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.”

Whenever people talk about the greatest guitar solos ever recorded, Guns N’ Roses star Slash is always in the conversation for what he played on classic songs such as Sweet Child O’ Mine, Welcome To The Jungle, Civil War and November Rain.

But what would the man himself name as the best guitar track of them all?

In an interview with Q magazine in the early 2000s, Slash revealed his favourite – Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix, from the 1970 live album Band Of Gypsys.

The track was recorded on 1 January 1970 at the Fillmore East venue in New York City. In this performance, Hendrix was accompanied by bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles.

Slash told Q: “There are so many guitarists and so many tracks that have had such a huge impact and influence on what I do – people like Albert King and Jeff Beck. But nothing beats Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix – the live version he recorded with the Band Of Gypsys at the Fillmore East.

“That performance by Jimi, it speaks. The solo is his interpretation of war, all this screaming… It’s such a brilliant piece of artistry, such a pure form of expression.

“I first heard it when I was about 13. I was in my bedroom, sitting on my bed – the bottom bunk below my brother’s if you really want to know! It was on the radio and it just killed me.

“I found the Band Of Gypsys album in my mom’s record collection – she had all the really cool stuff from the ‘60s. I must have played Machine Gun five hundred times, but I never tried to learn how to play it. I’ve never been like those other guitar players that have to tear a piece of music apart and put it back together again. With a lot of my favourite stuff, I just like to listen to it.

“When you’re 13, 14, it’s all about discovering your own music. I was getting into Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Sabbath… AC/DC was a big one. But eventually I went back to all those great records that my parents listened to.

“I wasn’t into the psychedelic thing, all that meandering, self-indulgent shit I couldn’t relate to. But Jimi was just hands down the best guitarist I’d ever heard. And what he’s playing on Machine Gun is not even complicated in a technical sense.

“It’s a very particular language that Jimi is speaking. It’s just pure, soul-wrenching emotion.”

NAMM 2026: Slash and Seymour Duncan have unveiled the latest signature electric guitar pickups in their long-standing collaboration, with the 3.0 humbuckers offering a slighter hotter take than the Guns N’ Roses guitarist’s previous pickups.

But while they’re hotter, don’t expect then to send smoke billowing from your amp. They’re tastefully hotter, raunchier without an X-rating, and they come almost three years since the 2.0 APH-2 pickup set.

“There are a little bit more output than PAFs, but they’re clear,” explains Slash. “They don’t have a lot of gain to them, and they’re very honest and true sounding to the guitar.”

Designed around an Alnico V magnet, wax-potted, available with single or four-conductor wire, and with the choice of chrome or gold coverings, or with black, white or zebra-style black and white bobbins, the 3.0 humbuckers could be the pick-me-up your Gibson Les Paul has been waiting for – or maybe you have an Epiphone guitar that you have earmarked for a US-made pickup (Seymour Duncan hand-winds its pickups in Santa Barbara, CA).

They are offered in standard widths and trembucker sizings, the latter particularly useful if you have an HSS Strat-style guitar in need of hot PAF mojo (Slash has installed them in his BC Rich Mockinbird).

“[The] 3.0 has an Alnico V magnet in it, so it’s just got a little bit more oomph to it,” he says. “You still have that same clarity and cleanliness in the actual tone, and the honesty of the sound of the guitar, but you just have a little bit more output. The 3.0 is obviously a little bit raunchier than the 2.0 regular Alnico slash pickup. It gives you that extra boost that I need in certain guitars.”

That’s exactly what Slash needed for Guns N’ Roses’ set at Back To The Beginning, the mammoth all-star farewell show for Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne.

“Sometimes I’ll need a pickup that has a little bit more output but without changing the overall character of the pickup sound,” says Slash. “So what we did was we did 2.0, which is an Alnico II pickup, which has a tiny bit more output, and the three is basically just one more step up from that. The SG that I had at the Ozzy gig, that guitar needed a louder pickup, but I still wanted to have that sort of true-to-life guitar sound that I like in my guitars, and so that’s where the 3.0 idea came from.”

Where the design came from was Seymour Duncan’s ace in the hole, Maricela “MJ” Juarez, manager of the Custom Shop, trusted pickup guru to the stars.

Ask Joe Bonamassa, Billy Gibbons, Peter Frampton, and of course Slash, who might be good friends with Seymour Duncan, having used his pickups since 1987 and the recording of GNR’s incendiary debut LP, Appetite For Destruction, but he just calls MJ direct when a project like this comes up.

“She’s an unparalleled talent when it comes to pickup wiring,” says Slash.

The Slash 3.0 humbuckers are available now, individually or as a set, and are priced from $129. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

Slash has revealed his surprise new project - producing and co-writing the music for a murder mystery TV series.

The series is The Crow Girl, which is adapted from a Nordic-noir novel and set in the city of Bristol.

As producer, Slash was involved in the script and casting and was present during filming in Bristol.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, he said of this new role: “Having a name helps get a meeting, but that can overshadow the project. I need people to stop looking at me as the guitar player. It’s great for a foot in the door, but harder to get people to take you seriously.”

He added that TV executives had requested selfies with him. “There’s a lot of that.” He described how he co-wrote the music for The Crow Girl in various hotel rooms while on tour with Guns N’ Roses, joking: “It keeps me out of trouble.”

Slash also revealed how he ended up befriending Robbie Williams, with whom he shares a birthplace - Stoke-on-Trent.

“I was in LA at the Sunset Marquis [hotel], which is a favourite haunt of musicians,” he recalled. “I was walking by the pool and this guy yelled out, ‘You’re Slash! From Stoke! I’m from Stoke!’ I didn’t know who the fuck he was.

“But that night I got on stage with this all-star covers band to do Queen songs and somebody started singing the lyrics so well. I turned around and it was that fucking guy. And that’s how Robbie and I got to know each other.”

And the Queen song that united them?

“Fat Bottomed Girls.”

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.

Slash is clearly having a blast on his current S.E.R.P.E.N.T blues festival, which is currently touring the US. It features an array of Premier League blues players, including Warren Haynes, Keb’ Mo’, Larkin Poe and ZZ Ward.

Amongst them is Eric Gales. Check out this footage which was posted online this week of Monday night’s gig. Gales opened the show and at the end of his set invited Slash up on stage. “You might know this tune, I think,” he quipped before the pair launched into an awesome version of the Hendrix classic, Purple Haze.

As you can see, whilst Slash himself is in fine form, it’s Gales who steals the show with some truly astounding soloing.

Slash is a long time admirer of the blues guitarist. “He’s amazing,” he said in a recent interview with Blues Rock Review. “I saw him play a long time ago, I was doing this Jimi Hendrix festival, and I was playing with Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell. I’d never heard of him before, and I was just like, ‘Wow, this guy is on fire.’ I’ve been aware of him ever since then.”

“He has this natural, fluid way of playing that’s really got a lot of feel, but he’s also got an amazing technical prowess. But he doesn’t make it sound like he's trying. A lot of these guys that are real technical in their ability sound like that, and it doesn’t really do anything for me. Eric manages to mix it into his natural feel for the guitar. It’s sort of unique in blues, that kind of approach.”

S.E.R.P.E.N.T of course is much more than just your usual tour-in-support-of-a-new-album, in this case Orgy Of The Damned. In Slash’s own words it’s “a celebration of blues and rock ‘n’ roll music, and a celebration of unity and togetherness in these uncertain and divisive times.”

The acronym stands for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality and Tolerance and to his credit the GNR man has put his money where his mouth is, donating a portion of the proceeds from every ticket to a range of charities including The Equal Justice Initiative, Know Your Rights Camp and War Child. 

He’s described the tour as “a vehicle to help support and uplift people and communities suffering from the injustices of racism and equal rights violations, as well as to support children adversely affected by war and poverty across the world.”

The festival carries on throughout July and into August, ending up at Grand Prairie, Texas on August 17.

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.

It could be argued that Slash is the most recognisable man in rock. There's certainly not another musician who could be as easily picked out of a lineup on the strength of their silhouette alone. Putting the top hat, Aviators, and leather trousers aside for a moment, perhaps more recognisable than his trademark look is his devilishly good playing. Slash is a guitar icon and his emblematic double stops and hypnotic harmonic minor runs will cement the Guns N’ Roses axeman in the annals of rock history as one of the best to ever do it. 

Now, while Slash may never be too far away from a Gibson Les Paul and Marshall stack at any given moment, it’s fair to say that he’s always been a blues lover at heart – and that’s never been more evident than on his latest album, Orgy Of The Damned. Much like his first solo release, Slash has assembled a star-studded cast of the world’s top musicians and a revolving door of talented singers – including Demi Lovato, Paul Rodgers and Chris Stapleton, delivering an album that’s choc-full of serious guitar statements. Unlike 2010’s self-titled release, Orgy Of The Damned features only one original composition, with the rest of the record being made up of takes on well-known blues staples. 

We caught up with Slash via video call to discuss the new album, and he informed us that he was looking to go in a slightly different direction this time around. “I went into this record with a little bit of a different approach, knowing that it was going to be a little bit more laid-back, and I wasn't going to bring Marshall Stacks in and all that,” he reveals. “But, other than that, I just sort of do what I do. My approach to stuff is always more or less the same. You know, I just sort of do it.” 

However, he does admit that he was looking to change things up sonically for this go-around, switching out his wall of Marshalls for Magnatones and reaching for a vintage ES-335 when the song called for it. 

“I wanted a different kind of sound, so I changed some of my gear around. And I think that was really the main thing. I took a bunch of combos into the rehearsal studio when we first started thinking about [making the record]. I've got Fenders, I've got a Vox, Magnatone and some other odds and ends. I tried everything, trial and error,” he admits. “I ended up on the magnetone for the whole thing – I recorded the full record with the magnetone. That's really been sort of like the sound that I've been digging for this. I even used it on the last Guns N’ Roses tour. I swapped out my Marshalls. I was looking for a little bit more of a clean, kind of raunchy, just old-school rock ‘n’ roll sound.”

Now, if you’re hoping to harness this new Slash tone for yourself, you’re in luck, as he recently released a limited edition signature series with the Missouri-based amp makers. “I've been working on a 100-watt Magnetone, which sounds really great,” discloses Slash. I've been using it with the Conspirators.” 

“Then with guitars, I was still using Les Pauls but I used a couple of different guitars that I don't use all the time with the Conspirators or with Guns N’ Roses.” The main six-string that seemed to get the most airtime on this new record was his newly acquired ‘63 Gibson ES-335, a guitar that Slash praises for its articulate tone. 

“I had just picked one up before we actually started making this record. I think it was a ‘63 that I picked up and it just sounded great. It's got humbuckers in it, so it's got the characteristics of a Les Paul as far as having a certain weight to it sound-wise, but it's also got a certain clarity to it. The strings when you're doing chords really ring out individually, and for solos, it's got a nice pop to it, and it's a little cleaner,” enthuses Slash. 

In fact, Slash loved this guitar so much that he had the team over at the Gibson Custom Shop make an expertly crafted replica in the form of a Collector’s Choice run that was limited to just 50 pieces. When pressed to see if we could expect a USA version or even an Epiphone anytime soon, Slash wasn’t giving anything away – although, he did inform us that the replica actually beat out the original while he was taping his recent live performance for Jimmy Kimmel Live. 

“I don't know at this point. That happened very quickly. I heard yesterday that all of them sold out in record time, which I was like, ‘Wow, really?’ I have one of these new ones, and I took both the old one and the new one to the taping of a TV show in Los Angeles. I was playing with the house band on a talk show, and I used both guitars, but I ended up just using the new one because it sounded really good. So I used that for the whole three days. I have to say, they made a really great replica of that ‘63.” High praise for the Gibson Custom Shop, indeed. 

Now, despite being such a massive part of most guitarists' remit, the blues can come across as inauthentic when not played with the right attitude — which certainly isn’t the case on Orgy Of The Damned. So, with that in mind, we felt it would be a good idea to ask Slash if he had any advice for players new to the blues that would help them sound more authentic and possibly eliminate dreaded imposter syndrome.

“Well, the way that it started for me, as far as the blues was concerned, I really didn't know that much about it until my grandmother played me B.B. King when I was like seven years old,” he reminisces. “His style really spoke to me even then, and I had no aspirations to play guitar, but I just liked the way it sounded. My grandmother turned me on to BB King because I came back from the UK with all this British rock ‘n’ roll stuff, and she was like, ‘Well, you know where those guys got it?’ Because my grandmother's American, my dad's British. So my dad turned me on to all this great sort of ‘60s and very early ‘70s British rock ‘n’ roll. And when I came to the States, my grandmother was like, ‘Well, you know where those guys got it?’ She played me BB King and that started a whole relationship with the blues.” 

“Now, for somebody who's picking up the guitar right now, you just have to go back and listen to a lot of old blues artists and see what appeals to you. There's a lot of different guys, and they all have different styles, but you know, all things considered, they're all great, and you just find one that you really [connect with]. 

“BB [King] was a big one for me and then there was Freddie King and Albert King – the King guys were great. I identified with them when I started playing guitar wholeheartedly. So that's really what you do – just start listening.” 

Slash continues to say that blues isn’t really something that is taught but more something you feel. The key to being a true masterful blues player is to tap into the emotion of the music and let it flow through your fingers. 

“It really is a feel thing. If it really speaks to you on an emotional level, pulls at your heartstrings, or really just moves you, then it shouldn't be hard to have your own interpretation of it, you know, because it flows through you. It's something that you just feel. I think the biggest pitfall about learning the blues is faking it. Knowing the notes is simple enough but then playing them without any kind of real emotional commitment [is where some players go wrong].

“You can talk about it but it's not something you can really teach anybody,” says Slash, “It's something that you just sort of have to do and see how it goes. I remember when I first could put four notes together on a guitar. I arrived at what you basically now call a pentatonic scale. I arrived at a melody using the notes from that scale, not knowing the scale at the time. Just the succession of notes was like a eureka moment. It was like the heavens parted and it [gave me] goosebumps. I was like, ‘Oh my god!’  – it definitely touched me.

“It really goes for almost any kind of music. I mean, when it comes down to it, blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, and all that, even classical music, it all should affect you when you play it or when you hear it. That's really what you're trying to do – achieve what you feel when you listen to stuff and be able to do it when you're playing.” 

Moving on from the topic of Orgy Of The Damned and eagled-eyed fans who were lucky enough to see Slash perform with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators on their Rest Of The World tour will have seen that GnR’s shredder-in-chief has a new love in his life, the pedal steel.

While he may still be fairly new to the instrument, an excited Slash discloses his love of the country staple but admits that learning it has been tricky. However, he is persevering with it and even incorporating it into his live show. 

"I've only been playing it for a short time," he tells us, "So it was really sort of flying by the seat of your pants to put it into the set. But I made myself do it because I wanted to get better at it. It's something that you have to practice all the f**king time.

“There are so many nuances to it,” he continues. "I commit at least two to three hours a day, no matter what, to playing the pedal steel. I started after the last Conspirators' tour. So that was in 2022. I've been at it for two years, and I've only scratched the surface with this thing, but I f**king love it. It's a great instrument." 

Despite his affection for the instrument, fans shouldn't hold out hope for a country album anytime soon. That said, there is a chance his beloved Jackson model will make an appearance on future tracks and at live shows. 

