1988.MM.DD - Tales of Destruction Audio Interview (Slash)

Transcript:
-----------------

Slash: The best rumor I’ve heard about the band? I know. The overdose ones are great. I like the AIDS ones; those work all right.

Interviewer: Do you laugh at it pretty much?

Slash: If they’re funny, yeah. It depends on how detailed they are. You know, one of us dying or something I’ve heard before. [Like] when I flew off Laurel Canyon or Mulholland in a Mercedes in the middle of the night, while I was strung out on heroin, after finding out that my AIDS test was positive. That’s a good one.

Interviewer: How many lawsuits do you guys have now?

Slash: Right now it’s not too bad. I don’t think we’re in the middle of any suits at the moment. We’ve managed to either settle or whatever, you know. Right now we’re doing okay. We’re very hard to pin down, too. We’re not that stupid and it’s very hard for us to get in a position where we’re stupid enough to be sued. Well, till we get sued tomorrow and I’ll stick my foot in my mouth.

Interviewer: Do you remember the first time you heard your music, Guns N’ Roses, on the radio? Like, what song it was and how did it make you feel?

Slash: Yeah, that was... It was a real kick in the ass. I’m still blown away by seeing a picture of us in a magazine and stuff. I’m real naive when it comes to that, because I was, like, a real rock fan and still am a real rock fan, so... The first time I heard us on the radio I think it was Move to the City, and I was just like, “Whoa!” You know, I started driving fast and stuff. I still get a kick out of it, you know?

Interviewer: You’re still thrilled to hear yourself.

Slash: Yeah. They sent me to Hawaii a little while back to sort of get me out of the city and keep me out of trouble. So they forcibly sent me to Hawaii for eight days right before the tour started, and when I was in Hawaii listening to a Top 40 station, Sweet Child came on and that was a real, you know... That was sort of like indicative of what the whole thing is doing right now.

Interviewer: Especially to hear it, like in – I mean, it’s a part of America, but it’s really, actually, not a part, because, what’s it like, five-six hours from L.A. almost? I mean by plane.

Slash: Yeah, by plane. Yeah, it’s four or five hours.

Interviewer: So it’s, like, an island and people know you. That’s pretty heavy, when that happens.

Slash: Yeah. Plus it’s a completely different atmosphere. Especially when I was in Maui and it’s like one of the worst places I’ve ever been to in my life.

Interviewer: Really? Why?

Slash: Because I’m a totally city kid. I like this activity constantly and I always need something happening. I can’t just sit around in the sun, and relax, and drink wine coolers all day.

Interviewer: You thrive on, like, the conflict and the tension.

Slash: Yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: Is it true that you knew David Geffen? Or that he knew of you?

Slash: I knew David Geffen when I was a kid, because my dad used to work for Geffen & Roberts, which was David Geffen’s company. My dad used to do album covers for most of his artists, so I grew up with him.

Interviewer: Interesting, like, to have this circle...

Slash: Yeah, I talked to him. I never told him that I was who I was, and being that my name is Slash and he knew me as something different when I was young... My mom had talked to him not long ago and he goes, “How is your son?” “Oh, he’s doing great. He’s sold two million records, and he’s in this great band, and they’re touring.” And he’s like “Oh!”- real surprised. “What band is he in?” “He’s on your record label.” You know, and he’s like, “What band?” “Guns N’ Roses.” And being that I’m the only person that looks the way I do in the band - I’ve always looked like this even when I was little, so he knew who it was right off. Now I talk business to him. I’m 23 years old at this point, and I talk business to him and stuff.

Interviewer: How many other companies were after the band? And was that fun, like getting taken out to dinner, I mean, for a while?

Slash: Yeah (chuckles).

Interviewer: How many companies were after you guys? You don’t have to name them.

Slash: I won’t mention names. I don’t know, like six or seven. Yeah, something like that.

Interviewer: Do you enjoy, like, not being able to, sometimes - like to have to pull money to afford a meal and then getting taken to places...

