enough for Axl Rose to get a little too arrogant and start cancelling shows the minute that he felt that his voice didn’t sound right. But throughout every single piece of rock history that Slash has seen, he has remained one of the single coolest rock and roll stars that has ever come along.
And that’s all due to the fact that he doesn’t consider himself one of the geniuses of guitar. He does have a lot of moments where he deserves his flowers for being a rock and roll legend, but he can never truly accept that kind of praise. He was happy to just make the best music that he could, and whatever else he created during that time might as well have been a bonus. But that didn’t mean the rest of his heroes didn’t take notice.
Joe Perry of Aerosmith knew that Guns were offering something different when he heard their first hits, and being able to jam with people like Bob Dylan and Carole King probably doesn’t hurt to have on his resume, either. But the reason why Slash wasn’t ready to become a star was knowing the ins and outs of what comes with working in the entertainment industry every hour of the day.
His mother and father had already been on the fringes of rock and roll when they started making clothes and album covers for people like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, and since his mom also had a close relationship with David Bowie, it’s not like he didn’t understand what that life was all about. He knew that people can lose their minds and feel like they weren’t themselves more than a few times, but that didn’t stop Slash from taking the call when Michael Jackson asked him to perform on his record.
No one in their right mind would have turned down ‘The King of Pop’ at the time, but there were already a lot of things to consider here. Slash didn’t want to leave Guns N’ Roses by any stretch, but even if playing on ‘Black or White’ and ‘Give in To Me’ bothered Rose, Slash already had a feeling that he didn’t want to start taking too many lessons from Jackson when he first arrived at the studio.
He was already working without his top hat for the first time, but Slash felt that Jackson’s eccentric lifestyle was a bit much for him to take, saying, “All the people he had around him, the tugging, and the yes people, you could tell that he knew 90% of them were full of shit. I felt sorry for him in that sense. Right after that, Guns came to town and did our shows, and our success was massive, but it wasn’t as overwhelming as what Michael was going through. It was just an interesting light, looking at the two things and being careful about what you wished for.”
And in the greater Michael Jackson story, Slash seemed more comfortable being off to the side a lot of the time. He never enjoyed the idea of being one of the biggest names in the guitar community, so being able to play some of the best riffs that he could while everyone else was focused on the greatest singer the world had ever seen was much more comfortable than having the spotlight on him all the time.
Jackson probably showed Slash how to handle fame a little bit, but the idea of going as over the top as ‘The King of Pop’ was not in the cards for him. Slash was able to keep his own extracurriculars to himself, and he didn’t need to put everything about his personal life out into the open every single time he made a new record.