“I don't have any professional aspirations for it, really. It's not something I'm doing because I want to put out a pedal steel record. It's just really for my own personal enjoyment. I don't know how many songs or what songs I could actually put it in, you know? 

“I love country music,” admits Slash “but I don't necessarily [like] all country songs or country singers especially, but I love the musicians, they are great. And I love steel guitar playing in that capacity. I also love where you can put it where it doesn't sound like country – in other contexts. And I think that's where I'm headed with it.” 

Slash may have only recently committed to learning the instrument, but his infatuation with pedal steel goes back to making his first solo record and a chance encounter with a model guitarist Jeff Baxter let him borrow, albeit very briefly. 

“I picked it up because I love the harp, you know, the stand-up harp. That involves foot pedals and chord grips and all that. This is going to sound crazy, but at some point in like 2009, Jeff Baxter came down to where I was doing the first recording of ideas for the first solo record. When I was first putting the songs together, Jeff came down to the studio and he brought a pedal steel to show me. And I was like, ‘This is a lot like the harp in its own way.’ 

“I was really into it, but it was so complex that I was like, ‘I don't have time to even start trying to learn how to do this’. He showed me some stuff, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is great,’ but then he said, ‘I'm gonna have to pick it up tomorrow,’ I said, ‘Tomorrow!’ 24 hours was not enough time for this thing. So he took it and it was always in the back of my mind." 

“Then Conspirators were recording the Four record in Nashville. There's something about Nashville, if you're recording [there], it really gets into your soul. So I was reading some books about different Nashville artists, and Lloyd Green was mentioned, he was a paramount country pedal steel guy from the ‘60s. Basically made his bones in the ‘60s. I was reading about him and I just got really fascinated about the pedal steel. So fast forward to when I got back from recording the record and the Conspirators were about to go on tour, I got this wild [idea] to buy a pedal steel and I locked myself up in my studio and started finding all these books to learn how to play it.”

Now, it’s fair to say that Slash has amassed a rather large collection of guitars over his four-decade-strong career, but it looks like he has started adding a slew of pedal steels to his arsenal.  

“The one that I'm playing live is a Jackson. Back in the day, there was a company called Sho-Bud, which was Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons' company that made really great pedal steels back in the ‘60s,” Slash informs us. “Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons split up, and so Shot Jackson's family went on to do the Jackson pedal steel, and Robert Randolph, who's obviously an amazing steel and lap steel player, he turned me on to Jackson, and so they sold me the one that you saw me playing [in concert].

“They just made me a new one which I haven't seen yet. I'm gonna see it tomorrow. So that's what I've been playing, but I also have a Williams at home. I have a bunch of different ones. I'm a guitar nut, so I have a new thing to go out and collect [laughs].” 

Slash admits that they aren’t as easy to get a hold of as his beloved Les Pauls, and he prefers newer models, as unlike vintage guitars, pedal steels can start to have issues the older they get. 

“They're not as commonplace and they're definitely more complicated to lug around but there's a bunch of different really great brands,” says Slash. “I've collected at least one or two of every one of those brands, just because, but the Jackson is great. It sounds really good and it's very simple  – and it's new. That's the thing about pedal steels, they don't age well like guitars.” 

Slash’s new album Orgy Of The Damned is out now and you can catch Slash and his touring blues festival S.E.R.P.E.N.T. around North America this summer, kicking off on July 5 at the KettleHouse Amphitheater in Bonner, MT and wrapping up at the Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie, TX, on August 17. 

Don’t worry, fans based in the UK and Europe, as Slash has hinted that the festival may make its way across the pond, saying, “If it goes well, then I definitely want to bring it to Europe, but I think the US is sort of the trial run, see how that all works. In Europe, there's nothing really like it that’s touring through the continent. So I definitely want to do that.” 

You can see a full list of US tour dates below. 

• Jul 05: Bonner KettleHouse Amphitheater, MT
• Jul 06: Airway Heights Northern Quest Amphitheater, WA
• Jul 08: Redmond Marymoor Park, WA
• Jul 10: Bend Hayden Homes Amphitheater, OR
• Jul 12: Lincoln Thunder Valley Casino, CA
• Jul 13: Los Angeles Greek Theatre, CA
• Jul 14: Tucson Anselmo Valencia Amphitheater, AZ
• Jul 17: Denver The Mission Ballroom, CO
• Jul 19: La Vista The Astro Amphitheater, NE
• Jul 21: Terre Haute The Mill, IN
• Jul 22: Cincinnati PNC Pavilion at Riverbend, OH
• Jul 24: Interlochen Interlochen Center for the Arts, MI
• Jul 25: Huber Heights Rose Music Center, OH
• Jul 27: Windsor The Colosseum at Caesars, ON, Canada
• Jul 28: Toronto Budweiser Stage , ON, Canada
• Jul 30: Lewiston Artpark Outdoor Amphitheater, NY
• Aug 01: Boston Leader Bank Pavilion, MA
• Aug 04: New York Pier 17, NY
• Aug 05: Bethlehem Musikfest, PA
• Aug 07: Cary Koka Booth Amphitheatre, NC
• Aug 08: Atlanta Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park, GA
• Aug 10: Clearwater The Sound at Coachman Park, FL
• Aug 11: St. Augustine Amphitheatre, FL
• Aug 13: Huntsville The Orion Amphitheater, AL
• Aug 14: Franklin FirstBank Amphitheater, TN
• Aug 16: Bentonville The Momentary, AR
• Aug 17: Grand Prairie Texas Trust CU Theatre, TX

We couldn’t really picture Slash as someone who’d choose sitting in front of a screen to cranking out riffs. 

The curly-haired Guns N’ Roses guitar legend has dismissed AI as “confusing and misleading” and suggests that it will lead to more music with the “same look or sound”.

Talking to the Battleground Podcast, he said, “I’m not super excited about this new development, only because I just know that people, for the most part, are gonna use it so much that it’s gonna be confusing and misleading.”

“There’s just gonna be too much of the same kind of look or sound for different things. I see it happening already.”

Having said that, he mentioned how he would love to see someone create something “unique and useful” with it. “I’m the guy that likes to go into a studio and record a band live and do it analogue. So the idea of AI, I can’t think of any application where it makes any sense to me for what it is that I do.

“I’m interested to see who comes up with something really great and unique and useful for me. But having AI reproduce anything or actually produce anything original in terms of music does not really thrill me.”

His comments come at a time of rising concern about the use of AI in music and the knock on effect it will have on artists’ rights. Last month over 200 artists, including Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, Robert Smith and Nicki Minaj signed an open letter from the Artists Rights Alliance warning against the “predatory” use of AI in music and its “assault in human creativity”.

Some artists such as Wyclef Jean have entered into partnerships with tech firms like Google to use and promote their AI products. However, others have been more dubious about its benefits. In an interview with Guitar Player last year, Queen guitarist Brian May warned that “the potential of AI to cause evil is...potentially huge.”

Last week Slash revealed that Guns N’ Roses were “trying” to make a new album, which would be their first since they reunited in 2016 and the first featuring both their iconic frontman and guitarist for over thirty years. His most recent solo album Orgy Of The Damned, a blues cover project, was released earlier this month.

Slash is one of the most recognisable musicians on the planet: he has a look, he has a sound, but he isn't done challenging himself. Far from it; he's been learning one of the most challenging stringed instruments a guitar player can find.

"I've only been playing it for a short time," he tells MusicRadar about learning to play pedal steel in a new interview focussed on his new blues album, Orgy Of The Damned. "So it was really sort of flying by the seat of your pants to put it into the set. But I made myself do it because I wanted to get better at it. It's something that you have to practice all the fucking time."

And he's putting the time in:  "There are so many nuances to it. I commit at least two to three hours a day, no matter what, to playing the pedal steel. I started after the last Conspirators' tour. So that was in 2022. I've been at it for two years, and I've only scratched the surface with this thing, but I fucking love it. It's a great instrument."

A pedal steel guitar is a sit-down console-type instrument that rises pedals and knee-activated levers to change the pitch of strings. The combination of sliding notes and expressive vibrato can give it an almost vocal quality. David Gilmour is another guitar hero famous for using one to perform Pink Floyd songs including High Hopes and The Great Gig In The Sky onstage. 

Slash is currently playing a Jackson model and while we shouldn't expect a country pedal steel album any time soon, it's inspiring to hear he's is putting so much time into learning it for the sheer love of music.  

"I don't have any professional aspirations for it, really," he admits. "It's not something I'm doing because I want to put out a pedal steel record. It's just really for my own personal enjoyment. I don't know how many songs or what songs I could actually put it in, you know?" 

Those songs won't necessarily be country either. You can see above how Slash integrated his pedal steel skills into a cover of Elton John's Rocket Man with Myles Kennedy And The Conspirators in Manila earlier this year. 

"I love country music," he reasons "I don't necessarily [like] all country songs or country singers especially, but I love the musicians, they are great. And I love steel guitar playing in that capacity. I also love where you can put it where it doesn't sound like country – in other contexts. And I think that's where I'm headed with it."

Check out our interview with Slash soon where he talks more about his pedal steel playing and the new album. 

Click here for more info on Orgy Of The Damned 

• "I can't stand them": Slash reveals he isn't a fan of using in-ear monitors live, but he does like using guitar plugins in the studio

Guns N’ Roses are working on a new album. Or at least they are “trying” to. That’s according to no less an authority than Slash himself.

This revelation came up when the top-hatted one discussed his new Orgy Of The Damned record with the Daily Star. He explained that Myles Kennedy, who has played with Slash in his Conspirators project wasn’t guesting on the record: “It was my own side thing, so I wasn’t dragging my own guys in.”

“Guns N' Roses are trying to make their own record and I'm working with them in that capacity but this didn't involve anyone else."

It’s been eight whole years since Slash reunited with Axl Rose and Duff McKagan from the classic line up for the Not In This Lifetime… Tour in 2016. Since then the band have toured extensively and both Rose and Slash have teased the possibility of brand new material on numerous occasions, though in October 2021 the latter admitted: “As far as new Guns is concerned; we haven’t even gotten to that point of really in earnest sitting down and writing.”

His latest comments suggest that there has been some movement, at least.

Of course, the band have released a number of one off singles over the past three years, but Absurd and Hard Skool from 2021 and Perhaps and The General were all offcuts from the Chinese Democracy sessions in the late 1990s.

In the meantime, Slash’s Orgy Of The Damned album was released last week. It’s a blues covers project, though one that’s flexible enough to find a place for Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone and Stevie Wonder’s Living For The City.

There are a glittering array of vocal collaborators too, including Brian Johnson, Iggy Pop, Steven Tyler, Beth Hart, Paul Rodgers, Billy Gibbons and Chris Robinson. But as he pointed out, no Myles Kennedy, and no Axl.

The 30th anniversary of the last Guns N’ Roses album to feature both its iconic guitarist and frontman passed last year. The Spaghetti Incident? was released in November 1993 and it would take Axl Rose fifteen years, thirteen separate studios, four credited guitarists and an estimated $13 million to complete its follow up, Chinese Democracy, the most expensive album in the history of recording.

In that context the news that the reunited GNR are currently ‘trying’ to make a new album should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt...

Orgy Of The Damned is out now on Gibson Records.

With Slash fully into a blues era (some would say he's always been in one) with a new solo album imminent, and news he's been branching out in the studio away from Les Pauls, Gibson has officially unveiled (via the Gibson Gazette) an ES-335 signature guitar for him.

It's based on Slash's vintage original that he tracked with on the Orgy Of The Damned album sessions (released via Gibson Records on 17 May). “I used a beautiful and killer-sounding 1963 ES-335 Gibson for more than a few songs on Orgy of the Damned,” he says. “Gibson has now built a fantastic replica of this extraordinary guitar. Same dot neck, Bigsby tremolo, and finish. You have to check it out.”

Let's do that! But there's a catch…

The Gibson Custom Slash 1963 ES-335 Collector’s Edition Guitar is limited to a run of  just 50 and there's no price stated – interested parties can call the Gibson Garage to order. But a purchase will include an invitation to a special Slash and Friends event at the Nashville retail space. Still, you know the old saying; if you have to ask the price… 

There's no harm in looking/drooling over this Bigsby B7-equipped beauty in Vintage Sunburst (with light aging from the Murphy Lab, including the pickups), a collection of case candy that includes a signed copy of Slash's new album, Orgy of the Damned, a signed copy of The Collection: Slash coffee table book (edited by former MusicRadar man Chris Vinnicombe, no less), and a certificate of authenticity.

And let's not forget that invitation to attend Slash's exclusive VIP experience at the Gibson Garage in Nashville, where the man himself and his blues band will play intimate live performance.

Will more affordable models follow? Based on previous form, we reckon so. So let's keep faith and our wallets close. 

More info at Gibson.com. 

• "I can't stand them": Slash reveals he isn't a fan of using in-ear monitors live, but he does like using guitar plugins in the studio

Slash and a stack: they just go together, right? But that doesn't mean he's not open to new ways to get the job done in the studio, and even open new sonic possibilities. And in a new interview with fellow six-stringer Ola Englund for the latter's Coffee With Ola series he's detailed how he likes to use guitar plugins for recording.

"So the Fractal thing, I haven't had any reason to go there," he says of amp modelling processors. "But plugins I use all the time because in the studio when you're doing stuff that doesn't necessarily have to be  'the Marshall sound' or whatever, you can get really interesting sounds from plugins and do a lot of unique things."

Their appeal for Slash goes outside of his familiar work in Guns N' Roses, Myles Kennedy And The Conspirators and his new blues solo album, Orgy Of The Damned. 

"I write music for this thing called Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood [a Universal Studios event], so when I'm doing that sometimes I use a guitar synthesizer, sometimes I use plugins – anything but just your standard stock guitar sound. So I am familiar with that stuff but that said, I've been using that Magnatone amp [XXX] and I've just designed a new amp with those guys – a 100-watt amp."

He's referring to his snakeskin-finished signature model. Further proof that Slash's heart still has a valve glowing inside.

"I love working with an amplifier because there is something, maybe it's old school, but there is something pure about the way the speakers react with the sound in the cabinet and all that kind of stuff."

In the video chat above, Ola himself agrees that "you can't replicate that with a plugin" – using the old 'movement of the air' observation many players cite to describe the tangible experience of playing with traditional valve amps and cabs. Whatever you think of that, Slash has some interesting opinions to share about the experience of using a 'traditional' rig with in-ear monitors.

"A funny thing about the amplifier is live I'm using amps and all that, but I'm also using in-ear monitors," he explains. "That changes the whole thing and I can't stand them."

Alas, they're a necessary compromise for the guitarist.

"I use them because especially with singers… it works for everybody, it's very convenient. So you're working with a [guitar] sound that isn't necessarily 'real' and it's really hard for me, and playing-wise you're searching and searching.

"I've been tweaking them like crazy," Slash says on his in-ear setup. "So I've been working with [Ultimate Ears founder] Jerry Harvey to make them so that they're a little bit more pleasing tone-wise to the ear. Because the first ones I had I said, 'How can anybody use these? It's awful'. It's very direct, it's very brittle… I had a show the other night in Paris and my in-ears went out. So I plugged them out and thought, I'll listen to the house [mix] but the house was too out front. This happened during a song called Wicked Stone – there's an extended guitar solo.

