The tour that made Slash want to quit Guns N’ Roses: “It was a really hard time”
For his stature as a rock legend, Slash has always seemed like one of the most easygoing guys in the business. He may have the status of being one of the most high-profile guitarists in the business, but he was just as likely to avoid the limelight every time he got onstage, often pulling his giant locks down over his top hat as he played. Though Guns N’ Roses turned themselves into a tour de force with Slash out front, he admitted that the band’s tour in 1991 into 1992 was what made him want to leave.
When looking at the album Appetite for Destruction, there was probably no other artist who could have done what Slash did on the hair metal scene. There had been virtuosos in the genre before, but Slash wanted to bring music away from the sounds of glam metal and more towards the old-school rock and roll of Aerosmith.
Although the band were known as the gutter punks of The Sunset Strip, it turned out that that authenticity was exactly what the scene needed. Grunge may have gotten the title of killing hair metal, but from the minute that Slash began playing the intro to ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, he was already starting to separate the wheat from the chaff in the music industry.
The band couldn’t have asked for more by the time they got to 1989: a blockbuster album at their feet, an amazing touring schedule, and the kind of royalty checks that musicians can only hope to receive. Then there was the looming question… now what?
Most artists don’t know the answer to that question, but Axl Rose sure as hell did. The next project needed to be more grandiose, which involved the band musically growing up way too fast on Use Your Illusion. Even though there were some good songs to be found on the album, the massive double album was accompanied by a tour that no one could have sustained.
Aside from going around the world twice, the original lineup could barely hold on, with Izzy Stradlin eventually leaving after not wanting to deal with their antics anymore. By this time, it would be really stretching to call the group a band anymore, especially with Rose dictating whether they would even go onstage on any given night.
For Slash, this kind of behaviour began to get too much for him to the point where he couldn’t take it anymore, telling Rock Icons, “It was exciting on one hand because of the audience factor, but it was a really hard time for us as well, trying to navigate this whole thing. There was a lot of internal stuff and there was manager stuff and business stuff, and there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen that helped bring a lot of things to a head. I kinda quit the job without knowing where I was going to work next.”
Given when he left, he may have gotten off the boat at just the right time. Since the tour had been marred by riots and a horrific episode where Slash almost died in his hotel room, he may have had to leave to just hold onto his sanity. While things eventually turned out for the best with Velvet Revolver and his eventual solo career, the days of swigging Jack Daniels and living the excessive lifestyle were finally starting to catch up with him.
