Frank Ferrer, the man who sat behind the drum kit for Guns N’ Roses for nearly two decades, has been talking to Rolling Stone about his stint in the band. He’s also said some very nice things about Axl Rose. Who would have thought?

Rose’s reputation goes before him. But Ferrer paints a picture of a focused individual who looks out for his bandmates. When asked what the world misunderstands about the singer, Ferrer replies: “That he’s a mean guy. I think the world thinks that he’s a scary, mean guy. And he’s the complete opposite. He doesn’t suffer fools, so that might piss people off. But he’s generous and super funny, and worried about us all the time, worried about, ‘Hey, you guys, how you guys doing?’ ‘Hey, is Frank OK? Hey, Frank, are you OK?’ ‘I’m doing fine.’ He’s, ‘Oh, OK, cool.’ It’s that kind of stuff constantly.”

“I wish they could know him the way I know him. That’s the only way I could say it. He’s a great musician, great singer, all that stuff that goes in the pot, but he’s a good man.”

Ferrer joined GNR in 2006, replacing Brian ‘Brain’ Mantia, who had held down the drummer’s spot since 2000. He played on some of the Chinese Democracy tracks and had seen the pressure Rose was under to deliver the album - which by the mid-2000s had already acquired a mythic status – all whilst touring on his own, without the original members.

“He’s out there busting his ass, trying to make everything sound great, be great every night,” said Ferrer. “He’s under immense pressure, and he delivers. He would lead the way. We would go up there and even if you’re feeling like, ‘Oh, man, I don’t know if I feel that great tonight,’ and then he comes out and starts singing and, I don’t know, turning into the Hulk out there. You’re like, ‘Fuck this. I better get to where he’s at.’ And everybody would push. He loves being up there. He loves giving a good show. And we had to rise to the occasion.”

Ferrer stayed with the band until last year, when it was announced via social media that he would be leaving ‘amicably’. It was, the drummer explains, “nothing dramatic...We didn’t get into a fight or anything like that. No.”

“Everything comes to an end,” he reflects. “And I’ve said this before, I knew this thing wasn’t gonna be forever. I was just so happy I got to do it when I got to do it, and now I’m doing other stuff. It’s really that simple.”

In the summer of 1987, Ian Astbury, singer of British rock group The Cult, saw a hot young band from LA playing at the famous Marquee club in London. That band was Guns N’ Roses, and what Astbury witnessed that night convinced him that this was the perfect opening act for The Cult’s US tour later that year.

At that time The Cult were flying high with their third album Electric, a kick-ass hard rock record produced by Rick Rubin.

Electric was a radical departure from the goth rock style of previous album Love. Moreover, The Cult’s new music, typified by riff-based singles Love Removal Machine and Li’l Devil, was very much in tune with what Guns N’ Roses had created with their debut album Appetite for Destruction.

The gig that Astbury saw at the Marquee was in June. Appetite for Destruction was released in July. Guns N’ Roses toured with The Cult in August and September.

Looking back on that tour, The Cult’s guitarist Billy Duffy tells MusicRadar that once the two bands got out on the road together they bonded immediately and partied heavily.

“Oh, we very much hung out,” Duffy says. “We became very enmeshed. There were lots of shenanigans. It was like you can imagine, you know? Whatever you can imagine, it was pretty much like that!”

Duffy points out that while said shenanigans aren’t exactly the type of things he’d get into now, it was all in good fun.

“Nothing evil,” he says. “Just a lot of high jinks. I mean, if you put two bands like that together who get along, let’s just say you’re always trying to outdo each other’s stupidity.”

Duffy acknowledges Ian Astbury’s role in bringing The Cult and Guns N’ Roses together.

“Ian was the guy who found them,” he says. “He called me up in London when we were living there in ’87 and said, ‘There’s this band from America called Guns N’ Roses. They’re really good. You should go check them out. I think we should take them out on tour with us.’

“And Ian is like that. He’s always looking for new bands and finding them. He’s very passionate and has great ears for that kind of thing.”

Duffy tends not to focus on such things.

“I’m nowhere near as good as Ian at that,” he shrugs. “But I remember going to the Marquee club, and Guns N’ Roses were doing three nights, and they sold them out. But I couldn’t get in. The guy at the door was like, ‘I don’t care who you are, you ain’t getting in.’ But that was very typical of London.”

Once he heard Appetite for Destruction, Duffy agreed with Astbury’s assessment of Guns N’ Roses.

“They were really good,” he says. “When they were on tour with us, Appetite had just come out. It hadn’t really clicked yet. But the needle soon moved for them.”

He adds: “Guns N’ Roses were great then – and they’re great now. They were just the real deal, you know?”

He smiles: “Back then they were crazy – but who wants rock stars to be normal anyway?”

Guns N’ Roses’ 1992 hit November Rain is one of the greatest power ballads of all time – and in the creation of singer Axl Rose’s magnum opus, his biggest influence was Elton John.

Elton’s 11-minute masterpiece Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding – the opening track from his 1973 double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – is widely considered to be a key inspiration for November Rain.

At the MTV Music Awards in 1992, Guns N’ Roses performed November Rain with Elton as guest star playing piano opposite Rose.

And when Axl was asked to induct his hero into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1994, he stated: “For myself as well as others, no one has been there more for inspiration than Elton John.” He added, with reference to a hit song from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: “When I first heard Bennie And The Jets, I knew I had to be a performer.”

Written by Rose alone, November Rain is nearly nine minutes of piano-driven brilliance with an intensity that builds and builds from its B Major intro before erupting into an explosively dramatic B Minor finale.

However, for GN’R guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin, as well as bassist Duff McKagan, the song was played in C position given that they are all tuned half a step down.

In Slash’s official autobiography, co-written with Anthony Bozza and released in 2007, the guitarist revealed how the song originally came into existence back in 1986, a whole year before the release of the band’s seminal debut Appetite For Destruction.

Speaking to MTV in 1992, Slash said of November Rain: “We’d been dicking around with it for years,” while also joking: “It used to be, like, 25 minutes long!”

This wasn’t a huge exaggeration. An early version of November Rain clocked in at 18 minutes. A 10-minute version was recorded at Sound City Studios in LA with producer Manny Charlton, the guitarist for Scottish hard rock band Nazareth. He was chosen because the group loved the sound of his band’s Hair Of The Dog album of 1975 – which Charlton himself produced.

The 10-minute version of November Rain from the Sound City sessions was included in the super-deluxe edition reissue of Appetite For Destruction, released in 2018.

In an interview with music journalist Malcolm Dome, Manny Charlton recalled his reaction to hearing November Rain in its embryonic form.

“Axl played it on the piano," Charlon said, “and I believed it should have been on the first album. I thought it had all the makings of being a hit single and told Axl it would be a mistake not to include it on the debut.”

As it turned out, it was Mike Clink who produced Appetite For Destruction. And the band didn’t need November Rain for that album.

They had another ballad – Sweet Child O’ Mine – and it went all the way to No.1 on the US chart in 1988.

November Rain was eventually recorded to Rose’s satisfaction in 1990 with Clink again in the producer’s chair.

The song was included on the 1991 album Use Your Illusion I, and when released as the third single a year later it peaked at No.3 on the Billboard Hot 100, making history as the longest song to enter the American top 10 at that time.

In a 1990 interview with Kerrang!, Rose had given fans a teaser of what to expect from his group in the future. His words certainly rang true when the world got its first taste of November Rain.

“I was writing these ballads that I feel have really rich tapestries and stuff, and making sure each note, in effect, is right,” Rose explained. “Cos whether I’m using a lot of instrumentation and stuff or not, I’ll still write with minimalism.”

He added: “But it has to be right; it has to be the right note and it has to be held the right way, and it has to have the right effect, do you know what I mean?”

Drawing comparisons between November Rain and Estranged, the big piano ballad from Use Your Illusion II, Rose once explained how they were both love songs from varying perspectives.

“November Rain is a song about not wanting to be in a state of unrequited love,” he revealed in one of the videotapes documenting their music videos from this era.

The first verse in November Rain features a handful of open position chords from rhythm guitarist Stradlin, who then adds some clean arpeggiated ideas from the second verse.

Slash makes his grand entrance in verse three with a much more rough and ready distorted tone, right as Rose sings, “I know it’s hard to keep an open heart.”

For the recording, Slash most likely used his number one guitar – a 1959 Les Paul Standard replica made by Kris Derrig – into a modded Marshall JCM800 2203.

However, in the video, he can be seen playing a Dark Burst 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard that had previously belonged to Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. He gave the guitar back to Perry in 2000 as a 50th birthday present. In an interview with Conan O’Brien, Perry said of Slash: “His heart is so big, I don’t know how it fits in his chest.”

The two guitar solos over the verse sections in November Rain are a great example of Slash’s melodic side – musical situations where he carefully considers the placement of each and every note instead of trying to force in something overly elaborate and up-tempo.

The final solo, however, is when everything shifts into minor key and he gets his moment to shine, switching between the B Harmonic and Natural Minor scales to create a lot of tension and suspense.

He lets his final note ring out into feedback as the final exclamation mark on one of his most universally admired musical statements.

November Rain has since been covered by numerous artists including Finnish bluegrass rockers Steve 'N' Seagulls and Scottish singer-songwriter Sandi Thom. One of the standouts is undoubtedly the 2018 version by Americana singer Nicole Atkins and Screaming Trees/Queens Of The Stone Age legend Mark Lanegan, giving the well-known classic a haunting countrified twist.

Even after all these years, November Rain remains one of the definitive power ballads, showing us just how forceful guitars and pianos can be when they are allowed to co-exist side by side.

In late 1993, Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash was mentally and physically exhausted after the band finally got to the end of a tour that had lasted for more than two whole years.

He also feared that his relationship with singer Axl Rose was broken beyond repair.

And in that moment of crisis, Slash turned to man who knew pretty much everything there is to know about life in a famous rock ’n’ roll band with a larger than life singer.

In a 2004 interview with MOJO magazine, Slash recalled how he had returned home to Los Angeles in July 1993 after Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion tour had ended with two shows at the River Plate Stadium in Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires.

No matter how bad Slash was feeling after those two years on the road, he was at least in better shape than bassist Duff McKagan, who travelled to his hometown of Seattle after the tour and promptly had a near-fatal medical emergency when his pancreas exploded.

But Slash was not in a good place mentally. Most of all, he felt disconnected from Axl Rose, who had become increasingly isolated from the rest of the band.

Slash needed some help in dealing with it all, and that help came when he was invited to dinner in LA with The Rolling Stones’ guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood.

Slash recalled to MOJO: “The Stones were recording the Voodoo Lounge record up at [producer] Don Was’s house. Ronnie and Keith and their wives and myself and my wife at the time all went down to a very famous Beverly Hills restaurant that all the movie stars loved to be seen at.

“I was sitting at the bar with Keith and we were talking, funnily enough, about drugs. Then he asked me what I was doing with Guns, and I told him about the situation with Axl. And Keith said, ‘You never leave’. I thought a lot about what he said.”

Slash continued: “One of the things about Keith that I love so much is that he hangs in there – thick or thin, he hangs in there. He’s a hero to me because he’s one of the few people that is completely un-bendable when it comes to what it is that he does, so I look up to him.

“And so when he said that to me, I was like, ‘Yeah, fuck.’ So I got the wherewithal to be able to go back to rehearsal the next day with a fresh attitude. That kept me in there for as long as humanly possible until it finally got to a point where it’s not gonna go anywhere.”