"So I'm out the front doing a guitar solo and this happens and I can't stop. So I played the whole rest of the song no being able to hear – just going off my imagination of what it sound like in my head. So that was an in-ear thing, I was like, 'Fuck I hate these things' but they're a necessary evil."

For Slash his experience of using in-ears live "almost defeats the purpose" of using valve amps and traditional guitar cabs onstage. "Even though what the people are hearing out front is genuinely coming out of a microphone in front of a cabinet, what you're playing to is something else entirely."

His Conspirators bandmate Myles Kennedy has had a much more positive experience with in-ears as a singer-guitarist. "I don't know how people can perform without them because it really is such a game changer," the Alter Bridge man told us in 2022. "And not only does it protect your ears but it'll help you perform better. Mark [Tremonti] is a good example; hearing his vocals now that he uses in-ears versus when he was just using wedges. He can hear his pitch much better now he doesn't have to push as hard. It's just a total total game-changer so I would highly recommend it."

Myles was also keen to stress their advantages for all live performers – even those of us who aren't playing arenas anytime soon.

"You don't have to be playing the enormodome to use in-ears," he added. "If you're playing just a small club you should absolutely be using ears because you will not only hear yourself better, you're gonna save your hearing. Unless you crank them up too loud. Be careful of that because you can actually do more damage if you're not careful and you want to get lost in the moment and get the adrenaline rush of cranking it up to 10. That's very bad. Uncle Myles says no!"

• Check out the full interview above. Slash' new blues album, Orgy Of The Damned, is out 17 May. 

Gibson's productive partnership with Slash has borne more six-stringed fruit in the form of another addition to its Les Paul stable, the Slash “Jessica” Les Paul Standard in Honey Burst with Red Back. Dubbed "a piece of rock ’n’ roll history reborn", Gibson's latest is based on the Guns N' Roses icon's much-loved live weapon of choice. 

"This guitar has been with me since 1988," Slash said of the guitar that's been his go-to stage instrument for over 30 years, in the excellent Slash: The Collection book. "It's faded, I fucking dropped a cigarette on it... I named it when I was drunk but I don't remember what the catalyst for that was!"

The new Jessica replica is built around a non-weight-relieved mahogany body topped with a three-piece plain maple top, while the neck is crafted from mahogany in '50s Vintage profile.

Sonically, it's driven by two Custom Burstbucker pickups with Alnico 2 magnets, ab ly augmented with hand-wired electronics, including Orange Drop capacitors, proven to offer a range of tones from clean and articulate to the trademark overdriven sounds featured on GNR smashes like  Welcome To The Jungle, Paradise City, Sweet Child O’ Mine, and many more.

Slash first acquired the Jessica, when he retired his Kris Derrig and Max Baranet Les Paul replicas in the late '80s and Gibson sent two factory seconds as candidate replacements.

“Both of ’em were pretty identical, with a bright Cherry Sunburst,” he recalls. “I started using those on the road for a while, then I had them refinished so that they were a little duller. And that became my main stage guitar and the backup all the way through Guns N’ Roses and on through Velvet Revolver, and now with Guns again.”

The Gibson Slash Jessica Les Paul Standard is available now at $3,199/£2,999. For more details and background, head over to gazette.gibson.com now. 

You don't need to know many guitar scales to play guitar solos – but you do need to know this one. The minor pentatonic is good enough for players including Angus Young, Slash, Eric Clapton, Jack White and Zakk Wylde so it;s good enough for us!

And if the idea of learning a scale is off-putting, step this way – we can do it through chord shapes. In fact, the three easy shapes we're going to look at are here almost identical to open chords you’ve probably already worked out.

1. C major pentatonic scale 

You hopefully already know the C chord Just press down on the strings with your first, second and third fingers where the dots show you, then strum the top five strings!

Unlike chords, scales are played one note at a time. You should be able to see that the C major pentatonic scale uses all the notes from a C chord, plus a couple of extras.

Play through the chord and scale before attempting this Keith Richards-inspired C major pentatonic line. After that, try making up your own lick using notes taken from the scale.

E minor pentatonic scale 

Em is another common chord that any beginner will know. Just press down on the relevant strings with your second and third fingers, then strum all six strings.

Just as with the C chord, Em is almost identical to a scale, this time the E minor pentatonic scale. The notes of the scale always sound good over an Em chord.

The challenge with any scale-based lick is the quick note to note changes. Use your second finger for all of the 2nd fret notes in this lick. It’ll help you keep position shifts to a minimum.

A minor pentatonic scale 

This is an Am barre chord – it’s more advanced than what we’ve looked at so far. Use your first finger to press down on all six strings. Third and fourth fingers are also used.

Again, see if you can spot the chord shape ‘hidden’ within the notes of the scale. It’s because the chord and scale share so many notes they always sound good played together.

There’s a classic rock vibe here – think AC/DC, Thin Lizzy and so on. Unlike our previous backing tracks, the music doesn’t stick to one chord, so there’s a more sophisticated sound.

• 3 guitar scales for beginners to learn

Mark Knopfler’s eagerly anticipated all-star supergroup version of Going Home, his theme to Local Hero, has been released, with the single featuring over 50 legendary guitarists, including the late Jeff Beck, who opens the charity single with a “spellbinding” piece of electric guitar manipulation that would be his last ever recorded solo. 

Now we can finally listen to the track – all nine minutes and 49 seconds of it – can we work out who played what on the track? That is easier said than done. Produced by Knopfler’s long-standing co-producer and Dire Straits keyboardist, Guy Fletcher, Going Home has a credits list that reads like a who’s who of guitar. 

You’ve got David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Slash, Brian May, Jeff Beck, Steve Cropper, Duane Eddy, Steve Vai, Sheryl Crow, Derek Trucks, Susan Tudeschi, Nile Rodgers, Pete Townshend, Hank Marvin, Tony Iommi, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Armatrading… The list of guitarists goes on and on, with other musical A-listers popping in, all to help raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America

Ringo Starr and his son, Zak Starkey, play drums. Sting plays bass guitar while Roger Daltrey plays harmonica. It’s a bewildering array of talent. Thankfully, a video will be dropping next week with a commentary on who is playing what to help us make sense of it all – though there’s no mistaking the work of Beck, Knopfler, Gilmour or May. 

And the Times has run a report from Paul Sexton – who wrote the sleeve notes – which sheds some more light on the project, which all started with Townshend and Clapton dropping by Knopfler’s British Grove Studios, in Chiswick, west London, followed by Sting and Sam Fender – whom we’d like to think got the same train down from Newcastle – with contributions delivered in-person and digitally from across the globe. 

When it came time to mix, Fletcher had an abundance of material to stitch together, and he got to work on a five-minute edit and the full version that’s being made available on digital platforms. 

He offered some clues as to who is playing what. For starters – and no one needed this one – Jeff Beck is playing the intro, as ever all fingerstyle, on the edge of break-up, jockeying the whammy bar, a performance Knopfler describes as “spellbinding”.

“Once I got Jeff Beck’s contribution, there was no way I was going to mess with that,” Fletcher told the Times. “It was as pure as it can be. What he did with it brings you to tears, it’s absolutely astonishing. Only five or six months after I received it, he passed away. The fact that he’s first is kind of beautiful.”

Fletcher says Armatrading plays electric guitar throughout the track and “just wailed” while there is no shortage of Gilmour for Pink Floyd fans to pick out.

“When David Gilmour came in, he played loads of stuff, but there were certain licks that were just absolutely Gilmour,” said Fletcher. “Same with Ronnie Wood, instant Stones.”

The track grows more rock as it gathers momentum, and much of that was to do with the influence of Queen’s Brian May, who made a telling contribution.

“Brian May did an entire section, about a dozen guitar harmonies, and when he comes in it’s unmistakably Brian,” said Fletcher, who added that Bruce Springsteen's contribution was similarly hard to miss, so keep your ears tuned for a Fender Esquire.

“What I really want to do, more than anything else, is just to thank each and every one for this sterling response,” said Knopfler upon the single's announcement in February. “I really had no idea that it was going to be like this. It hit Guy and I quite early on that we had to extend this piece somehow, to take in the number of people who joined in... I think what we’ve had is an embarrassment of riches, really. The whole thing was a high point.”

Going Home is available now, and it's for a good cause. You can find out more about those causes at Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America. 

Going Home (Theme From Local Hero) credits

• Joan Armatrading, Jeff Beck, Richard Bennett, Joe Bonamassa, Joe Brown, James Burton, Jonathan Cain, Paul Carrack, Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, Jim Cox, Steve Cropper, Sheryl Crow, Danny Cummings, Roger Daltrey, Duane Eddy, Sam Fender, Guy Fletcher, Peter Frampton, Audley Freed, Vince Gill, David Gilmour, Buddy Guy, Keiji Haino, Tony Iommi, Joan Jett, John Jorgenson, Mark Knopfler, Sonny Landreth, Albert Lee, Greg Leisz, Alex Lifeson, Steve Lukather, Phil Manzanera, Dave Mason, Hank Marvin, Brian May, Robbie McIntosh, John McLaughlin, Tom Morello, Rick Nielsen, Orianthi, Brad Paisley, Nile Rodgers, Mike Rutherford, Joe Satriani, John Sebastian, Connor Selby, Slash, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and Zak Starkey, Sting, Andy Taylor, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Ian Thomas, Pete Townshend, Keith Urban, Steve Vai, Waddy Wachtel, Joe Louis Walker, Joe Walsh, Ronnie Wood, Glenn Worf, Zucchero.

Slash has officially announced his new blues guitar album; it’s going to be called Orgy Of The Damned, it’ll feature an all-star cast of guest vocalists, and the first single finds the Guns N’ Roses guitarist covering Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor with Brian Johnson of AC/DC on vocals.

It is hard to top that, the gravelly Geordie pipes of Beano on one of the foundational blues tracks of all time, but Slash has the means and the contacts book to take it one step further, calling in Steven Tyler to play the harmonica. 

That’s right, the Aerosmith frontman pops by the studio to play harmonica. Incredible. You might also recognise Tash Neal on rhythm guitar, playing a Gold Top with P-90s, very nice. Johnny Griparic is on bass guitar, Teddy Andreadis on keys, Michael Jerome on drums.

Orgy Of The Damned features guest spots from Iggy Pop, Billy F Gibbons, Gary Clark Jr, Dorothy Demi Lovato, Paul Rodgers, Beth Hart, Chris Stapleton and Chris Robinson. It’s not all strictly blues; Neal sings lead vocals on a cover of Stevie Wonder’s Living For The City. Slash closes the album out with an all-original composition titled Metal Chestnut. 

But it makes sense that Killing Floor is the first track we’ve heard off the album, which drops on 17 May via Gibson Records. This was a track that got Slash when he was just starting out. 

“Killing Floor is one of my favorite Howlin’ Wolf songs, but also one of the iconic blues riffs that turned me on as a young guitar player,” says Slash. “I’ve always wanted to cover it in some capacity and this record was the perfect vehicle. But playing it with this band, and with Brian Johnson singing, it was an achievement I would never have imagined back then. Let alone Steven Tyler providing the harp.”

Everything was tracked live in the studio, just as Slash did with his previous studio album, 4. The video for Killing Floor is a briskly edited montage of performance footage from the studio, the highlight of which is seeing Slash’s guitar solo, which has an old-school rock ’n’ roll blues feel and is performed on a Bigsby-equipped Gibson ES-335 in Tobacco Sunburst. 

Though watching Johnson crooning lava into the mic is pretty cool too. It looked like a fun time was had by all. 

“When Slash asked me to sing on Killing Floor, I said yes immediately,” says Johnson. “It was one of the first songs I learned in my very first band, and when he played me the backing track it was a no-brainer, and Steven's harmonica is so bloody hot. I had a ball with Slash in the studio, and I think we did this great old song justice. Rock on.”

Orgy Of The Damned is available for pre-order via Gibson Records. 

Slash is set to unveil a blues solo album on Friday 8 March and has posted a video teaser ahead of the announcement that you can see below.

It features the Guns N' Roses man playing a Bigsby-loaded ES-335 amongst more in-studio footage. "I'm a rock guitar player who's firmly rooted in blues," says Slash in the clip. "Blues guitar is something I got turned onto when I was a kid. If you were to listen to anything that I do you can see how big the blues influence is.

"I'd always thought I'd want to record a [blues] record at some point and we got together and did it," he adds. 

Who 'we' is remains to be seen, but Demi Lovato is reportedly one of the vocalists who will appear on the follow-up to 2010's Slash album. In the intervening years he's worked on albums with Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators, as well as returning to Guns N' Roses.

In July 2023 Slash told Yahoo Music that the setup on his second solo record will be "similar" to the first in terms of featuring "a bunch of different singers."

He's already repaid the favour back to Lovato by guesting on her 2023 album Revamped for the rock version of her song Sorry Not Sorry. 

"Her [album] is way different than mine," Slash told Yahoo Music. "It’s a completely different type of a song, so it's interesting how diverse her voice can be.”

As recovering addicts, Slash explained that he and Lovato felt a connection that sparked their friendship.

“She and I know each other because we're both… we've been through that,” Slash told Yahoo Music. “We were introduced a long time ago and we had that relate to — we were both struggling addicts and all that. … I'd been sober for a little while and she was still struggling a little bit, having just gone through a relapse. And then I talked to her just post-that, and she was sort of trying to get it back together and whatnot. 

"That's how we initially started sort of talking, and she's just really cool and she's a really intelligent and talented girl. And so, we’ve just been friends ever since then.” 

We'll have the full details on the 2024 album this Friday, and like Slash's previous record with Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators (2002's 4), it will be released on Gibson Records 

The Dandy Warhols knew who to call for their doomy new song I’d Like To Help You With Your Problem; the wahlord Slash. 

He's nowhere to be seen in the song's video, but then neither is the band. Instead there's a boatload of AI-generated footage is and a blurry band performing on a beach who are not The Dandy Worhols. 

Musically it's a a markedly heavier direction for the band, best known for 2000 hit Bohemian Like You, but perhaps fitting for the title of their forthcoming 12th album Rockmaker – due on 15 March via Sunset Blvd Records.

“The first time we heard it back in our studio we just stared at each other with our mouths open,” says frontman / guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor regarding Slash's work on the track. “What he played on the track is amazing. I’ve never heard him play quite like that, but what is so fascinating to me is that it is clearly him playing. As recognizable as a familiar human voice.

“The song has a real Vietnam-era acid rock sound,” Taylor-Taylor added. “We wanted that kind of guitar playing on it, but we don’t have anyone in the band who can do it. Once we began discussing it, it became apparent that there wasn’t really anyone else whose hands we could put it in, so thus the Hail Mary to try and get Slash to play on it.”

The track continues the band's current penchant for star guest appearances – previous, fuzz-soaked single Danzig With Myself features Pixies man Frank Black on 'surf guitar'. 

Rockmaker will also feature British DJ and producer Keith Tenniswood (David Holmes, Primal Scream) of Two Lone Swordsmen who mastered the record and the mixing work of British producer Jagz Kooner (Massive Attack, Kasabian, Garbage).