Slash: We were taking advantage of the situation we were in. We’d sort of lead a record company on for ages, keep having meetings, you know, at the Dome, right?

Interviewer: That’s funny. What was it about Geffen that you liked? Did they give you this commitment to (?)

Slash: Well, because Geffen, being sort of the offspring of Warner Brothers, which is a major corporation - Geffen in itself is a small personal record company with good people in it. They had the best idea of what we were doing as a band and related to us, and so on and so forth. And we didn’t want to get lost in the shuffle coming out of, you know, Warner Brothers, or CBS, or Columbia or whatever. So we wanted to be in real close touch to the people we work with, all the business dealings and blah blah blah.

Interviewer: What’s the true story about Paul Stanley of Kiss? Was he interested in the band, came down to see you...

Slash: He wanted to produce us at one point. We turned him down (laughs).

Interviewer: What happened?

Slash: Well, I don’t wanna talk Kiss down. I guess they did what they did, but, I mean, they’re like has-beens, grabbing at straws, totally. Paul Stanley wouldn’t know how to produce a band if his life depended on it. And he was using sort of his name and his persona to, like, try and sucker this bunch of kids, you know, with a fresh band, into working with him. We’re not that stupid, you know?

Interviewer: I heard he wanted to change the band.

Slash: He wanted to change, like, some songs and stuff. And we were like, “No.”

Interviewer: It’s good for yourself. And you worked with Mike Clink.

Slash: Yeah.

Interviewer: Why did you choose him? Did you guys go through a lot of different producers?

Slash: Yeah, we scared a lot of people away. It took us a long time to figure out who we wanted to use. We didn’t want a producer – you know, “producer” - because we didn’t want anybody to rewrite any of the songs; we thought they were fine the way they were. So what we really wanted was an engineer. Mike Clink happens to be an engineer, more or less, and he gets great sounds - you know, great drum sounds, I got a great guitar sound, and stuff like that. So we just did this, we just recorded the way we originally wrote them and got them to sound good.

Interviewer: I want to ask you... I mean, it must be tough - or maybe it’s not. It’s not like a live environment, when you’re playing in front of an audience. But when you’re in, like, a sterile environment like the studio, how do you get that?

Slash: Well, see, I set up in such a way – I mean, for one, because I get off on playing my guitar. So I just set it up so that it sounded the way I wanted it to sound in the studio. I can’t use headphones; I had set up a big room with big monitors and blasted. So I just stand right in front of it and just blast my head off. It was fun. I had a good time.

Interviewer: Tell me about Welcome to the Jungle, how that came about.

Slash: Welcome to the Jungle was some lyrics that Axl wrote just about moving from Indiana into Hollywood, and it’s like a mid-America white boy meets downtown Hollywood Blvd. I just came up with the guitar part at another time. We did it separately, I had the music and he had the words. Then we sat down together and that’s what happened.

Interviewer: It’s pretty much Axl that comes up with the lyrics?

Slash: For the most part. There’s never a discrepancy as to Axl’s lyrics. Sometimes it’s like, me and Izzy wrote the words to Brownstone; Izzy wrote the words to a song called Think About You; and he wrote some of the words to Out Ta Get Me and I have, like, a line about the whiskey at the end in Out Ta Get Me and stuff. You know, we put in if we have something to put. It’s So Easy was written by Duff.

Interviewer: The lyrics and music?

Slash: The lyrics. The music was co-written with another guy named West, a friend of ours from L.A.

Interviewer: Who designed the logo?

Slash: I did.

Interviewer: Really? Tell me about it.

Slash: Which one? The actual Guns?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Slash: That’s mine. The cross logo is somebody else’s.

Interviewer: How did the Guns logo – do you have, like a-

Slash: When the band first got together, I was trying to put together a logo and I saw this gun, which was, like, the most powerful magnum handgun, right? It was on the cover of this magazine. So what I did was that I found a profile view of it in a magazine and just came up with the idea of having the two going in the opposite directions with the roses, and all that stuff.

