Episode 952 - Slash
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck tuckians what the fucking east does what's happening
Marc:Mark Maron here.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:Oh, man, is it going to be a lispy day?
Marc:What's wrong with my mouth day?
Marc:Happens sometimes.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Did I make it about me for a second more than I usually do?
Marc:Nice to...
Marc:Nice to be here.
Marc:Nice to talk to you.
Marc:Lots happened since I've last spoken to you.
Marc:What day is today?
Marc:Thursday?
Marc:It's Thursday.
Marc:So I went to the Emmys on Monday.
Marc:I haven't talked to you since Monday.
Marc:And that afternoon, I went to the Emmy Awards for the first time in my life.
Marc:For the first time in my life, I went to the Emmys and I was on a nominated show.
Marc:for best comedy glow and we lost but hey even though we lost aren't we all just losers is that the right that's not it isn't it even though isn't it even though we didn't win aren't we all winners anyways i like it my way hey even though we lost aren't we all losers i think that's equally as uh inspiring
Marc:Hey, sure, we lost, but we're all losers.
Marc:I think that, you know, ultimately, most of the time that turns out to be true.
Marc:I would say proportionately to, hey, we didn't win, but we're all winners.
Marc:That is really non-objective stuff.
Marc:So, you know, maybe this is too negative.
Marc:I'll tell you about the Emmys.
Marc:I'll talk to you about Slash, who is my guest today on the podcast, The Slash.
Marc:From Guns N' Roses and from Slash's Snake Pit and from Velvet Revolver and from Slash featuring Miles Kennedy and the conspirators.
Marc:But he's Slash, man.
Marc:He's fucking Slash.
Marc:And it's interesting because as much as I love Guns N' Roses and some of Slash's solo work, I don't know that I identified him as thoroughly as I did the other night.
Marc:After I talked to him,
Marc:I went to the whiskey to see Slash and Miles Kennedy and the conspirators.
Marc:Now, do I want to tell you about this?
Marc:Let's ease into this.
Marc:It was revelatory.
Marc:I'll tell you how revelatory seeing Slash and Miles Kennedy and the conspirators at the whiskey, which seats like 12 people.
Marc:I'll tell you how revelatory it was.
Marc:I stayed for the entire fucking show.
Marc:I didn't even stay for the whole Emmys.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:I mean, those of you who have watched my special, Too Real, available on Netflix now...
Marc:And you know my bit about the Stones concert.
Marc:I don't stay for shit because the idea of waiting for my car or getting to my car or waiting to get out of a situation in my car will almost preclude me.
Marc:Is that the word?
Marc:From staying till the end of anything, especially when you know it's going to end, especially if it's another song or especially if you you've already lost everything you stood to lose.
Marc:Because, hey, we're all losers.
Marc:I told you, I guess, about a week ago that La Fonda had a growth on her mouth and me and Sarah, the painter, kind of put our minds together.
Marc:We had the box already.
Marc:I put a towel in the box.
Marc:I had it open for the for that, you know, seizing that moment of getting that little fist of feline fury into the box to take her to the vet.
Marc:And, you know, Sarah said, I don't think you should take her.
Marc:I'm like, oh, well, it's a little like nodule there.
Marc:It's a little thing on her lip.
Marc:But she had gotten zits there before.
Marc:And then I looked up cat zits and mouth cat zits and then mouth cancer.
Marc:And I and I decided, well, she decided.
Marc:That maybe you should just wait it out because she's had stuff there before.
Marc:Cats get zits on their face.
Marc:So I waited it out and it looks like it's getting better.
Marc:So as it stands now, Monkey and La Fonda, 14 plus years old, holding strong, lean, energetic.
Marc:Buster, the kitten, couple years old almost, out of his fucking mind.
Marc:It's like this house that I'm living in now.
Marc:There's two floors.
Marc:It's old.
Marc:It's wooden.
Marc:There's not a lot of rugs.
Marc:And it feels like a fucking rodeo in the morning because he's figured out this route for himself from the end of the hall upstairs.
Marc:And he runs all the way down the hall, down the stairs where he jumps about three or four stairs and plonks down on the floor, runs into the living room.
Marc:Does some business in there.
Marc:Flips around.
Marc:Comes running back up the stairs.
Marc:This can go on at 2 in the morning, 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning.
Marc:Active little fuck.
Marc:Not a lot of love for him in those moments.
Marc:But doing well and learning to take affection.
Marc:He's resistant and he's peculiar and he's awkward when you pet him.
Marc:He's one of the only cats I know that really likes to be pet like a dog.
Marc:Scratched on the back, on the stomach.
Marc:And you gotta kind of really get him to not squirm out of it.
Marc:In other words, emotionally, he's exactly like me.
Marc:So I wanted to read this now that we're in cat zone.
Marc:I wanted to read this because there's not so much hopeful, happy stories in the world.
Marc:And this one, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to spoil it.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Because we're all losers.
Marc:And I'm not going to spoil it, but I want to read it to you now that we're in the cat zone.
Marc:Subject line, Kipling lives.
Marc:My boyfriend Adam is a massive fan of this podcast.
Marc:I'd never heard of Marin before I met him and am now a convert.
Marc:Recently, his Siamese, Kipling, went missing on a canoe trip.
Marc:I have to interject here.
Marc:Who the fuck takes their cat on a canoe trip?
Marc:I can I won't even let my cat outside.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I know there are special animals.
Marc:Mine are special in their own way.
Marc:Apparently, Kipling can be on a canoe.
Marc:So back to the story.
Marc:After the canoe capsized, we tipped.
Marc:Adam grabbed the cat and then the canoe hit Adam and Kipling went under and we didn't see him again.
Marc:Terrible feeling.
Marc:We searched for hours.
Marc:This cat was always going hiking, camping, and swimming with us.
Marc:We went back the next day trying to find his body or signs of him and didn't find anything.
Marc:That's the worst.
Marc:Not knowing.
Marc:We even got an amateur diver to help us search underwater for his remains.
Marc:Where'd you find that guy?
Marc:Still, no kip.
Marc:We took to social media and shared his story with everyone.
Marc:There were hundreds of shares and likes and comments, and we even had coworkers.
Marc:We worked for an animal hospital that took out search dogs to track him.
Marc:We had no idea if he made it out of the river at this point.
Marc:Adam was devastated.
Marc:This cat was a spot of emotional stability for him.
Marc:Sorry, Adam.
Marc:I know the feeling, buddy.
Marc:After 20 days, we got a call.
Marc:Someone found him in a hayfield 10 miles away from where we lost him.
Marc:He was 10 miles closer to home, actually.
Marc:Somehow, this cat survived a rapid river and trekked 10 miles to find some humans to take him home.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:God damn it, that's a good story.
Marc:Anyway, we like to be super clever and yell, Kipling lives, and thought this story may be enjoyed by our favorite cat-enthused comedian, thanks for the laughs, Jeffy and Adam.
Marc:You're welcome.
Marc:What a fucking great story.
Marc:Cats, canoes, started out, I was judging you guys.
Marc:I was judging you.
Marc:Why are you bringing the cat out?
Marc:What are you doing with the cat out in those situations?
Marc:But he's that kind of cat and fuck, you got him back.
Marc:You know, it just doesn't happen that often.
Marc:Congratulations.
Marc:I'm happy for you.
Marc:I'm happy for cat lovers everywhere right now.
Marc:What you know, you hear the story about the cat that disappears for 10 years and comes back.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I always doubt those ones.
Marc:But but this one sounds sounds legit.
Marc:And congratulations.
Marc:You're you're a winner that day.
Marc:OK, so the Emmys, let's go through it.
Marc:I went through it.
Marc:Why shouldn't I drag you through it?
Marc:So me, Sarah the Painter, go to the Emmys.
Marc:We got a car at like 1.30 to get there at 2.30 so I could go walk the photo line.
Marc:And she posed in a couple pictures with me, which we don't usually do.
Marc:But it kind of paid off because we got one of the cutest couples picture in People magazine.
Marc:That's exciting.
Marc:Got dressed up.
Marc:She was dressed up.
Marc:And then we got through the press line because we got there before almost anybody.
Marc:And we were in an entirely empty Emmys theater watching them do final touches on the set and getting cameras straightened out and the ushers getting their focus on for what was going to be a giant show business clusterfuck an hour away.
Marc:And then people started coming in and they started trickling in.
Marc:And I was sitting next to all the children.
Marc:I was sitting in front of all the children from Stranger Things and two rows behind all the cats from Silicon Valley.
Marc:All of us losers.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't really know.
Marc:I think we all won something.
Marc:But so it all started filling in and it was exciting to see.
Marc:I like, as you know, I enjoy running into celebrities.
Marc:I like seeing people I've had on the show so I can say hi.
Marc:I did see David Harbour.
Marc:I went out of my way to go engage with David Harbour, who also lost.
Marc:So after he lost, I made a point to go up to him and give him a hug and say congratulations.
Marc:He laughed.
Marc:And then he just lit me up, man.
Marc:Like David Harbour is like a...
Marc:human energy generating system he's like a battery man you just you lock in you stay open very exciting because I was starting to I was starting to fade a little bit we only brought a bag of almonds which we had to spread out I walked around a bit on a break ran into John Oliver we had a laugh about how hopeless everything is and how it's very hard providing hope because there isn't any but it's kind of our job to be as straightforward as possible with our hopelessness and somehow make it painfully funny
Marc:And he won a goddamn Emmy for it.
Marc:Congratulations, John.
Marc:There are a few people in this business who I adore and I think are great.
Marc:He's one of them.
Marc:I was happy for him.
Marc:So, yeah.
Marc:So I saw John Oliver.
Marc:I talked to him a bit.
Marc:And then, you know, I said hi to people here and there.
Marc:It was exciting.
Marc:You know, the kids from Stranger Things reminded me what it was like to be a kid for a second.
Marc:Not quite a kid at the Emmys, but, you know, that age.
Marc:michael and colin did a great job i think there was something odd about the pacing everything seemed to happen too fast yet it was still long i don't know how that happened but the the show itself was like they would you know quickly announce and show pictures of the nominees then just someone would walk out announce the winner they would run up they had like a second and they'd run off and even when they went up to get it they didn't sort of readdress with what the show was i don't know how it looked at home
Marc:But it seemed like I noticed they were doing something to quicken the pace of the show.