More info at dandywarhols.com

• 15 questions for… The Dandy Warhols: “Be nice to everyone. There’s no point in being a d**k; it’s a small world and an even smaller music world"

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

As one of Slash’s co-conspirators and a core member of the Mammoth WVH touring band, Frank Sidoris is arguably one of the hardest-working axe men on the scene right now. Most days, this SG-loving, rock and roll fanatic can be found playing some of the biggest stages in the world next to the most prominent names in the business. From shredding alongside Slash and Wolfgang Van Halen to jamming with childhood idols, Alice Cooper and Alex Lifeson, Frank has legitimately lived most guitar players' wildest dreams – something that isn’t lost on the Vegas-based guitar-slinger. 

We caught up with Frank while he was on a short break between touring with Mammoth WVH and starting rehearsals with Slash and the gang, who are due to hit the road in a few weeks for The River Is Rising – Rest Of The World tour. 

Frank lifts the lid on his current live rig and the pieces of gear he simply couldn’t live without. We also discuss everything from the time Slash surprised him with his dream guitar to his deep love of Orange amps and what he believes has contributed to the longevity of Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. 

So if you want to know what pieces of gear you need to get your hands on to become a well-travelled and highly in-demand professional guitar player just like Frank – and you need another reason to wish Slash was your best mate – then read on. 

I thought it would be great to start with a peek behind the curtain of your current live rig. As a professional guitarist playing alongside some of the biggest names in the industry, can you give us the essential pieces of gear you couldn’t live without?  

"As a guitar player on tour, I really don't ask for too much. Like, as a rhythm guitar player for Slash, I don't like to step on him or you know, put too much colour and too much of anything in anybody's face, if that makes sense. With Mammoth, I have a bit more freedom because there's a lot more ambient stuff that happens, you know?

"So I think it varies from band to band, with Slash my pedalboard's not very crazy and in general I'm not a guy with a massive pedalboard, but I feel like what I have are the absolute essentials for a live performance as a guitar player. I'm very specific about the brands I use, but I guess over the decade-plus that I toured with Slash and now with Mammoth, It's been very fun just fine-tuning [my rig] and starting to branch out a bit more as far as pedals go. I feel like a fairly barebones rock guitar player as far as my rig goes. If I could, I would just go directly into my amp and just call it a day."  

"As far as essentials, the one thing that I recommend any musician get eventually – the problem is they're a bit pricey – is in-ear monitors. I swear by the Jerry Harvey Audio Layla set. 

"I think, ultimately, it's come down to ear protection for me. I think that's the most important thing besides the obvious, which is just making sure that you have the best possible mix and that you can hear everything that’s happening. It just affords you the ability to really fine-tune and understand what's happening on stage. You can hear every little detail. 

"It's a really incredible experience when you first do it. It's something to get used to and you don't think about how convenient it is. Of course, if I could play a small club all the time with monitors, I would, but when you play in a band with someone like Slash who loves to play insanely loud – like crazy, crazy loud – it's nice to be able to kind of reel him in and actually hear what he's doing a bit better, and to be able to hear what I'm doing too, especially playing next to someone like him, his rig is insane. 

"But the other thing with the Slash band – I think it's so key as we don't use a click. With Mammoth, we use a click and I think Mammoth absolutely needs a click. Every band really needs a click [laughs], but a lot of old-school bands don't and I've kind of grown up that way. I never really used it, but I think that the in-ears really helps everybody just kind of stay in their own orbit in a live setting and it's an absolute requirement for what we do with Slash if we're not going to use a click.  

"I remember before I joined the Slash band in 2012, I didn’t use any in-ears, ever. I never did, and you know after a tour, your ears would be ringing for sure. I remember when I first got my ears, it was a set of Ultimate Ears. I put them in, I played in Brazil somewhere and I was like, oh my God, this is a completely different world. 

"My mix is always very simple, like when it comes to Mammoth WVH, I pretty much only have Wolf's guitar, his vocal, my guitar and vocal and the drummer. Everything else is very low. 

"With Slash, I have Myles, lots of drums usually and then a bit of Slash. You know, because I need to know where he's at and where he's standing. He loves to bounce all over the stage, you'll just be standing and all of a sudden, if you're not paying attention, Slash is right in front of you [laughs]. So it's kind of nice to know what's going on."

When it comes to guitars, I see you most often with a Gibson SG, would you say that was your number one? 

"The SG has become my favourite guitar and a staple for both bands. I'm playing an SG at all times – I have one right next to me now. I always liked them growing up, I always gravitated towards them, but it seemed like there were so many different variations I didn’t know which was the right SG for me, you know. It's like the Stratocaster, there’s a million different types. What's the one for you? You know. 

"[My main SG is] a 1964 reissue and the reason I like the ‘64 is because it's got the ‘59-sized neck, so it's a bigger neck. The pickups are unpotted, so it definitely gets a little feedback, but it's very old-school. You know, that's just what it was. When you turn up, it just sounds so good that way – but you’ve got to be in control of your feedback. 

"For Slash and Mammoth, I find that it fits perfectly in that world. Honestly, on stage, if Slash is playing a Les Paul, I shouldn't always be playing a Les Paul even though that's one of my main guitars. I used to play a Telecaster with him, too, because it really added to the show. It's like you can actually completely decipher between both guitars. 

"I think the SG fits in that perfect middle ground. It's got the beefiness and it's got the cut. It cuts right through when I'm playing along with Slash, so it's very fun. 

"It's always been that guitar I didn't realize I needed, but I have three of them now and I have them dispersed between both bands. It's like they're just my favourite and I play them all the time. The main one is the green one – it’s Olive Drab."

"We picked it up in Nashville, I saw it online and then Slash goes, 'Oh, I actually know the owner of that guitar store,' so I went down there and I played it and I was like, 'All right, please, please let this guitar not be as good as I hope it is because I don't have the money to do this right now'. I also don't have the brain capacity to be like, oh, I'm gonna miss this guitar if I don't get it now.' 

"And if I tell Gibson to build one for me, it's not going to be the same guitar. It's just never the same. Yes, they'll build an incredible guitar to spec, but the problem is that the neck of this guitar is not going to be the same. 

"I ended up getting that guitar because Slash surprised me with it – believe it or not. I've never really told this story publicly. I was going down to that guitar store to check out the SG, and Slash was like, 'Hey, let me know if you could find a case for my lap steel,' and I was like, 'Okay.' 

"So I go down there I find a lap steel case. I was like, 'What do you think?' And he's like, 'oh, this is great.' So I get it. Then I'm hanging out playing the guitar, and man, this guitar is perfect, so I send Slash some photos, like 'Dude, it's better than we thought!' He's like, 'Oh, that's great.' 

"So when I leave I just kind of accept the fact that I'm not getting a guitar. So we go to the Gibson Garage and we're just messing around playing different guitars. They have an Olive Drab Les Paul, it was a Classic, I think. Man, I just wanted an Olive Drab guitar, so you know, I'll take this as a consolation prize and I'll be happy with that.

"So I get that and go back to my hotel room and they're like, 'Yeah, we'll deliver it to the venue tomorrow', so I'm just sitting there in my hotel room wishing I had a guitar, and I get a knock on the door at 11:30 pm. I open my hotel door, and it's Slash and his girlfriend, and he's holding a guitar case, and I'm like, 'what the hell is that?' 

"Then I look and it's an SG shape. I go, 'Dude, what are you thinking? You’re crazy!' I open it up and I'm like, 'Oh my God!' He goes, 'I knew you had to have it and I wasn't gonna let you walk away without it'. 

"So yeah, he bought me that guitar, which is just the coolest thing of all time. 

"When it comes to guitars, he’s the same as us. He's a child that way. When he sees a guitar he wants, he's like 'I need it, I have to have it.' Of course, he’s not like that with all guitars. He's very specific, you know, it's like a guy who can get whatever guitar he wants. He's not going to do it unless it's something he really genuinely believes in and enjoys the way it plays. 

"So now I have that exact guitar in three different colours. As well as the Olive Drab, I have it in Inverness Green and Silver Mist – and that's the one I play with Mammoth. 

"As far as necessities on the road, the other guitar is definitely a Les Paul – you know, if I have the sonic spectrum of the SG covered. I said that you shouldn't play a Les Paul with Slash at all times, but there are plenty of times when it's necessary. So I'm definitely playing my Les Paul – I play a ‘59 reissue, Gibson R9. 

"And again that's another one of those guitars. It's different. It is its own thing. Every single ‘59 that they build, they're all different. They all have their own vibe, colour and top and just everything about it. I got mine in the Gibson showroom in LA. 

"And that guitar is so unique, it almost sounds like a Telecaster at times. Sometimes it's very interesting how the right set of PAF pickups can just sound, in that middle ground, like the Les Paul, but also a Telecaster. It's very cool." 

I have to ask what it’s like standing on stage with a Les Paul around your neck, next to the most famous Les Paul player of all time? That must be a pretty intimidating experience.

"It's funny, man, I'll say this, it's never lost on me. We've been friends for over a decade and bandmates – and it's great. It's always cool, you know, it's just normal. We travel in a bus, we eat food, we do normal people things together, but yeah, there's still plenty of time where you're just like, wow, it'll just kind of pop into my head. 

"The same with Wolfgang. I remember going to see Van Halen for the first time in like 2008 or 2009, I think. It was his second tour and they played Vegas. It was great to see him. I was like, 'oh man, we're almost the same age' and then fast forward to now and here we are – we're in a band together!  

"I spent so much time growing up playing along with my favourite Rush and Alice Cooper albums, all the live albums. I would just memorize them and play along. There was no promise of anything. It was just something I genuinely loved to do. I'd play along with my favourite albums and these people that I looked up to and I would visualize playing with them at times. I'd be at work at a retail job or whatever else I was doing and I would just picture it. 

"I played the Golden God Revolver Magazine awards with Slash and not only was I playing with Slash, but we had Alice Cooper come up and play with us so it was [one of] those moments of just like, 'Man I've been playing Schools Out my whole life and now the man himself is here, we're actually doing it' – all the live album practice finally paid off [laughs].

"I'll even raise you one more because this is a really cool thing that happened that I still can't believe. And I'm so eternally grateful for the people who reached out. 

"This was in 2016, and I got a call. They're like, 'hey Alice Cooper does this thing twice a year where he does a golf tournament for charity. All sorts of rock legends come out and play golf for charity, and they do a jam with all the people the night before the tournament, we want Frank to play, would he come down and jam?' 

"I was like, 'dude, of course, I'd love to play Alice Cooper songs and hang out with you guys.' About a week later, days before the actual event I get an email that says Alex Lifeson is going to be joining us. I was like 'oh my God', because again, that's not only jamming with Alice again, it's playing with one of my absolute guitar heroes growing up. I loved Rush and still love Rush!

"I met him once as a kid at one of the Rush shows because a close family friend, her mother went to school with him. So I got to just meet him as a kid. And then she emailed him to say, 'Hey, remember that kid you met years ago, you're going to play with him and Alice Cooper,' and when I saw him for the first time, on a professional level before sound check, he's like, Hey I remember you!' It’s still hard to believe that it actually happened."

From other interviews and photos online, I noticed you have a fairly modest pedalboard. Can you walk us through your pedalboard essentials? 

"I'm currently building a new pedalboard for the Conspirators. For years I always used to keep it real simple. 

"The MXR Phase 90, that's just the standard I have to have. I use it all the time and guess which band I use it in the most. Yup, it’s Wolfgang Van Halen's band Mammoth [laughs]. So it's cool because I got the striped one, like the Eddie Van Halen colours, the red, white and black. 

"Then I’ve got to have a wah pedal, of course. Slash always has a cool wah – he had his own signature – but the one that I swear by because it's got the perfect sweep is the EVH version, the yellow and black one, it’s unbelievable. 

"I hate turning on a wah and then I step forward it’s like it’s barely on and when you rock it back and forth and it sounds like the power of it's only in the middle. The EVH wah is perfect. It's got the perfect wah sweep, so that's become my absolute favourite. I use that all the time. 

"Are you familiar with Walrus Audio? I've been using them a lot for delays, specifically the ARP-87. This thing rules – I’m a big fan of that. If I don't have access to the Walrus Audio, I use the MXR Carbon Copy because again, that's just one of those simple pedals that works great." 

"Can you take a guess at which tuner I have on my pedal board?"

Hmm, the Boss TU3?

"Nailed it, you're right. It's the standard. You can't go wrong with it. 

"The next pedal is a volume pedal. The one thing that I learned during the Slash band is, I think it's important that everybody is not just channel switching from clean to dirty, you know? I think also in the Slash context, I'm always using a fairly classic amp that only has one channel. So in the Wolfgang scenario, we use the EVH amps that have multiple channels, but it's still a very classic-sounding amp. But the thing that I am trained to do is always use my volume to turn down and up like that's so Slash, and something we've always done. 

"It’s important because it just sounds so real and human on stage, instead of it being like, okay now we're loud, now we're quiet, now we're loud, now we're quiet again. 

"The volume pedal becomes necessary when there are lots of real quick changes in a song. In the [track] You're A Lie, I can't do the effect that takes place in that song with just the volume on my guitar – like you can, but I have to use the volume and the delay and slam it really quick, so it gives you this cool fadeout thing." 

Back in 2021, you were announced as an Orange artist. So I take it you are mainly using Orange amps now on tour?

"I used the Orange Custom Shop 50, that thing absolutely rules – that’s what I used on the last Slash album and last tour. I always wondered what the Orange amp is, you know? What's the Orange amp that kills them all? My buddy Scott Holiday from Rival Sons, goes, 'dude, there's only one orange. Get the CS50.'

"So I ended up buying one. It's funny, Alice Cooper's son Dash, he had an Orange cabinet and we traded my Wizard cabinet for his Orange one. So I used it for the last Slash tour and I just couldn't get enough man – the Les Paul through that CS50 just hits, it sounds so good. 

"The other amp I use is the EVH 5150III S, it's got the 6L6 tubes. In all honesty, I had zero experience with those amps because I just assumed they would be a bit too saturated and a bit too much for what I wanted to do. It turns out they are not, they are genuinely a classic amp. But of course, if you step on the third channel, then it sounds pretty explosive if you want it to.

"We all sound different in Mammoth. We each play a different EVH head. Because there are three guitar players, you need to be able to decipher all three of us. If you go to a show, you can hear each one. It's pretty cool. 

"It's a very, very classic-sounding amp. The other thing I love about it is that the amp I'm using is the one that Ed used. It's the one that Eddie Van Halen used specifically, the same model, I've been using that for years. I really love it."

As far as guitarists go, you are in a pretty unique position. Not only do you play in a band with Slash, but you’ve also supported Guns N' Roses while playing in Mammoth WVH. Did you learn anything new about your bandmate while watching him perform with his old band?

"It's funny. I think one thing I did notice is that I've always kind of known Slash to be like any artist, self-conscious. Who isn't? 

"You know, even Slash, he's a human being. That's another reason why I love the guy. It's funny because I remember there were times when I'd go out there and I'd watch him and he was like, 'oh, man, you're making me nervous.'

"He’s like, 'I actually prefer it when I don't know that my friends are watching me play, it makes it easier because I can just be myself, and if not, I'm overthinking it.' Not that you would ever know it as a spectator. He's always out there killing it.

"But you know, we all have our own critiques. I think that just kind of hammered home more of the human aspect of the guy."

