“Nobody else”: The guitarist Slash claimed no one could copy
Any artist’s goal should be to get their own sonic footprint down every time they make a record. Even if they aren’t the most proficient on their instrument, it’s much more of a compliment if someone can recognise a musician in the first few seconds of them playing than having to watch them pull off some insane solo or vocal run. Although Slash has that kind of signature touch whenever he straps on a guitar, he felt that no one could come close to playing like this guitar icon.
Even before Slash came on the scene, though, his brand of street-level hard rock was a breath of fresh air from the rest of Los Angeles. The massive shadow that Van Halen had over the rest of California had turned every hair metal band into the candified version of hard rock, but Slash took every lesson that his heroes before him had to impart and then applied them.
Across Appetite for Destruction, some of his greatest licks seem to be cherrypicked from the greatest names in classic rock. While the fiery energy of punk is in there as well, it would be hard to listen to his lyrical guitar playing and not hear traces of everyone from Joe Walsh to the Mick Taylor era of The Rolling Stones.
For anyone ingrained in classic rock, though, it all traces back to the blues, and Slash was always a child of the greatest blues artists on the scene. Even though he’s been able to hold his own sharing a stage with the likes of Joe Perry of Aerosmith and even BB King, there was something about listening to Rory Gallagher that set his world on fire when he first picked up the instrument.
While not the most recognisable face in classic rock, Gallagher may be one of the important names for virtuosic guitar playing. Despite him never getting the same adulation as someone like Jimmy Page or Jeff Beck, his raucous live shows and sweeping solos sounded like someone bottled up everything great about blues rock and channelled it into one person.
Whereas many people eventually flocked to other blues aficionados later, Slash still thought no one came close to what Gallagher could pull off, saying, “Nobody else I knew was really too hip to him, at least in Hollywood. But then they were sort of all into Randy Rhoads, anyway. Rory didn’t sound like anybody else. There are a million guys who sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan, but I never heard anybody who could really pull off sounding like Rory Gallagher.”
And while the guitar gunslinger is far too modest to put himself in that company, there are at least a few moments where he reaches Gallagher’s level of finesse. While some would argue that a tune like ‘Paradise City’ is a touch too long for radio, hearing the final two minutes where everything speeds up in tempo features Slash’s most Gallagher-esque guitar playing, especially when he goes on insane runs that shouldn’t even be possible for human hands to play.
But for all of the inspiration that Gallagher gave Slash, he never sought to be a straight mimic. What he had to do needed to be original, and by taking bits and pieces from every guitar hero that came before him, the Guns N’ Roses guitarist became the perfect example of everything that a guitarist should aspire to be.