Interviewer: Are you an artist? I mean, did you-

Slash: That’s what I did before I played guitar.

Interviewer: Graphic arts or-

Slash: Well, my whole family is sort of that way. I just did it for – I mean, I just do it when I feel like doing it. You know, it was never a career or anything like that. I just like to do cartoons, and this and that and the other. I draw my own tattoos and shit.

Interviewer: Did you do some of these?

Slash: Yeah, yeah. I only have two, this one and this one.

Interviewer: Which is your favorite tattoo?

Slash: I just got this one. This one is way cool.

Interviewer: That’s wild! That’s detailed, too.

Slash: Yeah, well, the guy who did it, actually – it’s not all mine either. This one is completely mine. This one I gave him a basic drawing and he changed it around. It looks very much more like a tattoo-tattoo than this one does and you can tell.

Interviewer: That’s more detailed.

Slash: Yeah.

Interviewer: Who has the most tattoos in the band?

Slash: Axl, I think - for sure, Axl does. The rest of us average on two. I refuse to get any more except for on my arms.

Interviewer: I want to ask you about – I mean that there’s that PMRC censorship and all that bullshit, and you guys have problems?

Slash: You mean I can say “shit” and stuff? (laughs).

Interviewer: No (?) (laughs). With the original album cover, It’s So Easy... It’s like, I wanted to play that on the show and they were like, “Oh, no! You will play (?)”

Slash: The more stickers the PMRC puts on records, the more attention that’s thrown in that direction as far as rock ‘n’ roll bands - or even anything – is concerned. That’s the whole element of rock ‘n’ roll; it’s rebellion. The more you do that, the more they’re gonna buy it, the more interest is going to be – you know, is going to... whatever word I’m looking for, generated or whatever. It’s a real catch 22 for them. It’s amazing that they don’t see how stupid it is to try and put a wall up in front of something that they just have no control over.

Interviewer: They helped WASP sell a lot more albums than they even normally would sell.

Slash: If I took an album cover and had a big red - or black album cover, or whatever, with big letters on it that said the f-word, and they put a sticker over it, everybody would buy it, you know? Everybody would buy it. They’d start getting t-shirts made like that. There’d be black t-shirts with a black sticker over it, right? No one would know what it said, but everybody would know what it meant, right?

Interviewer: Were you surprised that even now – I mean, you wouldn’t think it would be so repressive now that the album cover would be censored, that they wouldn’t put it out. I mean it was put out, but it was pulled.

Slash: It was banned because of... People were saying that it was anti-feminist, that it promoted rape, you know, blah blah blah. So that’s why they banned it. No big deal. Then everybody went out trying to find copies of it.

Interviewer: That’s the thing. I mean, more people want it now.

Slash: Yeah. They’re out there, too. I mean, they’re not hard to find. All the major-major record stores have them.

Interviewer: Tell me about Nightrain.

Slash: It’s a ripple wine.

Interviewer: Yeah?

Slash: It is.

Interviewer: Is it?

Slash: Yeah. That’s what it’s about.

Interviewer: About drinking?

Slash: Well, when we were, like, on the skids and really down and out living in L.A., we had no money, no jobs, so we could barely afford to live in the little studio that we were playing in. So, you know, since you couldn’t afford to go out and buy a case of beer or a bottle of Jack, because that was just like way out of our reach, you could get a bottle of Nightrain for, like, $1.75 and you’d get way fucked up on it - or drunk (laughs). We used to buy tons of this stuff. And one night, when we were really screwed up - we were, like, floored one night and we started singing it, and it just came together.

Interviewer: Do you think that the band is in danger, because of, you know, the amazing success that’s happening now, that maybe, I mean, is changing the band at all? I don’t mean in terms of members, but just, you know-

Slash: Our attitude and stuff?