Marc:But somehow it sucks some of the humanity of it.
Marc:But nonetheless, I thought the people that did the jobs did the jobs.
Marc:Well, I got a couple of laughs and I stayed right up until after we lost.
Marc:I somehow Sarah and I left to get to go to the restroom.
Marc:The one time we left in the nine hour thing to go to the restroom was the segment where Mulaney won and the guy proposed.
Marc:The one segment where something actually happened with an amazing dose of humanity, we missed.
Marc:But we saw later on the internet because you can do that.
Marc:Oh, the big news is, okay, and I don't know if you're, this is the weird thing.
Marc:Out of everything that happened that night,
Marc:I got to the Netflix party, and right when I walk in, I see Cat Williams carrying his Emmy with his little crew there.
Marc:I walk up to him, I'm like, how you doing?
Marc:He goes, Marc Maron, you're one of the guys I want to work with.
Marc:I'm like, wow, no shit, Mr. Williams.
Marc:I call him Mr. Williams.
Marc:He's like, yup.
Marc:He's like, keep doing what you're doing.
Marc:I'm like, will you come on the show sometime?
Marc:He's like, anytime you're ready.
Marc:And I'm like, okay.
Marc:And then I walked away from that and I'm like, I don't know how to get in touch with Cat Williams.
Marc:I think he's tricky to get in touch with.
Marc:I know he is.
Marc:So I saw him again and I said, how are we going to do this?
Marc:He's like, well, let's just exchange numbers.
Marc:I'm like, all right.
Marc:So I pulled my phone out and then he sent a woman over to give me his number.
Marc:So, oddly, maybe not so much, that was a high point for me.
Marc:Getting Cat Williams' phone number and knowing that that could happen.
Marc:That I just have to text him.
Marc:I guess I have to do it when I'm ready.
Marc:I think that was the condition.
Marc:And only I can decide that.
Marc:So, Slash...
Marc:Wow, man.
Marc:I, you know, I didn't know, like, I'm a pretty big Guns N' Roses fan, and I like all their work, and I've always liked Slash.
Marc:I liked his whole presentation, but I've never seen Guns N' Roses live, and I've listened to the records, and I, you know, I could hear, I'd like to, in most of the records, you know, outside of the bigger riffs, I'd like to hear the leads up front a little more.
Marc:Like, I could not quite identify exactly the,
Marc:from my history of listening to any of his stuff, like exactly the nature of his style, isolated as a fucking guitar player.
Marc:I know he's great.
Marc:I knew that from all the riffs and what I could hear, and I like him a lot.
Marc:And he came, we had a great talk, and it's sort of a little guitar nerdy, so prepare yourself.
Marc:And I'm not even a full-on guitar nerd.
Marc:I only know a few things, but I really liked the guy.
Marc:And I love his music.
Marc:So that's given.
Marc:But I'd never seen him live.
Marc:So they asked me if I want to go to the Whiskey, as I mentioned earlier.
Marc:So I go to the Whiskey to see Slash and Miles Kennedy and the Conspirators.
Marc:Miles Kennedy, great singer.
Marc:He's done a few records, his new record, which is good.
Marc:He did what Miles Kennedy's singing in his band.
Marc:And I was real close to see Slash do his thing, man.
Marc:And he came out with his top hat and his sunglasses and his Gibsons.
Marc:But it was great to see him play and just to hear him so isolated like that.
Marc:I mean, Slash's job in this band is just he's the lead guitar player.
Marc:And he's laying down the tunes.
Marc:And you can hear he wrote some.
Marc:And you can hear by him playing solo in a band that he's been with for a long time just how much of Guns N' Roses is him.
Marc:his pace, his tone, his riffs.
Marc:But they didn't do, I think they only did one Guns song.
Marc:And as I found out when I talked to Slash, it was originally his song from way back.
Marc:They did Rocket Queen, which is one of my favorite fucking Guns N' Roses song.
Marc:And he fucking did like a seven to 10 minute solo in the middle of this thing.
Marc:And it was astounding.
Marc:The way he plays lead, he holds, he sort of like,
Marc:He slouches down a little bit, and he almost literally sets the Les Paul on his knee to play it so the neck is almost next to his face.
Marc:And he just is all in to those strings, man, and to his fingers.
Marc:And I've never seen...
Marc:Like, there was so much taste to it, so much style.
Marc:You know, the blues were definitely there and all the other Slash tricks and riffs and runs.
Marc:And I was just fucking blown away.
Marc:Stayed through the whole show.
Marc:Anyways, this is me talking to Slash.
Marc:solidly one of the greatest rock guitar players ever.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:And his new album, Living the Dream featuring Miles Kennedy and the Conspirators comes out tomorrow, September 21st.
Marc:You can get it wherever you get music and it's a great fucking rock record.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Me and Slash.
Guest:Do you have any of those, the Gold Tops?
Guest:Actually, I just used... I don't know what year that one was.
Guest:It's a reissue.
Guest:It's a Gibson reissue, the 56.
Guest:Okay, well, I used a real... I mean, it's just funny that you bring that up, because I used... On the new record.
Guest:A 56 on the new record.
Guest:That's what that is?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I knew it.
Guest:Well, not every song.
Guest:But a few, right?
Guest:The opening song.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And you can tell, because it's brighter.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:But I needed that sound, and I had that guitar.
Guest:I've never recorded with it.
Guest:I've had it for years.
Guest:I've had it since, like, 1992 or something.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:So I dragged it out and it ended up on like five or six songs on my record.
Marc:I just said to her, man, I was just listening to it in there.
Marc:I'm like, the guitar sounds different.
Marc:It sounds more like raw and weird, like one of these.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So that's what you did.
Marc:So you recognized that.
Marc:I fucking recognized it right away because I was like, what did he do?
Marc:That's cool.
Marc:I feel much more comfortable now.
Guest:I'm talking to a guitar nerd.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I wish there was more of one, but I do know, like, I'm kind of a cure.
Marc:Yeah, but still to be able to pick out that guitar.
Marc:Well, this, like, when I got turned on in that guitar, like, I was a Fender guy.
Marc:You know, I'm like, I'm no wizard on there.
Marc:I like to play straight through.
Marc:I'm not a pedal guy.
Marc:Like, that's an old 57 Deluxe right there.
Guest:Yeah, which is basically what I used, well, not on the whole record, but there's a song I use the exact same model.
Guest:Really?
Guest:There's a song called, hold on, bear with me.
Guest:uh the great pretender which is like the third to last song on the record and you just went straight in that with a 58 uh no with the 59 les paul the 59 i'm not an effects guy either i don't do pedals i just i mean occasionally you'll have a phase for something but right um but yeah 59 was it sunburst yeah yeah like uh like michael bloomfield used to play yeah yeah yeah fuck man
Guest:Like a real one?
Guest:A real one, yeah.
Guest:I've had it for years, and I've only used it in one session.
Guest:So on this record, for the most part, I used a 58, a 59, the 56 Goldtop.
Guest:And then I also have this one guitar that I've had for years, which is, we just call it the Derrick guitar, which is a handmade 59 replica that a guy named Chris Derrick made back in 1985.
Guest:And I got a hold of it in 1986, and I used it on the first Guns record, and it's just one of my, it's been my go-to recording guitar ever since.
Marc:And it's just the replicas from Dude Mates, like, exactly kind of thing?
Guest:Yeah, but back then they didn't do reissues.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he used to make these really incredible 59 replicas, and they're actually really valuable now.
Marc:So who like, what do you got, nicotine gum?
Marc:Yes, I do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was on lozenges for a decade and the nicotine lozenges.
Guest:You know, I haven't, like I quit smoking nine years ago, almost 10 years ago.
Guest:And when I did it, I had pneumonia.
Guest:I was just talking to Rick Nielsen about it on my way here because he just had pneumonia.
Guest:And pneumonia is what helped me quit smoking.
Guest:That and I saw Cher the night before and that's when I caught the pneumonia.
Guest:So Cher...
Guest:Help me quit smoking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, so I couldn't smoke.
Guest:I mean, I tried.
Guest:I couldn't breathe.
Guest:I just couldn't.
Guest:So I had two weeks on my back.
Guest:It's what you do try.
Guest:You do try.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I quit, and then I used the patch to sort of get the edge off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then I started doing the snus thing.
Guest:The snus, yeah.
Guest:And I was doing that for years.
Marc:I would go sweep with it.
Guest:I still, I mean, I did.
Guest:I sweep with snus in my mouth.
Guest:My significant other talked me out of doing it.
Marc:and so i started doing the gum and i sleep with the gum sure i mean that like i was off the lozenges just between me and you and whoever's listening to this i've been smoking fucking cigars right so i've been i've been off cigarettes for the same as you 10 days about 10 years and then i was on the fucking lozenges for almost like eight years and i would sleep with them then i would do snooze and then i fucking do dip pouches right now i got off everything for a while then i just started smoking cigars now like two of them yeah i'm a fucking junkie like that
Marc:It's just like, it's going to be one thing.
Guest:You know, all things considered, it's my last real bias.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I'm sort of like, I mean, I know that if I really put my mind to it, I could just quit like I would with anything.
Guest:Yeah, but it doesn't feel- I don't feel like, what's the reason?
Guest:Oh, she said, oh, you know, she's like, oh, you know, it can't be good for you.
Guest:That's right, right.
Guest:Yeah, that's- It's got to be bad for your blood pressure or something.
Guest:I'm like, well, you know, until someone reads me a scathing report about-
Marc:But isn't that fucked up about Snusso too?
Marc:Like with the snus, didn't you think like this is safe somehow?
Guest:Like it's better than chewing tobacco?
Guest:Yeah, and you weren't spitting into a cup and doing all that kind of stuff.
Guest:But then your teeth start to get loose.
Marc:I found some other brand that was like triple strong.
Marc:I'd get up with coffee and put one in and I'd have to sit down for a while.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Guest:But that's just the nature of it, man.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I mean, I was talking to a friend of mine, a musician, who's another blues guy.
Guest:And he's had some drugs and alcohols.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he just got his shit together.
Guest:And, you know, so we're sitting at Jerry's Deli and we're talking about, you know, like, you know, how hard alcohol is and how hard smack is and all this stuff.
Guest:But then the one thing that we both said, cigarettes, man, that's the tough one.
