1995.02.DD - Japanese TV - Interview with Slash and Eric Dover

Transcript:
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Interviewer: Welcome to our show.

Eric Dover: (Greets in Japanese)

Slash: Hi.

Interviewer: So, Slash, you finally released your first solo album.

Slash: It’s not a solo record!

Interviewer: Oh yeah, sorry.

Slash: No, just to make it clear. It’s not my band even, it’s our band. And I think it’s just sort of an alleviation from the other projects that we’re used to being in, for a bunch of friends to get together and just sort of play with no pressures, no real obligations - you know, for the most part. And we’re all having a really good time. And it seems to me that the kids who bought the record, or the kids that are out there, seemed to like the kind of attitude that we have - you know, having to do with just going out and doing it.

Dover: Matt went into the situation, actually with Slash in the beginning, and he was free to play anything he wanted to, Gilby came in with songs of his own that we adopted in Snakepit, and by the time I got in it was like, “Here, write something,” and so I did, and we collaborated on lyrics. You know, it was a good thing for everyone.

Slash: There was no, like, sort of pressure, you know. There was nobody – it’s like for a while everybody was worrying about our respective bands that we were from. We were in the studio jamming and having a great time, and it was a nice release for all the individuals in the bands. There’s no rockstars in this band, there’s no hierarchy. It’s just the five of us, it’s very equal. And you know, we just decided,
“Well, it sounds like a good band, let’s make a record and go out on tour.” And we did it for basically what you’d consider a shoestring budget, and we did it very quickly. It was doing it very fast and just going off the heart – you know, this sounds good and leave it the way it is, and I don’t know, then tour in clubs and so on. It’s just gonna be – like, I’ve been playing in stadiums for ages and it’s gonna be nice to be able to see the people, you know.

Interviewer: Because we’re from TV, did you make any video...

Slash: Well, there’s – we have Beggars and Hangers-On. I don’t know if it’s released in Japan yet or not, but I saw there was a copy of it on here earlier. There’s that, it’s gonna come out and then we’re gonna do a couple of other videos.

Interviewer: It isn’t very like (?)

Slash: There’s no dolphins in it (laughs).

[Beggars And Hangers-On video]

Interviewer: Eric, tell us a little bit about you. Briefly, for people.

Dover: Briefly? Well, the only thing that I was being part of before this was Jellyfish, and I came in the band during the second record - after the recording of the second record. So that’s really about it.

Interviewer: We’ve heard that you are basically a guitarist.

Dover: Yes.

Interviewer: But you don’t play on this record.

Dover: No, I don’t.

Slash: No, we write together. He plays guitar, we play on guitar (?). Actually we sometimes do these little impromptu acoustic gigs and he plays guitar.

Dover; Yeah. Yeah, I love playing guitar, but, I mean, with Slash and Gilby in the band there’s no point in doing it (laughs).

[Break]

Voice-over: Back to the special of Slash’s Snakepit.

[Clip from November Rain video – voice-over in Japanese]

Interviewer: What is the big difference between this album and Guns N’ Roses?

Slash: I don’t – Guns is great, you know, and that’s fine. It’s just got to be such a big band that it didn’t seem to have any real direction anymore. It was like, it just got more and more expensive, big videos, big tour, blah blah blah. And I wanted to go backwards, back to sort of our roots, and Axl didn’t wanna do that. So that’s understandable, because once you finally reach being a big band, why would you want to go backwards. But there’s nowhere else for us to go except for to keep doing it. After two and a half years of touring in stadiums, I really wanted to go back to a crowd that I can feel and see. And so this will be fine, because we can go in, almost anonymous, and just play, as opposed to Guns. It’s like, as soon as Guns goes in the studio or is about to do a tour, everybody goes, “Whoa, it’s Guns N’ Roses.” You know, whatever, it’s still a garage band as far as I see it. So with Axl’s whole preoccupation with us keeping this rockstar thing going, I get to go off and just do something that’s a little bit more me, and obviously more of the other guys, and so it’s just been a little more fun (?).

Interviewer: So did you feel sometimes big pressure?

Slash: Well, it’s not so much – it’s a lot of pressure as it tends to feel like a job, because the interaction between the audience and the band is limited. You know, it’s great to be able to reach that many people, but I don’t know how many of those people we actually reach, because of the size of the audience.

Interviewer: On stage you’re gonna play all songs from this album?

Slash: Mostly, I imagine within, you know, the amount of time that we’ll be on stage, we can do this whole record, a couple of Gilby’s songs off his record and some covers that we’ll sort of discuss between us, which ones we’re gonna do. It’ll be fine.