Interviewer: Yeah, just, I mean-

Slash: No, I really don’t. So far it hasn’t changed me, personally, at all. Even my... how would I say it... It’s just I haven’t gotten any more materialistic just because I have more money to do that. It’s just not me. It’s like, I don’t see why I’d need anything more than a few shirts, a couple pairs of jeans and my guitars, you know? I mean, I’ve bought more equipment than I used to have, because I can afford it - or the band can afford it - but that’s for a certain cause. I don’t have an attitude about that either; that just, you know, goes without saying if you want to sound half decent. But, I mean, as far as me going out, flashing the fact that I have a million dollars, and buying, like, a Rolls Royce and a big house, and cruising, that’s not me at all. I’m probably looking at, like, getting an old Mustang or something, you know?

Interviewer: That’s cool. That’s-

Slash: I haven’t even gotten an apartment.

Interviewer: Really?

Slash: I haven’t lived anywhere since I left home (laughs) - when I was, like, 17 or 18, or whenever that was.

Interviewer: Do your friends treat you differently? Some of your friends? I mean-

Slash: I don’t have any friends. Just acquaintances. The guys in the band, and I have a few close friends that I’ve known most of my life and those are still really the only close friends I have. I’ve gotten close to a couple of guys from different bands, like Metallica and Megadeth, I’ve got relationships with. But, other than that, I haven’t gotten any new friends now. People do treat you different, yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah. They pay your bills, right? Some people (laughs). Paradise City is probably one of my favorite tracks off the record. I read somewhere that you like that solo a lot off the record.

Slash: Well, it’s the only place on the album where I got to do an extended guitar solo. Everything is usually contained within a certain amount of bars.

Interviewer: That must trip you a little bit?

Slash: Well, no. I mean, it’s like, you just get into the habit of playing the solos the same every time, because there’s only so much time to improvise them. Paradise City was all improvised and it was just like, all right, here’s the solo section, you know, just go for it.

Interviewer: Did you come up with the riff? And the chords?

Slash: Yeah.

Interviewer: How long did something like that come, like, do you write – when you come up with a riff, is it usually just pretty spontaneous when you come up with things, or you have to work at it?

Slash: It’s usually spontaneous. I usually – there’s no formula. Sometimes it’s off the top of my head; or sometimes it’s something I’m hearing, like when I get to soundcheck or something, I try and figure out what it is I’m hearing in my head and apply it to the guitar.

Interviewer: Do you expand on the live solos? Do you expand or how closely do you-

Slash: Depending on how important I think the solo is to the song on the record. Like, I can go out of bounds with songs like It’s So Easy. The middle section of Nightrain I keep the same, because that’s what the song called for and it just sounds right; if you go off, people don’t relate to it instantly, because it goes by so fast. Paradise City, the middle section in that, I always play the same. Sweet Child O’ Mine, that solo is, like, very much a part of that song; if I change it around too much, it’s going to throw people off. So I try and maintain some sort of a format as far as the song is concerned. If it’s something I can get away with and improvise on, I do.

Interviewer: I guess when you do-

Slash: I improvise on rhythm; I don’t improvise on everything.

Interviewer: Yeah?

Slash: Yeah.

Interviewer: Well, that’s the best way to come up with ideas. Otherwise you’d be stagnant.

Slash: It’s not to come up with ideas when we’re playing live. It’s just to get a kick out of playing live.

Interviewer: What do you like the best out of the creative process? Do you like the live playing the most? Do you like the writing process?

Slash: It’s all one in the same, you know.

Interviewer: You get a kick out of it all.

Slash: Yeah.

Interviewer: Sweet Child O’ Mine is doing very well in the singles charts and it’s like something...

Slash: I’m almost embarrassed to say it. It’s almost not cool (laughs).

Interviewer: But it’s on your own terms.

Slash: No, it wasn’t really on our own terms, because it’s edited and we refused to edit one of our own songs. They pressured us and pressured us, and I thought, “Well” - you know, to give a little bit of credit to the other way of thinking, that if we did a single there’d be a lot more people exposed to it, who normally would never get to it, and to me that seemed a pretty smart thing to do. So eventually we broke down and we did it. And it’s done great for us. It hasn’t hurt us at all.