He went on: “I don’t know what relationship Keith and Mick have, or fucking Joe and Steven from Aerosmith have, or any of the other lead singers and lead guitarists, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. All these bands I grew up listening to. The one thing they all seemed to have in common, though, is the singer wants to do his thing.”

He claimed: “I was dealing with somebody who didn’t want to do anything in particular except to keep fucking dragging the ship down. So finally I did leave and I talked to Keith later after that, and he said, ‘There was nothing you could fucking do.’”

It was in 1996 that Slash’s exit from Guns N’ Roses was confirmed, but in that 2004 interview with MOJO he said that his decision to leave the band was made in 1994. Coincidentally, this happened as Guns N’ Roses were recording a version of a classic Rolling Stones song, Sympathy For The Devil, for the soundtrack to the movie Interview With The Vampire.

Slash told MOJO: “Axl was killing us – slowly but surely. I’d been depressed, but I used to drown that with alcohol and keep going.”

He referred to the departure of the band’s rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin in 1991.

“Even after Izzy left, we patched it up and kept it going. But when we were trying to get this record [Sympathy For The Devil] made, the whole process was just such hell.

“Axl wouldn’t show up at the studio until two or three o’clock in the morning. The band was spinning its wheels, and there was no way to get it back on track.”

Slash said of his decision to leave Guns N’ Roses: “Everybody thought I was nuts, but I knew what I had to do. And I can honestly say it was one of the smartest decisions of my whole fucking adult life.”

12 years after that interview, Slash was reunited with Rose and Duff McKagan as Guns N’ Roses embarked on their wryly titled Not In This Lifetime tour.

It was a major flex. 17 September 1991 saw the release of not one but two albums from Guns N’ Roses – Use Your Illusion I and II.

The band had been empowered by the phenomenal success of of their debut album Appetite For Destruction, which had hit No 1 on the Billboard 200 in 1988 on its way to becoming one of the biggest selling albums of all time, with worldwide sales in excess of 30 million.

But there were other blockbuster rock albums released in ’91, including Metallica’s self-titled record, aka The Black Album, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik and the three albums from the rising stars of Seattle’s grunge scene – Nirvana’s Nevermind, Pearl Jam’s Ten and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger.

The new wave of alternative rock music – with Kurt Cobain its reluctant poster boy – would damage the credibility and sales of many big name bands that had hit big in the ’80s. To those bands, grunge was a curse.

But that’s not how Guns N’ Roses saw it, as the band’s lead guitarist Slash revealed in an interview with MOJO magazine in 2004.

This interview happened during Slash’s exile from Guns N’ Roses, when he and two former bandmates from GN’R – bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum – were in the supergroup Velvet Revolver, fronted by ex-Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland.

Looking back on the making of Use Your Illusion I and II, Slash told MOJO that he, McKagan and singer Axl Rose all shared an appreciation for alternative rock pioneers Faith No More.

“I remember when we were writing the Illusion records, we all got turned on to this band Faith No More and that record The Real Thing. Axl had a copy, Duff had a copy and I had a copy.

“That record had a profound effect on Axl’s perception of what the next Guns N’ Roses album would be. Duff and me just liked it because it was a good record.”

Faith No More’s hit song Epic featured vocalist Mike Patton rapping in the verses. This may have had an influence on My World, the final track on Use Your Illusion II, on which Axl Rose also raps over an industrial rock rhythm.

Referring to the Seattle grunge explosion, Slash said: “We started touring during the making of the Illusions records, and Nirvana came out, and Pearl Jam. And way before that we dug Alice In Chains.

“We just thought Nirvana were sort of cool. One of the few times Axl and I ever went out in public was to go and see Nirvana at the Palace in Hollywood. But I really didn’t think much of it at the time.”

One of the better songs on Use Your Illusion II, written by rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, was Pretty Tied Up (subtitled: The Perils of Rock N’ Roll Decadence).

The songs lyrics include the lines: “One there was this rock ‘n’ roll band rollin’ on the streets/Time went by and it became a joke.”

Asked if he felt that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy for Guns N’ Roses, Slash countered: “Definitely not, because Izzy wrote the lyrics to Pretty Tied Up, and Izzy was as oblivious to what was going on in the music scene as I was. The only person that the encroaching ’90s music had an effect on was Axl.

“Looking at it now, because of all the fucking theatrics that Axl put into this thing, it was against the band’s best judgement. We didn’t want to do it but we did it just to get Axl out there. We just wanted to go play.

“I could see it being a huge disappointment [to some Guns N’ Roses fans]. But it didn’t have an effect on the actual band itself.

“A lot of people say, ‘Oh, grunge killed Guns N’ Roses.’ But we went on doing our thing, we were playing stadiums all the way up until ’93. The band broke up on its own. It had nothing to do with the grunge movement.”

It could be argued that Guns N’ Roses opened the door for Nirvana and others to follow – such was the raw sound and edgy lyrical content in Appetite For Destruction.

Slash had his own take on that.

“I hate to try to look at that accurately or honestly,” he said. “I don’t really know. But one thing about Appetite was it opened the doors for rock ‘n’ roll at the time.”

He said of the success of Appetite For Destruction: “Something had happened that got so big that the industry would take a chance on something a little less predictable than what they normally would. So we might have helped open the door for grunge.

“The Nirvana thing was a huge fucking singer-songwriter talent that happened. That was a great thing. I was never a big Pearl Jam fan, but Soundgarden we thought was great.

“That whole thing was very cool. It was just sort of a drag that it just lasted for a second.”

Josh Freese is one of many great drummers to have featured in Guns N’ Roses over the years – and as far as he’s concerned, nobody could ever play the way Steven Adler did on the band’s legendary debut album Appetite For Destruction.

Freese joined Guns N’ Roses in the late ’90s as the replacement for Matt Sorum, who had taken over from Adler in 1990.

Freese’s two-year contract with the band (1997-1999) was the result of friend and colleague Paul Westerberg of The Replacements nudging Freese to go for it.

Freese performed on the GN’R single Oh My God, which appeared on the End Of Days film soundtrack in 1999. In addition, he was credited as co-writer on that track.

During his two years with the band, Freese recorded an estimated 30 tracks for what would eventually become the storied Chinese Democracy album. He was also a co-writer of that album’s title track along with singer Axl Rose, guitarists Paul Tobias and Robin Finck, bassist Tommy Stinson, keyboard player Dizzy Reed, producer Caram Costanzo and engineer Eric Caudieux.

However, when Chinese Democracy was finally released in 2008 after 14 years in the making, Freese was credited only for ‘arrangements’. His performance on the title track was replaced by a new recording by Frank Ferrer, while the remainder of Freese’s drum parts were re-recorded by Bryan ‘Brain’ Mantia.

Speaking to MusicRadar, Freese says of his role on one of the most expensively recorded albums of all time: “All I know – and that I am happy about – is that the song I wrote ended up being the title track of that album. So if you look at the album credits, my name’s always attached to that record.

“It's not ‘Josh Freese the drummer’ on that record. It’s like, ’Oh, Josh Freese wrote the music to the title track?’ That's kind of cool.”

Freese has his own take on why his drum parts were replaced by Bryan ‘Brain’ Mantia.

“I think that Axl was wanting Brain to feel a part of the project,” he says. “So when he came in, Axl’s like, ‘You know, hey, let’s redo the drums!’

“I think there’s also an excuse – at least in the Guns N' Roses thing, since they were taking so long to do everything – to prolong things by another month or two. You know, sometimes you do stuff and you want to feel like you're busy. ‘Oh, we gotta re-record these drums, you know?’ But do you really have to re-record those drums?”

Freese says he enjoyed the experience of working with Axl Rose, despite the singer’s reputation for being somewhat difficult.

“It was great!” he says. “I think that people, a lot of times, want to hear horror stories about Axl, and I really don't have any. He was always real generous with me, and easy to get along with.

“I really don't have anything bad to say about him! I enjoyed working with him, and I liked the fact that he was open to other people writing and open to me as the new drummer.

“If I had a good idea, he'd want to use it, and he did. And I had other songs that were kind of in the running, so to speak, that didn't end up on the A-list, but that's fine. I mean, the fact that I've got the title track, it's kind of cool, you know?”

During Freese’s time with Guns N’ Roses, it was reported that a new version of the band’s classic debut Appetite For Destruction was recorded using more modern Pro Tools techniques with producer Sean Beavan.

Freese tells MusicRadar that the magic of the original album could never be recreated – in part due to the unique feel of Steven Adler's drumming.

Freese says of Adler's performance on that record. “It had a swing and a weird swagger to it that can't really be duplicated, and it was of a time. I don't even know if Steven Adler could do that again. Honestly, it's just kind of the way it worked out, kind of like lightning in a bottle.”

Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash has confirmed that the band will make a new album – but refuses to commit to any sort of time frame for its release.

In a new interview with Guitar World magazine, Slash says that they have a huge stockpile of new songs, while also insisting that no concrete plans are in place at present.

“There’s so much material at this point — it’s a matter of having the discipline to sit down and fucking get into it,” he says. “But the thing with Guns is, in my experience, you can never plan ahead. You can never sit down and go, ‘We’re going to take this time, and we’re going to do this.’ Every time we’ve done that, it falls apart.”

He says of the band’s creative process: “It just spontaneously happens through some sort of inspiration that triggers it. And the next thing you know, it’s off and running.”

And he suggests that a new GN’R album is not too far ahead in the future.

“It’s coming,” he says. “I know it’s coming because everybody is thinking about it. It’ll just happen when it happens.”

In the same interview, Slash also says how much enjoys playing alongside rhythm guitarist Richard Fortus – while admitting that Fortus may not have retained his position in Guns N ’Roses if founding member Izzy Stradlin had decided to rejoin the band in 2016.

“Richard is a great all round guitar player,” Slash says. “He can do it all.

“There was a lot of expectation that Izzy was going to do this, but Richard was there that first day we started rehearsals, and I was given the opportunity to see if I liked working with him or not.

“Although we did toy with the idea of Izzy coming back, Richard was always there. I felt really at ease and comfortable with Richard staying in when Izzy didn’t work out.”

Zak Starkey has appealed to Axl Rose to return a master recording that - according to him – could raise up to £2 million for charity.

The recording in question is a cover of the T Rex classic Children Of The Revolution that was cooked up in studios in Rio, New York and LA and features Rose plus bandmates Slash and Duff McKagan alongside Elton John and Ringo Starr (Starkey’s dad, of course).

The idea came about after Guns N’ Roses and The Who played the track at Rock In Rio at 2017. Originally, it was supposed to be included on a Teenage Cancer Trust charity album, but for some reason, that never came about.

Now, Starkey has taken to Instagram and asked Axl to release the master so the track can finally see the light of day.

Starkey wrote: “Dear Axl Rose, please give me my master of this track back. Me and Sshh (Liguz, Starkey’s wife) spent three years making this Bolan tribute for teen cancer.”

The drummer said that between them his wife, dad and himself had “arranged to include a modulating section for Slash’s guitar, another for Duff’s bass solo and plenty of room for Elton before you asked Sshh if you could sing it”.

“It’s a drag that the record is on the shelf, as Christie’s (auction house) have advised it could generate $2M for teen cancer,” he added. “C’mon bro.”

Starkey first alerted the world to the existence of this charity album last year, again in an Instagram post. Describing how the Bolan cover was recorded, he wrote: “My dad played drums in LA (while I fudged the bass) then in Rio, Duff cut bass.

"A couple of weeks after the tour we cut guitars in NYC with Slash – sent the track with sshh guide vocal to Elton who played amazing piano. Sssh went to hang with Axl, who said he’d like to sing it – wow! – Axl killed it – amazing vocals.”

