The band that Slash was embarrassed to tour with
By the start of the 1990s, no rock band seemed more dangerous than Guns N’ Roses. As much as the group’s days may have been numbered with the rise of alternative rock slowly starting to creep in, every aspiring guitarist was looking to emulate what Slash was doing every night, playing in a blues-infused style reminiscent of classic rockers like Joe Perry and Eric Clapton. While Slash may have been one of the most successful guitar players to ever live at the time, he admitted that he was embarrassed having to share the stage with another hard rock legend.
When Guns N’ Roses first arrived on the rock scene, they were already ushering in the new guard of what rock would become. Since most of the bands out of Los Angeles were teasing their hair and trying to make the most surface-level songs they could think of in the hopes of getting on MTV, Slash was looking to be authentic in every sense of the word, living up to the band’s reputation as a rock and roll street gang.
While Guns N’ Roses may have been looking to break down the LA rock scene from within, Metallica were already trying their hand at heavier music since the early 1980s. After the massive success of their debut, Kill Em All, the thrash metal titans would carve out their own path in the metal mainstream without so much as a video, with albums like Master of Puppets filling stadiums strictly by word of mouth.
Once the group got together with producer Bob Rock for The Black Album, they set their sights on mainstream success, pairing down their sound to something that could get radio play on songs like ‘Sad But True’ and ‘Enter Sandman’. Even though the band could have easily toured stadiums on their own, Lars Ulrich had the idea of putting together the biggest tour imaginable by going out on the road with Guns N’ Roses.
Although the groups may have had a similar overlap of fans, most of the tour was quickly marred by chaos, with Guns frontman Axl Rose refusing to show up at their required start time and often cutting the setlists short depending on the day he was having. By the time the band toured Montreal, it had reached a boiling point, with James Hetfield being severely burned in a pyrotechnics accident.
Even though Slash was ready to take the stage early and play a blistering set, Rose would only get through a handful of songs before storming off the stage, complaining of vocal problems. After a riot broke out following the show, Slash remembered feeling mortified to even speak with the members of Metallica afterwards.
When talking about his time working on the tour, Slash remembered how ashamed he was of the band’s behaviour, saying, “That caused a big thing. But a lot of that stuff that went down was really out of my hands. To be honest, I was really quite embarrassed by what went down. It’s not like we were on bad terms, but there was a definite silence around. Fortunately, things are fine between me and the Metallica guys now”.
While Metallica could soldier on after the tour wrapped up, the end of the road would spell disaster for Guns N’ Roses, eventually breaking up following the release of the covers album “The Spaghetti Incident?”. Even though Slash may have wanted just to play rock and roll for anyone within earshot, this tour marked the moment when things were getting far bigger than any of the band members could handle.