Interviewer: How did it come about, this song? Did you come up with that beginning-

Slash: We were sitting in the room at this house - it was me, Duff, Izzy and Axl – and I came up with that intro thing. Then Izzy put the chords that fit behind it and then Axl started singing it. So we had the first part of the song down and then we just started working on it from there.

Interviewer: That’s cool. A lot of riffs and things like that – do a lot of things come when you guys just jam together and you’ll just be, like, working on something and you won’t even think consciously that you’re developing something?

Slash: As soon as you get with that general vibe, which, like, gets you excited in the first place, then you know you’ve got something happening, you know? If you don’t get turned on by the stuff that you’re playing, then it just falls by the wayside and [is] forgotten.

Interviewer: Do you think the best songs are ones that just come to you pretty quickly?

Slash: The best songs are just the ones that, however they come, you get off on. You know, the ones that you actually enjoy playing. They give you a sort of a buzz when you start playing. I mean, I still enjoy playing the songs that we play; otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to handle being on the road for the last year.

Interviewer: Is that tough? I mean, I guess it’s a question you should be asked four or five years down the line. Like Aerosmith, they can’t not do Dream On. I’m just wondering how – I mean, I get sick of songs that I listen to, you know, in a year or something. I guess it’s maybe just the audience and the way you look at it. It’s a business, you gotta do it, I guess. Hopefully you won’t reach that point.

Slash: I don’t think – that’s, like, so much French to me. I mean, we just go out and play, and that’s it. We put gigs and...

Interviewer: My Michelle: real person?

Slash: Yeah. I used to go out with her when I was, like, 14 or 13, something like that.

Interviewer: What does she think about the song?

Slash: When Axl first wrote the lyrics to it, some of them were so realistic. I mean, it was just like so upfront realistic and so cruel, in a way, that I thought, “Oh God, you can’t do it that way. You’re gonna crush this girl.” And she didn’t mind it, so we used it.

Interviewer: Mr. Brownstone, you said you guys came up with the lyrics for that?

Slash: Yeah. Me and Izzy.

Interviewer: How did that come about? I love the lyrics for it, as well.

Slash: Um, let’s see... Me and Izzy were sitting around, um, intoxicated one night. The song, if you really read it, you know what it’s about, then you sort of just read into it. It’s sort of self-explanatory. It’s basically about having a serious habit and the lifestyle that goes along with it, and we just happened to be sitting in the middle of it at the time. It’s sort of a joke. It’s sort of like a parody.

Interviewer: What do you think of videos? Do you like the process? Do you mind making videos?

Slash: I mind them when we’re doing it at the time. When it’s finished it’s cool, because it’s done. At the time it’s 12 hours of really boring, what I would call very non-rock ‘n’ roll, type of garbage you have to go through; you know, the parts where you have to just stand there and pretend like you’re kicking ass for an hour or what, playing the same song over and over again, and you feel like a dick for doing it. You get used to it, though. I mean, the first time we did it was really hard for me. The second time we did it, it felt more natural. It just comes with experience.

Interviewer: What’s the next video you guys-

Slash: I’m not really sure. We’re trying to figure out whether we are even gonna do another video. We might not even do it.

Interviewer: If it is, I hope it’s live. That would be great.

Slash: Yeah. We’re talking about doing a live version of It’s So Easy.

Interviewer: Do you think music – we were talking about rebellion and stuff like that in the 60s, you know, the Who and all these groups. I mean, anarchy and the Pistols and stuff. Do you think music still has that ability to be dangerous?

Slash: It was getting a little scary there for a while. It was looking like there was nothing that was like what you would call real hard rock happening. None of that attitude was there. It was getting so institutionalized, so industry oriented that even the bands were calling up the record company asking what they should write about. It was getting really out of hand. I think that’s why we’re doing so well, because we’re not like that. We’re really against the grain at this day and age, you know? But I don’t think the whole element of rock ‘n’ roll and the whole attitude, you know, what it all stems from, is ever going to go away. It may have lulls from time to time, it may have a decade where it’s sort of flimsy, but it’ll always be there.