I think one of the things that has made Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators such an enduring band for all these years is the chemistry between the members. It doesn’t feel like a Slash solo project, it feels like a band just like Guns N' Roses or Velvet Revolver. What do you feel has contributed to the longevity of the project?

"When that project first showed up, before I was ever in it, it was just called Slash. Then it was Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators. Slash will be the first person to tell you he didn't want it to be just called Slash. He's like 'I don't like the idea of it being just me. I want it to be a band.' He's always preferred being in a band, that's his whole thing. And you know, I think it's very admirable coming from somebody who has such a history, such longevity and accolades in the business.

"So I think what contributes to what makes this band a band is that he's trusted us to write the songs with him and I think we all get along so well. I think Brent, Todd, Myles and I, we're in a lot of ways cut from the same cloth. 

"We just get along. We love the same music and we have the same influences. That's another thing I love about Slash, this is a guy that even though I look up to him, there's an entire other generation that Slash and I both look up to together. It's very cool, we can both get excited about jamming Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones and stuff – it'd be one thing if I played in a band with Paul McCartney, it's like, 'yeah, you know, skiffle groups and stuff that I grew up listening to' [laughs]. 

"Plus he includes us in everything you know, the videos, the merch, it's not just the Slash show and I think that that translates very well and everyone can see it. You know, technically – now, I think that Guns N' Roses are back together, it might change this stat – but The Conspirators is the longest consecutively running thing that Slash has ever done."

Can you talk a little about the writing process for a Conspirators’ record? How much input does each of the members have when it comes to writing new material? 

"For most of the songs, he's usually the riff guy. It's like every song starts with his riff. Our writing process always starts at sound check or if we're rehearsing. For the last decade-plus, we would just go to sound check, and then Slash would roll up and play a riff, and then we'd play a riff, and then it goes into a verse, and it goes into a chorus. We do that all the time. 

"That's just always how it starts, and Brent [Fitz], my drummer, will play the drums, Todd [Kerns] will come in on the bass, and I'll just try to see where he’s at on the guitar and not play what he's playing. You know, there's times to mimic and play what he's playing, and there's times to actually be a rhythm guitar player. 

"It's an interesting role that I think, you have so much freedom, which is really fun. Like if Slash is playing the low part, you'll play the high part, or you'll play a harmony or you'll play whatever. It's cool, there's plenty of room for colour and lots of different approaches, and it's great because he's very open-minded to anything I've ever come up with. 

"There are times when they'll get together, just drums, bass and guitar, and they'll send me [what they've been working on], and then I'll write my parts. I'll show up to the next rehearsal, and we'll jam it together and I'll show them what I wrote. It's really fun. It's a fun process.  

"Myles comes up with a lot of ideas, too. As an incredibly accomplished guitar player himself, he will come up with great guitar parts that Slash and I are both like, 'well, that's that's the fucking move, all right, good idea, Myles!'

"The other thing I love about it is that Brent and Todd are both very accomplished songwriters and both multi-instrumentalists – Brent specifically, as he can legitimately sing, play guitar, bass, drums and piano. He does it all and it's so cool because he knows the actual songwriting side of it. He knows how to communicate with a guitar player. He's the first guy to reach out and be like, 'actually, that would be really cool if it did this.' And it's like, 'yep, good idea.' It's a nice collaborative effort, all five of us."

I know you are hitting the road with Slash this year, but are there any plans for a new record?

"Not right now, but I can almost guarantee you that when we walk into that rehearsal room as a team, Slash is going to have a new riff and we're going to write something. It happens every time."

As the last album, 4, was tracked completely live, do you think you'll want to take the same approach for the next record?

"I actually don’t know. Slash was like a kid, he was so excited to do that. He always loves playing the way we did it, which is very live. He wants to [record] with loud-as-hell amps while you're in the same room. 

"That could just be a one-off thing. There are so many factors and variables with recording, especially guitars, because it's like each of these strings goes out of tune every two seconds, the intonation of the guitars and having two guitars and all that. It was just crazy – we did it to tape too!  

"So I think that the next album, if we do an album in the near future, whenever that is, it would probably be how we did it before with Elvis, the last producer.

"Dave Cobb [producer], was a lot of fun to work with, but I'm not really sure, I have no genuine foresight right now because I'm in Mammoth and Myles has a solo project and Alter Bridge, and Guns N' Roses is a priority – who could ever blame Slash, he's got to do that! 

"But it's cool because it's opened the door for us to do other things. When we can get together, we do. It's been nice going over the songs again, it's been really fun. The memories are coming back and I just can't wait to jam these songs again."

So with Mammoth, Wolfgang plays all the instruments on both of his releases. Are there plans for the current live band to record together? 

"It's a tough call because so much of what Mammoth is, it’s literally Wolfgang and Elvis [Baskette] the producer. 

"We're very close. We're very much the same person as far as humour goes, and I just love the guy. It's like we get along really well. And even when we're making joke songs, some of it's really cool. And we're like, 'oh, that's hilarious. That's in my head now,' it happens all the time. 

"And so I think that there’s a chance that we could maybe do a song together. Maybe, I don't know. I feel like that's up in the air. Or we do some sort of instrumental, who knows? There are plenty of joke recordings and real recordings of us just jamming.  

• You can catch Frank with Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators on The River Is Rising – Rest Of The World Tour which kicks off in Mexico City on the 23rd of January. Head over to Slash Online for more information, and to grab tickets to a show near you. 

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 has released a statement confirming he is still a Marshall Amplification artist following yesterday's announcement (9 November) that he is working on a new signature amp with Magnatone.

In a recent statement from the US amp company, the Guns N' Roses guitarist  revealed a "killer" new signature version of its Super Super Fifty-Nine M-80 tube amp was on its way. While other parts of the guitar media and over-eager YouTubers were keen to jump the gun and assume that meant the end of his relationship with Marshall Amps after 30 years, the guitarist has now confirmed this isn't the case.

“To clear up any misconceptions that might arise, although Magnatone and I have been working together to create a new amp, I still maintain my long relationship with Marshall and look forward to continued collaboration with their incredible team,” said Slash in a statement released on 10 November, 24 hours after the Magnatone news broke.   

“I used a Magnatone 50-watt M-80 in the studio earlier this year and was blown away by how it sounded,” Slash revealed in the initial statement announcing the move. “Since then, I've been working with Magnatone on a 100-watt version of the M-80 and I absolutely love what they have come up with. It’s killer.”

Billy Gibbons already has a limited edition signature M-80 with Magnatone, and the company is understandably giddy to have another icon in its stable. 

“We could not be more excited that Slash embraced our quality engineering and commitment to tone excellence as the platform for designing his next generation of Signature amplifiers,” says Rod Washburn the General Manager of Magnatone.

“We are thrilled to welcome Slash to Magnatone and with his signature tone and style, our Master Collection of models will be taken to the next level,” adds Ted Kornblum, President and CEO of Magnatone.

Slash is set to co-design the new signature model amp and 4x12 cab with Magnatone engineer Obeid Khan. It's due out in early 2024 when Slash will be touring it with Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators.  

• Slash shares his 7 tips for recording live: “Being in a rock ’n’ roll band is to be able to go in and be as good as any of those people that didn’t have the luxuries of what we have today"

AC/DC have shared audio from the band’s rehearsals in preparation for their slot at Power Trip festival in California, and they’ve made a few changes to the line-up. The post suggests that drummer Phil Rudd will not be joining the band in the US, however, AC/DC has confirmed that bassist Cliff Williams will return.

Shared to the band’s social media accounts, the 34-second clip features rehearsal audio of If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It), and is accompanied by a caption, stating that Williams will be coming out of retirement, and that drummer Matt Laug is playing on the rehearsal recording. 

Matt Laug plays in Mike Campbell’s side project, The Dirty Knobs, but has had a successful career as a hired gun. He played drums on Alanis Morissette’s monster-selling debut album, Jagged Little Pill, as well as putting in stints with Alice Cooper and serving as the drummer for Slash’s Snakepit. 

Laug is also a devoted AC/DC fan, often making reference to the band on his social media channels, marking important dates in the band’s calendar and showing praise for Phil Rudd’s drumming.

There’s no confirmation from AC/DC as to whether Laug will definitely be behind the kit for the US festival, although it does seem likely. Likewise, there’s no official comment as to why Rudd wouldn’t be involved. 

However, many fans are speculating that Rudd’s omission could well be due to issues securing a US visa following the drummer’s legal trouble in 2014/15, where the he was placed in home detention for eight months after being convicted of making threats to kill, as well as possessing marijuana and methamphetamine.

Cliff Williams announced his retirement from the band in 2016, performing his last show alongside the Axl Rose-fronted line-up, which included Chris Slade on drums . However, he and Rudd both played on AC/DC’s 2020 album, Power Up. The COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to potential touring plans, and until now it has been uncertain as to whether Williams will play live with the band.

Power Trip takes place 6-8 October and also features Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica and Tool. 

Slash’s ‘Hunter Burst’ Les Paul, the quilted maple topped replica electric guitar he used to write much of Appetite For Destruction in the mid ‘80s has gone up for auction, with Elvis Presley’s Gibson J-45 joining it.

Both are listed by Gotta Have Rock And Roll. Both are steeped in rock ’n’ roll – and film – history. Both are forecasted to go for big money, with the estimated bids for Slash’s high-end LP copy listed between $1 million and $2 million. That eye-watering figure tells you just how important this guitar is in rock history. And for Slash, it was the one that got away. 

The Hunter Burst got its name from its previous owner, the American session guitar ace Steve Hunter who notably played with Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, was nicknamed the Deacon in some quarters, and took the first solo on Aerosmith’s cover of Train Kept A Rollin’, when Joe Perry hit a mental block during the sessions for the Boston rock institution’s sophomore album, Get Your Wings.

It is also not a Les Paul, even if it and Slash’s more famous Kris Derrig replica did help repopularise the model in an era when hockey stick headstocks and lurid paint jobs were the style. Built by Peter “Max” Baranet, one of two ’59 ‘Burst replica’s the luthier made, it did, however, look and sound the part. 

For reasons he can’t quite remember, Slash parted with it in ’86, before the sessions for Appetite For Destruction. But much of the material was already written on it.

And if you were there on Sunset Strip between ’85 and ’86 the chances are you would have seen Slash with it onstage. There is plenty of photographic evidence. It has also been exhibited at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. 

• Slash tells the story of the Guns N' Roses classic Sweet Child O' Mine: “The saving grace for me was the solo section”

Slash picked it up from the wonderfully named Guitars R Us. It has been retrofitted with Seymour Duncans. And it comes with various documents of provenance and certificates of authenticity.

By comparison, Elvis Presley’s Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar has led a sheltered life, but it too arrives in player’s condition, with the King Of Rock ’N’ Roll’s name stencilled in the soundhole, alongside “Property of Paramount Prop Department”. Here’s hoping the Mountain doesn't make a claim on it.

It was certainly on two of the studio’s hits starring Elvis, 1961’s Blue Hawaii, where you can see the King serenade the boys by the beach, and G.I. Blues, the effervescent musical comedy from the year previous starring Juliet Prowse. 

The guitar has been in the position of Elvis’s old friend Charlie Hodge, who suggests that this might have been in Kid Creole, too – arguably the finest movie in Elvis’s filmography.

If so, well, that just makes this more valuable. Elvis certainly saw the worth in it, and like many of his movie “prop” guitars, he would take them back to Graceland and play them. Hodge first met Elvis in the mid-‘50s when Hodge was playing in The Foggy River Boys.

They would meet again in the service a few years later and become fast friends. Hodge was a member of the so-called ‘Memphis Mafia’ and a resident of Graceland, serving as stage director for the King. Hodge’s letter of provenance is included with the instrument, alongside a COA.

The J-45 is expected to fetch between $200,000 to $500,000. And as with all the best vintage acoustics, it’s sure to sound better now than it ever did.

Bidding ends 22 September. To learn more – or to bid! – head over to Gotta Have Rock And Roll. You'll find Slash's Hunter Burst here, and Elvis's J-45 here.

• Slash teases a new signature Les Paul based on his main Guns N' Roses stage guitar – the “factory second” plain-top named Jessica

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.

We recently reported on comments made by guitarist Nuno Bettencourt in a Planet Rock interview where he seemed to suggest that some of the guitar players he admires, including Slash, would struggle with the diversity demanded by his role as Rihanna's live guitarist. Since then Slash's Guns N' Roses bandmate – and Rihanna's live guitarist himself before Nuno in 2008 and 2009 – Richard Fortus has stepped in to air his own views on the subject – prompting Nuno to respond in kind. 

"When somebody like Rihanna reaches out to you to perform everybody thinks 'Oh, that's cute. It's a pop artist, whatever,'" Bettencourt originally told Planet Rock. "Let me tell you something, what I had to do night after night… put on a reggae hat [for one song] with a reggae feel, and go into R&B, then go into some punk rock and pop rock that she did, and then club tracks. All sorts of [things], all those different feels.

"I'm sorry, most of the guitar players who I admire could not in their lifetime play that gig," he added. "I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

"Slash is one of the greatest rock guitar players of all time but I guarantee — and he'd be the first to tell you — that if he jumps up and he's got to play a clean intro to 'Rude Boy' from Rihanna, it ain't happening," Nuno added.

Things took a turn when Fortus shared a report featuring Nuno's comments to Instagram a couple of days later, and added his own thoughts.  "I have to respectfully disagree," he wrote. "@nunobettencourtofficial is one of the greats, for sure. However, there is very little @slash couldn't do on guitar (if he wanted to). I toured with Rihanna prior to Nuno and I've spent a lot of time playing with Slash. This gig wouldn't be a struggle for him."

Fair and polite enough? Fortus certainly seems like he's well-placed to offer an opinion on the subject. But by Saturday (22 July) Nuno was none too pleased by Fortus's response:

"Welp… I knew this was eventually coming," Nuno began. 

"You can't be blessed and be on multiple guitar magazine covers at a shocking 56 years old, get this much attention for your playing and new album as a rock guitarist without another guitarist stirring up some shit.

"I'm responding to this not cause I give a s##t about what this guitarist thinks about me but, instead, because I'd hate to think my few words offended a hero of mine, @slash and possibly f**k up my relationship with him.

"@4tus I've 'respectively' never heard you play one note in my 56 years of being alive and only know your name from the Rihanna camp and as a replacement player in Guns," Nuno continued.

"I'm sure you're a decent player, but did you really need to repost a headline that made me look like I am badmouthing a fellow player, Slash.

"As if I'd ever think Slash isn't capable of playing any Rihanna song in his sleep.

"Let's get something f*****g straight. To me, Slash is one of the greatest rock guitarists of my generation and of all time. PERIOD. And @4tus if you knew me at all and where my heart is you'd know that what I meant in this statement was not about Slash or his capability, It was about Rock guitarists like myself or Slash switching genres and the awkwardness of playing these feels.

"No S***T Slash can play these songs, thank you so much for pointing that out as if we didn't already know that. But for me as a predominant ROCK guitarist, I'm obviously not as talented as you and found it a challenge to nail all the different pockets and guitar tones of genres like reggae, r&b, electronic dance, trap and pop.

