Did Keith Richards ever ask, "Pardon me, but do you mind if I shoot up?" I don't hang around them, so I don't know if rock stars tend to seek permission or bother to excuse their antisocial behaviour. (Richards does have manners; he considered it to be the poorest etiquette to overdose in another's loo, for one thing.) Anyway, I'm not sure I expected Slash to ask me if it was okay to smoke before he lit up, but he didn't. He's two feet away from me, on the hotel-room couch, and I'm leaning in a bit with my tape recorder, because he's a little laid-back (or "mild-mannered," as he puts it). So, as he draws and puffs, I'm in on the whole Marlboro experience.
I wouldn't have it any other way, though, even though I'm an avid non-smoker. Heck, if the guitarist had asked me if it was cool to smoke, I would have replied with astonishment: "Is it cool for you to smoke? Are you joking? Dude, it would be so totally cool if you did smoke."
If he didn't believe me, I could have walked him over to the other room, where a cardboard box full of copies of his new autobiography sat on a table. The cover art is a headshot, with the former Guns N' Roses member in classic depraved rock-star pose, iconic cigarette on his bottom lip, dangling like a participle. The nose ring, the hair in the eyes, the hazy stare, the crazy top hat - it's all there.
In the flesh, the Mad Hatter-like lid is replaced by a backwards ball cap. He's calm, drinking coffee (not Jack Daniels), and the room is rather untrashed. His book, co-written by Anthony Bozza (author of bios on Tommy Lee and Eminem), chronicles a chaotic history of extreme behaviour and drug and alcohol use. But, by the end of 457 pages, Slash is sober. He still is - for 18 months now. "I kind of had to just burn out on it," the surprisingly fit-looking 42-year-old says, referring to numerous attempts at cleaning up that didn't take in the past.
Sobriety hasn't altered his look at all - leather pants, shades, skull ring, bracelets and black cowboy boots announce him as rock star. Slash, the stereotypical stoned rocker, says he has never played up to the image. "I'm just a guitar player who likes rock 'n' roll and the life that goes with it. It's a life I've always led."
When asked if you can have sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll without the drugs, Slash, who survived a heroin-related near-death experience in the early 1990s, laughs a bit. "Yeah, definitely you can," he replies, before adding, "But it was a big part of it."
Heroin, cocaine and drink may be in the past, but the divorced father of two didn't make it out unscathed. His book opens with the admission that doctors gave him six weeks to live when he was 35, his body beaten up by years of debauchery. Since then, a three-inch implanted defibrillator keeps his heart pumping.
Slash, born Saul Hudson, is not an invalid; he certainly looks up to the nerdy challenges of the rec-room rockers that test him relentlessly on the popular video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. In real life, there is some question about his status: While he isn't among Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, a 2004 Internet poll conducted by Guitar World magazine slotted him 15th.
Asked if he thinks of himself as a guitar hero, Slash is demure. "No, not really," he answers, amused. He has played the video game, but hasn't faced himself as a contestant. "I'm a practising guitarist," he continues. "It's one of those things you work at your entire life and you never master."
That's a stock answer, isn't it? "It's hard to put on airs unless you have this kind of mentality where you think you're a hero before you even learn how to play, and that was what you were striving for. There are some very arrogant players like that, but I don't fall into that category. I have good moments, but I'm not consistent enough to be able to walk around like that."
That he's able to walk around at all is something of an accomplishment. He was born in Stoke-on-Trent, England, but as a child moved to Los Angeles, where his parents worked in the entertainment industry (his black mother, as a costume designer to the stars; his white dad, as an artist). By the time he was a teenager, Slash had developed a taste for soft drugs, competitive BMX riding and assorted delinquencies. After the raw, dark sound of Aerosmith's Rocks changed his obsession from bike racing to guitar, he eventually got together with the musicians that formed Guns N' Roses, included among them an intensely odd singer from Lafayette, Ind., named Axl Rose.
"I remember my dad even told me, back in the day," Slash says on the subject of his former bandmate. "He said, 'Don't go down with the ship, because that's where Axl seems to be taking you all the time.' "
Rose was volatile and young Slash didn't need his father to tell him so. Once, after the singer was abusive to Slash's grandmother, the guitarist confronted him about it while driving along Santa Monica Boulevard. Although Slash "chose his words carefully and presented the issue in a very non-judgmental, objective tone," the moody singer began rocking back and forth as he stared out the passenger-side window, before he opened the car door and leapt out without a word, landing on the pavement at 40 miles per hour. He made it to the sidewalk and took off down a side street without looking back.
"He's different," Slash says, "simply put."
In print, the guitarist comes off as the peacemaker of the unruly group, handling Rose with kid gloves. Slash left the band in 1996, but he still hasn't taken those gloves off. The book is not an anti-Rose manifesto. "Everybody's looking for that," Slash says. "Everybody loves to have some dirt, some negativity. They thrive on it, and I didn't want to feed that. That's not what it was all about."
Although the pair were not particularly close - Slash describes them as like fishing buddies who have nothing to talk about if the talk isn't about fishing - the guitarist is charitable when speaking of Rose. "He can be a really endearing, charming, sweet guy who's a good guy to have in your company," Slash says. "But there's another side of Axl that is very self-sabotaging. So, even though he's a perfectionist, extremely talented and will work to no end to achieve a goal, he will tear it down in a split second."
Under those circumstances, the band that broke big in 1988 with the album prophetically titled Appetite for Destruction could hardly have been expected to last - not with a singer who provoked riots by walking off stages early (St. Louis, 1991, and Montreal, 1992) and a drug-and-booze-addled lead guitarist as main attractions.
While Rose continues to lead an otherwise anonymous Guns N' Roses, Slash now records and tours with Velvet Revolver, a hard-rock outfit that includes combustible singer Scott Weiland as well as two former members of GNR.
Every journalist who has spoken to the guitarist since he split with Rose has asked him about a possible reunion, and I see no reason to break the string. So, Slash? "I don't see it happening," he says, not riled at the tired question. "It's not happening now, and it's not going to happen any time in the near future. But you never know - crazy things happen."
They sure do, crazy things. You could write a book full of them.
***
Sweet Line o' Mine
Slash wasn't the chief lyricist for Guns N' Roses, but his book reveals a talent for one-liners:
- "That's a wonderful side effect of leather pants: When you pee yourself in them, they're more forgiving than jeans."
- "I thought of my hallucinations as my good-time entertainment."
- "I couldn't deny the fact that kicking Steven [Adler]out of Guns N' Roses for drug abuse was kind of ridiculous and excessively harsh."
- "It was a monumental gig, but the most memorable part of the evening was when I took my pants off in front of Liz Taylor."
- "I had no remorse about my overdose - but I was pissed off at myself for having died."
- "Under the circumstances, I did the only thing that made sense: I hung out with David Lee Roth all night."
B.W.
Brad Wheeler