Guest:Yeah, because they keep coming around.
Marc:They're kind of available.
Marc:Well, but you get these triggers all the time.
Guest:Like, they only last for maybe...
Guest:I don't know, two seconds or something, but they're really, really potent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you can just get it watching somebody smoke on TV.
Guest:I saw somebody smoking at a bus stop, and I was like, whoa.
Guest:It happens at least once a day, every day.
Marc:Well, I think that it's rare, too, you see people smoking.
Marc:I was just in Chicago, fucking everyone still smokes.
Marc:They didn't get the memo, man.
Marc:They're just fat dudes smoking cigarettes outside.
Guest:Everywhere.
Guest:The problem is, is I was a compulsive smoker.
Guest:I chain smoked.
Guest:And I couldn't handle... That's not why I quit smoking, but I couldn't handle not being able to smoke wherever I wanted.
Guest:It just really... I was in...
Guest:calabasas one time it's one of the first times i'd ever actually been there yeah and i went to you know there's like some sort of outdoor molly kind of thing with theater it's like a pavilion or something right and uh and i got out of the car and i lit a cigarette and i was walking wherever we were walking to through the parking lot and they they said you can't smoke in here yeah i said what do you mean smoking here i'm fucking out here this is out here yeah
Guest:and it was like there's a rule you can't smoke it's a lot street right and uh i was and and so enough of that kind of stuff and i started i was smoking at gigs and i was in on tour in in the uk yeah and they told me said yeah well the smoking band's coming i said you guys are gonna have some serious problems there's an island
Guest:you're gonna have yeah they're gonna you know they're gonna riot it's not it's not gonna work yeah and so you know didn't finish the tour and while i was well uh came back like maybe six months later and they had passed this thing yeah and there was people sitting outside all smoking their cigarettes with their cocktails yeah and sitting on benches and some hotels that put monitors outside so you could watch tv and smoke and they just went down quietly
Guest:Wow, everyone did.
Guest:And it was like, wow, no repercussions whatsoever, no violence, no stoning or anything.
Marc:I think it's because there's a fundamental shame to people who are addicted to things that they know in their heart are bad for you.
Marc:You think that's what it is?
Marc:What are they going to really fight for?
Marc:It's like, can't we have the right to kill ourselves inside?
Marc:And can we take down everybody that doesn't smoke with us?
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because like after a certain point, you know, when you wake up and it's like, you hear your lungs, but you, like you said, like you had pneumonia and you tried to smoke.
Marc:Like after a certain point, you know, you're fucked.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, well, I mean, all things considered, they were finding me for every cigarette.
Guest:They were trying to find me for every cigarette I smoked on the stage.
Marc:like the venues yeah so it was like a hundred quid for every cigarette so we had to make up a bunch of stories and we got out of it but i mean i couldn't believe it got into that point that was part of the bill right yeah well let's talk like who those blues guys when you listen to blues guys because i have some questions we can talk about your life a little bit but i have guitar questions just for just because like i'm not as deep a nerd but like when because you have a lot of guitars you play mostly les paul's right yeah
Marc:But at the beginning, to get the tone you wanted, did you fuck with the electronics or did you just do amp and guitar shit?
Guest:I've always been... Well, okay, it's a deep question.
Guest:Because when I first started, yeah, it was just... I think I had a little Fender Princeton.
Guest:It was a little Fender combo thing.
Guest:And the first electric guitar that I had was a Memphis Les Paul copy.
Guest:This was, I guess it was 1980, right?
Guest:Did you just start playing?
Guest:I just started playing, yeah.
Guest:So I started playing when I was right around my birthday, so 14 going on 15.
Guest:And then so I had an acoustic guitar that I learned on with a one string on it.
Guest:So I learned all these one string riffs.
Guest:And then I had this cool guitar teacher in town, a guy named Robert Wolin, who was great, who taught me how to put the other strings on and some other cool shit.
Guest:How did you find the guitar teacher?
Guest:There was a music school on Fairfax and Santa Monica.
Marc:Well, okay, so let's go back and come around to this.
Marc:But you weren't born here?
Guest:No, I was born in Stoke and Triumph.
Guest:I was born in Hampstead, London.
Marc:So you were a British guy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm half.
Guest:My mom's American.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she was in show business?
Guest:Well, she's a clothes designer, and so she did all entertainers.
Guest:Was she around still?
Guest:No, she passed away.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:Right around the time that I quit smoking.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Because she died of lung cancer.
Guest:Oh, fuck.
Guest:Because she was one of those smokers that always said, I'm going to quit one day, I'm going to quit one day.
Guest:Oh, and you had to watch that?
Guest:Yeah, it was bad.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:While she was in the hospital, not to go back to this, but...
Guest:I would literally sit with her, go outside, smoke a cigarette, come back, sit with her.
Guest:And then the Cher thing happened, and that's when I said, you know what?
Marc:You were just at a Cher concert.
Guest:She's not personally responsible.
Guest:Yeah, but I had to leave for every song and go outside and smoke.
Guest:Oh, were you playing?
Guest:No, go outside and smoke.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And I think I'd worn myself down from smoking so much, and Cher just took me over the top.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That was...
Guest:every time she's taking a lot of people every time she revisited one of those periods she had a closet on stage yeah and she'd go in the closet and she'd come out and she'd be the indian and then she'd come out oh really oh and she'd be the for gypsies tramps and thieves every every single thing that she's been over her you know no kidding and it was i you know when she started with the sunny and share thing yeah it just killed me i couldn't take it so i would smoke every two seconds killed you in a good way or a bad way
Guest:i just didn't have any fond memories of that show or any of the other stuff you know so you but your mom uh she did she did her clothes she costumed entertainers yeah so she did i mean my mom did a lot of people um so like okay share was one of them helen reddy was another one dina ross oh that's why you're at the show david bowie yeah no no that's not why i was at the the share show why were you at the share show
Guest:Oh, because my ex and her buddies wanted to go and drag me along in Vegas, all places.
Guest:Anyway, so she did all these people, David Bowie, John Lennon.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I could go, this is a long list, Sylvester, remember Sylvester?
Guest:Stevie Wonder.
Guest:But also Flip Wilson.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Like a lot of-
Marc:He wore almost a tux on stage, kind of.
Marc:Flip Wilson, so she was the person, it sounds like.
Guest:Yeah, she was a pretty hot shirt.
Marc:What was her name?
Marc:Ola Hudson.
Marc:Do you know which period of Bowie or Lennon?
Marc:I just saw that exhibit.
Guest:Did you see it?
Guest:No, she's in it.
Guest:Her clothes are in it.
Guest:I mean, they have her thing of her clothes.
Guest:She did the cool period when he was the thin white duke, the suits.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the white suits.
Marc:That was her thing.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you lived in London how long?
Guest:I moved permanently to L.A.
Guest:in 1971, I guess.
Guest:1970.
Marc:Because I think we're like the same age.
Guest:I was 65.
Marc:I'm 63.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So now your real name's Saul, but are you a Jew?
Marc:No.
Marc:No?
Marc:You got no Jew in you?
Marc:No, but I'm in the book of Jewish famous people.
Marc:It's so funny.
Marc:Well, I thought I'd heard you're half Jew.
Marc:I'm full Jew.
Marc:I thought maybe he's half Jew, but you just got a Jew name.
Marc:No, I got a Jew name.
Guest:But I mean, if you were to ask my dad about it, he was talking about King Saul.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so it's a different thing.
Marc:Isn't that Old Testament?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not really good with that.
Guest:It's Jew.
Guest:It's pretty Jew.
Guest:Plus all my friends are Jewish, so I'm honorary.
Guest:What did your dad do?
Guest:He's a graphic designer and photographer artist.
Marc:Is he still around?
Guest:He's still around.
Guest:But during this time, he was doing all the album covers for Asylum Records.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So we lived in Little Canyon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I first moved to LA, that's where we lived.
Guest:So we were in the midst of that whole- In 71?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Very exciting stuff.
Marc:Where you just see, like, you know, David Crosby stumbling down the street?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, like, and Joni Mitchell was our, like, my mom did her clothes.
Guest:My dad did all her.
Guest:Zappa?
Guest:Zappa's down the street.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I used to love the swans.
Guest:He had this big lake.
Guest:Who did?
Guest:Zappa?
Guest:Zappa.
Guest:His house was on the corner of Laurel and... Woodward Wilson?
Guest:Lookout Mountain.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so there was the big, huge, tall shrubbery that surrounded the whole thing.
Guest:But if you peeked inside, there was a lake in there and he had swans.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:And I was just...
Guest:because swans they have swans in england so that was like my thing oh that was cool it made you feel at home yeah where now were these people coming and going when you were a kid or were your dad were they in that scene your folks they were we were all in that scene yeah um you know we were always at the troubadour and there was uh you know like we're talking about um linda ronstadt oh yeah so we had all the the
Guest:The Eagles guys.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:I didn't know who the Eagles would be at the time, but they all turned out to be the Eagles.
Marc:It's funny.
Marc:I didn't realize until recently that the Troubadour was sort of a low-key trip.
Marc:I mean, it was like kind of singer-songwriter laid back.
Guest:It was the spot.
Guest:It wasn't hard rock, though.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:No.
Guest:Singer-songwriter.
Guest:I mean, the biggest thing that happened at the Troubadour when I was a little kid was Elton John playing.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And everybody talked about it.
Guest:I didn't go, but everybody talked about it.
Guest:And that was like sort of a seminal L.A.
Guest:moment.
Guest:Talked to Walsh the other day, Joe.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:Joe's great.
Marc:He's another guy.
Marc:Just like what a chameleon sort of like guitar stories.
Marc:He's always sort of at these weird junctures, giving people guitars, hanging out.
Guest:Joe's great.
Guest:Joe, and he's one of my all-time favorite guitar players.
Guest:He's probably not listening to this, so I'll say all kinds of nice things about him.
Marc:Now, I don't know if they'll listen to it.
Marc:He's one of those guys where his kid got him over here.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Marc:His kid's like, you got to go do this cool thing.
Marc:So I had Joe over here.
Marc:He's pretty fucking sober, too.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I know Joe very well through a lot of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You do the thing?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I finally succumbed to that.
Guest:There was a point there.
Guest:And so the word surrendered to it, and I did.
