He might have paid his dues with rock legends Guns N’ Roses, but guitarist Slash remains humble. So humble, in fact, that he’s been spotted playing the iconic riff of Sweet Child O’ Mine while auditioning for a teenage rock band.
Okay, it’s not an actual audition, but rather a new commercial for finance company Capital One, but the top-hatted one shreds the Appetite for Destruction cut as if his role in the fresh-faced rock outfit really does depend on it.
For the man who penned some of the most classic rock riffs in history on 1987’s Appetite for Destruction, Slash revealed earlier this week that he’s never owned a copy of the album himself.
“I mean, you make a record, you go through this whole process of creating the music and working on it with the guys and developing it,” he told Goldmine Magazine. “Then you go into the studio and you record it, then go in and mix it. And then the final process is mastering. And once that’s done and it’s off to be released, you’ve moved on.
“It’s like you’ve gone through everything you need to on that material, and the only thing you have to look forward to at that point is going out and performing it.”
Over four decades into his career, Slash remains one of the most active guitarists in the scene. Aside from his involvement in the latest Capital One commercial, he has enjoyed a busy 2022, touring extensively with Guns N’ Roses and launching the fourth full-length of his solo side project with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators.
That album, Slash told Total Guitar back in March, was recorded in only five days.
“It was like it was a meeting of minds,” he said. “We went out to Nashville, set the gear up and just started playing. We did two songs a day over the course of five days and that was basically the whole record sans overdubs and background vocals. We used wedges as monitors and it was just like playing in a club. Myles was in a booth right next to us, but I could actually see him and he just sang along.
“There would be two or three takes and that was it. I think Myles thought, ‘I can always go back and redo this or that’, but then he was the first one to test positive for Covid. The vocals were great so there was no need to go back and redo them.”
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