2015.04.21 - AL.com - Slash: 'I Think More Than Anything, I Just Love Playing'

Slash: 'I think more than anything, I just love playing'

By Lawrence Specker

Guitarist Slash has one of rock's truly iconic looks as well as one of its most enviable resumes, and he's bringing it all to Mobile next week.

The former Guns 'n' Roses guitarist, who also racked up a few hits with Velvet Revolver, is touring with his current group, Slash with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. They play Soul Kitchen Music Hall on Wednesday, April 29.

Reviews and set lists indicate that the guitarist is generous about playing songs from his previous projects as well as his newer material, and while vocalist Kennedy is no mere Axl Rose clone, he's got the range to do justice to the older stuff. Meanwhile, the band has plenty of reason to hold its heads high: "World on Fire," the ensemble's second album, came out last September and hit No. 1 on Billboard's hard rock chart and No. 10 on the overall pop album chart.

In advance of the show, Slash took a few minutes to field questions about his musical activities.

Q: I have to start this interview with a story. I have a 14-year-old daughter, and one day she came in wearing a Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt. I looked at her and said, "You have no idea what that is, do you?" And she didn't. She'd seen one of the members of One Direction wearing the shirt, so she wanted one like it.

Slash: "Oh, God."

Q: But I gave her my "Appetite for Destruction" CD and she never gave it back, so there's a happy ending.

Slash: "Oh, really? We're very far removed from One Direction. So that's all good." (Note: Informed of this exchange, said 14-year-old wanted it known that she was just 12 at the time. "Don't make me look like an idiot," she said, disavowing her tastes back when she was young and didn't know any better.)

Q: Such tangents aside, I do imagine that you draw fans from a few distinctly different directions.

Slash: "We play for a really sort of wide demographic. There's a lot of really young kids that come down and are really enthusiastic. A lot of 'em are not even old enough to come without their parents, let's put it that way. There's that, and then there's fans that have sort of grown up with Guns 'n' Roses, and are about the same age as myself, and everything in between."

Q: You released "World on Fire" last September and it has done well. You're touring hard and making TV appearances. This seems like a very active, fun time for you.

Slash: "It's been great. Ever since this thing started, which was basically 2010, it's been (hitting on) all cylinders forward, and we've just been picking up momentum as we go. At this point in time, we're obviously touring on the 'World on Fire' record, but the band is really kicking ass and we're playing all over the planet. It's just fun. I think more than anything, I just love playing, and when you have a lot of opportunities to just go out there and do it, that is pretty much what you're in it for. So it's good."

Q: In your audience you've got everything from Guns 'n' Roses diehards to guitar nerds who are there to watch your fingers. For the audience as a whole, what kind of overall experience do you try to create?

Slash: "It's a very high-energy, loud, rock and roll band. I wouldn't say that it's necessarily what you'd call a retro thing. We're not trying to you know, sort of revel in old school for old school's sake. But it's stripped-down, it's not taking too much advantage of all the sort of new technology. We're not playing to any loops, we're not doing any kind of pre-recorded this, that and the other. It's just, we go out and actually play. But people seem to really dig it, and the new material goes over great. I think when we first started, a lot of people weren't sure what to expect. But we do sort of a mix of all the stuff from my whole catalog. And now that we've been doing it for the last five or so years, we've amassed a lot of fans of what this entity is, as opposed to seeing it because I'm going to play this song from the past, or whatever.

"As far as guitar nerds go, that's the worst. When you're standing on stage and you look down and there's people that are standing there expecting you to blow their minds with your guitar playing tricks. It's not that, necessarily. That's not exactly what my M.O. is. I mean, I'm a player and I can play, but it's all within the context of the music, the songs. So it's sort of interesting that you do get those guys who sort of analyze you from a technique point of view. It happens.

Q: I get the impression - partly from my daughter, again - that with pop radio putting such an emphasis on slick, heavily processed production, younger listeners are starting to look for stuff that's got more authenticity.

Slash: "I think basically, as kids, coming up, you're only exposed to the stuff that's out there on the radio. If you're fortunate, you've got cool parents or older brothers or sisters who have really good taste in music, and you get exposed to some really cool stuff. What's happening commercially always kind of ebbs and flows. The trend for a long time has been everybody sort of phoning it in and everybody really sort of conforming to whatever is successful. And I think people tend to go along with it for a while, as far as listeners (and) consumers are concerned. Go along with it for a little while until it becomes really redundant and you can sort of see through that facade. And then ... there's always a handful of really good, sort of traditional - when I say traditional, I mean people who really play and really write songs and have their own point of view - and what happens, especially with kids, they start leaning toward hearing somebody who has something real to say, as opposed to just following the current market trend." (Laugh) "It comes and it goes."

Q: Joe Perry of Aerosmith came through the area with his side band, the Joe Perry Project, a while back. And one of the things he told me was that sometimes he feels like a time traveler in the music business. Sometimes the music he likes is in fashion, sometimes it isn't, and he just keeps on going.

Slash: "That's totally true. It's totally true. I mean, for me, I've been very similarly just doing what it is that I do. One minute everybody's really into it, and then for another minute, everybody's into something else, and I just stick to my guns and just keep going. And I've always got those sort of hardcore fans who are always there. For one year they multiply by 100, and then another year it'll be just those 10."

Q: What else would you like for people to know about what you're bringing to the party?

Slash: "We're working on new material now, for another record, and so I think that what it is that I'm into is just trying to do what's the most inspiring thing, and picking up some new stuff along the way. There's always that element of new discovery that ends up on the next record. But the one thing they can always expect, it's going to be really sort of from the heart, hard-rock material, whatever it is that I end up putting out. I'm always true to the school."

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