The album, he said, was: “Produced by me n sshh it’s a full album with more than one Beatle, a Smith, a Pretender, an Ashcroft, an Iggy and many more …. Soon come.”

No doubt, we’ll soon see if Starkey’s public petitioning has the desired effect.

DRUMS WEEK 2025: In March of this year, Guns N’ Roses announced that drummer Frank Ferrer had left the band by mutual consent.

Ferrer was GNR’s longest-serving drummer, having joined the band in 2006. He also had a couple of side projects - The Compulsions and Pisser.

His final show with Guns N’ Roses was in Mexico on 5 November, 2023.

Ferrer also played on five tracks from Guns N’ Roses’ 2008 album Chinese Democracy.

In 2016, when lead guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan reunited with singer Axl Rose for the band’s Not In The Lifetime tour, Ferrer spoke to MusicRadar about his role in Guns N’ Roses.

He also voiced his appreciation for the drummers who had performed with the band before him - Steven Adler (who played on the classic debut album Appetite For Destruction), Matt Sorum (featured on the twin 1991 albums Use Your Illusion I and II) and Chinese Democracy-era drummer Bryan ‘Brain’ Mantia.

Ferrer said of his predecessors: “I have tremendous respect for the drummers in Guns N’ Roses. I really try to keep the spirit of the way the [original] song was played.”

He gave the highest praise to Steven Adler’s performance on Appetite For Destruction.

“When we play the Appetite stuff I try to have the push and pulls,” he said. “Steven’s punk rock bits are great.

“Adler’s playing was one of the greatest rock drumming performances in the history of music. You can put it in the top ten. His playing on Appetite is perfect.

“Then with [Matt] Sorum it’s a little more tight and more reserved kind of playing. I do try to keep that spirit, though.

“I love Brain [Mantia] so much. What Brain told me was to try and make the songs my own. I never forget that.

“Obviously my own personality comes through, especially on some of the funkier stuff. I might give a more New York hip hop kind of feel to it.”

Ferrer revealed which classic songs he most enjoyed playing.

“My favourite song to play is You Could Be Mine, that’s so fun to play as a drummer. That one’s like shifting in a car. You’re peeling out then hit a low gear, then you’re cruising. You have to shift the gears. It’s balls out!

He continued: “Rocket Queen is dope. [Mr.] Brownstone is dope. I do Brain’s intro to Brownstone. Adler used to just do the bo diddley on the floor tom where as Brain was doing it more on the toms, the two racks and the floor.

“Think About You is a lot of fun, real punk rock and more of the kind of spirit that I grew up with.

“Some of the first record stuff, the way that Brain was playing it when I watched him play it, it sounded like it gave Axl more room to sing. Axl sings fast a lot so you have to pull back a little bit so he can get his words out.”

Ferrer went into detail about his own sound and kit.

“The style of music and sound I like to hear is like John Bonham, big, huge, open toms.

“What they did with Chinese Democracy, the drum sound they got there is the one that they like to use live. It’s not important to me that it has to be my snare sound, just as long as it sounds good. If it makes the music sound better then that’s all that matters to me. I don’t really mess with the tunings.

“I have a great tech and front of house guy and they’re the experts in that as far as I’m concerned. I have a 12” rack, 14” and 16” floor, 24” bass drum. The snare drum is the diamond of the kit, it’s a Tama bell brass snare. It’s the greatest drum I’ve ever heard. They used those on the record, but they used the original one from the ’80s. I think the one I’m using now is the newer one, the one Lars Ulrich came out with. The ones they used on the record were 27 years old, $3,000 a piece!”

He also explained the physical challenges of performing with Guns N’ Roses, with three-hour sets as standard.

“During the live show I play on all of the [guitar and keyboard] solos so I don’t get off my riser once,” he said. “It definitely pushes you to the limits.

“There’s nights I feel like I can play all night long. There’s nights where I think, ‘If we don’t get to Paradise City soon I’m going to pass out!’ Then sometimes you get to the double time in ‘Paradise’ and think, ‘Man, I’ve got to play this now!?’

“It’s a gig that you have to have your mind in it, your body in it, you have to be in it because it will get away from you fast," he added. "Most of the time even if you’re not feeling at top form the crowd will pull you through. I just started doing a little yoga. It’s good to do that kind of stretching.”

Ferrer concluded by describing his role in the band.

“The kind of drummers I love are guys like Phil Rudd, Charlie Watts, Peter Criss, just foundation type drumming,” he said. “Soloists that I grew up listening to where guys like Zack Alfred, Sterling Campbell.

“I’m in between there, I would imagine. I can rip it out. My mindset was to just give it to them, just hammer them, throw your sticks down and walk off the stage. What’s great about Guns is that I get to showcase my talent within the songs.

“A lot of that stuff is the Sorum stuff, but there’s also songs like Brownstone. If you want to know what kind of drummer I am just listen to me play Brownstone or Rocket Queen.

“I love being the foundation and sitting in that pocket. I can be in the pocket all day. I’m more like Phil Rudd, I just want to 2/4 it and let everybody else do their thing while I sit up there holding it together.”

Appetite For Destruction is one of the biggest selling albums of all time — but when Guns N’ Roses were recording it their manager feared they would never recoup the money it cost to make.

“I thought I'd be lucky to see anything of worth out of this project,” said Alan Niven, who managed the band from 1986 to 1991.

In a 2018 interview with Classic Rock, Niven recalled how he got the album made with the help of Tom Zutuat, the A&R man who signed Guns N’ Roses to Geffen Records.

Niven explained why Mike Clink ended up producing the album after initial recordings with Spencer Proffer, the successful producer of Quiet Riot’s No.1 album Metal Health, and Manny Charlton, the former guitarist for Scottish rockers Nazareth.

And he revealed why the ballad November Rain, singer Axl Rose’s magnum opus, was left off Appetite For Destruction in 1987 and held back for the 1991 album Use Your illusion I.

The band had already begun working on Appetite For Destruction when Niven became their manager.

“I signed a contract with the band in September 1986,” he said, “and there was plenty of material available for constructing an album.

“Just consider the tracks that got left off — the three that were later used on Illusion [November Rain, Don’t Cry and Back Off Bitch], along with Move To The City and Reckless Life.”

The latter two tracks were featured on the EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide, which was released in 1986 and reissued in 1988 as part of the mini-album GN'R Lies.

Niven recalled: “Tom Zutaut was expecting Proffer to produce. Around this time Tom gave me some tracks from the Manny Charlton sessions, which were characterised by him as demos. It was our collective understanding that we had yet to begin recording the album for real.

“Both Tom and I considered the recordings done to date as demos, as part of the preproduction process. We thought that the band had yet to be thoroughly represented on tape."

The recordings made with Manny Charlton eventually surfaced as 'The Sound City Session' included in the expanded version of Appetite For Destruction released in 2019.

“The Manny sessions sounded very punk," Niven said. "Axl sounded like he had overdosed on helium at certain points. They sounded like a brash young band making their early recordings.”

Niven admitted that he hated the album that Spencer Proffer had produced for Quiet Riot, with its cartoonish title track Bang Your Head (Metal Health) and a hit cover version of Slade’s ’70s glam rock anthem Cum On Feel The Noize.

“I was definitely not a fan of Quiet Riot,” he said. “Covering Slade, for God's sake, a bunch of Top Of The Pops goofballs. Not exactly Aerosmith or the Stones, what?

“Bang Your Head was ridiculous to me — can you imagine Axl singing that lyric?”

It did not take long for Niven to dispense with Spencer Proffer’s services.

“I asked to meet with Spencer,” he said. “When I arrived for the meet I was met by his assistant who off-handedly took the meeting.

“Spencer obviously thought I did not deserve his time. That was a bad move.

“So Spencer made it easy for me to tell Tom that we needed to look for someone else. Proffer missed his chance to persuade me otherwise.”

Enter Mike Clink, a rookie producer but an experienced engineer who had worked on albums by major rock acts such as UFO and Survivor.

Niven was particularly impressed by Clink’s work with producer Ron Nevison on UFO’s 1979 live album Strangers In The Night — the British band’s last classic album with German guitar hero Michael Schenker.

Said Niven: “Mike Clink was suggested by Tom. I thought it a brilliant idea. Mike was very humble — and thus there would be less likelihood of artist/producer frictions — and a great guitar engineer. His work with Nevison and Schenker was terrific.

“Tom and I were determined to let the band be the band, and for them to self-fulfil their potential. A personality like Mike with his skills was perfect. And we were proved right.”

“Neither the Charlton or Proffer sessions had the gravitas of the Clink recordings —the sweep and majesty. The band matured into the Clink sessions and gained dimension and depth, gained a deeper and broader power.

“Better performances, better tones, better textures, greater confidence, more imagination.

“Just note the opening scream over the intro riff on Welcome To The Jungle. Note how the song locks into a perfect tempo anchored by a huge snare.”

According to Niven, at the end of the recording sessions Mike Clink was too exhausted to undertake the mixing process.

“He was completely out of gas come the mixing sessions,” Niven said, “and we had to look elsewhere.”

Niven called in Michael Lardie, the rhythm guitarist and keyboard player for another band that he managed, Great White. Together they mixed a key track from the Guns N’ Roses album, Mr. Brownstone.

Niven recalled: “Lardie and I did the first mix on the Appetite recordings — Brownstone. It was my way of proving Mike had the performances on tape.

“He [Clink] couldn't get a mix done and Tom was scared shitless that all that time and money was wasted.

“Lardie and I were in the middle of recording [Great White album] Once Bitten, doing guitar overdubs, but we stripped the board and set up for a mix and told Tom to choose a roll of tape and send it down to us.

“In a mere four hours we had a workable mix. The band were waiting at Tom's office to hear what we thought. Had Clink got it on tape or not? ‘You'd better come down,’ I said over the phone.

“Only Izzy [Stradlin, Guns N’ Roses’ rhythm guitarist] had the courage to come down. We hit 'play' and by the chorus he was out of sofa and pumping his fist in the air — a very un-Izzy-like action.

“Everyone was real worried. Clink had it on tape, though.”

The whole album was mixed by Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero, who had previously co-produced another Geffen Records act, Tesla.

“Tom wanted to go with Thompson and Barbiero, which personally disappointed me,” Niven admitted. “But again, in the eventuality it was a great call, and I was blown away watching them do their manual mix dance — they utterly connected to the energy of the tracks. That’s my perspective, anyway.”

Niven said he knew from the start that Welcome To The Jungle was a pivotal song for the band.

As he recalls it: “The one concern I had when listening to the demos was that one of the songs, which had a weak performance, be concentrated on and brought up to another level.

“I thought it might prove to be an important song on the record, one of which I really loved the social sarcasm. LA was beginning to lose its glitter and gloss to me. That was Jungle.”

He said that he and Zutaut each had their favourites: “Tom was real high on Sweet Child O’ Mine, and I had a major boner for Paradise City.”

November Rain was already written and demoed during the Appetite For Destruction sessions, but Niven says it was always the plan to hold this song back.

“We already had Sweet Child and didn't need November,” Niven said. “Axl was convinced that this [November Rain] was his master stroke, and that it needed even more time and attention. So it qualified as a brilliant hold over."

Keeping this and other songs in reserve was a key part of Niven's strategy.

As he explained: “A band has years to form the material of their debut. Once signed and recorded, if things go well, they will go out and perform those songs for a year or so.

“They will come home exhausted — physically, emotionally and creatively. At that very moment the label will start in with their demands for a follow up — fast — to 'maintain career momentum'.