"As far as you shining a light on my ridiculous statement that Slash would 'struggle', yes a poor word choice on my part, I personally would hope that Slash who is a peer and influence would be more mature enough to understand what I truly meant as a guitarist by that comment.

"In mentioning Slash as an iconic Rock example, I meant in general a rock guitarist would find it, NOT A STRUGGLE, but feel like a fish out of water as a player. THAT'S ALL I MEANT.

"I've had NOTHING but respect and admiration for @gunsnroses and @slash.

"Apologies if I've unintentionally offended anyone."

A spirited response from a passionate player, and hopefully everyone is clear that no  disrespect was intended towards Slash. 

Slash has revealed that he has a new solo album in the works, and the as-yet-untitled release will welcome a number of guest vocalists to the studio – one of whom will be Demi Lovato. 

The Guns N’ Roses guitarist was speaking to Yahoo when he shared the news, offering few details but just enough to confirm that the setup will be similar to his eponymous solo debut from 2010, on which some legendary singers lent their pipes – and there is the tantalising prospect that we'll hear him play some blues guitar on it.

There was Ian Astbury of the Cult, Fergie, Chris Cornell, Lemmy (who also played bass guitar), Iggy Pop, Ozzy Osbourne and more. Myles Kennedy of course featured and we would bet good money that Kennedy would appear again, given the pair’s ongoing concern with the Conspirators. 

This time around, Slash describes the music as “more blues-oriented”, and it will feature Demi Lovato – who has already recorded her track. Slash told Yahoo he first got to know Lovato through a shared history of addiction recovery.

“I’d been sober for a little while and she was still struggling a little bit, having just gone through a relapse,” he said. “And then I talked to her just post-that, and she was sort of trying to get it back together and whatnot. That’s how we initially started sort of talking, and she’s just really cool and she’s a really intelligent and talented girl. And so, we’ve just been friends ever since then.”

Slash has already returned the favour, with the GNR legend dropping some electric guitar on Lovato’s reimagined Sorry Not Sorry, which was released last Friday (14 August). The single is taken from Lovato’s forthcoming album, Revamped, which turns a bunch of tracks from her back catalogue into rock tunes. 

Not all of the tracks or guests have been confirmed. It would be interesting to see if Nita Strauss will feature on the album, having left Alice Cooper to tour with Lovato last year. Strauss has since returned to the Coop’, but given that she likes to keep her schedule packed, don’t rule her out.

• Slash shares his 7 tips for recording live: “Being in a rock ’n’ roll band is to be able to go in and be as good as any of those people that didn’t have the luxuries of what we have today"

As for Slash, he said his part was tracked when Guns N’ Roses were on tour and had a day off in Norway.

“I told her, ‘Hey, if you ever need me to put some guitar on something, just let me know and I'll do it!’ And so she hit me back about two weeks, three weeks later, and said she's got this song that she's doing a remake of and asked if I'd put some guitar on that,” he said. “[Guns N’ Roses] did a show in Norway and I had a day off, so I found a cool engineer and studio in Norway and just put the guitars on there. It's amazing how fast it came out.” 

Slash said we can expect his solo album sometime in 2024. And you can expect Slash onstage in Athens tomorrow evening as GNR play the Olympic Stadium. Their tour continues through the summer. See Guns N’ Roses for full dates.

There is no escaping Barbie. If you have been near a cinema or taken public transport in the past two weeks you will know fine well that Greta Gerwig has taken Mattel’s most-famous creation and put her onscreen, with Margot Robbie in the lead, Ryan Gosling playing her hapless S.O., Ken. 

Ordinarily this would not be news in electric guitar land but there are some big-hitting guitar players on the soundtrack, with Slash and Wolfgang Van Halen both contributing to a Gosling-fronted track, I’m Just Ken.

Speaking to Variety from the red carpet, the producer Mark Ronson, whose job it was to put this soundtrack together, revealed that he reached out to Slash and asked him to take a solo on the track. 

Ronson admits that he has been Slash super-fan since a young age, and thought there was no harm in asking the Guns N’ Roses rock guitar icon if he would contribute to the score. And he had just the track; I’m Just Ken, an ‘80s power ballad in the traditional sense – big production, candied melodies, a sense of theatre, here for a good time and nothing overly taxing on the cerebral cortex.

“Slash is my hero. I was what, seventh grade, when Appetite For Destruction came out. He is my all-time hero,” said Ronson. “I had pictures of Slash all over my wall, so when we were getting this film being done, I was like, y’know, it never hurts to ask. It seems like such a long shot.

“I sent him the song, and he was like, ‘This is a good song.’ I didn’t know Slash that well before this. He was like, ‘Cool, I’ll play on it.’ And he was so cool and he killed it. He played the solo at the end, and the rhythm parts, and it’s wonderful.”

Also attending the Barbie premiere was Wolfgang Van Halen, who revealed on Threads that he is all over the soundtrack, including I'm Just Ken. 

“My buddy Mark Ronson hit me up earlier this year needing my ‘mammoth guitar sound’ and I happily obliged,” he wrote.

To hear some of Van Halen deploy two-handed tapping on a Barbie score, however, you might have to wait for the film. 

“I have a lot of textural stuff throughout the film with two major spots where I do some soloing,” he continued. “One in particular is pretty cool because it’s the big song that Ryan Gosling sings and Slash plays on it as well! There’s a specific moment in the song that’s only in the movie where I’ve got this fun solo with some tapping and stuff. Such a cool opportunity. Honoured to be a part of it.”

As for the movie, Van Halen was a fan, describing it as “hilarious/surreal/heartfelt”. It opens 21 July. You can check out Gosling and Slash’s efforts above.

Tom Morello turned the opening day of Graspop Metal Meeting 2023 in Dessel, Belgium, into a six-string duel when he invited Slash onstage to perform Interstate 80 for the first time ever.

The track, which features on Morello’s 2020 EP, Comandante, was inspired by Guitar Hero, and how it made videogame superstars of the Rage Against The Machine and Guns N’ Roses guitarists. It is all about cutting lose on the electric guitar. And on Thursday 16 June, that is just what Morello and Slash did. 

Morello was midway through a set that had featured an epic RATM/Audioslave medley and an instrumental cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Child (Slight Return). Time to turn up the heat under the summer sun and get some rock royalty involved. Enter stage left, Slash with his black Gibson Les Paul Custom. 

Morello was using his Shining Path Telecaster. With Morello on the microphone, Slash tees off, taking the first solo, offering some wah pedal guitar as backing vocals during the verse, taking another solo because those Fasel transducers were in a good place and it was time to work the Cry Baby again.

The fan-shot footage offers the view from the pit, and is kind of immersive rock ’n’ roll cinema experience that Metallica were aiming for with Through The Never. Slash’s guitar dominates the mix. But that’s okay. Morello clearly has his hands full as master of ceremonies, and Slash is enjoying giving the fingerboard a workout.

That fingerboard, of course, is one of the talking points about his guitar choice on the day. The Les Paul Custom typically ships with an ebony fingerboard. Slash prefers rosewood, and, well, let’s just say his name draws a lot of water over at Gibson HQ. He duly got a couple of Customs custom-made to his specification. In Slash: The Collection, the Guns N’ Roses guitarist – and now Gibson Brand Ambassador – explains all.

“Ebony is just a little too bright for me for everyday use,” he says. “But I just love the way Customs play, and I love the way they look. I went to the Custom Shop and said, ‘I’ve got this idea; let’s do one of these with a rosewood neck.’ They actually did two of them and they sound great.”

In the pantheon of Slash guitar lore, the rosewood Les Paul Customs might not be as famous as the Derrig Les Paul, but they have been in regular rotation for Conspirators and GNR shows ever since Slash first put in the order. 

He used one of the rosewood-fingerboard Customs for the Sympathy For The Devil solo from The Spaghetti Incident.

“It’s a fucking kick-ass guitar,” says Slash. You can read more in Slash: The Collection, which is available now in Standard, Deluxe, and Custom Editions. See Gibson for more details.

As for Morello, he has recently hooked up with the Neural DSP to turn his rig digital and make it available as a guitar plugin. The Archetype: Tom Morello is priced €119 and available now. See Neural DSP for more details. And check out Morello and Slash's Interstate 80 performance at the top of the page.

NAMM 2023: There has rarely been a better time to be a Guns N’ Roses fan with an Epiphone Les Paul looking for an aftermarket mod to soup it up, because Slash and Seymour Duncan have just put their heads together on a new version of his signature electric guitar pickups, and they’ve just gotten hotter.

The Seymour Duncan Slash 2.0 signature set comprises two humbuckers based off the top-hatted rock icon’s original signature APH-2 pickups. 

Those Alnico II ‘buckers were configured to the exact same specs as the original pickups in Slash’s legendary Derrig Les Paul, the electric guitar behind Appetite For Destruction’s gnarly and wiry sound, and, ironically given the Derrig is a copycat build, the tone that rekindled a generation of guitar players’ love for the Gibson Les Paul.

A decade or so later, it was time to update the APH-2. You will find the same tone profile with the 2.0 version. These neck ‘bucker is slightly scooped but skewed towards treble. Its counterpart at the bridge is similarly slightly scooped but with more equilibrium between bass and treble. 

• Slash tells the story of the Guns N' Roses classic Sweet Child O' Mine: “The saving grace for me was the solo section”

The clarity is still there, so all that note definition and old-school dynamics are preserved – one of the reasons Slash found himself using Seymour Duncan pickups, after a long period of trial and error, was because “they weren’t trying to do more than they needed to do”. 

But this time out Seymour Duncan has given them a hotter wind, so that when you dig into a powerchord you’ll give your guitar amp a bit more to think about. Given how hard Slash hits those strings, that could make all the difference.

“They’re just a little bit louder,” says Slash. “They are higher output but they don’t add any distortion. There’s no gain. There’s just a little bit of a higher level. For some reason, certain guitars that I have are quieter than other guitars, and I started finding that I needed a little bit louder pickup in those guitars.

Enter, Seymour Duncan. The Slash 2.0 pickups are hand-wound in California. Once more they are based around a rough cast Alnico II magnet, and have a DCR reading of 8.8k at the neck, and 9.38k at the bridge.

They are available in a variety of finish options. You can have them open-coiled with black bobbins, zebra, reverse zebra, or with black-nickel, nickel, raw nickel or gold coverings. The latter might be just the thing in a Les Paul Custom. But who doesn’t like the look of a zebra-coil set on an Iced Tea Les Paul Standard? 

For the player who has got one of the superlative Epiphone Slash Les Pauls, however, this might just be the tone upgrade they’ve been waiting for. 

The Slash 2.0 humbuckers are priced from $119 per pickup, $238 a set (there’s a premium for the metal coverings), and they are available now. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

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

Gibson still has the basics covered. If you want a high-end acoustic guitar, you’ll find a number of options, like the Hummingbird, or maybe an Everly Brothers SJ-200. There is no shortage of electric guitars in the catalogue. 

But the Nashville-based guitar giant has been branching out of late, launching Gibson Records in partnership with BMG, a fashion line collab with Billy Reid, and now it has opened its own book publishing arm, too.

As with the record label, Gibson Publishing makes its debut with Slash, in a coffee-table book that documents the Guns N’ Roses guitarist’s mammoth guitar collection, with some 400 instruments catalogued inside.

Featuring photography from the legendary Ross Halfin and Gibson’s in-house team, Slash: The Collection is available in Deluxe and limited-run Custom editions. 

There are no prizes for guessing that the Les Paul features heavily. Notable LPs include a custom graphic model with cobra inlay on the fingerboard that was toured heavily by Slash in his Snakepit years, and a 1958 model that was one of the first two Sunburst models ever made by Gibson. And it wouldn’t be a Slash and Gibson story without a double-necked EDS-1275 in there too. 

• Slash shares his 7 tips for recording live

But it’s not all Gibson. Slash’s longhorn BC Rich Mockingbird is in there, so too the 1979 Travis Bean that he would bust out for Bad Obsession during the fevered nights of the Use You Illusion tour – those halcyon days when Axl would be in red cycling shorts and a matching suit jacket and that’s just how it was.

Slash: The Collection was put together by written and edited by Gibson editor-in-chief Chris Vinnicombe, and has heaps of interview content for when you can’t drool over the pictures any more. Seriously, in the context of guitar culture, this is borderline pornographic.

Cesar Gueikian, brand president of Gibson Brands, thanked his and Slash's teams, and described the launch as “an important milestone” for Gibson.

“We continue to leverage our iconic past and lean into the future creating more opportunities for music fans around the world to experience original storytelling,” said Gueikian. “With Gibson TV, Gibson Records, and now Gibson Publishing, we are organically growing our own media platform that continues to create compelling original content.” 

Just like the good stuff from the Gibson guitar-making branch’s Custom Shop, the Custom edition measures 297 by 420mm and arrives with all kinds of case candy. There is an Axe Heaven Appetite Les Paul miniature, a Slash bandana, a tin of Dunlop guitar picks, a cover poster, four guitar art prints, a certificate of authenticity, and most importantly Slash’s signature. It’s limited to 500 units worldwide.

The Deluxe edition measures 240 by 340 mm and has the poster, the prints and the COA, and the first run of 1000 books comes signed by Slash.

For more details, head over to Gibson.

If you’re not a big reader or struggling for space on your coffee table, you could always watch the Gibson TV segment above, with Slash holding court with Gibson’s Mark Agnesi and talking through some of the coolest pieces in his archive.

Capitol One's new commercial features none other than Slash auditioning for the guitar spot in a teenage band. And he wows them with a rendition of a riff he knows off by heart; Guns N' Roses's classic Sweet Child O' Mine. 

You can learn it for yourself too with our Sweet Child O' Mine riff lesson and find out the story behind the recording of the song from the man himself. 

Slash shares his 7 tips for recording live

Slash has been a blue chip recording artist for some years – the man is a rock icon – but it’s only just now that a producer has been brave enough to let him and a band off the leash in the studio. 

Tracking 4, his latest album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, the first released under Gibson’s new label, was the first studio session during which he got to record exactly how he always wanted to – performing the songs live in the studio, with no safety net beside the ears and expertise of producer Dave Cobb to steer the sessions onto the tape. And you can hear it in his voice just how happy that makes him.

“Honestly, no producers over the years either trusted a band enough to have them play live in a room and take a chance on them being able to play from one end of the song to another without fucking it up,” says Slash. “Or, producers are really, really anal about having control over every single track and being able to manipulate it the way that they want to. 

“I’ve always wanted to record something [live]. We’ve always done it where we go in and everybody plays together and we record the track that way, but I have always redone the guitars because I hate headphones and I just don’t trust the guitar sound or the way I play with headphones on. And I have always said, ‘Why can’t we just play in the room?’

“Dave Cobb was the first producer I have worked with where he was like, ‘Yeah, man! Let’s just record everything Glyn Johns-style. And I was like, ‘You gotta be fucking kidding me?! Are you serious?’ I was really excited, and it was very liberating to go in and do it that way.”

There are risks when recording live. From an audio standpoint, these can be considerable. Bleed is an obvious issue. Prophylactic measures such as DI recording can help, as can mic choice and careful setups. You are at the mercy of the studio space. Not everyone can have access to the wide open expanses of of RCA Studio, Nashville.

