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Musician - June 1992
Slash Shows His Face
by Matt Resnicoff
The rebellion
you appear to represent has been undercut by your popularity.
At the point we're going at now, "rebellious" and trying to
do something that's conducive to the art start to be two completely different
things. It gets separated because what you started out as, which was sort
of rebellious, kick you in the ass, kind of fuck-you attitude, turns into,
like, almost the element of the band that made it become commercial. [laughs]
A lot of parents bitch at me for saying this, but when your mom and dad
and grandparents and your girlfriend's parents like your band, it sort
of kills the whole thing! [laughs] It's nothing against having
your mom and dad like what you do, it's just that the whole rebellious,
anti-society attitude you start out with, when it finally becomes accepted,
doesn't make any real sense as far as where you're coming from, where
your band's coming from. And that's what's happened, so you just have
to deal with it realistically. And I don't think Nirvana's attitude about,
"Now that we've got here, it's fucked, and we're not gonna do anything"
makes sense. That's copping out to some sort of - I'm sorry to say it
- but pathetic, "It was easy to do what we started out with; now
we have to deal with something.
Is this in part a reaction
to the fact that they don't want to tour with you because of some of your
lyrics?
No, it has nothing to do with that, they just don't want to work.
Axl and I are supposed to go over to the singer's house and talk with
him. I don't know him personally. They don't want to go out, and the vibe,
from my point of view, is just because they don't wanna fuckin' deal with
"mainstream," which
there's no such thing as mainstream
if you don't want it to be that way. I love their record, but I can't
stand the fuckin' attitude. Because we spent our entire career as a band
doing what we wanted to do in the way that we wanted to do it, going totally
against the mainstream and getting to where we are now, which is great.
If you have something important to say, you don't give up and flake out.
[laughs] Because once you get there, it paves the way for other
bands. We're in the mainstream only because the mainstream has become
part of us. They've adapted to what we do.
Rebellion is relative - it's
funny how the music you're playing is based on everything from Kiss to
Skynyrd.
You know what it is? It's a rock 'n' roll thing. A lot of people have
forgotten what that was all about. I listen to old ZZ Top records and
go, "Fuck!" It's like history, and nobody even knows what they're
doing anymore. It's that boogie and blues thing, and jamming and just
improvising, you know? Everything's so preplanned and intense as far as
business goes that everybody missed the whole fuckin' point somewhere
along the way. And we get flak for maintaining what I thought got me into
this in the first place. And sometimes you forget what got you into it;
you start to go with the flow, and every couple of days you listen to
an old record or even your own records, and go, "This shit's really
screwed up now, isn't it?" [laughs] I've become really aware
of how detached from the rock 'n' roll mentality this industry gas gotten.
You go to a concert, and even the people in the crowd are clueless. They're
into it if you show it to them, but otherwise, they don't know what they're
getting into at all. I mean, it's not like they're expecting to
just hang out, have a couple of drinks and listen to music anymore, it's
like some sort of bizarre congregation where you're gonna go in and listen
to a certain amount of songs and there are going to be certain songs off
certain records and it's gonna be done, and then they're gonna
go back to school or home or their families and say, "Oh yeah, they
played this song" - which they expected to hear - "Yeah, they
did it." [laughs] I mean, last night we didn't do two of our
biggest hits because we forgot to do 'em, and we didn't think twice about
it until the end of the show. [laughs] But we had a great show.
You're also getting called
out over your vodka endorsement.
Well, I ran into this vodka in Europe called Black Death, and on the bottle
was a top hat and a skull, which is sort of my moniker anyway. It tasted
great, so I drank it for a couple of days and that was it. I did an interview
where I said, "We don't do endorsements for cigarettes or beer or
what have you. The only thing I would endorse would be Black Death
vodka." A couple of weeks later I get a call saying, "Black
Death was interested in you doing that," and I said, "Okay!
Cool!" It was just in Europe at the time. Now that it's stateside,
I'm getting all kinds of flak from people saying I'm influencing the youth
of America. Fuck 'em, the vodka's great. Everybody's supposed to be smart
enough to make their own decisions, you know?
Apart from the anger you'd
probably experience at being scrutinized
I don't even get angry, let's get that one straight. It's par for the
course. I can understand where people can be pissed off because I'm endorsing
something that is not necessarily healthy, and maybe I have some influence
on younger kids, but at the same time, the way I grew up, and where I
come from, I've done it for myself. As far as influencing kids
goes, I didn't know that was my fuckin' job, ya know?
You say people should know
better, but you may be smarter or more fortunate than kids whose incompetent
parents leave their minds in your hands. You've been given this power,
and it's up to you what to do with it.
There's no way I can condone some religious drug - and alcohol-free life.
No way. This is an opinion; I don't want to force it down anybody's throats.
You get involved in things, you make your decisions, and the only one
that's gonna be able to figure those decisions out is yourself. Now, if
you're so easily influenced and gullible that you have no idea what those
decisions mean to you, then you're fucked, right? So I'm not talking to
those people. [laughs] I can't recommend what I've been through
to everybody, but if you're sheltered by your parents or some moral idea
of what your life is gonna be like, you're missing a lot. You don't have
to drink or do drugs or even have sex before a certain age, but you have
to do what you think is fun, because life's too short. Be smart about
it, though.
You were lucky because people
were depending on you, though. Even business people.
No, I'm talking about before that. I was 11! [laughs]
You had drunk
I didn't drink when I was 11, I used to smoke pot. Look - in Italy, kids
have a glass of wine with every meal. It's how you look at it. If you
realize you're getting drunk, stop. Or if somebody offers you dope, it's
your choice to get into that. Peer pressure is the lamest excuse for drug
addiction. I got into dope because I thought, "Wow, all right, let's
see what this is like." It wasn't because anybody told
me to do it.
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