1995.02.DD - French TV - Interview with Slash

Transcript (the voice-overs are translated from French):
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Voice-over: Panic in Guns N’ Roses. Slash is taking a break. He’s going solo. The third castaway of the band, he doesn’t want to play the rockstar anymore but simply play music. He is abandoning the ship in full storm, head out of the water, in the time of making an album. He is leaving Axl Rose, the captain, to sink in the abyss of litigation and glamour, in court with his ex-wife and his ex-girlfriend, model Stephanie Seymour. In short, Slash is ready to deprive Guns N’ Roses of his talent, if Axl doesn’t listen to him: yes to the music, no to showbiz.

Slash: Well, limousines, jets, constant media hype, you know, just the whole big grand scale of it; and then trying to perform music. It’s not really too conducive, that aspect of being creative. And it just takes a lot of work, and this whole Snakepit thing has just been a lot of fun. It’s inevitable though that it was gonna be a pain in the ass (laughs).

Voice-over: Hundreds of concerts, millions of women, and profits of tens of millions of dollars. Would Slash be ready to quit one of the most profitable machines in the rock industry?

Slash: I mentioned to Axl, “Let’s go play some clubs for the Spaghetti Incident, when that came out, and Axl wasn’t into the idea. And I was like, “What are we gonna do?” And you know, like, I don’t wanna get a huge orchestra, all that kind of crap on the stage. I just wanted to get back down to a normal rock ‘n’ roll level, which meant going back to clubs. You can’t get any bigger than the stadiums, you know. It’s not possible.

Voice-over: Acoustic show in Paris: a success; at Elysée Monmartre, a small crowd of diehard fans. New singer, new band. Treason. Style of new album: invariable.  

Slash: Everything is out of fashion, as far as I’m concerned (laughs). I don’t give a shit about fashion anyway.

Interviewer: Do you like the Guns videos?

Slash: What, the big epic ones with dolphins, oceans and stuff?

Interviewer: Yes.

Slash: I hate doing videos like that. I like to have a video that looks cool, where it’s just the band playing. That’s what I think a cool video is.

Interviewer: Do you like Stephanie Seymour?

Slash: Stephanie Seymour?! I don’t even know Stephanie Seymour.

Interviewer: She was playing in one of the videos.

Slash: Well, she was Axl’s girlfriend at the time. I don’t really like her or dislike her. She’s useless. I don’t care (laughs). I don’t care about her.

Voice-over: Playing with Michael Jackson was an infidelity to Axl. Slash doesn’t belong to anyone. Everyone wants him and Axl is suffering terribly.

Slash: It was mentioned at one point, because, like I said, he’s got this distorted vision, or thought, that when I apply my talents to the guitar - or however we wanna call it – that it’s automatically Guns N’ Roses material, which isn’t the case. That means Lenny Kravitz stuff, Iggy Pop, Michael Jackson and Carole King would all be Guns N’ Roses material (laughs). That’s not the case at all.

[Clip from November Rain video (funeral scene)]

Voice-over: Slash and Axl at the funeral of Guns N' Roses? Only God knows.

[Clip from November Rain video (Slash's solo in the desert)]

Voice-over: And Slash, is he preaching in the desert to buy his artistic freedom? If Axl doesn’t listen to anything, and it's yes to showbiz, he has already pulled off.