Slash on Johnny Thunders: “I hated that little fucker”
When the Almighty Book of Rock and Roll is finally set in stone, Slash is going to be the definition of what a rock and roll star should be.
In a scene that was inundated with bands that were into fashion instead of thrashing, the first few seconds of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ practically rendered everyone obsolete when his guitar roared to life. Compared to every other guitar player, Slash was a walking encyclopedia for rock, but that didn’t mean that he had to be in love with the same music that his band was into.
After all, Slash had a very particular lane that he wanted to work in as a guitar player. He had followed in the footsteps of everyone from Mick Taylor to Eric Clapton to Joe Perry, and while everyone else was trying to be the next Eddie Van Halen clone in Los Angeles, Slash never underestimated the power of making a badass rock and roll riff jump out of the speakers when he played tunes like ‘Paradise City’.
There hadn’t been a rock and roll outfit like Guns N’ Roses in years when the band debuted, but it was about much more than standard rock and roll. Axl Rose was the one bringing the finesse to every song when he started breaking out the pianos for ‘November Rain’ and ‘Estranged’, but there was also that punk rock attitude that Duff McKagan had whenever he started coming up with his tunes.
The band were proud of their street credentials, and some of the biggest names in punk were as important to them as The Stones. The Germs had already laid the groundwork for what hardcore punk could be like out of California, but there was no replacing the seedy energy that came from the records they were hearing from the other side of the world. Ramones and Dead Boys had helped break down the doors for punk, but for McKagan, no one had the same rock and roll attitude that Johnny Thunders did.
Granted, Thunders wasn’t the greatest guitarist in the world, but that was never the point. The New York Dolls almost took pride in being rough around the edges, and as long as they had a lot of energy behind their music, that was good enough for them. But for someone who wanted a bit more structure to their songs, Slash felt that Thunders was far from the kind of guitar hero he wanted to emulate.
He had the same kind of mystique that the punk rock icon did, but he was far from a fan when the band started working on ‘You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory’, saying, “I didn’t even play on the Johnny Thunders song cos I hated that little fucker. I wasn’t that concerned when he died. We worked with him a couple of times and I didn’t like him at all. No disrespect for the deceased, but he’s not one of my heroes, let’s put it that way. I liked the Dolls, but I just wasn’t that interested in Thunders.”
At the same time, having McKagan pulling the weight on this tune actually serves the song a lot better than any Slash solo ever could. Thunders’s music didn’t need to have soaring leads over top of everything, and McKagan’s gravelly performance behind the mic is also a lot closer to the kind of vocals that Thunders would have thrown onto one of his tunes.
Then again, the fact that Slash was already talking trash about Thunders before The Spaghetti Incident had time to cool was already a bad sign. The band were practically being held together by duct tape and faith, and if this was what they sounded like during the promotional cycle, it was only a matter of time before he left the fold altogether.