Guest:I followed it to a letter.
Guest:I've been sort of out of it for a long time, too, because-
Guest:I do.
Guest:I follow it myself.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Well, that's the way if you program your brain.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you got good.
Marc:I got 19 the other day.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:August 9th.
Marc:Happy birthday.
Marc:Thank you, pal.
Marc:How long are you?
Guest:I have 12 years.
Guest:That's good, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:No one would have ever predicted that.
Guest:No.
Marc:No, you were headed for the box.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But there was a point there where, you know, the glory days are gone.
Guest:You cannot relive them.
Guest:You can't do it anymore.
Guest:And you can try.
Guest:You keep shooting for that.
Guest:It's just never going to happen.
Guest:But, dude, when you see dudes your age still at it, if they're still alive.
Guest:I was at a wedding recently, and some guy who was my age, if not probably older, asked me if I wanted to do a bump.
Guest:I was walking down a flight of stairs and he came up alongside me and said, hey, you want to do a bump?
Guest:I was like, what?
Guest:Because I hadn't, it just, and he said, you know, a bump.
Guest:And I was like, no, no, I'm good.
Guest:But it was weird.
Guest:And then I had another.
Marc:But do you remember hearing that in like 1984?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, well, it was normal.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was the most exciting question.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was expected.
Guest:It was the question you were waiting for.
Guest:Otherwise, you're going to have to ask people.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:You hold him.
Guest:We used to call you, are you William?
Marc:Are you William?
Marc:Is that what he called me?
Marc:yeah anyway we just say you got a bindle yeah yeah yeah good times yeah okay so about the guitars no it's yeah well so you got here you're living in laurel canyon you're a kid so but you're but i think what's what's interesting to me is that you know you were immersed in a creative community like you you come from it there was probably never any sort of like you shouldn't do this or that no you're always encouraged to kind of
Guest:Well, there was also a whole philosophy that my dad had about raising kids, which was to treat them as adults, right?
Guest:You have siblings?
Guest:I do, but he didn't come around until seven years after I was born, so he was a little younger than me.
Guest:So I was raised with a ton of sort of freedom, you know, sort of like...
Guest:uh i think it was a i think it was a spock thing at the time oh yeah yeah treating like adults basically yeah yeah so i just was sort of running around in this crazy i mean looking back on it it's it you it was really really cool people were really really cool right it's a different time yeah really intelligent very creative and outside of the system and just doing their thing um so it was very inspired and whatnot so it was it was good but i had i never had any aspirations to actually become a musician no what were you thinking
Guest:So, I mean, like the only real sort of natural talent that I had was drawing.
Marc:And the old man did that, so the pencils were around.
Guest:Yeah, so I was always drawing.
Guest:And I actually did a kid's book with Joni Mitchell that never got released.
Guest:When you were a kid?
Guest:Yeah, so I did the drawings and she did the poems.
Guest:Do you still have a copy of it?
Guest:My dad does.
Marc:Oh, I think everybody wants to see that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Keith Richards wrote a kid's book with his daughter.
Marc:Oh, no way.
Marc:He did.
Marc:It's out.
Marc:I can't remember what it's called, but I talked to him about it at the end of the interview.
Marc:I was like, how's it being a grandpa?
Guest:Did he write the... Yeah, yeah.
Marc:He did some of the... I can't remember exactly.
Guest:He's one of my... As all the musicians, at least, that I know, he's my favorite.
Guest:I think he's the funniest.
Guest:I think he's got the best fucking dry wit out of anybody.
Guest:And he's so fucking
Guest:and smart.
Marc:I don't know how long you've known him or what your relationship is with him, but I was just a fan.
Marc:He was my guy when I was a kid.
Marc:I was like, who didn't want to be Keith?
Marc:He's why I smoked.
Marc:He's why I drank Jack Daniels.
Marc:Right?
Marc:My first guitar was a telecast.
Guest:When I first met him, I was 13 years old.
Guest:Really?
Guest:How the fuck did that happen?
Guest:Seymour Cassell.
Guest:Back in the day when they all used to go to Seymour's house.
Guest:Okay, this is another story altogether.
Guest:Seymour has a son named Matt.
Guest:He's got a couple kids, but Matt was my best friend in high school.
Guest:And so if you know anything about Seymour, we... He's one of Cassavetes guys.
Guest:Yeah, he's one of that little team.
Guest:So they were pretty hard-edged.
Guest:Anyway, so we used to hang out there.
Guest:And that's where he's the one that named me Slash.
Guest:That's where the name Slash came from.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:so so we used to hang out there because well all right because uh and i didn't find this out until the 90s because he just called me slash and it just became a nickname yeah but i asked him why in the 90s because because you were always hustling and you were always going on the move you never stopped to talk you never stopped to hang out so it was always a whiz going by so it just goes slash yeah yeah right and i was like that's it that's it it's stuck
Guest:So Seymour used to live behind the riot house on Sunset.
Guest:And there was a house that was tucked away into this long driveway covered in trees and shit.
Guest:And then there's an A-frame in between.
Guest:And so they had some notorious weekend stuff.
Guest:And if the stones would come into town, that's where they would go.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:So I got to be friends at a young age with Ronnie.
Guest:And that's how I met Keith.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ronnie.
Guest:Wood.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So they were already, yeah, okay.
Guest:Self.
Guest:Friends of Seymour.
Guest:So we would go to stone shows.
Guest:So Keith was always a hero, and he was always very bigger than life.
Guest:I didn't really get to be what you call friends with him until after, you know, in the 90s.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:So you're here, and you're drawing.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So then, you know, we went through.
Guest:I mean, this is a very much hand-to-mouth, you know, living paycheck-to-paycheck kind of thing.
Guest:Were you a old man?
Guest:Yeah, both of them.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, because there was work, and then there wasn't work, and then when work would come back.
Guest:All right, right, right.
Guest:Nine to five.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Anyway, so I was just doing whatever and trying to sort of fit in at school, which I had an issue with all the way up until, really, until I started playing guitar.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:Who were you hanging out with?
Guest:Like the bad kids or just nobody?
Guest:I never fit into that whole thing.
Guest:A mainstream public school.
Guest:There was no corner that I fit into.
Guest:Or maybe just in your skin in general.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was okay.
Guest:Yeah, you felt all right?
Guest:All things considered, I was all right.
Guest:I didn't have a lot of issues.
Guest:I was half black and half white and half British, and that was sort of weird for a lot of people.
Guest:Did you have an accent at the beginning?
Guest:Yeah, back then I was like, yeah.
Guest:And I think I worked... I made an effort to get rid of it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But for everything else, I was... Same t-shirts and jeans, long hair and all that.
Guest:But then I just stumbled on the guitar without even knowing that much about it.
Guest:I had not...
Guest:i used to get turned on to go in to see bands set up the troupe and right starwood and you could get in because you were so and so's kid well back then i was with my parents because that's where they were right but you probably knew like they all knew the people that were involved that sort of knew yeah yeah there's a slash i guess i'm not i wasn't slashed then but right
Guest:but yeah yeah yeah so then and then uh uh steve adler i met when i was racing bikes i was racing bmx at this time like i was like so that was your crew that was what and so i was gonna i was gonna be a motocross i was i was aspiring motocross guy and i i met steven and steven had an electric guitar at his house and uh he used to just crank it up and and bang on it was he a hollywood kid
Guest:No, he's from fucking Cleveland.
Guest:But then on top of that, he was from Cleveland, but he lived in Reseda.
Marc:So was he older than you or was he with his folks?
Guest:About the same age.
Guest:He's like a couple months older than me.
Guest:And his mom kicked him out.
Guest:And so he had to stay to his grandparents in West Hollywood.
Guest:And that's when we met.
Guest:And so I got turned on, because he'd play guitar.
Guest:You know, that sort of kid fantasy thing.
Guest:And I was at that stage where you start doing air guitar and a cheap trick.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:So I thought, well, I guess I'll play bass.
Guest:But I didn't know anything about playing bass.
Guest:So I went to that music school.
Guest:Other than the neck strings.
Guest:Well, I didn't have an instrument then.
Guest:So then while I was sitting there talking to Robert, the teacher,
Guest:He was playing guitar, and he was playing Clapton and stuff.
Guest:And he was like, that's what I want to do.
Guest:And he goes, that's not bass.
Guest:That's lead guitar.
Guest:And I was like, that's what I want to do.
Guest:So that's when I went and found that one-string guitar in the closet.
Guest:So you never played bass at all?
Guest:Never did.
Guest:I do now sometimes.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Anyway, and then it was the hugest turn-on.
Guest:I mean, even just playing a couple notes that actually sounded like something.
Guest:It was just woo.
Guest:yeah yeah the heavens parted and all that like what clapped and stuff that was there was uh uh disraeli gears oh yeah that record all right so so you you have this uh cathartic moment and then you're like i'm gonna be a guitar player right and then to go back to your time i got an electric guitar and the first thing i did was take that little princeton and i had the the the les paul copy right i got one of those mxr distortion pluses
Marc:Oh, those are great.
Guest:Yeah, the shit brown one.
Guest:Yeah, it was like a puke green, yellow kind of thing.
Guest:And that was that moment where I was like, oh.
Guest:The MXR Distortion Plus was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And now, you know, I started learning about what everybody's using.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But that specific sound, that's true, because you kind of held that for a while.
Guest:Well, that was the thing.
Guest:I mean, I think all I've been doing ever since then is just trying to do what it is that turned me on in the first place.
Marc:You never perfect it, so you're just constantly trying to... It's like drugs, but sure, so you're that young, and that first time you turn that MXR Distortion Plus on, it's a very specific type of distortion, that one, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it's a little compressed.
Guest:It's a little compressed.
Guest:I mean, when you're 14, 15 years old and you do it, it's like, wow.
Guest:And then you sort of slowly but surely graduate from there.
Guest:But the one thing about music and about guitar sounds that's different from drugs is that there are always plateaus that you can reach.
Guest:And it goes on forever.
Guest:With drugs, you hit it one place.
Guest:Usually in the first couple of weeks, you started doing it and it's all down.
Guest:Exactly, and there's no real skill set.
Marc:Well, that's something else altogether, but just because you said like drugs.
Guest:Sure, the feeling, the endorphin, the rush.