“That’s why so many bands have weak follow up albums. Tom and I wanted to have material marinating in the larder — to avoid this sophomore jinx.”

However, even with Appetite For Destruction in the can and November Rain in development, Alan Niven was a worried man ahead of the album’s release in July 1987.

“The recording of Appetite eventually cost $365,000,” he said. "That represents a huge amount of studio time.

“It was an outrageous amount to spend on a debut and I worried that we would never dig out of that hole and see any meaningful income.

“I had just become a parent, my son Corey had just been born. Getting paid was now more of a concern.

“As it was, it was over a year before I saw my first penny from GN'R. In December of ’87, Izzy went to look at the books and was horrified to see I had not been paid anything at all.”

As it turned out, Appetite For Destruction did a whole lot better than anyone expected.

Within a year of its release, it was at No.1 on the US chart.

But for Alan Niven, that was as good as it would ever get.

By the time the recording of November Rain was completed to Axl Rose’s satisfaction, a power struggle with the Guns N’ Roses organisation was in full effect.

In the summer of 1991, before the release of the the band’s twin albums Use Your Illusion I and II — the former featuring November Rain — Niven was relieved of his position as Guns N’ Roses’ manager.

Ultimately, Appetite For Destruction would rival Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell as the biggest selling debut album of all time.

And certainly Alan Niven played his part in that.

Strange things can happen to our gear in the heat. It can play havoc with a vintage germanium fuzz pedal. It can do all kinds of unwelcome things to our guitar’s setup. Oh, and on some occasions it do something even more drastic – like what happened to Richard Fortus just the other day.

Fortus was playing at the Mohammed Abdu Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Guns N’ Roses took to the stage just after 10pm, the sun long gone over the horizon, the temperature a little more amenable to a three-hour rock concert on the Arabian Peninsula.

During the day it was a different story, with the mercury reaching 45º Celsius/113º Fahrenheit. Not all of the gear came out of the GNR truck in the same condition it went in. Fortus’ signature Gretsch Falcon looked like it needed a bit of work to get it ready.

“Well this is a first,” Fortus wrote on Instagram. “It was so hot in Saudi Arabia that the wax in my pickups melted!”

Alex Skolnick metaphorically spoke for all of us here when the Testament guitarist left an open-mouthed emoji. Horror is the only appropriate response.

Melting wax is a new one on us. Wax-potted pickups are commonplace, and for good reason. Wax potting reduces mechanical vibrations in the pickup, which in turn helps nix unwanted microphonics.

Also, just think how sweaty you get during a show. Wax potting prevents moisture getting into the pickup and corroding the pole pieces, preserving the lifespan of your pickup.

But just look at front of Fortus’ Gretsch guitar. It’s like a candle has been dripping onto the guitar’s top. The V-Stoptail looks like it could be caked in it.

The good news is that this is easily enough fixed by a qualified tech. Guns N’ Roses will have at least one or two on the payroll with them. Also, it’s rare.

Indeed, when MusicRadar spoke to Fortus in 2022 about the Falcons, he said “They’ve proven to be incredibly stable on this tour”. But then maybe a June/July run through Europe is not quite as hot as the an-Nafud desert.

The Filter’Trons you will find on Fortus’ signature guitar are not your garden variety Filter’Tron. He tried every variant before co-designing a pair with Gretsch that suited his Falcon to a tee.

“At first, we tried all the boutique Filter’Trons – Lollar, Mojotone, TV Jones… We went through everything including the Arcanes, which is what I use in my [hollowbody] Players Edition Falcons,” said Fortus. “I love the Arcanes in those guitars. They sound amazing.

“In fact, I’ve just recommended them to Charlie Starr from BlackBerry Smoke. He ended up putting them in an old White Falcon he has – like a late ‘60s model. But in the end, it was quite the process. We had the luxury of being able to wind pickups and test them in Guns N’ Roses rehearsals.

“I had several guitars on rotation and John Gaudesi was winding pickups on the spot. We were listening in fine detail through in-ears and in the control room and tweaking them as we went along until we found the perfect sound.”

Guns N’ Roses concluded the Middle East run of their tour in Abu Dhabi, UAE, yesterday and start their European run on 30 May in Georgia. They play Birmingham on 23 June and London on the 26 June. See Guns N’ Roses for full dates and ticket details.

Guns N’ Roses ex-manager has rubbished the band’s later years and made it plain who he thinks was to blame for the slow disintegration of their original line up: Axl Rose.

Alan Niven managed GN’R from 1986 to 1991 when he was ousted in what he describes as a “coup” by the band’s tour manager Doug Goldstein and lawyer Michele Anthony. Speaking to the Appetite for Distortion podcast, there seems to be no love lost between Niven and his successors.

“Goldstein was the tour manager,” Niven said. “He had nothing to do with forming the marketing strategy that I employed. He makes some rather extravagant claims of his significance, and the one thing I will say was, yeah, you were significant as the tour manager. You did a good job as a tour manager. And I could ride on the bus getting to the next gig, knowing he was on it."

He continued: "So, Doug is a tour manager. That's what he's good at. And let's get something else straight, because this is not an opinion. It's a matter of history we can all look at. And because it's history, it's incontrovertible. The fact the matter is, once he and Michele Anthony pulled their coup, what do we get out of Guns N' Roses? We get The Spaghetti Incident, (and) an Axl solo record masquerading under a GN'R logo."

"The biggest sin of the record was that it was boring; that Chinese Democracy was a boring record. But calling it Guns N' Roses was not honest. It was totally a solo record, and that's all it has been since 1991.

"All those years were lost. Who knows what that band could have done had it stayed together; had it kept its chemical dynamic... Who knows what they would have written in those 10, 20, 30 years?"

So why did the original line up fall apart? There’s a simple explanation, according to Niven: "Axl got control of everything.”

To illustrate his point he recalled an incident from early on in his managerial tenure when they were touring with the Cult in the late '80s. "My joy in making rock and roll pretty much came to an end in September of '86, when I signed the contract with GN'R, because from then on, it was pressure, anxiety, and stress, all the time. We're in Toronto, second or third day on their very first tour with The Cult."

"I could only get to the third show, and I just dropped my bags on my bed, and there's a bang on the door. I go to the door, and there's Izzy, and he looks frazzled. He pushes past me, goes into the room, and flops onto the sofa. I go, 'Izzy, what's up? What's wrong?' 'That fu**er makes us fu**ing miserable every fu**ing day.' It's a quote I will never forget."

At the end of the ’80s, Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan was asked to name the best album of that decade. He chose Prince’s classic double album 1999.

Many years later, McKagan told Classic Rock why that album meant so much to him.

First, he recalled how he had cut his teeth as a musician.

“I played in twenty-nine punk rock bands in Seattle,” he said. "I counted. I was a drummer, bassist, guitar player, whatever.”

He also named the punk records that had the biggest influence on him.

“I loved Black Flag’s Damaged, and the Germs’ (GI) was a big deal for me. That record changed the course of American punk rock.”

However, McKagan said that his taste in music was always broad. “I listened to the Stones and Led Zeppelin too, and I was always into r&b stuff – Marvin Gaye and Prince.”

And he described how Prince’s 1999 album had a profound effect on him.

“It was a changing point in my life,” he said. “When that record came out, ’82, I was eighteen.

“All these punk kids from the suburbs had shaved their heads and started fighting at the shows, doing Nazi salutes and all that crap – just ruining punk rock in America. And there was a lot of heroin coming into Seattle at that time.

“The band I was in, 10 Minute Warning, got signed by [Dead Kennedys singer] Jello Biafra’s label Alternative Tentacles. It seemed like we were on our way to being the next big thing, and the heroin came in and just ravaged that band.

“At that point I was drinking, maybe more than average. But all my friends started using heroin. My girlfriend was strung out, my roommate was strung out – it seemed like it was closing in on me. And that was when 1999 became the soundtrack to my life.

“I loved what Prince did on [1981 album] Controversy. It was really cool, kind of punk rock and kind of Sly & the Family Stone. And with 1999, a double record, I was really diving into those songs.

“It was all the things that music is supposed to be – your solace, your best friend, an escape. And through that record I made the decision to move to LA.

“I’d seen what Prince had done by himself, and I figured if he can do all of that, the least I can do is go to LA.

“It was a scary thing to do when you’re nineteen, going to a place where you know nobody. But I figured I could sell my drum kit, so I had three hundred and fifty bucks. And yeah, it was 1999 that gave me the courage to do it.”

McKagan then described his experience of arriving in LA in 1984, and meeting the musicians with whom he would eventually join in Guns N’ Roses - guitarist Slash, drummer Steven Adler and singer Axl Rose.

“Two of the first people I met were Slash and Steven, and those guys were really cool, introducing me to stuff,” he said. “I suddenly had a new little social circle.

“And in the first month I was there, Slash took me to an L.A. Guns show, so I saw Axl singing for L.A. Guns, and for me he was like Henry Rollins. It was real, it was dangerous, he broke a glass on stage, and I was going, yes!

“And his voice was incredible – like, what the fuck? That was when I realised: I’m not in Seattle anymore….”

Guns N’ Roses, Tool and Rival Sons will perform at Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell show in Birmingham on 5 July.

This all-star event - billed as Back To The Beginning - sold out in less than 10 minutes last week.

The show will feature the reunion of the original Black Sabbath - Ozzy, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward – plus a solo set from Ozzy and performances from a host of major acts.

Also confirmed for the event are Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Alice In Chains, Halestorm, Lamb Of God, Anthrax and Mastodon.

The all-day event will also feature a supergroup with a revolving cast of musicians which will feature the following names:

Andrew Watt, Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Dave Ellefson, Vernon Reid (Living Colour) and Whitfield Crane (Ugly Kid Joe), will join Billy Corgan (The Smashing Pumpkins), David Draiman (Disturbed), Frank Bello (Anthrax), Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit), Jake E Lee, Jonathan Davis (Korn), KK Downing, Lzzy Hale (Halestorm), Mike Bordin (Faith No More), Rudy Sarzo, Sammy Hagar, Scott Ian (Anthrax), Sleep Token ii (Sleep Token), Papa V Perpetua (Ghost), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), and Wolfgang Van Halen.

Ron Thal, aka Bumblefoot, is one of the most respected guitar players around. That much is evident in the guest list on his new album: Guthrie Govan, Steve Vai, and Brian May.

The album is titled …Returns!

It’s a heady cocktail of quasi-industrial, futuristic-sounding instrumental metal with flourishes of grandiose guitar badassery.

And it’s out on 24 January 2025.

Bumblefoot is of course best known for his tenure in Guns N’ Roses during that long period when Slash was out of the band. He worked with singer Axl Rose on the album Chinese Democracy, and is credited for playing on every one of that album’s 14 tracks.

Right off the bat, he tells MusicRadar that he doesn’t like to talk about his time with GN’R - but he does eventually, with a little gentle prodding.

He’s much happier talking about his new album, his guitar heroes, and the pure joy of playing…

What guitar did you learn on?

“It was a kid-sized, nylon string, no-name practice guitar. After that, I had a copy of a Les Paul by Pace. I've never seen another Pace guitar on this planet since! I don't know where this thing came from or who made it, but it looked like a sunburst Les Paul. I got it when I was eight, and that was my guitar!”

In your early days, what guitar was the game-changer for you?

“It was a 1983 Ibanez Roadstar. Finally, I had a guitar I could play Van Halen and Ozzy songs on. Before that, I had gotten a Fender Stratocaster, but it just didn't have the balls I was looking for. I was an old-school metalhead, so I needed something with a [tremolo] bar that really drove harder. I think I put a Floyd Rose on the Ibanez, and I toured and recorded with it for about 13 years.