Interviewer: I wanted to ask about Out Ta Get Me, which I like a lot. Anything about that song? Here’s what I want to ask regarding that song: did you guys do a lot of takes of songs or is it pretty much like a live feel?

Slash: Every song was done in one to three takes in the studio, which was live. We used the bass, the drums and Izzy’s guitar. I played too, but I did dummy tracks, because I can’t play with headphones, although for all of you to play at the same time you have to wear headphones. So I did dummy tracks and then went in by myself and just did all the guitar – not all the guitar, my guitar (laughs).

Interviewer: That’s right. If it wasn’t happening in, like, three takes, you just say move on?

Slash: Yeah. There was only one song, I think, that didn’t happen in three takes and instead of just keep plotting along with it, you just come back a different day and do it again.

Interviewer: Did you do it?

Slash: Yeah.

Interviewer: What was it?

Slash: It’s on there. So it obviously got done.

Interviewer: Tell me about the Dead Pool. I thought that was really interesting. I mean, how did you guys get-

Slash: The movie sucked. The movie was lousy. But the cool thing about it was that as soon as we were in it, as soon as you saw it – have you seen the movie?

Interviewer: (?)

Slash: Oh. As soon as you see the parts that we’re in, we stick out like a sore thumb. There’s, like, everybody who’s supposed to be in the movie and then these guys, right? And it’s just really funny. I mean, you just have to see it and sort of take it for what it is.

Interviewer: Was Clint a fan of the band? Was that how-

Slash: No. What happened, the reason that whole thing came about was because someone from the Eastwood camp had us referred to them as a hard rock band for a song for the movie. They didn’t know what Guns N’ Roses was, or where Welcome to the Jungle was gonna go or what it was, or anything like that. So we gave them the song and then, all of a sudden, you know, because they were a little slow (chuckles) – all of a sudden they found out that we just sold, like, a 1.5 million records, and the song was sort of a hit, and, you know, that we were getting to be a pretty popular band. So then they sort of permeated the movie with the song (chuckles). So that’s how it happened.

Interviewer: I was hoping that he was a classic Guns N’ Roses fan.

Slash: No, I don’t think so. He came up to us on the set, and the guy’s like nine feet tall, right? Yeah, he’s very intimidating. And he walked up to us and said, “Great album,” shook our hands and walked off. I didn’t really know what to think of it. So I don’t know what his trip is.

Interviewer: Well, that was an experience (?)

Slash: Yeah.

Interviewer: I definitely want to see the movie, just-

Slash: You should see it, yeah. It’s cool. I mean, the parts that we’re in are really cool.

Interviewer: I want to ask you about your guitar interplay with Izzy. It just seems like there’s a chemistry there where it’s not like you guys play together rather than play-

Slash: It’s not really chemistry. Chemistry is something that, like, you mix together, and it comes out and produces a certain something that you would think is supposed to be perfect; it’s supposed to be some sort of a combination of something that’s perfect or that works. With us it’s just very impromptu and I don’t know if it works or not, but that’s the way we do it.

Interviewer: It works. What’s your approach when you put down solos, even Sweet Child O’ Mine for instance? I mean, do you pre-plan it?

Slash: No, I go off the top of my head, which is one of the reasons that in certain songs I can’t really play anything but what I did on the album, because I only played the solo once or twice and that’s what it was, and every time I play it that’s what I feel.

Interviewer: (?) you just came up with that?

Slash: Yeah. I mean, I get off on improvising, though. It’s like, that’s where the energy of it is; you know, that initial first kick in the ass that makes you play what you play. If it works, if it sounds right, use it, because you’re not gonna be able to get a more spontaneous take than the first one.

Interviewer: What kicked you in the ass early when you started playing the guitar that you were trying to emulate or maybe you were just taking stuff from?

