2021.09.10 - Orange County Register - Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash flies in from concert tour for Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights opening

Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash flies in from concert tour for Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights opening

The L.A. rock icon talks about creating original music for the "Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives" maze at this year's event.

By Kelli Skye Fadroski

Though he’s long performed in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans in sold-out stadiums around the world, Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash says he gets a real adrenaline rush at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights.

For four Halloween seasons, the 56-year-old Los Angeles resident has worked directly with Horror Nights creative director John Murdy to create original scores for haunted attractions.

“One of the biggest bummers of last year was the fact that this was canceled,” Slash said while in a private area just outside the Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives attraction. “I flew in from Indiana this morning and have to fly back out to Atlantic City for our shows tomorrow just to be able to be here and see this.”

The theme park officially kicked off its Halloween event on Thursday, Sept. 9, and it will run select evenings through Sunday, Oct. 31. It was sold-out on opening night but the new layout of the mazes, which are scattered throughout the park, allowed ample space for fans to social distance. It looked as if about half of the attendees wore face coverings the entire time, indoors and outdoors, while others committed to just wearing them in queue lines and within the mazes where a mask mandate was strictly enforced. Other themed mazes include: “The Haunting of Hill House,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Exorcist,” Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers,” “The Curse of Pandora’s Box,” “The Walking Dead” and “The Purge” franchise has taken over the Universal Terror Tram.

Slash and girlfriend Meegan Hodges masked up and headed inside Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives, the guitarist having created music for the attraction. Murdy & Co. wrote an original story for the maze since, though one of the most iconic Universal monsters, The Bride of Frankenstein has less than five minutes of screen time in the studios’ 1935 film of the same name.

“That is kind of amazing,” Slash said. “Elsa Lanchester [the actress who played The Bride of Frankenstein] is such an icon and she’s definitely immortalized here. I thought the story idea was killer to have the Vampire Brides and The Bride of Frankenstein together; it was just a cool angle on the whole thing.”

In 2014, Slash created an original song for a disturbing, psychedelic 3D clown maze that aimed to scare those suffering from coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. In 2018, he composed 19 pieces of music for the Universal Monsters maze featuring all of the monsters including Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Phantom of the Opera, Bride of Frankenstein and more and the following year he wrote new music for Universal Monsters: Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man.

For The Bride attraction and the adjacent SilverScream Queenz scare zone, Slash said he got in his studio and was immediately inspired to write this music, which he used a synthesizer to create the violin and keys heard throughout using his guitar.

“I definitely wanted to bring a romantic thing to it and rock it up because I thought the girls demanded that,” he said. “I also wanted to bring a lot of chaos to the fighting where the clash with the Vampire Brides happens.”

Aside from returning to rock venues across the U.S. this year, Slash also revealed that there’s a fourth Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators album in the can and it will be released in early 2022.









Photos by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG

https://www.dailynews.com/2021/09/10/guns-n-roses-guitarist-slash-flies-in-from-concert-tour-for-universal-studios-halloween-horror-nights-opening/