Which guitarist is your biggest influence?

“You've got Hendrix, Brian May, and everyone from every cool band of the ’60s and ’70s. Definitely Angus Young and Yngwie [Malmsteen], of course. But my main influence has to be Eddie Van Halen. There was guitar before him, and then there was guitar after him.

“There's time periods that you can measure, and before Van Halen there was a lot of reckless, Angus Young, bluesy kind of playing. Then Van Halen experimented, and there was a lot of what you can do unconventionally. It was exploratory.”

In terms of technique, what was the last new trick you learned?

“A lot of my tricks are old! But on my new album […Returns!], there's an acoustic intro thing that's me doing my bullshit version of flamenco because I can't play flamenco. I do a thing where it's sort of a banjo roll, and I take off my fingers, pull off onto the open string and quickly hammer it back down.

“So, you're picking the fourth string, plucking the second string with your second finger, plucking the first sting quickly, and then lifting off your fretting finger that's on the second string to pull off onto the open string and hammering the note back down. You're getting these five notes.”

What was the last piece of gear that you were excited about?

“There's two. The first is the DigiTech JamMan [Solo] HD looper. It has a ton of saveable loops; you can have hours of loops in this thing. It has excellent audio quality, so it's an excellent looper. The other is the DigiTech FreqOut [Natural Feedback Creator]. It simulates amp feedback, like when you're just going up, facing the amp, and holding the note. It starts building it into feedback and has all these settings where you can control the harmonic, or it could be random, and you control the swoops in the level. You can also use it as a momentary switch.”

How much do you practice now?

“My guitar is always within arm's reach. I'll spend 10 hours a day in front of the computer mixing albums for a band when I'm producing and thinking to myself, 'Okay, in five minutes, I'm going to take a break and do some playing.' And then, 10 hours pass, and it's like, 'Okay, tomorrow, I'll play.' I could end up going weeks without touching a guitar.

“It's really shameful. That needs to change. I really do need to play more. It's not helping my hands anymore.

“In the old days, I lived every free moment playing guitar. I'd have lessons, I'd be practicing, I'd be writing. And then I'd drop the needle on an album and play along until I figured it out. By doing that, I built up a great sense of intuition for where a song is going.”

As a player, do you have any bad habits?

“Oh, a lot of them! I sit down too much. When I go to play standing up, my wrist isn't used to it and everything in my fingers feels weak. I need to play more standing up.

“When you're sitting down and slouching over the guitar, it's comfortable. But when you stand up and the guitar is down by your crotch, you have to grab it very differently. I lose a lot of dexterity, so that's something I need to practice because I don't do it enough.”

Is there anything you can't play that you'd like to?

“Basketball! But definitely half of Jeff Watson's solos from Night Ranger's songs. People don't realise how unconventional he was. His fingerpicking and tapping was just insane. He showed me a lot of solos, and I still can't play them after all these years!”

What technique did you have to work the hardest to master?

“Economy picking. That took a while to get comfortable with. But once it's a part of your playing, it's very natural. So, just getting used to it was the thing—also, singing and playing at the same time.”

What is the one song or performance that you're most proud of?

“My last album, Little Brother is Watching, was one where I was happy with everything about it. The songs, arrangements, recording, and production were exactly what I wanted them to be. And now, with my new album, …Returns!, I'm happy with the sound of it. With everything, I have no complaints.”

What is your favourite song on Chinese Democracy?

“The song I’m most proud of playing on is Shackler’s Revenge. I feel like I contributed a lot more to that song than some of the others. From the crazy guitar solos to the tapping stuff at the end over the last chorus, that song kept me very busy. And it was a lot of fun to play live, especially co-ordinating singing backing vocals as well as doing all of the crazy tapping patterns at the end of the song. It’s a very fun song to play.

“But I will say that Shackler’s Revenge was already written - and Buckethead [another featured guitarist on Chinese Democracy] was already out of the band. I believe he is the one that wrote a good chunk of that song, so I was putting icing on a cake that already existed by the time I joined the band.”

How did you come up with riffs and solos with GN’R?

“By experimenting with different ideas in the studio. I was with Caram Costanzo, who was engineering and producing, and he was very hands-on in the studio every day. We’d spend a good 14 hours a day just trying different directions and approaches and seeing would fit best.”

Was it inspiring for you to work with Axl?

“I'm not gonna talk too much about Guns N' Roses. And especially not about Axl. It only leads to turmoil and torment on my end.”

Have you ever felt like you'd failed as a player or felt embarrassed by a performance?

“I feel that every time I'm onstage! I really do. Every time I play, most of the time, I walk off the stage depressed, feeling like I've let myself down, let the audience down, that I could have done better, that I wasn't focused, and that I wasn't connected to the music. And the more shows I do, the more suicidally depressed I get. So, pretty much all of them!”

And a final word for guitar players out there?

“What I can't play is pretty much infinite. And this goes for everybody, because it's an endless road ahead of you. What's ahead of you is what you can learn, practice and discover. You're always a forever student. And that's exciting…”

It has been reported that AC/DC are about to announce a major US tour for 2025 - and according to rumours, the legendary band might be reunited on this tour with Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose.

Rose performed with AC/DC in 2016 on the Rock Our Bust tour as the stand-in for Brian Johnson, who was forced to stop singing or risk going deaf due to a problem with his hearing.

Johnson returned to AC/DC for the 2020 album Power Up, and recently completed a European tour with the band in the summer.

So why is Axl now back in the picture?

The rumours began when Axl’s friend, former Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach, gave an interview in which he claimed that Axl would be joining AC/DC on their upcoming tour.

It is not known whether Bach was suggesting that Rose will replace Johnson for a second time, or if Rose would be appearing alongside Johnson as a special guest.

What is certain is that AC/DC lead guitarist Angus Young has a great respect for Rose following the Rock Our Bust tour. As Angus told Classic Rock in 2019: “Axl did a great job.”

Could Axl return for another tour? Stranger things have happened…

Slash’s guitar collection is so epic that Gibson made a feature-length YouTube documentary about it and then published a book on it, but while the Guns N’ Roses guitarist admits to being “an addict” when it comes to the electric guitar, he argues that you don’t need to spend crazy money to get the only guitar you’ll ever need.

Indeed, in an interview with Reverb, in which he shares his philosophy for buying guitars, he says you only really need one good one and you are set for life. 

And while you should expect to pay a certain premium for quality, he cautions against throwing cash at an instrument just because of the name on the headstock, or the year it was made.

“Spending too much money for something is just absolutely not worth it,” he says. “There is a line there that you cross where you are just spending money for the sake of the name or the label, or whatever it is. So I figured you have to spend a little bit of money for quality. But you don’t have to spend exorbitant amounts of money for it.”

The last 20 years have seen the market for vintage guitars appreciate to the point where even pros and über-collectors such as Joe Bonamassa have complained that it has become too “elitist”, with Bonamassa speaking last year about the fact that many players who want to play an old Stratocaster have now been priced out the market by people who see these instruments as investments first and foremost. He can see both sides of the coin.

“As a collector they've been great investments,” he said, appearing on Dave Friedman’s Tone-Talk podcast. “As a player there's real disadvantages now and I feel bad for people who are into old things, who always wanted to experiment musically with them, which is what they're for, that can't justify $55,000 for a ‘57 Stratocaster. And at the end of the day it's just a f*****g Stratocaster – it’s not going to sound much different to something you can buy new for a thousand bucks or less.”

Slash echoed this sentiment, arguing that mant of the people who are dropping six or seven figures on an electric guitar are of a similar mindset to those who might stockpile luxury cars. Is it worth it? Not if the instrument doesn’t speak to you.

“People who buy a million-dollar, 500,000-dollar guitar, are the same people – mentally, anyway – as people who buy Rolls-Royces,” he says. “There’s a point there where you’re buying it for the year, the value that it has accrued over time… If you’re not going to use it, if it doesn’t give you whatever it is that you are supposed to get out of an instrument, for that much money, then it just doesn’t make any sense.”

In Slash’s experience, vintage guitars come with their own issues, many of which a player can live with over time, some they can’t. Just don’t expect perfect. 

And don’t expect to click with a guitar straight off the bat; after buying an ES-335 for Velvet Revolvers sophomore album, Libertad, he found he was just trying to make it sound like his signature sound of a Les Paul into a Marshall amp. Only when working on his blues guitar album, Orgy Of The Damned, did the ES-335 truly make sense on its own terms.

Slash does offer some encouragement for anyone looking to buy a vintage instrument. He says some of the air has been taken out of the market. The prices have come down a little. But whether you are buying new or vintage, you don’t have to – and shouldn’t – torpedo your finances.

“I honestly believe that you can get an excellent – as good as you’re ever going to need – guitar that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg,” he says.

Check out the full interview with Slash at Reverb, in which he unpacks his live rig, talks about his love for the Firebird, and explains how choosing the Les Paul in a time when it was unfashionable helped him find a signature sound.

Next year is going to be a busy one for Guns N’ Roses. According to Slash, anyway.

In an interview with Loudwire Nights, the guitar icon was asked about his future plans and said, “I’m going into the studio with the Conspirators (his project with Myles Kennedy), getting a new record done and then after that, 2025 is all about Guns N’ Roses.”

“We’re trying to get some things going with that. I think there’s a small tour in the summertime next year. I heard a rumour about that anyway, so that’s going to be focused on that. But prior to that, it’s the S.E.R.P.E.N.T tour and then the Conspirators.”

Last month Slash said in another interview that Guns N’ Roses are “trying” to make a new album. With these new comments it looks unlikely that any work on it will start before the New Year.

Since he rejoined in 2016 the band have toured extensively and released a number of one-off singles, but tracks like Absurd, Old Skool and The General have all been off-cuts from the torturously long Chinese Democracy sessions, of which Slash played no part at all.

In other Slash-related news, GNR producer Mike Clink has been singing the curly-mopped one’s praises. In an interview with Guitar World he said that the thing that set Slash apart isn’t his gear, but his “hands and fingers.”

“Slash became one of the most iconic guitar players for a reason. When you hear that tone, you know it's him. It doesn't matter what notes he's playing, it's the tone and that signature sound. It's what all guitar players strive for, but few accomplish. It's not just the amp or the guitar. It's in the hands and fingers."

"That's what sets guitarists apart. It's how they attack the strings and settle into the track, using the instrument to its full dynamic range. Stevie Ray Vaughan was the master of that. Talk about smooth! That guy was so in the pocket. And I think Slash is right there with him. It’s a different style, but he has that same sense of flow - very much standing as the glue holding it all together."

Clink has observed the guitarist at close quarters over a long period. He was at the controls for all of the GNR albums during their initial phase as well as 1995’s It’s 5 O’ Clock Somewhere album, which was released under the name Slash’s Snakepit. 

He reunited with him on the guitarist’s current Orgy Of The Damned album, a blues covers project that features collaborations with Brian Johnson, Iggy Pop and Billy Gibbons.

By his own admission, Ron Thal – better known to fans around the world as Bumblefoot – has been a busy bee. He’s talking to us today to promote Whom Gods Destroy, the new band featuring ex-Dream Theater keyboard wizard Derek Sherinian and Whitesnake/Trans-Siberian Orchestra multi-instrumentalist Dino Jelusick on vocals, as well as rhythm section Yas Nomura and Bruno Valverde. 

