2018.09.25 - 102.9 The Hog - Interview with Slash [AUDIO]

Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash spoke in an interview with 102.9 The Hog radio station and revealed the story about how he found a new singer for his solo band. He remember his first conversation with Alter Bridge singer Myles Kennedy.

Here’s the statement:

“To make a long story short, when I did the first solo record [2010’s ‘Slash’] with all the [guest] singers, I didn’t have any long-term plans. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what would come of it.

When I was making the record, I had two songs that I couldn’t figure out who should sing. I had sort of pre-planned every other piece of music, who would be the singer and so on.

I had been hearing about Myles for a long time, but I never actually heard him sing. Then I thought I’ll take a chance on it and I sent him a piece of music and I called him up: ‘Hey, it’s Slash. I’m doing this record with all these vocalists.’

He said, ‘Send me the song.’ So, I sent him the song, and about four days later, it came back as an MP3 e-mail kind of thing and I sort of reluctantly clicked on it and was blown away by the vocal.

I flew him out to Los Angeles and we met and he was very cool, down-to-earth, very personable kind of individual. We recorded the studio version of that song and it was a song called ‘Starlight,’ and then I asked him if he wanted to do another one and we did ‘Back From Cali.’

At that point, I said, ‘You know, I need to do a tour on this and have somebody who can sing all this stuff, plus Snakepit, plus Velvet Revolver, plus Guns N’ Roses.’ It’s a tall order, but he seemed like the kind of guy who had the capability.

I was expecting a ‘no’ answer, and he surprised me by saying ‘yes.‘ I auditioned drummers and I met Brent Fitz through word of mouth, then he introduced me to Todd [Kerns, bass]. We rehearsed for a week, then we started touring and have been together ever since.”