Marc:But yeah, you're not going to kind of evolve the way you use drugs to a degree where it's like, I'm really getting creative with this.
Marc:You do, but it's not taking you anywhere.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's not like learning flamenco guitar, right?
Guest:No, no, it's not at all.
Guest:I think you cook it up and that's about as far as you're going to get.
Marc:i've really nailed this i've taken this wherever it needs to go so so how long wait did now i guess the question at this point for me is that like in terms of natural ability versus like practicing your ass off i mean like i mean you can have a feel and stuff but how much do you do like in order for you to get from the beginning there i what what what were you learning what were you how were you practicing to get to um
Guest:Well, I mean, I was learning.
Guest:I mean, well, that guy, Robert, he said he was going to teach me guitar lessons, right?
Guest:So you start out like, I don't know if you ever took piano lessons, but the same kind of thing, scales and this and that.
Guest:You can read music?
Guest:No, because I didn't do this for very long.
Guest:But I gave it the college try, and I learned a lot from watching him play.
Guest:And he goes, well, if you can learn this lesson next week, I'll teach you any song you want me to teach you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was like, okay, cool.
Guest:So, you know, I mean, I was listening to Zeppelin and Sabbath and Aerosmith and Cheap Trick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I had the Stones and Beatles and The Who and like all those tons of records.
Guest:That first Aerosmith record is underrated.
Guest:It is underrated.
Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, all things considered.
Guest:You know what's wrong with that record is it didn't sound, it was actually, it didn't sound, in 1973, it didn't sound as good as other records did in 1973.
Guest:That was the problem.
Guest:Songs were great.
Guest:Playing was great.
Guest:Nice, loose.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, it was all awesome.
Guest:It's own thing, yeah.
Guest:Sonically, I think that's why it didn't cross over like it should have.
Guest:anyway so i can't remember what the first riff i had him teach me was but i watched him do it he put the record on and he had the guitar and he just sat there and listened to it and figured out the notes yeah so i can do that and so i eventually left there with all due respect to to robert yeah i learned a lot of cool things i have some picking techniques scales pentatonic no no just up and down picking um pentatonic stuff well just because learning those licks off of a record
Guest:Yeah, that's where I stop, pentatonic and I'm good.
Marc:You can play blues here and then move it down two and then it's major.
Marc:Yeah, well, see, you put some thought into it.
Guest:There's theory behind that.
Guest:Anyway, so I quit with the lessons and I just started learning.
Guest:So I was learning Keith and Mick stuff and Mick Taylor and Keith Richards.
Guest:Open chords.
Guest:open chord stuff some of it i didn't go all the way down to yeah like with with uh with keith he's got a lot of of open chord technique yeah which didn't totally interest me right i know more of it now than i did then yeah but uh but a lot of mick taylor single note lead stuff that was a big thing so so uh can you hear me knocking like is there just like that solo
Guest:I never had to listen to anything else.
Marc:That's McTaylor?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's regular tuning?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you sat down.
Marc:You were one of those guys who sort of learned the leads.
Marc:Yeah, so I was learning everything.
Marc:Yeah, and you had an ear for it and you figured it out.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Hours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The guitar and I were inseparable.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I used to walk around with one of those little...
Guest:What was it?
Guest:Walkman?
Guest:No.
Guest:The Rockman?
Guest:The fucking tape deck.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Box, boombox?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like Panasonic.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The one with the handle?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that and some cassettes that I used to steal from Tower Records.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And my guitar.
Guest:And I was...
Marc:what was like when you started playing what was like the the one the the guitarist that you were sort of learning who who was the real you know portal like was like what what guitarist like blew you the fuck there was there was a few mick taylor i named was one jimmy page was another old eric clapton yeah one hendrix was one
Guest:That was all sort of going on.
Guest:Oh, and Aerosmith.
Guest:I mean, there was an Aerosmith record called Rocks.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And I credit them for that was the record that I identified with attitude wise.
Guest:And so that was an important one for me.
Guest:I mean, that sort of set me in the direction that I ended up.
Guest:oh really yeah rock that's sort of really loose drunken aggressive misfit fucking rock and roll thing yeah yeah it's a different production too huh yeah it's you can tell it was right before everything took over yeah when they were still having fun with all the you know even Jack Douglas who produced it somebody I know pretty well they were all just having a good time you know and just decided to make the heaviest rock and roll record and yeah they did you know it's really bassy and muddy and you're friends with those guys now yeah
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Perry's... Both of those... I think the other guy, he doesn't get enough credit.
Guest:Oh, Brad?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, Brad's major.
Guest:I mean, there was Brad... I think Brad... Whitford?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Brad and Joe, collectively, were one of the best dual guitar teams.
Guest:But Brad's playing was so different than Joe's.
Guest:It was very much lick-oriented, whereas Joe's is lick-oriented, too, but he had a lot of dynamic...
Guest:like a a sort of a punch here or a dive bomb there right that's a whole different kind of trip and he plays he plays in a in his own zone like you know like he's actually he plays he's so unorthodox just the way that he plays um and he uses the same fingers everybody else does but just the way that he fingers stuff is very different
Marc:And like what did you feel about in terms of like knowing that relationship between because like, you know, a relationship that Keith has with Ronnie is obviously it's like was meant to be, you know, Ronnie and Keith.
Marc:You know, Keith and Mick, you understand why that didn't quite last.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But like with Izzy, did you have that with him?
Guest:Yeah, well, I think, I mean, I don't know what other guys do.
Guest:Still to this day, I don't know what other dual guitar... For me, it was always like, you know, I play my thing, you play your thing.
Guest:And we never sat down, really, and worked stuff out.
Guest:It was just jamming, and we sort of knew what the chord changes was.
Guest:We wrote something, I play it this way, and he play it that way.
Guest:And it just worked.
Guest:And that was about as much effort as ever went into it.
Guest:And so even with guitar players that I work with,
Guest:like in my band or in the Guns N' Roses, I'm playing with Richard now.
Guest:It's really, I hate to sort of sit there and studiously work out guitar harmonies or like these sort of like perfect guitar passages.
Guest:No.
Guest:So I think, you know, listening back to guys that came around doing the dual guitar thing way before we did, it was, it seems for the most part, the bands that I like anyway, it sounds very natural.
Guest:It doesn't sound thought out.
Marc:Well, it's funny because when you realize that everybody's following Keith, which seems like insanity, but they are.
Marc:But Keith is always following Charlie.
Marc:Right, but their relationship is sort of like, yeah, I think it goes back and forth because sometimes I've read that Charlie's sort of like watching Keith.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, because he might keep trying to go from being behind the beat.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because that can turn the whole thing around.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So there was a language there.
Guest:But that's what makes a unique chemistry.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because that doesn't necessarily... Other people get freaked out.
Guest:I can't adhere to that fucking lack of commitment to structure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I need to... I mean, but some people just get up and jam and they can speak to each other without even...
Guest:just playing and sort of inherently or instinctively, sorry, go into the thing that he expects the other guy to do.
Guest:And if it doesn't happen that way, he can react accordingly.
Guest:And it's just that kind of natural synergy is what makes a band like The Stones different than another band.
Marc:And also, I guess the players, it's better if they really have a voice on the thing.
Guest:yeah right yeah yeah you know it's important i mean well especially for a rock and roll band where guitar is is is the one of the main instruments of the whole thing right i mean it's the other lead instrument you know you got your bass and drums yeah so it needs to you these guys need to be able to speak right it needs to be a personal right it can't just be a guy who's just a kind of uh
Guest:Well, here's the chords.
Guest:I'm reading along.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I saw Phil Monick last night with John Williams, and you see those guys play.
Guest:I mean, okay, we're talking about an orchestra.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, I understand why everybody needs to cue.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But in a rock and roll band, you've got a sort of very personal artist with a certain voice that needs to sort of- You have to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's only four chords.
Guest:Express themselves.
Marc:Three or four chords, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that's the weird thing about when, that changed my mind about thinking about playing, is that for a long time it was three chords, really, for the most part.
Marc:And everybody, it's not how fast or what you play, it's if you are speaking with the thing.
Guest:Yeah, no, I mean, listen, the most important thing, guitar players, God, it's...
Guest:guitar is a very competitive like everybody especially nowadays everybody's trying to be you know they've got their techniques down their speed their this that reminds me of x games yeah where it's just like how much you can wow people but really what's important is to be able to express yourself be able to sing or speak you know with your own voice and to be recognized as yourself right whatever that is yeah you know even if it's three notes
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that's really what matters is be yourself and have that translate and have it.
Guest:And people might pick up on it or they might not, but at least you're being honest.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's what you learned from the blues guys, right?
Marc:You know, from Freddie, Albert, BB, any of them.
Guest:All the Kings.
Guest:Those are my, the King, the three Kings are my favorite blues.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when did you, when did you and Adler start playing in a band?
Marc:We had a couple different bands.
Guest:But they weren't really full-fledged bands.
Guest:There was always a member missing.
Marc:And usually it was the singer.
Marc:So you played with him for a while.
Marc:So how did Guns... I'm sure you've told the story a million times, but not to me.
Marc:I was in L.A.
Marc:I was a doorman at the Comedy Store in 1986.
Marc:But you guys were it then, right?
Marc:So when did you join those cats?
Guest:I started working.
Guest:I had a group with Stephen, and then I had a group with Stephen and Duff for a short amount of time.
Guest:Couldn't find a singer.
Guest:Duff's cleaned up too, huh?
Guest:Yeah, he got cleaned before I did.
Guest:He's got a few years before I did.
Guest:And then I met Izzy, and Izzy had a thing with Axl, and I saw Axl with Izzy later.
Guest:It's hard for me to remember exactly.
Marc:What kind of player is Izzy?
Marc:I can't seem to know.
Guest:Well, when I first met him, he was, oh, fuck.
Guest:He seemed more Keithy.
Guest:It was Keith, Johnny Thunders.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Johnny Thunders.
Guest:A little bit more electric than Keith.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:but uh it definitely had a uh a very like he was i always say knee slides it was a guy that doing power chords and knee slides right and it was really it was it was really really cool and then so those guys had a band obviously then i ended up well met axel had a band called hollywood rose and i joined up with him yeah and izzy was in it and izzy quit and so steven again like the first time okay and
Guest:And so Steven and Axel and a guy named Steve Darrow, great bass player, very big Alice Cooper influence guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we had a band called Hollywood Rose and that split up.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so, you know, so all these different things happened.
