The guitarist Slash claimed outplayed him: “He wiped the floor with me”
Anyone even trying to compete with Slash on guitar is fighting a losing battle. Ever since he first burst onto the scene with Guns N’ Roses, the top-hat-clad rock and roller has encapsulated everything badass about the genre, down to those blues leads and his ability to tear the roof off of nearly every single venue that would have him. He doesn’t claim to be a god, though, and any time that he put himself in a jam session with Les Paul, he admitted that he was just trying to keep up.
Then again, Slash never aimed to be a guitar hero in those early days. He no doubt wanted to be in a successful rock band, but his approach to the instrument was more about applying himself until he found the sound that he wanted to hear rather than being the grandstanding musician out front alongside Axl Rose.
Despite not wanting that much attention, it’s almost ironic to see Les Paul get so little attention for his guitar chops. Most casual guitar fans only know the name as that little piece of window dressing on a guitar headstock, but before teaming up with Gibson, Les Paul had already earned his stripes as one of the best in the business.
Looking at some of the archival footage of him from the pre-rock and roll days, Paul had already started developing his own language on guitar. Whereas Chet Atkins had his signature guitar twang, Paul had a certain element of fury whenever he played. It was still in service to traditional songs, but when listening to him tearing through a lead, the precision he played with was beyond anything most had seen at the time.
And if it weren’t for Paul, there’s a good chance Slash would have never seen the limelight. He had certainly played like a god whenever he was onstage, but it wasn’t until he got a copy of a Gibson Les Paul during the recording of Appetite for Destruction that solidified him as a giant, bringing in that warm tone that coated tunes like ‘Paradise City’ and ‘Welcome to the Jungle’.
Although Slash did have the opportunity to play with other giants like BB King and Eric Clapton after the fact, he knew that he was in for an education working with Paul, saying, “He’s the grandfather of guitar for me. I didn’t know who he was until my grandmother told me. I played with him a bunch of times. I went up there, all cocksure and everything, to jam, and he wiped the stage with me. I used to judge how much better I was getting by how well my jams with Les were.”
But there’s more than just speed in Paul’s playing, and looking at some of Slash’s later records, some of the tasteful playing he used is practically an extension of what Les had done. Listening back to some of the leads he laid down on his self-titled solo record, the tone and the note choices are a lot more nuanced than before, almost like he took every lesson and then applied it to working with whichever singer he happened to write a tune for.
Then again, Slash would always sound like Les Paul if he had that Gibson in his hand. Many people say that a guitarist’s tone is all in the fingers, but how are you supposed to compete with someone who actually wrote the rulebook on your instrument?
