The moment Slash heard his future and the riff that changed his life: “That’s what I wanna do”
There are only a handful of guitarists who can play guitar as fluidly as Slash.
Even though it takes a certain amount of skill and dexterity to pull off any Guns N’ Roses solo, the enigmatic man in the top hat makes it seem so effortlessly when he’s playing, practically flying blind and ripping out one classic melody after the next. For a brief time, though, there was a good chance that Slash wouldn’t be playing guitar at all.
During his youth, Slash occasionally got left to his own devices and became fascinated with riding his bike. Pulling off tricks that most people would be doing on X-Games years later, Slash was still enamoured with music, falling in love with the genre after hearing Rocks by Aerosmith one day.
Although Slash had the idea of forming a band with drummer Steven Adler, he was out of luck when Adler claimed the guitarist spot. As he recalled, “I thought that I was going to play bass because Steve Adler, who was my best friend at the time, already had a guitar. He used to crank it up through this little piece of shit amp that he had, and he would turn KISS Alive II all the way up and just bang on this guitar, even though he didn’t know how to play it.”
Even though Adler couldn’t play, it didn’t matter as long as they had ambition. Scouring the neighbourhood, Slash walked into a music store and asked if he could be taught bass, explaining, “I went to a local music school around the corner and sat down with a guitar teacher, and he said, ‘Do you have an instrument?’ I said no, and then we had a conversation. He was trying to figure out who he was dealing with and what it was that I wanted to learn”.
At that point, it wasn’t really about technical ability anyway. Like so many kids drawn to rock and roll, the appeal was in the noise, the attitude, and the sense that you didn’t need permission to start making something of your own.
That early lack of direction ended up being a blessing in disguise. Without any rigid idea of what he was supposed to be, Slash was free to stumble into the instrument that would define him, following instinct rather than any formal path, which is exactly what gives his playing that loose, unteachable feel all these years later.
In the background, Slash was already being treated to the best rock and roll music ever released. Whereas Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin loomed large in the background, the 1960s trio Cream were being looked at as legends of the scene, with their album Disraeli Gears introducing the world to the psychedelic sounds of Eric Clapton’s guitar.
Once Slash heard his music teacher playing ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’, he knew he had found his calling, saying, “This is the record I was listening to when I chose to play guitar. While he was talking to me, he was playing ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’, including the solo bit. When I heard that, I was like, ‘That’s what I wanna do!’ So that’s how I started playing guitar.”
That bluesy foundation has remained a part of Slash’s sound ever since. While his work with Guns N’ Roses fit comfortably in the world of hard rock and heavy metal, Slash’s heroes always returned to the blues giants, pulling from artists like Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Joe Perry and adding his own flavour into the mix.
While it’s easy to spot those influences on Slash, the classic approach to rock and roll marked a sea change in what was happening at the time. Since the hair metal scene was starting to expire, Guns N’ Roses’ brand of hard rock, combined with Slash’s furious guitar playing, created the foundation for the next generation of rock and roll. Trends in fashion might change on MTV, but just like Cream’s classics, Slash’s approach to guitar is most likely never to go out of style.