Marc:And this is all in, what, 82, 83?
Guest:No, this is like 84.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, 83, 84.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Axel had Hollywood Rose and this guy Tracy had this band called L.A.
Guest:Guns and they merged.
Guest:L.A.
Guest:Guns, yeah.
Guest:And became Guns N' Roses.
Guest:And then Duff, after working with Steve and I, he was living across the street from Izzy.
Guest:So he ended up joining Guns N' Roses.
Guest:And then Axel and I talked at one point.
Guest:And he goes, I guess he had a falling out with Tracy.
Guest:So I said, well, I want to come back and do it.
Guest:so i started working in it and then the the drummer there was this gig that we were going to do we're going to do a tour up to yeah of of the pacific northwest because duff is from up there and he knew all the venues right and so when when the original drummer guy heard about this he said i'm not going i'm not going up there with you guys why you're out of control it's just yeah totally out of control
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It probably didn't feel stable enough for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I called Steven, and Steven came in.
Guest:You're like, great, we're all out of control.
Guest:And then we went up to do these gigs up north, and the car broke down in Bakersfield, so we hitchhiked up there, and that was really what cemented this band.
Guest:With your equipment?
Guest:Well, we left the van and the equipment in the U-Haul.
Guest:And we had two guys that were sort of like roadies, friends of ours.
Guest:And they were going to get the car fixed and meet us up there.
Guest:They never did.
Guest:So we borrowed this van that Duff knows equipment called the Fastbacks.
Guest:And we did one show.
Guest:They tried to not pay us.
Guest:In San Francisco?
Guest:No, this was in Seattle.
Guest:And then we got a ride back.
Guest:And we were together after that from that point on.
Guest:So the car ride was the bonding experience?
Guest:I guess, yeah.
Guest:I think the whole experience was pretty bonding.
Marc:So when did you start?
Marc:What were you doing drug-wise from then?
Marc:Where did it start?
Guest:Realistically, in all honesty, it was mostly booze.
Guest:I wasn't a Coke guy then.
Guest:I had a bad experience with Coke on my birthday trying to play after doing a gram or something in my head.
Guest:And from that point on, I was always sort of indifferent about it.
Guest:coke so mostly mostly drinking then i didn't get into the other stuff because the other stuff drug of choice is the obvious dope yeah and that didn't happen until like 1985 19 yeah right right around when you guys were working on appetite yeah right before we got a record deal
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or not right before.
Marc:But it seems like L.A.
Marc:at that time, because you, like, it's interesting, you were able to witness the sort of intimacy of that Laurel Canyon thing.
Marc:And like, you know, like, L.A.
Marc:was a small town musically in a lot of ways when you were growing up.
Marc:And even in the 80s, it seemed like if you watch that decline in Western Civilization.
Marc:I love that movie.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:But like, all you guys knew each other.
Marc:Right?
Marc:I mean, there was just this battle of the bands every fucking night in this city.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we were definitely the only five guys in town that could have made up that
Guest:band yeah you know because we we all hated pretty much what the 80s scene in LA was about because it was too like too fluffy it was too fluffy it was it was contrived you know it was totally um everybody was getting the look together yeah I don't have any real chops right real background right yeah music history or
Marc:So you guys were all the bitter, angry dudes?
Marc:I guess we were a little angry.
Marc:Honoring the rock of the monsters.
Guest:I think a lot of it, there was just a general attitude.
Marc:So hair metal was what you were up against.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so we went in, going in, just doing our thing against, it was us against everybody else.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's so funny because I know John Daniel.
Marc:Do you know John Daniel?
Marc:I'm trying to think who that is.
Marc:He was a bass player in Candy.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:And now he's in music management, but he's Gilby, like him and Gilby were buddies.
Guest:Oh, Candy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, I remember, funnily enough, we played Madame Wong's one time, and Candy was playing, and that's how I first became aware of Gilby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was funny because when Gilby came into the whole thing, that's where I remembered him from.
Guest:Right, from Candy.
Guest:He'd be perfect because there was a lot of guitar players that had this sort of dyed black hair, sort of Johnny Thunder, whatever kind of thing going on.
Guest:Ryan Roxy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What was his band?
Guest:What was Ryan Roxy in?
Guest:Do you remember?
Guest:I can't remember.
Guest:I played with him.
Guest:He was in Snake Pit for a little bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I can't remember exactly where he had going on.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But it was a similar kind of a thing.
Guest:It's a certain guitar player kind of look.
Marc:So when you guys come out with Appetite, you're up against all that shit.
Marc:It's a different trip, right?
Marc:And didn't it kind of, when he first released, didn't it take a couple years before it popped?
Marc:Wasn't there a weird story around it?
Guest:Well, I mean, Guns was probably a good example of a band that nobody really wanted to see happen except for the people that were directly...
Guest:uh involved with it you guys and us and we had a we had a a manager at the time and an a and r guy why didn't they want to see it happen because we were just you know we were unsavory i guess you know in terms of attitude we weren't playing the game the way that everybody else was doing it and we played by our own set of rules and we just did things our way
Guest:And so, you know, granted it was a good band, you know, it was a little risky and scary for most everybody in the industry.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:They thought they'd got beyond that shit.
Guest:Well, whatever they were thinking.
Guest:They just, you know, they'd show up at a rehearsal, you know, thinking because someone said, well, you should sign this band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great.
Guest:And they'd walk into rehearsal before we were done with the song, just seeing how we worked, they were gone.
Guest:We had a lot of that kind of stuff going on.
Marc:Everyone doing their own thing, drinking their own shit, doing their own drugs.
Guest:Yeah, and loud and whatever.
Guest:It's hard because I'm so close to it to get a perspective of what other people thought they were seeing.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So when we finally did find a producer to do the record, which is Mike Klink, we went in, we made the record.
Guest:Who was it?
Guest:Mike Klink.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was a really great engineer that worked with Ron Nevison for years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, so, so we did the record and then, you know, we got onto a, you know, opening slot with the cult, uh, going across Canada and stuff.
Guest:And it wasn't, you know, it didn't, it, it, it was, the record didn't explode in any way, shape or form.
Guest:And so then the label wanted to drop it, you know, so it took some effort on a few people's part to keep us.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So it came out in 87.
Marc:It came out in 87.
Guest:And I remember like, cause we hit, we started hitting, uh, in 1988.
Marc:Right, because I read a piece... I remember I had hit the wall on drugs and I had moved back to Boston and I was living in an attic in Somerville trying to get sober the first time.
Marc:And there was an article in Spin basically about this album came out a while ago and no one fucking noticed it properly.
Marc:It's like, this is where this should be.
Marc:This is the rock record of this decade kind of trip.
Marc:But it'd been out for almost a year, right?
Guest:I mean, it'd been out longer than a year, I think, when it finally...
Guest:And I think we put out Welcome to the Jungle.
Guest:And it built up this sort of cult kind of following.
Marc:Yeah, because you were saviors of rock.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We definitely wasn't Bon Jovi.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:So we had this core group of followers that we weren't totally aware of because you're on the road.
Guest:You don't really know what's going on.
Guest:And we're just having a good time being on the road and doing our thing.
Guest:But then Sweet Child of Mine came out, and it was a big MTV thing.
Guest:And I hate to say it, but that really exploded.
Guest:I always hated MTV.
Marc:Was that with him in his white leather suit?
Guest:No, it was Paradise City.
Guest:That came out afterwards.
Guest:So Sweet Child of Mine, and we had that single, and that really blew up.
Marc:Paradise City and Rocket Queen are actually my two cuts.
Marc:Those are the ones.
Cool.
Marc:I don't even know why.
Marc:I like Sweet Child.
Marc:I like the whole record.
Guest:The riff in Rocket Queen was actually a riff that we were doing when Duff and Steven and I had a band called Blood Crew at one point.
Guest:That's where Rocket Queen first started.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it was like, I didn't realize until I'm looking at it right now.
Marc:I mean, the life of it,
Marc:It was only like, what was it, five years of guns?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When you were in the original.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Well, it started at, let's say, 85 to 96, so 10, 11 years.
Marc:Oh, you really did it.
Guest:We hung in there.
Guest:After 96, then there was a point there where everything sort of went south, and so I went off and started doing my own thing, and we didn't get reacquainted for 20 years.
Guest:how much was it like you know in terms of looking back on it as like just a sober cat like how much did did drugs shred the band ultimately i mean well i mean when did you start getting strung out it wasn't the catalyst yeah um we managed and and the thing was is like for me professionally yeah when we were touring yeah for the most part i didn't use yeah i drank which was always acceptable right
Guest:But when we were off the road for any extended period of time, I'd go down the black hole and I'd have to pull myself out of it and all that.
Guest:But I think it was more, I mean, obviously any kind of chemical influence is going to have some bearing on your logic and how you handle certain situations and all that kind of shit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:so i'll you know i can't say no it wasn't that but you were losing members but there was yeah there was other yeah like to death no no no to like you gotta go clean up and come back kind of shit um well that was later there was a situation with steven yeah that happened but it was a pretty irretrievable kind of way you know and we were we were trying to get him together but he just you know is he still around yeah yes he's still around
Guest:So there was the lying and all that, and it just wasn't going anywhere.
Guest:And Steven wasn't the kind of person that, under the influence, he could just show up and play.
Guest:So there was different people had different ways of handling it.
Guest:Couldn't handle the high.
Guest:Right, something like that.
Guest:But I'd say it was more of business management and shit like that that really was the catalyst for splitting up, at least my leaving.
Guest:oh really so the underlying theme was definitely that right about money it wasn't necessarily about well yeah it was about money for those guys yeah for us it wasn't about money but it was also you know playing playing guys against each other and i don't want to get into all that sure sure yeah well i i'm you know i'm not uh such a gnr nerd where i'm gonna be like what about that you know so i didn't expect that
Marc:you know you you know i have a broad it's a it's a it's a complex and and and ultimately very personal thing sure so we just like after a while just like you know what it's not it's not worth even trying to explain yeah but then also like i mean it's got to be hard to imagine coming from where you all came from and doing the work and then you know becoming this like you know mega million dollar touring band and recording band i mean that's got to change that was hard too
Guest:i mean you know the adjustment i'm not that guy you know so it was really it was really sort of culture shock i can't imagine and that was hard so that that really helped where you just want to sort of bury it all yeah oh yeah like you know i want to get back to just me in my room i want to ride my bike again sitting in your house you don't want to go anywhere you don't want to hang out in all the places you used to hang out at yeah
Guest:And you're just, so you just ended up isolated, doing smack and just, you know, it was hard.