“Steve Cropper has got an office in that building!” Slash laughs. “It was just like, ‘Steve Cropper’s here!’ And then, on the walls, they’ve got all these candid black-and-white shots of everybody who has recorded there, from Elvis to Waylon Jennings, to Charlie Pride, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, and all these candid photos of their sessions just all over the walls. And you just can’t help but be sucked into that.”

And yet, recording live is a choice, and what makes it the right choice for Slash, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators – or any other artist for that matter – is that it captures a performance as opposed to a take, and rock ’n’ roll traditionally has been a performer’s medium.

“As we get further into the millennium, the harder and harder it is to really do a stripped-down, old-school record,” says Slash. “In rock ’n’ roll, in jazz, and in classical music and the blues, that’s really an important part of what that music is all about. I think that has gotten lost in the fascination with the genius technology that we have come up with, where that has become more interesting than the music.”

This, then, is a corrective, and the performances on 4 bear this out. Wheeling in a live rig, using the volume in the room as a guide and inspiration, 4 does sound more natural. It hangs on the groove. It’s sleazy, it’s raw. It is, as Slash says, stripped down, pared back to the simple yet evergreen electric guitar tone arithmetic of Gibson Les Paul plus Marshall amplification. 

But, of course there was still time to bring a sitar in for the intro to Spirit Love, a piquant choice – very Harrison/Shankar, right? – that is styled out in the course of the jam. Slash is giggling. 

“I laughed because, when you said George Harrison, that was the one thing I was trying for it not to sound like!” he protests. “It’s true, though! That’s what happens whenever you record sitar; it just becomes that cliché.” 

Tonally it makes sense, though. 

“I think I got away with it this time,” he says. “There are other times where it has come up. I have a real double-gourded sitar that I got from India but I can never use it because any time I have ever even attempted to record with it it just sounds so Ravi Shankar.”

Before going in deep on the recording process for 4 and what we can learn from it in our own sessions, there is also a tone tip for anyone willing to risk the Harrison/Shankar cultural reference and put an electric sitar into your track. Use a large, high-powered tube amp.

“We recorded the song with the guitar, and then went back during that whole little overdub period and rerecorded it with the sitar,” says Slash. “I recorded the sitar through my Marshall, the same setting as my guitar, so it sounds like a sitar but it also sounds like a fucking monstrous sitar or something.”

Slash's 7 tips for recording live

1. Location is everything: choose your room wisely

“I think it is important to say that that particular room is a big room but it is not entirely ambient. It’s a little bit of a dead room for its size. I think that’s what lends itself to it being able to have all the amps and the gear in one space. I don’t think that this particular set up would work in any of the big studios I have been in.

“Dave Cobb, he and I talked about this, how this particular room does tend to lend itself to being able to play live like this. And so, with all due credit, the room is very specific.

One of the great things about working on this record was that it was completely loud in the studio – the way that we did it was like we were playing onstage. So that was a lot of fun.

“It’s hard to put it into words but the studio itself, and the aura of that place, and all of the people that recorded there before, and the history of it, that was a big appeal of the session.”

2. If you can finish writing the record just before recording, then all the better

“On this record, I did demos and they were all like 30 to 40, 50 per cent finished arrangements, and when the restrictions cleared up a little bit, the guys came in and did two weeks of preproduction and then we went to Nashville. So, we didn’t have any finished arrangements like we normally do. 

“We would work on the song, and get the arrangement together and all that stuff, play it a couple of times and then record it, and that’s how we did it for every song. Some were more worked than others but that was basically it, so it was very raw, and very fresh.

“There are a couple of things that were a little different to how I would normally do things on this record. I mean, the pandemic changed the approach to the record entirely because I put demos together, which I normally do not do. I usually work the songs out with the guys in the room, and then we just rehearse the shit out of it so that, when we go into the studio, we can bang them out really quick.

“[It was] just all of us in a room together just doing our thing and really being in a natural setting for us, the way that we always are, the five of us in a room playing, and not having a lot of those distractions, like, ‘We’re doing this, and then you’re gonna go over there and do this then come back and do that…’ Which is sort of what normal sessions are like. This was almost like rehearsal. We’re working through the groove. Okay here’s Todd, there’s Frank, there’s Myles, blah blah blah… And just playing together. It was a really fun and liberating recording experience.”

3. Set up so you can see each other play

“It’s crucial. It is as important for me to be able to see the singer as it is for me to be able to see the drummer. 

"When we were doing this, Myles was basically in the room just shielded by a sort of room within a room and a glass partition that could communicate and see each other perfectly through, so it worked out. That was an important factor.”

4. Remember, overdubs are okay

“When we went into do this record, everybody knew we were going to do this record live, but Myles, he was laying down his vocal as genuinely as he could in the moment but he had no idea that that was going to be the final take. He sort of went into it, and I guess we all went into it thinking, ‘Oh, with the vocals, we’re tracking to capture the band here but with the vocals it’ll be sort of be the normal way we would do it, going back to fix it or whatever.’ 

“But then he caught Covid, and he actually had it when he was doing vocals and didn’t know it. We’d been testing, and he tested negative, but suddenly he tested positive, and so then he had to go into quarantine. Three of the guys were sick. It was just me and Dave, Frank and the engineer, and I was like, ‘Okay, so we’ve got a couple of overdubs, some harmonies, and we are going to have to get background vocals, but we can start mixing…’ And Dave was like, ‘Well, all the vocals are great!’ So we started actually doing a rough mix and when those guys got better we got the background vocals done, and that was it. For all intents and purposes, Myles thought he was doing scratch vocals. [Laughs] 

“Now, having this experience under my belt, if I go into do the next record I would do it the same way but I would make allowances to be able to do a couple of things. Obviously vocals wouldn’t be as such a restricted thing as much, y’know what I mean? To sort have some leeway. 

“We really went into this record, listening back to a take, and I would be like, ‘God, there’s a couple of things I can fix on the guitar but, no, we’re just not touching anything.’ So I would probably keep the whole live thing but would probably not be as so rigid about not fixing stuff, vocals included.”

5. But don’t overwork it

“It can become very linear. The human dynamic of people working in the moment, and especially working as an ensemble, there is a lot of little things that go on. There is a lot of communication, unsaid even, that really comes across in the playing and the way it sounds, and what we have got into the habit of doing is just producing everything to the point where there is nothing organic about it. 

“And it works for some pop music. I think it works great for a Katy Perry record. But some of the greatest records are made in a way that the human element is intact, and I guess somehow we managed to forget that. 

“I mean, the advent of the hard drive made people go crazy, and people were making records from all corners of the Earth you know what I mean? We were all sending them in, ‘Isn’t this great!?’ And that was the novelty of it, and I think it has worn off and we are starting to realise that the integrity of the music is totally lost in this fascination with the ability to do that.

“I think for rock ’n’ roll, all of the greatest rock records, for the most part, are done pretty much in a live setting, or in a very stripped-down, raw setting where everybody is playing more or less together, and I think that is something that comes across in what you’re hearing. You can’t put your finger on it. It’s there, and it’s something that makes records exciting.”

6. A simple setup can help

“Yeah, it was a very simple setup. Not a lot of pedals. I think I had a phase pedal, and I had my wah-wah pedal and a voice box. And just the guitars that I actually wrote the songs with at the time. And that was it. It was really a very sparse, straightforward setup. 

"I didn’t use the octave-fuzz. Whatever Gets You By? I didn’t use any effects. I didn’t put anything on it that I can remember. We have been playing that song live. That song and Spirit Love just came into the set and we don’t use anything for anyone of those songs, though, I did find a sitar pedal I used that actually sounds really good for the intro.”

7. Remember, this used to be the norm

“I think the biggest thing I walked away from it with was that you can do it. [Laughs] Y’know, you can do it that way and it is way more musically satisfying to put the work in to be able to play and to have everybody able to work there together. It’s what we signed on to do, right? When we picked up an instrument 30, 40 years ago, whatever the deal is.

“Being in a rock ’n’ roll band is to be able to go in and be as good as any of those people that didn’t have the luxuries of what we have today, where they only had three takes and they were out! [Laughs] Old-school rock ’n’ roll. 

“It was nice to be able to do that and make a record that way. It’s no big deal to say that any of my heroes would have made the record this way, but in this day and age it is so fucking against the grain to do something like that, so I enjoyed that part of it, too.”

The album 4 is out now on Gibson Records. For more info visit slashonline.com

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

When Gibson Records was launched in July last year, it was no surprise that the Nashville-based guitar giant would make its first signing Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. And now, to mark the release of their new album, 4, Gibson has unveiled a commemorative electric guitar.

The Slash Les Paul Standard Limited 4 Album Edition dresses his signature model in Translucent Cherry, and similarly bears the top-hatted rock legend’s signature on the truss rod plate and ‘Skully’ illustration on the rear of the headstock. It also comes with a sticker with the number four on it. This is to be applied below the tailpiece. But thankfully Gibson is wise enough to leave this to the player’s discretion.

Only 250 units of these have been made available, so get them while they’re hot. Many online retailers have already sold out of them; unsurprisingly, that Slash Signature Les Paul Standard sure looks good in cherry.

Otherwise, the build and spec is the same as the other Slash models in the Gibson USA Artist Collection. The Slash Les Paul Standard Limited 4 Album Edition has a pair of Gibson Custom BurstBucker Alnico 2 pickups, a ‘50s-inspired neck profile, a AAA flamed maple top, the usual 24.75” scale and 12” radius Indian rosewood fingerboard. 

Those looking for an old-school Les Paul feel would not find anything to unduly put them off. Those signature flourishes are subtle, and like the other Slash models this comes with a blank truss rod cover. Besides the sticker, case candy includes a copy of the album and a pick tin.

Should you miss out on the 4 Album Edition model, you still have finish options comprising Anaconda Burst, Appetite Burst, Vermillion Burst, November Burst, and the “Victoria” Goldtop. And you can order your own copy of Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators’ 4 on all formats and digital here.

Slash superfans with deep pockets could also plump for the 1958 Les Paul Standard “Brazilian Dream”. Resplendent in Dark Burst, this comes signed by the man himself, and is a USA-only release retailing for $12,999. Alternatively, the Epiphone Slash Collection Les Paul Standard is a superb budget-friendly version of the iconic singlecut.

For more details, head over to Gibson.

Epiphone Slash Collection Les Paul Standard: What is it?

We have seen Slash signature Les Pauls from Epiphone before. Models such as the Slash AFD Les Paul Special II remain a hugely popular beginner electric guitar, most commonly seen packaged with a compact little practice amp as part of a comprehensive starter pack.

Back in 2008, there was the Epiphone Slash Signature Les Paul Standard Plus Top, a solidbody singlecut with a spec to rival Gibson’s US-built Les Pauls. Okay, it had a figured maple veneer instead of a cap, but it judiciously appropriated design features from classic LP designs to sell it in terms of tone and feel. 

This 2021 Slash Collection looks to continue on in this fashion and is the most in-depth signature guitar tie-in between the Guns N’ Roses guitarist and the Gibson-owned brand. 

The four Les Pauls and two J-45 acoustic guitars that comprise the US Gibson Slash Collection are reprised here, with the same aesthetic flourishes such as Slash’s ‘Skully’ logo on the rear of the headstock, the matched hardware and open-coil humbuckers, and similar finish options.

The Epiphone Slash Collection Les Paul is offered in a deep red Vermillion Burst and dark green Anaconda Burst, a Goldtop ‘Victoria’ model, an Appetite Burst model, which most closely resembles the ‘original’ Les Paul copies Slash used on Guns N’ Roses’ debut album, Appetite For Destruction, and November Burst, the former of which we have in for review.

Like the Goldtop, it is equipped with Gold Top Hat control knobs with dial pointers, while both Anaconda and Vermillion Bursts have black Speed Knobs, and the Appetite Burst has Gold Top Hat control knobs with metal inserts.

They all look the part and come with a pink fur-lined signature case. Unlike the Gibson models, there is no blank truss rod cover, but you could pick up a blank spare if you wanted to keep the signature flourishes to a minimum.

As with its US-built counterpart, one of the biggest attractions to the Slash Collection Les Pauls is that they are simply that; variations on the Les Paul theme that don’t stray too far from the template. After all, that sound and feel are what Slash was after in the first place.

Epiphone’s Slash Collection Les Paul is reassuringly hefty, solid mahogany topped with a maple cap that’s veneered with AAA flame maple. The lacquer brings out all the details in that top and is meticulously applied as we have come to expect from Epiphone in recent years. 

The glued-in mahogany neck is carved into a custom C shape – a signature profile that’s reprised on the J-45 acoustics – and topped with an Indian laurel fingerboard that’s inlaid with pearloid parallelogram inlays. With the fingerboard’s 12” radius and the 24.75” scale, the dimensions will be very familiar to anyone who has played an electric guitar comprised of Gibson DNA.

Epiphone has not scrimped on the hardware and components. We’ve got a Graph Tech nut and LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece. The jack is framed nicely by a cream plastic square plate matching the cream gold stamped ‘Rhythm/Treble’ washer around the pickup selector switch. In the case you’ll find some Epiphone strap locks. Under the hood, you’ll find CTS pots and Orange Drop capacitors.

The controls are as you would expect, with volume and tone controls for each pickup, with Epiphone deploying a pair of Custom ProBucker Alnico 2 humbuckers to replicate the Custom BurstBuckers that were in turn wound to replicate the pickups on Slash’s touring Les Pauls. Think PAF but more carnivorous, with a little more heat. Is that what we’ll get here?

Performance and verdict

You'll be glad you got the thicker strap when you shoulder this Les Paul. Slash doesn’t go in for all that weight-relief business; he’ll take them just as they come, and this feels like a substantial instrument. Slash also plays his hard and favours a set of 11-48 gauge strings. This allied to the generous C profile of the neck might intimidate some players, but just size down on the strings for a slinkier feel and we’d wager that the neck profile will grow more comfortable over time.

Those looking for a vintage-inspired feel and a spiky, rock-friendly sound will find a lot to like here. Does it cover the signature Slash tones? 

Sure, select that bridge humbucker and through it through an overdriven Marshall guitar amp and you’ve got that heady sound of late-‘80s sleaze, so decadent that with the right break up and EQ you’ve got an almost cocked wah sound to it, with just the right amount of aggression without overpowering things. Roll the volume back and it cleans up nicely. Roll it back until it’s just gone clean and put it through an analogue chorus pedal and that Paradise City intro starts to come alive. 

For the siren wail of Sweet Child O’ Mine – an essential tone for wedding band players, and an interesting one for everyone else to fool around with – your neck pickup is your friend. It’s just as well because many players will be buying into this collection for easy access to those tones.

But we’d argue that the best thing about these is not Slash’s name on the headstock; it’s Les Paul’s. What the Slash name guarantees you is the imprimatur of the connoisseur. How you choose to use yours, what style you’d play, that is up to you. The pickups might have a little more animalism than many stock LPs but it has a typically dynamic voice that works well in any company. 

MusicRadar verdict: With a choice of finishes, superb spec and a tone that’ll welcome you to the jungle, the Epiphone Slash Les Paul is a no-brainer for GNR super-fans and a very attractive proposition for anyone searching for serious but affordable Les Paul.