Their debut album, titled Insanium, is out now via InsideOut Music just a month after the release of a record from Thal’s other band Art Of Anarchy. And, as we find out, there’s another solo instrumental effort finished and ready to be unveiled in the very near future. It doesn’t take long to figure out the man we’re speaking to feels like he has little time to waste…

The newest project, Whom Gods Destroy, was formed after the dissolution of another supergroup Sons Of Apollo, with Thal and Sherinian choosing to continue their creative exploits under a different guise. And if you listen to just about any track from this inaugural release, it’s once again clear there’s a striking chemistry at play – with many a midrange conversation between the guitars and keys, the pair thriving on an almost telepathic level. 

Sherinian is no stranger to working with top-tier guitar talents, of course, having collaborated with the cream of the crop over the years, with standout names including Slash, Joe Bonamassa, Allan Holdsworth, Joe Satriani and Al Di Meola. Things might not have worked out in Sons Of Apollo, especially following the news of drummer Mike Portnoy rejoining Dream Theater, but this particular musical alliance between Thal and the keyboardist has certainly not run its course...

“As many people know, we recently worked together in Sons Of Apollo,” explains Thal, when quizzed on the ins and outs of their creative partnership. “This time we stepped it up and it definitely feels like the next chapter for the two of us. I always wanted to go a bit heavier and turn up the intensity of everything. Let the crazy be crazier. Let the heavy be heavier and the passion be more passionate. It was all pushed to the max. I think of it as a day at the gym where you stay a little longer and sweat a little more.”

So, all puns intended, which of these new tracks ended up soaking the towels most? They were all pretty challenging, reasons Thal, but one definitely comes to mind first thanks to its usage of both necks on his trusty Vigier signature...

“There was a lot going on guitar-wise... I definitely fucked myself there!” he laughs. "The song Crawl, which came out just before the album, doesn’t sound super hard but some of the riffs and leads are so out there. There are little things that probably don’t sound like much until you try playing them. And it was all recorded years ago so now I’m trying my best to remember it all. 

“In the chorus section, I’m using both necks on my double neck Vigier at the same time. There are a lot of little things in there that are going to make my life hell! And the best thing is I did it to myself. I could have made it easier and written something like Smells Like Teen Spirit but no, I had to push the boundaries with two necks at once and make life problematic!”

From his work in Guns N’ Roses and Asia to the groups listed already, Thal has vast amount of experience sharing sonic space with keyboardists and other guitar players. While his solo releases tend to be more of a melodic one-man band affair, where he’s usually joined by a drummer and perhaps a few guests on woodwind or stringed instruments, in a group context he prefers to welcome more musical information to coexist alongside him. As he goes on to explain, it’s something that stems from his childhood and the artists that captured his imagination early on... 

“It’s fun playing with another guitar player or a keyboardist or some other midrange-bandwidth instrument. I feel like there’s more you can do. Other than maybe Led Zeppelin and Van Halen, I was raised on music that always had more than one guitarist. It was bands like AC/DC, Kiss, The Beatles and all the old-school metal stuff like Priest, Maiden and Queensrÿche who had those twin harmonies. It’s nice to have someone else in that range... I get to hide behind them so the attention isn’t on me!”

It’s a humble sentiment. Anyone familiar with the man’s work will know he’s more than capable of holding his own without any help whatsoever. So how exactly does a player of Thal’s calibre continue to raise the bar? He once joined the biggest rock band in the world, went on to form supergroups with members of Dream Theater, Whitesnake and Mr Big, and has guested on albums for musicians as highly revered as Guthrie Govan. It turns out his recent homework has been something seemingly simple, which, despite its importance, many players tend to overlook... 

“Over the pandemic, I feel like my vibrato changed,” admits Thal. “It used to be very wide and frantic, with this wild puppy energy. With all the time at home, my soul calmed down a bit and so did my vibrato. I experimented with speed and width, and even tried out a gentler side-to-side vibrato. That’s probably what I’ve paid more attention to recently, certainly more than I did in the past…

“I never figured out the Steve Vai circular motion one, it feels so sexual when I try it [laughs]! But everyone has their own unique fingerprint. You can tell from one note whether it’s John Sykes, Gary Moore or Zakk Wylde. And Yngwie Malmsteen for sure, especially the way he’d come from the bottom of the neck right up high and then bend. Ace Frehley, on the other hand, had that slow style of vibrato. It’s how you let people know it’s you playing.”

Speaking of building a familiarity between the musician and the listener, here are the three most essential pieces of gear that Thal relies on to create his signature sound...

1. Vigier DoubleBfoot Ron Thal signature

“Let’s start with the guitar, this particular one is from 2017. There’s no truss rod in the neck, it’s carbon fibre holding it together. It has 24 frets with the Zero Fret system. As for pickups I use a DiMarzio Tone Zone in the bridge and a Chopper in the neck position, controlled by a five-way selector. 

"I can choose between the bridge as a humbucker, the bridge as a single-coil, the bridge and neck together, the bridge and neck out of phase and finally just the neck. I have no tone knob, but there’s a little something extra thrown into the volume knob that means it doesn’t go too dark or dull as you turn it down. So even with a lot of grit on the amp, I can roll my volume down nearly all the way down and it won’t get muddy – it will sound like a clear and shimmery clean guitar. 

“There’s also a neck selector, so I can choose which neck I’m using: one is fretted with a rosewood fingerboard and the other is fretless, made out of an alloy or stainless steel kind of metal. They won’t tell me what it is and would have to kill me if they did! But it has lots of sustain and sounds great. There is a killswitch on the guitar, too. I don’t use it that much these days, it was mainly for the [Guns N’ Roses] Chinese Democracy songs like There Was A Time where Buckethead would introduce a killswitch into his leads. Other than that, I’m not much of a killswitch guy. 

“I have a magnetised hole in the bottom horn where I can pull out a metal thimble that I use on the smallest finger on my picking hand. I use it to tap on the string beyond the fretboard to essentially replace the non-existent frets. Once you’re past the 24th fret, instead of touching the string to a metal fret, I am touching a metal thimble to the string in hopefully all the right spots. It works great for the bridge pickup. 

“You can also hold the thimble in front of the bridge and the string will then ring a shorter distance, stopping at the thimble rather than the bridge. It’s almost like moving the bridge forwards and changes the scale of the guitar – your frets will become higher in pitch than they normally would be. You’re essentially taking away the intonation of the guitar! I can even do that after a bend to create jumps that wouldn't be physically impossible. The thimble can also come in handy for tapping. I can get the same notes but keep my picking hand in the same kind of area, instead of moving it onto the fretboard and then back again.”

Line 6 Helix

“This one thing has replaced 95% of my rig! Since I’ve been using it, I’ve become so comfortable with it. We all have certain things we just look at and can instantly get what we need intuitively. For me, that’s the Helix. I didn’t need to read the instructions, I could use it straightaway. Because of that, I got a lot deeper into the parameters of it and started to fine-tune the exact sounds I wanted. 

“I use the Helix for absolutely everything beyond my guitar. I don’t run amps anymore, I go direct to the front of house. Since I’ve been doing that, I’ve been getting more compliments on my tone than when I was running the most wonderful analogue rig. You get the pure sound you worked on. You lose that when you play a gig and the house engineer puts a microphone that might not be the best one for that particular speaker cabinet at an angle that is maybe not optimum. It’s hard to get that consistent ‘best sound’ in those scenarios. But this fuckin’ Helix absolutely did everything I could possibly want! 

“The one I use is the step-on floorboard version. They all sound great and have the same guts. Anything I do with the plug-in will sound exactly the same on the pedal. I like having the same exact sound every time! 

"The internal routing is also incredible, it allows you to do things that would be impossible in the analogue world. After my in-front effects, I tend to run two different amps: one being a clone of an Engl, which is the main sound, and then there will be a second amp and cabinet that I mix in enough just to fill any frequencies that might be missing. Then I sew them back together and put that into another IR of a cabinet at 50%. 

“By doing that, I get rid of any high-end digital grit. It smooths it out and sounds so much more like sound moving through air in a room. You can control any parameter through the expression pedal – instead of it being a wah or volume, it could be changing specific elements of the EQ or the amount of reverb or the delay time. You can have one amp fade out and another fade in. There are so many wonderful things you can do that would be hard or impossible to pull off in the non-virtual world.”

DigiTech FreqOut

"Lastly, this is something I got my hands on last summer and I’ve been using ever since. As I’m not going to have a wall of speaker cabinets that I can stand next to and get feedback from, this thing is going to do that for me. 

"You can have it as a momentary switch that you just step on, or you can keep it on while also controlling the speed it comes in, how loud it is compared to your dry signal, which harmonic you’re hitting and more. They call it a natural feedback creator, and yeah, it’s pretty damn good. It’s fun to hold a note and let the overtones come in. 

“I can allow certain notes to pulse in and do things that would never happen the same way a second time. It’s a very useful tool to produce unique ‘moments’. It’s a fairly newish pedal, I can see MusicRadar did a review of it back in 2017. Obviously DigiTech are masters of these kinds of quirky effects. The Whammy was a game-changer. Once that pedal came into the picture, everything felt different. There were new sounds and ideas happening that weren’t there before… just look at Rage Against The Machine!”

Insanium, the debut album from Whom Gods Destroy is out now via InsideOut: more info

If you flicked on MTV over the summer of 1991, you’d probably have been faced with the surreal sight of Axl Rose staring down the shotgun of a cyborg in sunglasses. By this point, there was a list of people who might have considered terminating the mercurial Guns N’ Roses frontman. Fortunately for Rose, however, this was merely the video for You Could Be Mine and the killer robot was Hollywood beefcake Arnold Schwarzenegger, there to promote its inclusion on the soundtrack to Terminator 2. In July 1991, this was simultaneously the coolest video, most anticipated single and part of the best movie on Earth. It couldn’t fail.

Strange, then, that Guns N’ Roses had buried this classic song in the vaults for nearly five years. Scan the inlay card to 1987’s Appetite For Destruction and you’ll find the key lyric – ‘With your bitch slap rappin’ and your cocaine tongue you get nothin’ done’ – printed almost as a band mission statement. Meanwhile, Slash told Total Guitar magazine in 2011 that the music was nailed when GN’R and producer Mike Clink hunkered down for initial sessions at the SIR Studios in Hollywood.

“That song, and Perfect Crime, we started writing when we were doing pre-production for Appetite,” he revealed. “You Could Be Mine was one of Izzy’s riffs, and as always with Izzy [Stradlin, guitar], he’d play something and it would catch my ear, and I’d play along, but in my own sort of style. That was what was so magical about Izzy and I: we never sat down and worked out anything.”

A chaotic squall of punky chords with a white-hot solo, Slash pushed for You Could Be Mine to appear on the band’s hedonistic debut, noting in his autobiography that “it’s more reminiscent of that time than anything else on the Use Your Illusion albums”. Tracklisting limitations wouldn’t allow that, but by the time Guns headed into A&M Studios for the Illusion sessions, You Could Be Mine had lost none of its smash ’n’ grab attitude. “That song didn’t change at all,” Slash told Total Guitar, “apart from the fact that I used a tremolo bar on the solo. Every so often, I feel it’s necessary to use a tremolo on something! So on almost every record, you’ll find one song that has it.”

By necessity, Slash deviated from his standard Derrig Les Paul and believes he turned to his red BC Rich Mockingbird (the mahogany- body, Seymour Duncan-equipped model certainly appears in the video). “I must have had my Mockingbird by then and I know I used a guitar with a tremolo,” he recalled. “I had a lot of guitars for Use Your Illusion, but amps were the one thing I didn’t have a lot of, as always. At that point, I was using Marshall Jubilees and a couple of JCM800s.”