Guest:It was hard, but you know, I learned a lot from it and I've been, went through it so many times that now if I've got, if I, if I get it down, yeah, just downtime.
Guest:So now I'm just a complete workaholic.
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's like, you know, congratulations.
Marc:It's hard to come back from smack.
Marc:I mean, you know, really due to like, you know, a lot of kids.
Guest:I'm really actually, I look back on a lot of shit that I went through and I'm just really, really fortunate.
Guest:Someone up there was looking out for me because I, you know, I redlined so many times and I'd come back and I'd be like.
Guest:In the hospital?
Guest:Oh, in the hospital.
Guest:Sometimes on the floor with paramedics somewhere.
Guest:I mean, all kinds of shit.
Guest:And it didn't.
Guest:it didn't freak me out so I would just keep going right it was just sort of like this is part of it you know yeah it's like smoking with pneumonia exactly it's just sort of like it's not it's not like a focused um death wish kind of thing but you just are not intimidated by any of the pitfalls of the shit that you're doing you just keep doing it if something happens to you but you didn't want to die no I had no you know but you would just do whatever and whatever happens happens occasionally you just died sometimes yeah
Marc:You never came back from being dead with any sort of wisdom?
Guest:No, it never irked me.
Guest:It's like, well, now that... How long?
Guest:Because they pump you full of Trixon or whatever it is.
Guest:It's like, well, how long before I can get high?
Marc:Oh, you're in, man.
Marc:Seriously committed.
Marc:The other records, like the ones you did... Like, I listened to all the other soul records.
Marc:I listened to Velvet Revolver, like that.
Marc:You know, Scott, that's a sad song.
Guest:Dude, man.
Guest:I was listening to Velvet Revolver...
Guest:Night Before Last because we're rehearsing right now and we're going to do a Velvet song and I hadn't heard it in a while.
Guest:Guns is?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Oh, your band, yeah.
Guest:And so put the song on and then just let it play and listen to the rest of the record from there.
Guest:And I was like, wow.
Guest:Yeah, and there was some cool stuff on there.
Guest:And Scott was brilliant, but God, there was somebody that there was just no...
Guest:Coming out.
Guest:We thought, when we got into it, we thought, well, shit, we've been there.
Guest:We can rally behind him and get through it.
Guest:But there was just, it wasn't happening.
Guest:But he was great, man.
Guest:Such an amazing talent.
Guest:Yeah, good singer.
Guest:But that was who he was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, sort of, you can't really mourn that in the way that you would normal people because you sort of...
Marc:That's how he was going to go that way.
Guest:Yeah, you live on the edge and shit happens.
Guest:He committed.
Guest:It's sad.
Guest:He was so good at it, though, that it surprised me.
Guest:That he could function?
Guest:It shocked me.
Guest:No, it shocked me when something happened, yeah.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Was it a mistake, an accident?
Guest:Well, I mean, it's usually an accident.
Guest:It's called bad chemistry, you know?
Marc:Yeah, and now you're lucky you're out before this fentanyl shit.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:But no, I'm just saying that you seem to be, with every record, you're still evolving.
Marc:You're still doing shit you want to do.
Marc:I mean, this record sounds like a fucking solid hard rock record.
Guest:We did this at my, I have a little studio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Here in L.A.
Guest:And it's just raw.
Guest:And we had this guy Elvis, who is great producing it.
Guest:And I said, I just want to keep it stripped down.
Guest:We keep trying to do a fucking stripped down record.
Guest:And then something manages sort of...
Guest:you know sneak its way in like what how does that get away from you on a production you can get you can get overproduced with drums you can you can get overproduced with vocals but who's in charge of that how come it's just something that you you know you go in and we always do it live yeah right and then and then you know you start piecing it together from there and it's just something that can sort of happen without you really realizing so you lay down you do a couple you do a master track and then just start cutting into it
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, so you do a master track, and then you put the guitars on, and everything's cool, and you're doing vocals.
Guest:But somewhere along the way, there can be some EQ stuff that you put on the drums.
Guest:It really affects the overall.
Guest:Ah, right, right, right.
Guest:And you don't really see it coming, because you don't hear it on the drums so much to yourself when you're soloing the drums.
Guest:And it's also just from not wanting to have to deal with every little thing every step of the way.
Guest:You just want to play your guitar and focus on that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what's going on with that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, so I remember when we were doing Velvet Revolver, we went in there, basically did the record the same way that I've always done records.
Guest:And we're doing this little tiny studio down in Hollywood, right?
Guest:The place where Hendrix worked.
Guest:I forgot what it was called.
Guest:But so everything's going fine.
Guest:And one day I realized I'd left something at the studio.
Guest:So I'd gone home.
Guest:I came back.
Guest:And I found the engineer just pro-tooling everything together.
Guest:Just moving everything so it's all perfect.
Guest:And I was fucking shocked.
Guest:And I just didn't have the experience to know that that was going to be something that might happen.
Guest:Because it's pro-tools.
Guest:So he was tightening up the beauty?
Guest:The looseness?
Guest:He was losing it.
Guest:Yeah, just moving everything so it falls right on the beat and everything's perfect.
Guest:And cleaning up any of the nuances and just making it all...
Guest:and that freaked me out i i and but that's what the way the record ended up sounding because there was nothing i could really do about it at that time i was like oh go back and you know and then i'm one fifth of the band too so it's like right um but so on this one it was just like we did it on a fucking 16 track
Guest:And although we did it for the first record in a while, we did do it digitally because I just didn't have the resources to do an analog record.
Guest:But we didn't sit there and fuck with everything.
Guest:And that's one thing I always very...
Guest:you know, attentive to is to make sure that we don't start getting into tweaking stuff and making it sound too sweet.
Guest:And then, and the other thing was just having a conversation with all of us saying, we just got to keep this thing raw and fucking.
Marc:Oh man, right out of the gate.
Guest:I love it for that.
Marc:First chord.
Marc:So I, well, this is it.
Marc:Well, good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you got a good, you got a hit single already, right?
Marc:Apparently it's doing pretty well.
Marc:Driving right?
Guest:Yeah, I don't follow the, they tell me if there's a, you know, a point that they should tell me, you know, something cool is going on.
Guest:So yeah, I guess it's the fastest charting single I've had as a solo guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Rock is back.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I don't know if we're going to, rock is in a very funny way right now because this industry is just not, it's not a rock business anymore.
Guest:It's hard to figure out what business it's in.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I was thinking about it.
Guest:It's the Ed Sheeran business.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I mean, it's all types of top 40 that they've been putting all types of music into the top 40 filter.
Guest:So, even country music for a minute there sounded like, you couldn't tell it was, they said it's country band.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and hip hop is huge and that's all sort of going into this sort of very mainstream.
Guest:It'll do what it's going to do until people are tired of it.
Guest:But rock will always be there.
Guest:And there's always going to be guys that really fucking appreciate what rock and roll is all about and doing it.
Marc:I think that's true.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, there's a lot of guitar selling.
Marc:Everyone's buying guitars.
Guest:People love guitars.
Marc:Yeah, they do.
Marc:But what about that, like the blues combo that you put together, like the blues record that you did?
Marc:Or it's not even a record.
Marc:Did you just tour with the blues?
Guest:The blues ball?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The bass player for that band was the guy I was talking to the other day that I mentioned earlier.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Um, that was just a, you know, like when, after the sort of Guns N' Roses thing, I just started throwing bands together and jamming and playing on other people's records and just playing all the time.
Guest:I was pretty out there just doing all kinds of shit.
Guest:And I had this one sort of offshoot band with some friends of mine called Slash's Blues Ball.
Guest:which was really i remember hearing it somewhere though it was really cool man we just did a lot of covers so there was a couple was there a record no uh-oh yeah no we just went around uh playing any place that would have us you ever think about just doing a blues record it did you know it's been it's come up you know at some point i'm sure that'll be the thing that'll be the statement i want to make but right now it's just not you listen to that uh rolling stones one that that that was great that was i mean that was a really great record it's actually in my car it's
Guest:crazy it's so good and then and to to really you know i mean i the way that they played it i think you maybe with stone's record sometimes you forget yeah and so when you hear them playing all these old standards you're like wow you know you really stop and listen to how great they are well yeah because like you know like that's the one the one liability of the blues is also the beauty of it which is that any idiot can play him
Marc:So, like, you know, the difference between a bar band doing a Jimmy Reed cover and the Stones doing it is that, you know, the Stones, they're the fucking Stones.
Guest:That's where they come from.
Marc:That's where they come from.
Marc:They're like, when you hear them play, you're like, now with all this wisdom experience, they're a real fucking blues band.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, it just blew my mind, dude.
Marc:And Don was told me, he just...
Marc:You know Don?
Marc:Yeah, I've talked to him.
Marc:I love Don.
Marc:Yeah, sweet.
Marc:But I talked to him about that record because he said they would just dick around during rehearsals and play blues numbers.
Marc:And he was recording them.
Marc:And there was no pressure to do a blues record.
Marc:But he said, you guys should listen to these that you were just dicking around with.
Marc:And they knocked that thing out in like three days.
Guest:Yeah, and that's the beauty of it.
Guest:In this day and age where everything is...
Guest:you know, the way things are put together for them to, as the Stones, who can obviously fly in a record and fly it in from anywhere and to put it through.
Guest:They did it like the old school way.
Guest:And it sounds amazing.
Guest:And it's just, it's great to hear something.
Guest:It's really refreshing.
Guest:In this day and age especially, I mean, that would be a good record at any time.
Guest:But in this day and age especially, to hear something sound that good that was done in a way that a band, that's what a rock and roll band is.
Guest:It's guys interacting with each other.
Guest:And like I said, that chemistry.
Guest:combination of personalities musicians that come together and make a unique sound unto them yeah and people sort of forget that so you're going to tour with miles yeah i'm going to tour with miles uh september into october then go back out with guns in november and december is guns doing any are you guys working on a new song we'll see what happens
Guest:Let's just leave it at that.