Epiphone Slash Collection Les Paul Standard: The web says

“The neck pickup rings like a bell with the tone rolled back for that famous intro, outputting all the nuanced interaction and harmonics between the strings as we go. Pushing the tone back up to full with some overdrive gives us a near perfect bluesy-rock lead sound.”
Total Guitar

Epiphone Slash Collection Les Paul Standard: Hands-on demos

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Epiphone Slash Collection Les Paul Standard: Specifications

• BODY: Mahogany with AAA flame maple top
• NECK: Mahogany
• SCALE: 24.75”
• FINGERBOARD: Indian laurel
• FRETS: 22
• PICKUPS: Gibson Custom Burstbuckers
• CONTROLS: 2x volume, 2x tone, three-way toggle
• HARDWARE: Chrome
• LEFT-HANDED: No
• FINISH: Appetite Burst (pictured), November Burst, Vermillion Burst, Anaconda Burst, Victoria (goldtop)
• CONTACT: Epiphone

Today's a special day for any guitar playing Guns N' Roses fans as the long-awaited Epiphone Slash Collection is released. The collection was first teased in January by Slash himself and comprises a handful of Les Pauls boasting the same finishes as their Gibson counterparts, and a pair of J-45 acoustic guitars. 

Coming in at the high-end of Epiphone's lineup, the Slash Collection models have some very grown-up specs. The J-45s have an all-solid build with Sitka spruce on top and mahogany on the back and sides, while the Les Pauls have a solid mahogany body with AAA flame maple cap that'll add some luxury under those transparent gloss finishes, and mahogany necks carved into a comfortable C profile.

Available in Anaconda Burst, Appetite Burst, Vermillion Burst, November Burst and in a 'Victoria' Gold Top finish (named after the person who stole his original Gold Top), these Epiphone Les Pauls looks pretty sweet. All come equipped with a pair of Epiphone Custom ProBucker pickups, a three-way toggle plus the usual two volume, two tone control setup. 

As we have seen with some of their other top-line Les Pauls, Epiphone has used quality components throughout, with CTS potentiometers with Orange Drop capacitors ensuring the tone controls taper nicely and Epiphone Strap Locks so your beloved new guitar does not hit the floor.

As for the fundamentals, these will measure up comparably with the Gibson Slash Les Paul Standard, with a 24.75" scale, 12" fingerboard radius, 22 frets, and a thick leather strap advisable for long sessions. In keeping with its 50s models, Epiphone has used the long neck tenon as a nod to vintage instruments. 

Aesthetically, the only major difference is the headstock and that Indian laurel is used for the fingerboard instead of rosewood – but it looks the part with trapezoid inlays, binding and, best of all, the custom-matched hardware and controls. Slash's signature Skully illustration can be found on the rear of the headstock, and his signature is on the truss-rod cover.

As with the Epiphone 50s Les Paul Standard, the Epiphone Slash Les Pauls are fitted with LockTone bridge and tailpiece, a Graph Tech nut and Epiphone Vintage Deluxe 18:1 tuners.

The acoustics, meanwhile, offer two financially accessible versions of Gibson's iconic dreadnought with Slash's signature flourishes. Available in Vermillion Burst or November Burst, the Epiphone Slash J-45 acoustics offer a modern feel, with 16" Indian laurel fingerboards and a Slash custom C profile mahogany neck.

Both come fitted with an LR Baggs VTC pickup and preamp, with volume and tone controls tucked away discretely in the soundhole. As with the Les Pauls, we have Graph Tech TUSQ nuts, while Epiphone has chosen a set of Grover Rotomatics for tuners, and an Indian laurel bridge.

The Epiphone Slash Collection is available now worldwide. All models ship with a custom hard-shell case. The Epiphone Slash Les Pauls and J-45s are priced £799 / $899. See Epiphone for more details.

The promotional machine surrounding Slash's second solo album 'Apocalyptic Love' (due 22 May) is warming up as the guitarist announces plans to present six shows on Radio 2 this April.

Slash revealed his plans via Twitter stating, "Just finished recording a six show radio series for Radio 2, full of hard rock & metal that was a major influence on me. Blistering!"

It won't be the guitarist's first appearance on BBC Radio, back in December 2010 he presented a two hour show on 6Music, in which he played tunes from the likes of KISS, Queen and The Rolling Stones.

Speaking of the latter, Slash will also be dropping in on Ronnie Wood's radio show this week, revealing (again via Twitter) that he was looking forward to getting the opportunity to "Shoot the shit & play some riffs".

Episode 87 of The Ronnie Wood Show, featuring Slash, will air this Friday (9 March) on Absolute Classic Rock Radio 7.00pm to 8.00pm. Dates for Slash's own show are yet to be revealed.

Scroll down to stream a teaser of 'You're A Lie' the first single from Slash second solo album, 'Apocalyptic Love'.

The 30 second sample debuted through Australian radio station Triple M, which will be hosting the world premiere of the full track on Monday (27 February) and Slash will also be making an appearance on the show.

'Apocalyptic Love' is the first Slash album that the guitarist has recorded with his live band, now dubbed Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators.

Stream the Slash 'You're A Lie' teaser

Check out the track above and let us know what you think via Facebook and Twitter.

The second solo album from Slash is due out on 22 May in the UK and, as was the case with his previous record, will be released exclusively in 'fan pack' format via our sister magazine Classic Rock.

The new Slash Fan Pack will include a magazine dedicated to the guitarist (featuring behind-the-scenes photos), bonus album tracks, a pin badge and a poster of the album artwork and will be available nationwide via newsagents, music retailers and online channels.

There is also the matter of the aforementioned snazzy video trailer for the release, which you can check out above.

We spoke to Slash during the recording sessions for Total Guitar issue 223 and found out about new songs 'Bad Rain', 'Standing In The Sun' and 'Halo'.

Click here to pre-order the Slash Fan Pack, available May 22.

Total Guitar issue 223 will be available on 28 December in stores nationwide and, digitally, worldwide via Apple's Newsstand and Zinio. This issue we've got exclusive details on Slash's new solo record, plus a full tab of his Guns N' Roses classic 'Sweet Child O' Mine'.

Features

Slash
In our brand new studio report, TG gets the exclusive lowdown on the album set to revive rock 'n' roll guitar music in 2012. We're Stoked!

The Joy Formidable
Surviving as the guitarist in a three-piece isn't always easy. Learn how the formidable Ritzy Bryan does it.

Animals As Leaders
Want challenging instrumental music for a new generation with no monkey business? Then you'll love AAL

Bombay Bicycle Club
Guitarists Jamie MacColl and Jack Steadman answer your questions in our latest String 'Em Up.

Andy Powell
Meet the Wishbone Ash guitarist who pioneered twin lead playing

New bands for 2012
New year, new music. In our On The Up special, TG looks at a mammoth 33 guitar bands that you need to hear.

Plus! New interviews with Rush, Anthrax, Anna Calvi, Devin Townsend, Tony Iommi…

Learn To Play

FULL TABS

Full tabs, backing tracks, the story behind the song and a guide to nailing the tones for...

Guns N' Roses 'Sweet Child O' Mine'
Thin Lizzy 'Whiskey In The Jar'
Black Sabbath 'Children Of The Grave'
Niccolò Paganini 'Caprice No.24'
The Jam 'That's Entertainment' (strum along)

ONLINE VIDEO LESSONS

Steel Panther '17 Girls In A Row' (riff)

Essentials: Get Playing Now (Part One)

Warren Haynes Guest Lesson
Steve Lukather Guest Lesson
Matt Schofield Guest Lesson

Rockschool Grade Four
RGT Initial Stage Rock

Gear

Over 20 pages of gear news, reviews and advice.

Reviewed this issue:

Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster
Randall Diavlo RD50H
LTD TE-202
Head to head: Ring modulator pedals
Hagstrom Viking Rex-Tone
Boss BC-2 Combo Drive
Line 6 Mobile In/Mobile PD
SKB FootNote Amplified Pedalboard
T-Rex Tonebug Totenschläger

Plus! Accessories, First Look: LTD 330 Series, Ed's Shed: Restringing an acoustic guitar with bridge pins

Slash has given TG a backstage pass to his LA studio and exclusive details of the second solo album, due for release in April 2012. Read the full story in Total Guitar issue 223 (on sale 28 December to 27 January).

"I hate to put this out there and have anybody feel like I'm bragging," he grins, "but it's really cool. Everything I do, I do because that's what turned me on as a kid. And I think I'd have been way into this album."

After the celebrity starburst of 2010's 'Slash', the still-untitled second album is a more streamlined affair, with touring bandmates Myles Kennedy (vocals/guitar), Todd Kerns (bass) and Brent Fitz (drums) hooking up with previous producer Eric Valentine at LA's Barefoot Recording Studios.

"We've toured together for a year-and-a-half," Slash says of the lineup's chemistry, "but we were pretty f***ing tight even in the first month together. It's something that just happened naturally. The guys are good players and we lock in. It's been like that ever since."

Slash's choices of signature Appetite Gibson Les Paul and Marshall AFD and JCM800 heads are familiar, but he reveals this album will find him playing leads over the rhythm work of Kennedy, with the band recording entirely live (as opposed to Slash's past tactic of overdubbing solos in the control room). "You have to know the songs like the back of your hand to be able to do that," he says, "so we rehearse the s*** out of them."

Three tracks are complete: the "heavy and dark" 'Bad Rain' with its drop-D tuning, the "riffy" 'Halo' and the "melodic" 'Standing In The Sun'. By January, Slash estimates, it'll be ready to roll.

"We're recording by the seat of our pants. The three tracks we've recorded are killer, there's so much material and it's so diverse, and I'm really excited. There are some really interesting riffs on this record, I can say that. There's a lot of riffage going on…"

Check out Total Guitar issue 223 (on sale 28 December to 27 January) to read our six page interview with Slash and a a full tab of 'Sweet Child O' Mine'.

Buy Total Guitar for iPad, iPhone and iPod

Buy a digital copy of Total Guitar magazine
(US readers click here)

Top-hatted, chain-smoking, sun-bespectacled guitar wizard Slash has announced that he is due to appear in animated form in the forthcoming cartoon 'Phineas And Ferb The Movie: Across The 2nd Dimension' and that he's recorded a song for the soundtrack.

It was only a matter of time. You've already made one of the greatest rock albums of all time, followed it up with a successful and varied solo career, as well as releasing a string of your own signature guitars and amps, so where does the discerning rock star go from there? The Disney Channel, of course!

Yeup, Slash has confirmed that he will be appearing in the forthcoming 'Phineas And Ferb' feature film, which is scheduled to premiere on the Disney Channel in the US on 5 August. The guitarist, or at least his animated self, will be performing a song written especially for the film.

Slash told press that the animation is a "guilty pleasure" and "very rock 'n' roll, even for a cartoon". So far there are a smattering of teasers to be found around the internet, including the YouTube video embedded below, and a more revealing snippet on RollingStone.com.

There will also be a full DVD release, again in the US, on 23 August. There is so far no word on whether or not the film will make it across the pond to the UK.

What do you think about Slash's latest career move? Is it just a bit of fun, or so bad that he should have steered well clear? Vote on the Total Guitar Facebook page!

Video: Slash in 'Phineas And Ferb The Movie: Across The 2nd Dimension'

After keeping this ace up their sleeve for years, Guns N' Roses gave us both barrels in 1991 with 'You Could Be Mine'.

Pick up Total Guitar issue 216 (on sale 10 June to 7 July) for an exclusive interview with cover star Slash about the making of the song, not to mention a backing track, a guide to nailing the guitar tones and the scales and chord diagrams from the tune.

Part One: Intro

Part Two: Intro solo

Part Three: Intro riff

Part Four: Verse

Part Five: Chorus 1

Part Six: Interlude solo

Part Seven: Bridge

Part Eight: Solo

Part Nine: Middle 8

Part 10: Outro Riff

Part 11: Outro solo

Composed by Izzy Stradlin, Duff Rose McKagan, Axl Rose, Matt Sorum, Slash and Darren A Reed
Tutor: James Uings
Audio: Steve Allsworth
Videographer: Martin Holmes

In the mag:

Read it!
Every song has a story. Where possible we speak to the musicians and studio technicians to explore the inspiration, as well as the writing and recording processes behind your favourite songs.

Get the sound!
As well as a backing track, every song comes with easy-to-read illustrated settings for amps and effects. This enables you to not only play classic riffs, solos and tunes, but to replicate the tone, too.

Backing tracks!
Every song you learn in the magazine comes with a backing track on your CD, so you can play the guitar parts along with a full band. The CD is just that, a CD of music, so you can play it anywhere and easily transfer the songs to your PC or MP3 player.

Slash has announced a string of solo UK tour dates based around his forthcoming summer festival appearances.

The four new dates are due to take place in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Stoke-on-Trent (the guitarist's hometown) throughout July.

Slash has previously confirmed festival shows at Ireland's Oxegen Festival, Scotland's T In The Park and London's High Voltage, the latter of which is hosted by TG's sister magazine Classic Rock.

Slash 2011 UK tour dates

9 July T In The Park festival, Scotland
10 July Oxegen festival, Ireland
20 July O2 Academy, Birmingham
21 July O2 Apollo, Manchester
23 July High Voltage Festival, London
24 July Victoria Hall, Stoke
25 July O2 Academy, Leeds

Tickets for the solo shows will be £28.50 and are due to go on sale this Friday, 6 May, at 9am through livenation.co.uk.

Tickets for High Voltage (which will also feature Dream Theater, Judas Priest and Black Country Communion) are available now at highvoltagefestival.com.

Pick up Total Guitar issue 214 (on sale 15 April to 12 May) for a backing track and a guide to nailing the guitar tones from the song.

Part One: Verse 1

Part Two: Chorus

Part Three: Main riff

Part Four: Bridge

Part Five: Interlude

Part Six: Solo

Composed by Paul James McCartney, Linda Louise McCartney
Tutor: James Uings
Audio: Phil Capone
Videographer: Martin Holmes

Our Video Lessons are now hosted online through www.totalguitar.co.uk/video, but you'll need to buy the mag to get the most out of them. Each issue includes the story behind the songs, clearly explained amp and effects settings and backing tracks for all of our Video Lessons and tabs. See below for more information.

In the mag:

Read it!
Every song has a story. Where possible we speak to the musicians and studio technicians to explore the inspiration, as well as the writing and recording processes behind your favourite songs.

Get the sound!
As well as a backing track, every song comes with easy-to-read illustrated settings for amps and effects. This enables you to not only play classic riffs, solos and tunes, but to replicate the tone, too.

Backing tracks!
Every song you learn in the magazine comes with a backing track on your CD, so you can play the guitar parts along with a full band. The CD is just that, a CD of music, so you can play it anywhere and easily transfer the songs to your PC or MP3 player.

Image: © Tim Mosenfelder/Corbis

Top-hat fan and all-round guitar genius Slash has revealed that he is already working on a second solo album that he hopes to release in 2012.

Slash told Australian radio station Triple M: "I'm touring around with a sort of mobile studio and we're working on material that I'm gonna do with Myles [Kennedy, Alter Bridge frontman] for the next record. And I'm looking at probably early next year."

It's still early days yet and it's not known whether Slash will be looking to arrange another series of top-flight guest stars for the new recordings. His previous self-titled solo album, released last year, featured appearances from Lemmy, Dave Grohl and Ozzy Osbourne.