Although it wasn’t written specifically for Terminator 2, the track’s slamming brick-wall tone and breakneck pace were the perfect soundtrack to being chased by a relentless shape-shifting assassin from the future. According to a Schwarzenegger interview clip on YouTube, the film and song were also brought together by an unlikely mutual respect.

"They’re big fans of Terminator,” he noted of the line-up, “and they’ve expressed that many times. I’ve always been a fan of their music, so we checked into what it would be like to do a video together, or to get some of their music.”

Slash concurred that it was Schwarzenegger’s personal enthusiasm – not a Carolco Pictures boardroom meeting – that scored You Could Be Mine a place on the soundtrack. “I know that Arnold liked the song ’cos he was the guy who made the final decision,” recalls the guitarist. “Duff and I actually went and hung out at his house. He seemed to be into the whole thing. We had a lot of shots with Arnold!”

Fast, hard and steeped in danger, You Could Be Mine was the starting pistol to a thrilling decade. Fast-forward 20 years and it was the song that started to break some ice between the classic Roses line-up, with Duff joining Axl onstage in London in October 2010 to perform it. “The show is going on and I’m watching it, and somebody comes over with a bass,” he told a Seattle DJ. “Now I haven’t played You Could Be Mine since 1993, [so it] was like, ‘Oh God! I can play it, I think I remember it.’ I’d forgotten the second part of the bridge, and I had to look at Bumblefoot to see where the next chord was. But it was fun!”

• Classic interview: Slash on the story of Guns N' Roses's Use Your Illusion I & II

Slash’s new signature Magnatone tube amp has been revealed, with retailers on both sides of the pond now taking pre-orders. 

At £/$4,899 street, the Magnatone Slash SL-100 ain’t cheap, but there is a lot of amplifier here to get excited about, and right here we are going to get excited about it, even if fiscal reality means we’re more budget guitar amp than boutique.

The news that Slash had hooked up with Magnatone, and would be augmenting his backline with a newly designed signature head and cabinet, was unquestionably one of the gear stories of the year, albeit less sensational than first thought, with Slash releasing a statement to clarify that the collab would not mean an end to his long-standing relationship with Marshall amps.

Indeed, the Magnatone Slash SL-100 looks to draw more than a little inspiration from classic Marshall designs. The first thing you might notice is the green snakeskin Tolex covering, which is such a Slash touch you don’t need to see the Skully illustration on the control panel to tell whose amp this is. The second thing would be that gold metal control panel and red jewel power lamp – which has a certain je ne sais quoi about it.

Let’s look at the specs. Well, it’s a 100-watt tube amp head, based off a Super Fifty-Nine M-80, which means that is voiced with a British accent. Under the hood it is packing a quartet of EL34 power tubes, with another quartet of 12AX7s in the preamp. 

All this presented across a single channel, but one with two gain settings, one Hi for giving you that mid ‘80s super-juicy Jubilee-esque tone, one Lo for getting your vintage ‘60s Super Lead kicks. 

The gain mode is selected via a slider switch, or alternatively via a footswitch, with each mode controlled by its own dedicated gain knob.

Elsewhere on that control panel you’ll find Presence, Bass, Middle and Treble dials, and the all-important master volume. 

There are two 1/4” inputs, one Hi, one Lo, and around the back of the amp you’ll find a tube-buffered effects loop, a pair of 1/4” speaker outputs, and a switch for matching the SL-100 with four, eight and 16-ohm speakers. There is also a 1/4” compensated line out for sending a signal direct – though this must be used with the speaker connected.

Speaking of which, there is a matching straight-back 4x12 cab, loaded with Celestion Vintage 30s, and constructed of the same Baltic birch used for the head. It’s yours for £,$2,699. 

The SL-100 is yet to feature on the Magnatone website but both Sweetwater and Andertons are carrying them, and are open for orders should your amp budget stretch that far.

Slash’s collection of Gibson signature guitars looks like it is going to be growing in the near future after the Guns N’ Roses guitarist posted a picture of a prototype replica of his “Jessica” Les Paul Standard to his Instagram account.

Granted, this is not Jessica as we know her, the guitar that would become Slash’s main stage guitar since he took receipt of it in the late ‘80s – and one of the many stars in the Gibson Publishing book documenting his epic guitar collection. 

There are no cigarette burns on the front. But the plain maple top, with what looks like a visible seam that suggests it has a three-piece top just like Slash’s original. And given it is a prototype, there may or may not be some more changes to come. 

Slash, who is now a Gibson Brand Ambassador, draws a lot of water around Nashville these days but speaking to Gibson’s Mark Agnesi in 2022, for The Collection YouTube segment, he explained how Jessica was a “factory second” that the company sent him. Nonetheless, he soon put it into heavy rotation after retiring his two ’59 Les Paul Standard replicas.

“This guitar has been with me since 1988. It’s faded. I fucking dropped a cigarette and it stuck there,” said Slash, who says all the wear and tear you see on the guitar is totally natural. 

When they talk about player’s grade vintage instruments, this is what they mean. Years of playing onstage with Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver has all but removed the finish from the back of the guitar in what is one of the most acute cases of buckle rash you’ll see. Nowadays, people pay very talented luthiers to make electric guitars look like that.

“You know when you buy used guitars and the neck is all worn off and you think about all the time and work that went into doing that? This is actually from me, so it’s a trip,” said Slash. Jessica was originally a “bright Cherry Sunburst”, and shipped with its doppelgänger, Stephanie. 

Slash had it refinished to quieten down the colour but it was soon used as his main stage guitar during touring sessions for Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver, the other used for his back-up Rig B. What is particularly noticeable about this guitar is that it has a three-piece maple top. “I was a factory second that they sent me,” said Slash.

Time will tell whether or not this Gibson USA model will be joined by a super-premium Custom Shop version, though you could well imagine Tom Murphy turning up to work with a spring in his step if making a replica of this was on his to-do list, or indeed if there would be a plain-top Epiphone version. 

• Slash shares his 7 tips for recording live

Slash says Jessica has a skinnier medium profile neck as opposed to the fatter ‘50s profiles on his current signature line, and factory second or not, he says there is something about it’s tone that is hard to quit.

“It’s interesting because it does really have a great, sort of unique sound,” he said. If you catch Guns N’ Roses on this summer run you might see him playing some Appetite For Destruction and Use Your Illusion tracks on it. 

In other Gibson singlecut news, it looks like the Les Paul Supreme is making a return in 2023, after Gibson brand president and CEO Cesar Gueikian posted a pic from the factory floor with what looked like next-gen Supremes in production.

Any guitar fans watching Guns N' Roses' headline set at the Glastonbury Festival will have noticed Richard Fortus's new guitar; it made an appearance early on and featured an unusual pairing of a singlecut body shape with what looked like one Firebird pickup. 

Those in the know recognised it straight away; an Ivison Dakota One. The work of Neil Ivison from Worcester and featuring a Sunbear pickup – the brand of fellow Brit Stuart Robson. 

As owners of Robson's Sunbird Firebird pickups (Stuart makes them in P-90 sized SoapBird and standard humbucker casing too), we know how good his handwound pickups are and the Dakota is the perfect platform to bring the special Sunbird tonality to more players and ears. 

"I don't really know what to make of it, it's still sinking in," Neil told the BBC after seeing Fortus with his guitar on the TV. He had delivered the guitar to the Guns musician in Bath on the Friday before their Saturday headline slot, and he was clearly taken with it.

"He said he loved it," Neil added. "He said, 'I really want to play this tomorrow night'."

Even so, the builder, who opened his shop in 2018, didn't have any expectations when he tuned into the BBC coverage of Guns N' Roses' set.

"We’d leapt off the settee, the drinks went flying, and then just sat there in disbelief for the rest of the gig," he told the BBC.

It was a huge suprise for Stuart Robson too. "Surreal moment," he wrote on Instagram. "Bravo to Neil for every drop of work he puts in to making these amazing guitars. Now, where’s the best whisky in this house!"

We're chuffed for them both. Ivison guitars are also being used by Blackberry Smoke, Electric Six and The Hives live… and this is just the beginning. 

The Ivison Dakota is available in two-pickup configuration as well with a variety of finish options at ivisonguitars.com and you can find out more about the whole Sunbear range of pickups at sunbearpickups.com

For a while, Alan Niven had the most difficult job on the planet. The New Zealand music industry veteran was Guns N’ Roses’ manager at a time when the brilliant but fractious, self-destructive and just plain old destructive band’s talents were cresting. 

After a cold start, their 1987 debut album, Appetite For Destruction, would soon become a hard rock legend, and a rod for their own backs – Niven’s included – when it came time to release a follow-up, with David Geffen breathing down their necks. 

But as Guns manager, Niven was afforded a unique perspective on the band’s totemic lead guitarist, Slash, whom he watched mature before his own eyes, and in a recent interview with Louder, Niven explained Slash’s approach to the guitar as he saw it, and what made him stand out to his peers.

• Slash shares his 7 tips for recording live
• Dave Navarro recalls ‘very strange’ Guns N’ Roses studio session

At first, says Niven, there was “ lots of energy and even more notes”, a coltish player looking for his voice. Slash, however, soon found out what he wanted from the electric guitar – he soon found a sound.

“I first thought he might be beyond average when I asked him what he wanted from the band, from his playing  –  ‘I want to be recognisable,’ he said. He wasn’t referring to a top hat , he was talking about developing a personal style that could be recognised,” said Niven.  “Think of Santana. Think of Robin Trower. Think of Peter Green. All have their feel and sound. Predominantly determined by their left hands.”

Niven described Slash in the early days of Guns N’ Roses as “inebriated” and “excited” but not lacking in focus when it came to creating.

“Slash didn’t say he wanted a house, an endless stream of girls, an Aston Martin,” said Niven. ‘He wanted to develop his technique so that it would have an identifiable character. That’s an intelligent and special musician.”

That process meant finding some space in his sound, something that differentiated Slash from the other six-string hot-shots on Sunset Strip, and a generation of players who wanted to out-Eddie Eddie Van Halen. In Niven’s opinion, the great players all have an appreciation of space; they know when not to play.

“Guitar is a voice,” he said. “It’s not how many words you use, but how you deliver the right ones with dynamic, and clarity. Great speakers know when to pause. Great players revere the space between their notes. Great guitar players learn how to manipulate a sustained note into personal representation.”

They also have a temper. Niven also recanted the famous story of how a Gibson SG met its end after Slash through it through the windshield of the band’s van – “a clear and obvious indication he was having sound problems”, and a move that led Niven to supply Slash with a Les Paul copy that would become the cornerstone of his sound, and an inspiration for his official Gibson signature guitar line years later.

Niven was speaking as Guns N’ Roses reissued their 1991 classic double release Use Your Illusion on various formats, including a seven disc/12-LP deluxe box set. 

You can read the full conversation over at Louder.

Slash has revealed that new Guns N' Roses music is coming soon. While previous talk has suggested the band have worked on Chinese Democracy era material alongside classic era members Slash and Duff McKagan, the guitarist has now suggested the best is yet to come.

In addition to the two songs Hard Skool and Absurd from this batch of older material that have already been released, the guitarist has confirmed new plans on that front. In addition, he's also thinking ahead to a fresh Guns album. And he's wants to push on with it soon.

"I wanna go in and cut a whole brand new record at some point, probably sooner than later," he told Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM's Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk. But there's the aforementioned older material to come out before then.

"But other than that, we have stuff that we've still got to come out," Slash continued. "So that's gonna be coming out piecemeal over the next — I don't know — over the next few months or something like that. So that's basically it. We have one more tour left to do next summer, and then that'll free us up to be able to go in and work on a new record."