Guest:Are you in the studio?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:We just got off the road and then I went straight in to do this.
Guest:And it went good on the road?
Guest:That was great.
Guest:Dude, it was a miraculous couple years.
Guest:I was going to say a year and a half.
Guest:But it's been, as of this November tour, it'll be more than two years.
Marc:The people love it, right?
Guest:It's been great, man.
Guest:It's been, I mean, you know, and I was so like...
Guest:There was so much whatever.
Guest:The idea that that would ever happen was such a far-fetched thing in my mind.
Guest:And so when we played, I guess it was the first show at the Troubadour, and from that point forward, it was just like, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The people were there for it, right?
Guest:Yeah, no, the people were, I mean, I have to say that, you know, with all due respect to the 90s, it was great, but the people coming to the gun shows around the world for this thing has just been unbelievable.
Marc:So, and also, you're awake for it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It actually, you know, one of the things, I haven't really figured it out yet, but one of the things that I noticed about it is that I've known, you know, Axl and Duff for 30-some-odd years now, and we played these songs.
Guest:A lot of these songs I've played a million times.
Guest:Some of them, some of the new stuff, I haven't played until just this tour.
Guest:But it's weird because it's all seemed... Like what, from what?
Guest:Well, Axl's record.
Guest:Oh, okay, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, so there is, there is, you know, those moments on stage I'll look over and, and, and, but it doesn't remind me of anything from the past.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which is weird.
Guest:So I don't have like, you know, those moments of like reminiscing where like in the middle of Welcome to Jungle and all of a sudden I flash back to another time.
Guest:No, it's right now.
Guest:It all seems very present.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Marc:So that's a trip.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I wanted to ask you about session stuff, because you worked kind of, not extensively, but a few.
Marc:I was doing a lot of stuff.
Marc:Right, but like a few times with Michael Jackson, right?
Marc:Like several songs and some live stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was it like to work with him in retrospect now that he's gone?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Michael's great.
Guest:I mean, you know, I got that phone call from Guns' tour manager, or no, manager at the time.
Guest:And he said, well, Michael Jackson's on the phone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I was like, wow.
Guest:And I remember I was at the Riot House and I was with some chick.
Guest:And I was like, okay.
Marc:The Riot House is on top of the Roxy?
Guest:Where is it?
Guest:No, the Hyatt.
Guest:It's not the Hyatt anymore.
Guest:Oh, the old Hyatt.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Next to the comedy store.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Next to Seymour Cazell's house.
Guest:Oh, yeah, right, which is behind it, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I was like, okay, let me get my shit together.
Guest:And he goes, well, just meet him down at the record plan at such and such a time.
Guest:So later that night, I went down there.
Guest:And it's funny, and I don't mean to name drop, but he was there, and the studio was very dark.
Guest:And it was him, and it was Brooke Shields, right?
Guest:So that, for me, I was like, Blue Lagoon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:i'm out of my element which album this is this was dangerous and uh i guess it was like 92 91 or i'm not sure but uh anyway so we we met he was very nice very cordial and she wasn't but yeah no she was just being herself yeah and then so they took off to dinner and just left me with the track yeah and just do what you want
Guest:and it was cool it was this song called given to me and i you know put some guitars on and stuff and he really dug it and then he asked me to come down a couple times after that and then we did a bunch of live performances like we did an mtv thing and then i played with him like in italy one time and in germany and then we did a video he just flew you out yeah yeah and so i and it was fun because the whole show or just the songs
Guest:I would go for the show, but I'd go up and play three songs or whatever.
Guest:But it was great working with him because he is one of those great artists that when he would walk on stage and do his thing, and he was a real hard worker, sound check and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:And dancing.
Guest:Yeah, well, that's what I was saying.
Guest:He'd get up there and start doing the choreography stuff, and one guy, and there's 30 other people doing the same move.
Guest:You could tell Michael was just naturally gifted.
Guest:thing that just flowed through so that was pretty pretty amazing wow to be around and you know all things considered he just wanted me to be me and he seemed to really dig that and van halen played on beat it right or on one of them it was beat it yeah before yeah you friends with eddie yeah how's he doing he's good he's good i actually i don't talk to eddie all the time i mean when i say friends we've we've hung out a couple times and whatnot but i did talk to him recently on the phone and he seemed really good
Guest:That's good.
Guest:And what was this thing you did with Carole King?
Guest:That was a long time ago.
Guest:Actually, okay, Teddy Zigzag, who was the keyboard player, he actually was on the road with Gunz in the 90s, but he was the singer-keyboard player for Slash's Blues Ball.
Guest:He was this guy I jammed with all the time.
Guest:And he worked with Carol.
Guest:And so they asked me if I would come in and I think I recorded a song with her, how it happened.
Guest:And she was great because she goes back to that period.
Marc:Lieber and Stoller.
Guest:Well, it's just the whole Laurel Canyon thing.
Marc:Oh, even before I was going back to her husband, Goff, and they were like bro building.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But she was back in the, she knew the folks?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I think she knew my mom.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So it was cool.
Guest:It was an honor to go in and work with Carol on something.
Guest:And then they had me come and play at the Jazz Fest in New Orleans.
Marc:That's a wild venue for you.
Marc:People must surprise people when they see Slash come out.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It was fun, though.
Guest:It was a gasp.
Guest:And tell me about the film production company.
Guest:The film production company.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, I produced a horror movie back in 2013, I guess it was.
Guest:And it was one of those experiences where it was just fraught with problems.
Guest:It was insane.
Guest:But we managed to pull it off and we finished the movie.
Guest:That would be something that either turns you on or turns you off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I turned me on, and so I'm still doing it.
Guest:And so I've got all these different things going on in different stages.
Guest:But I've got a couple deals that just closed.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To make movies?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm not going to talk about it because I'm not going to jinx it.
Marc:But it's going.
Marc:It's a slow process.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it's nice to work a different muscle.
Guest:Well, it's also something that when I was a kid in England, I was turned on to music without...
Guest:at that time it was like the fucking who and the yard birds and the kinks and stuff my dad was into all that shit the other thing was horror movies yeah i was just naturally just oh you that was your thing yeah yeah so that stuck with me all throughout and then in the millennium you know the horror genre had been dumbed down to its fucking stupidest denominator yeah
Guest:And I just thought, you know, I would love to be able to get involved with trying to make something that was a little bit more story-driven and character-driven.
Guest:What are some of your favorites?
Guest:Well, right off the top of my head with The Omen, the original Omen.
Guest:It was a fucking great movie.
Guest:It was a drama with a little fucked-up twist to it.
Guest:But it was just intellectual enough.
Marc:The twist was the antichrist.
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, it started out he was just a kid.
Guest:Turns out.
Marc:It always starts out that way.
Marc:But it was a great feature.
Guest:But I mean, Night of the Living Dead, when I was a kid, I saw that in a drive-in with my mom.
Guest:That and The Exorcist, Double Bill.
Guest:And it was just like, God, this is the best.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And there was a lot of great movies that came out through the 70s and then into the 80s.
Guest:But I think when we got into the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises, everything started to go in that way.
Guest:Just murder thrillers.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And that's not, you know, like... Dumb kids going like, what?
Guest:Going there?
Guest:Sleepaway camp.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, whatever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're going to bring back story-driven.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Marc:You like those Rob Zombie weirdo movies?
Guest:Well, Rob makes movies that really disturb me because he makes movies about psycho rednecks.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But his movies are great, but it's a different thing than what it is.
Marc:It's kind of a riff on B-movies, and he uses a lot of those real dudes.
Guest:Yeah, and he's good at what he does, and he does, it's all his thing.
Guest:So you gotta love that.
Guest:And he succeeded at it.
Guest:Writing his own flicks and his own style and doing it.
Guest:Did you play on that last Alice record?
Guest:the last out no no no wait wait yeah i did a lot of people on no i did play on it i played on yeah i did but you know when i played on it there was only a couple of us on there and then it morphed into schools out uh with with the pink with another brick in the wall yeah thrown into it and then by the time i heard it back there was like eight or nine of us guitar but i don't even know which one's mine right right right
Guest:one of the cool things about alice and knowing him for a long time is like if you want to find a rock star model to be like he's the guy yeah he's so cool um and he's aware that it's a character in a show well yeah but he as a yeah yeah exactly he's pretty unaffected but you know he had to get he had to get his act cleaned up too yeah yeah yeah which is where the golf thing came in which to me was always be had been very anti-rock and roll
Marc:Oh, it's golf.
Marc:It's conservatism and Christianity.
Guest:It took a lot.
Guest:I accepted it with Alice because I knew where it came from.
Guest:I always saw golf as something you should be into because that's when those guys get up early in the morning and work out fucking stealing shit from you on your contracts.
Guest:Your attorney and your managers and all of them, that's when they get together and work out your life.
Guest:Do you play?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:You do anything?
Guest:You do physical?
Guest:You do it like working out?
Guest:I'm not really sort of like a sports guy.
Guest:Me neither.
Guest:I go to the gym and stuff.
Guest:Oh, you do?
Guest:Yeah, you have to.
Guest:Get some cardio going?
Guest:Yeah, to keep up with this pace of this.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, I love it, man.
Marc:The new record sounds great.
Marc:Good luck with the tour.
Marc:Great talking to you.
Guest:It's been great talking to you.
Guest:It's fine, man.
Guest:And I have to say, since I don't want to put you on the spot, but you're fucking awesome at Globe.
Guest:oh thanks buddy dude i know that guy yeah we all know that so i love it i had no idea and i have to i have to thank megan because she goes you gotta watch this with me it's really good and i was like gorgeous ladies of wrestling i never watched it when it was on tv right but she got me into it and i was like oh man this is great i remember this yeah right yeah well thanks man it's great meeting you nice meeting you
Marc:All right, that's it.
Marc:I love that guy.
Marc:How can you not love that guy?
Marc:Again, the record, Living the Dream featuring Miles Kennedy and The Conspirators comes out tomorrow, September 21st.
Marc:Get it wherever you get that stuff.
Marc:Do I play some guitar my way?
Marc:The simple way?
Marc:The amateur way?
Marc:After I talk to one of the greatest guitar players that ever lived?
Marc:No.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:I don't.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Boomer lives!
you