Slash: Basically, when I first started playing guitar - plus I’d been around music heavily all my life. So when I first started playing guitar, I just started learning stuff off of all the records that I had. It wasn’t anyone particular guitar player. I used to like Aerosmith a lot, I had my Ted Nugent records, Cheap Trick, Zeppelin, and this and that. Jeff Beck was a big one. I think the one guitar player that I listened to consistently over the years, like I still go back to, is probably Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. Those two guys and Jeff – those three, Jeff Beck, too. And now, like right now, I’m going back into a Clapton phase, old Clapton phase, you know. I go in and out, but I’ve been listening to Page consistently, like I still dig the shit that he does.

Interviewer: Do you like the new record?

Slash: There’s some good guitar stuff on there, but it’s, like, a really, really boring album. I mean, nothing against Jimmy or anything. It’s just a boring record.

Interviewer: The vocalist, Miles is okay. Chris Farlow is on side, too.

Slash: Yeah. I just don’t – I’m not into it at all.

Interviewer: He was great. The thing Page – I mean, just the way he constructed stuff, he wasn’t like-

Slash: He’s just got a good style. I mean, I don’t wanna analyze it. I don’t ever try and pick out what it is that makes a structure work or whatever. It’s just, you know, I like the way it sounds. You sort of subconsciously lift stuff, you know?

Interviewer: Do you have a favorite solo of his?

Slash: Of his? Um... That’s really hard to say.

Interviewer: Or even an off the wall solo.

Slash: An off the-? I dig No Quarter off the live album. It’s got some really tasty stuff in it. And, of course, there’s Tea for One on Presence, and then there’s Since I’ve Been Loving You. It’s got some really cool stuff on it.

Interviewer: You picked some good ones and you picked the unobvious ones, which is good. If you had to say your most prized guitar, what would it be?

Slash: One with six strings.

Interviewer: You love anything.

Slash: No. I have two old Les Paul’s that I really cherish. I don’t use them right now, but I’ll use them when I go in the studio. Then I’ve got two new ones that I use live that do pretty well.

Interviewer: Was music the only thing you always wanted to do? Was that from the start?

Slash: I didn’t know I wanted to do music when I started doing it. I just started doing it, because it’s just something I got into. It was like, Steven got me turned on to playing guitar and I just really got into it. I didn’t have any kind of, like, aspirations or dreams in the beginning, you know, but I worked – I mean, they must have been there somewhere, but they must have been very subconscious, because I was working my ass off to support the habit, and I was working my ass off to get better as a musician, and blah blah blah. But, at the same time, I wasn’t, like, working towards any particular goals like, you know, trying to be a rock star or trying to beat John McLaughlin or anything like that.

Interviewer: Thankfully you know John McLaughlin.

Slash: I’m probably never gonna be any better than my influences, you know what I mean? Because that’s all I ever listened to and that’s the only pinnacle to which, you know, I’ve ever had to try and get to be able to be that good.

Interviewer: Do you practice a lot?

Slash: Sometimes. Sometimes I practice like crazy and sometimes I won’t pick up... When we’re on the road, I play every day and I usually play for an hour or more before every show. But then, like, when I’m off the road, I’ll go through a period where I can’t even look at a guitar. It’s just like, I don’t want to bother with it. I’d rather just get drunk, and this and that. And then I’ll just lock myself up and seriously get into playing for a while.

Interviewer: How did you guys survive? I mean, you had a lot of lean days from what I read about in Kerrang, a lot of the early articles and stuff. How did you guys survive and what was just living with all different people and-

Slash: I still do.

Interviewer: (Laughs) Do you look fondly on those days?

Slash: Yeah, I had a lot of fun. Still do.

The disc with the interview was released in 2016
https://www.discogs.com/Guns-N-Roses-Tales-Of-Destruction/release/9935032
Apparently it was a reissue by a different bootleg label.

According to the description on youtube, it was originally released in 1992:

Tales of Destruction
℗ Intertec
Released on: 1992-08-12

The interview was obviously conducted some time in the second half of 1988. If I were to guess, I'd say August.