While Chinese Democracy era songs Absurd (a reworking of the composition previously known as Silkworms) and Hard Skool have already been released with Duff and Slash's contributions, it sounds like the best is yet to come on that front. 

"There's a handful of those songs that we actually fixed up and did when we were in lockdown," Slash told Trunk. "So those have yet to be released. So those are gonna come out. They're really good, too. So I'm excited for those. We're just gonna put out like one or two songs, and another one or two songs. And I think that's gonna be pretty much all of 'em. I'm not sure exactly how many we did in total."

And fans hoping for the kind of Guns N Roses showcased on tracks like Estranged and Coma might be in luck.  "These other ones, they don't have the same kind of amount of history, 'cause I know Hard Skool seriously has… [it] goes way back. But there's a couple of epic ones coming out, so I'm excited about that."

So the suggestion seems to be that these songs don't date back as far as the Chinese Democracy era and here's hoping Slash gets to properly put his playing stamp on them. 

Myles Kennedy explains why he switched to using the same guitar picks as Slash

Last year, Gretsch launched two Richard Fortus Signature Falcon models: the white, Bigsby-equipped G6636T-RF and the black, stoptail-fitted G6636-RF.

Drawing rave reviews throughout the guitar world, these semi-hollow rock ‘n’ roll machines have been praised for their unique tone and impeccable build quality.

Developed in close collaboration with the Guns N’ Roses guitarist, the Richard Fortus Signature Falcons feature bespoke pickups and a construction designed to withstand the toughest of tours.

Currently in the midst of a huge Guns N’ Roses stadium tour, we caught up with the man himself to find out how his new axes have been performing on the world’s largest stages.

It’s been several months since your Gretsch Signature Falcons were released. How have they been performing on the road with Guns N’ Roses?

I’m so thrilled with them. I haven't had any major issues whatsoever. It feels great every time I pick them up. They've proven to be incredibly stable on this tour.

On the white one with the Bigsby [the G6636T-RF], I did have a minor issue with my low E string. I use a fairly thick .052-gauge low E string (.010 to .052 is my set) and it would pop out sometimes.

So, I just swapped the stock [TonePros TP6R] bridge with roller saddles for a regular Tune-o-matic and that solved it. It's a very easy fix. It just pops right on the posts that are already there.

Also, when I'm chugging on the lower two strings, I can often hear some overtones ringing out. This is because we went with a B6 Bigsby which has no tension bar, as opposed to a B7 (which was the original idea).

But that was a real easy tweak too. I just cut out a little piece of foam and put it underneath the bottom two strings. [See above].

I’ve also seen people take a piece of Velcro and just wrap it around the strings on the Bigsby to kill the vibration.

It sounds like the same sort of hack people use for Jazzmaster and Jaguar vibratos. Did you notice the overtones more with high stage volume?

Yes. And with heavy gain sounds. When I was chugging on the strings, I started noticing a subtle ringing. But it's so easy to take care of.

How are the pickups performing?

The pickups I've kept completely stock. They're just exactly as they came. I think they're perfect.

The only pickup that bothers me is in the red prototype. Actually, I need to ask Gretsch if they can send me one of my regular pickups to swap out.

It’s an earlier one that we were experimenting with and I don't like it as much. It sounds muddier and doesn't have the definition that the other ones do. I notice it every time I switch to that guitar.

The red prototype Falcon has become a mainstay of your rig. What's the story behind that?

Leo Scala refinished it for me. It’s also pretty heavily reliced. I hope somewhere down the line Gretsch will do another model with me and use the red colour because it's so cool-looking.

It's more or less the same as my Signature Falcons. But it's a different finish. And it has the B7 Bigsby, which is what we started out with.

I find you just don't get the same subtle manual modulation of the B6 as you do with the B7. It’s like you lose something with the tension bar of the B7 – it’s a totally different feel. You don't have that sensitivity like you do with the B6.

My old vintage Gretsches have the B6, and it just feels so much better to me. Gretsch actually ended up changing the neck angle to accommodate the B6, but in my opinion it was well worth it.

We’d love to see Gretsch issue a version of your Signature Falcon in red.

If I do another one – a red one – I'd like to do it with the B6. But I'd like to have the shorter 24.6” scale like the black [G6636-RF] guitar.

And I'd like to have a kill switch installed, like I do on my red one I use live now. I think those subtle changes would be nice.

Also, I’d maybe tweak the pickups a little for a gainier, more aggressive sound than the current guitars.

Tell us how you developed your Signature Falcon pickups with Gretsch.

At first, we tried all the boutique Filter’Trons – Lollar, Mojotone, TV Jones… We went through everything including the Arcanes, which is what I use in my [hollowbody] Players Edition Falcons.

I love the Arcanes in those guitars. They sound amazing. In fact, I've just recommended them to Charlie Starr from BlackBerry Smoke. He ended up putting them in an old White Falcon he has – like a late ‘60s model.

But in the end, it was quite the process. We had the luxury of being able to wind pickups and test them in Guns N’ Roses rehearsals.

I had several guitars on rotation and John Gaudesi was winding pickups on the spot. We were listening in fine detail through in-ears and in the control room and tweaking them as we went along until we found the perfect sound.

Which Guns N’ Roses songs do you use the Players Edition Falcons for?

I use them on Civil War, November Rain and Don’t Cry. They just have a thing that I like on those songs. It’s the Arcane pickups, and also the B6 Bigsby.

There's something really vibrant about the fully hollow body of the Players Edition Falcon. Not having the centreblock on those songs just works really well.

What differences do your hear between the white G6636T-RF and the black G6636-RF Richard Fortus Signature Falcons?

I hear the difference with the white one on rhythm stuff particularly. Because of the longer 25.5” scale length the intonation is slightly better.

It’s also a little snappier. For stuff that I'm strictly playing rhythm on a lot of the time I will opt for the white one.

Which Guns N’ Roses songs do you prefer to use the white G6636T-RF Richard Fortus Signature Falcon for?

I use the white Signature Falcon for It's So Easy and Mr. Brownstone – stuff where I'm playing a lot lower on the neck – because it has a lot of twang to it.

And I use it for Paradise City. I will generally opt for the better intonation if there are open strings involved, as there are on that song.

I also prefer the white one for the songs Chinese Democracy and Double Talkin’ Jive.

For Live and Let Die, Shadow of Your love and Reckless Life I can use either. It's more comfortable for me to play Reckless Life on the black one but I also like the white one on that because, like I said, it's lower down on the neck and it has more chime to it.

I can go either way on Estranged too, although I tend to favour the black one for Estranged lately.

Walk All Over You sounds better to me using the white one, but it depends on what [song] we're coming off of. I mean, I might not want to switch guitars. 

Same with You Could Be Mine, although I'll usually opt for the black one on that song because it's easier to do bends with.

Are there any songs in the current Guns N’ Roses set where you prefer to use the black G6636-RF Richard Fortus Signature Falcon exclusively?

I use the black one on Welcome to the Jungle, I Wanna Be Your Dog and the fast version of You’re Crazy.

If it's a song where I'm doing a lot more bending, I'll use the black one. It's easier to bend because you don't have to fight the Bigsby. And it's also faster with the shorter 24.6” scale.

In Rocket Queen, I use the black one because I solo a lot in that. It's all bending, and that guitar just sounds great on that song. Same with Nightrain – there's a lot of single note stuff in there too.

Hard Skool is another. There's some fast shredding stuff I do where I prefer to use the shorter scale. I like the stoptail for that one.

Absurd is very heavy and it's nice to have the stoptail on that one as well.

Do Guns N’ Roses use set lists?

No, we don't have a set list. Axl steps on a button and uses a talkback mic. He'll say, “We're going to go into this song next,” or whatever. But most of the time he’s telling jokes.

Do you tend to favour certain gain pedals depending on which Richard Fortus Signature Falcon you’re using?

No, they're pretty consistent when it comes to that. It's not that vast a difference between the black and white one tonally. I mean, an audience member in say row 637 in section 16 isn’t going to hear the difference.

Ultimately, we're just trying to be inspired as guitar players, aren't we? I mean, I'm totally thrilled with how the Falcons have held up on the road.

They're always inspiring to play.

For more information on the Richard Fortus Signature Falcons visit Gretsch.

A trove of stage-played and road-worn guitars and guitar amplifiers played by Slash, Gilby Clarke and Richard Fortus is being sold by Denmark Street Guitars as part of its Guns N' Roses Private Collection.

There are a number of incredible instruments to sate anyone's appetite for destruction, such as a BC Rich Mockingbird Supreme spec'd up to match Slash's model and played by Richard Fortus on tour, and Gilby Clarke's singlecut Zemaitis models.

But Perhaps the most eye-catching items up for sale is Slash's Sanchez Custom S-style electric guitar. 

Something of rarity for the top-hatted rock icon, who was the standard bearer for the Les Paul throughout the 80s and 90s, the Sanchez has a bolt-on construction, featuring two Seymour Duncan Alnico II humbuckers, a double-locking Floyd Rose vibrato, maple neck, alder body and an all-black finish.

The guitar was built by Slash's then tech Sammy Sanchez, who is widely regarded as one of the finest in the business, having worked with Ted Nugent and Toto, and built guitars for the likes of KISS and Terence Trent Derby.

By all reports, Sanchez made two Strat-style guitars for Slash, which were used during the Use Your Illusion tour to perform Dust N' Bones. The Sanchez guitars feature a shorter 24.75" scale to match the feel of Slash's Les Pauls, as opposed to the 25.5" as found on almost every other S-style.

Other six-string highlights in the collection include a Bigsby- and mini-humbucker-equipped 1970s Gibson ES-325, a 1968 reissue Gibson Les Paul Custom with a relocated pickup switch, a heavily modded Les Paul Standard with a kill-switch, and a black Gibson Les Paul Special – all played and signed by Fortus.

Besides a pair of Clarke's Zemaitis guitars, the collection includes a Hamer Explorer-style electric that was played live and in rehearsal and a Schecter E Series offset with a single Seymour Duncan bridge humbucker. 

But perhaps for those chasing that classic Guns N' Roses crunch sound, the most exciting listing is for a pair of modded Marshall heads. There is a late-80s JCM800 100-watt head that is missing its badge, but features aftermarket modifications such as linked channels and "added tonal network to the preamp section" – i.e. the mod you need for nailing Slash's raunchier than thou tone. 

Helpfully, the settings are still legible in white chalk on the amplifier's control panel. Also on sale is a 1968 JMP 50 Plexi. This 50-watt fire breather has also been modded,  clocked up some road miles with the band. 

See Denmark Street Guitars Facebook page for more details or visit the site.

UK Guitar Shows, the organisers of the upcoming Birmingham Guitar Show, has announced that legendary founding member of Guns N' Roses, Velvet Revolver and Loaded, Duff McKagan is to attend the event between 26-27 February 2011.

Appearing in conjunction with Rotosound strings, bassist/guitarist McKagan will be conducting several signing sessions during the Birmingham Guitar Show, allowing visitors the chance to get up close and personal with one of the most popular rock icons of his generation.

Show manager Jason Hunt said, "we're thrilled to be able to welcome Duff to the show. He's been an inspiration to rock musicians for two decades, so we're very pleased to be able to give visitors the chance to meet a true legend. Duff's attendance really adds the icing on the cake of what promises to be a great weekend."

Tickets for the Birmingham Guitar Show are priced at £8.50 in advance and £10 on the door. There is no booking fee and parking at Bingley Hall is free.

Information taken from official press release, for more visit UK Guitar Shows.

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