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Rolling Stone - April 20, 1995
by Katherine Turman
Slash takes a working vacation from Guns N' Roses
with his new band, Slash's Snakepit
Even under the best of circumstances,
the Hamburger Hamlet that anchors the west end of L.A.'s Sunset Strip
is lacking in serious ambiance. At 3 in the afternoon on a rainy Saturday,
though, the venerable if unremarkable restaurant is surprisingly crowded,
the day's watery light lending a strangely cozy, slightly surreal air.
The eatery's
proximity to the Atlantic and the Geffen record company offices makes
it a humming power-lunch destination during the week. Weekends, however,
find plastic-surgerized Beverly Hills matrons quaffing diet sodas and
kibitzing in the restaurant's brighter front rooms while the serious drinkers
huddle in the welcoming banquette booths or at the bar in the slightly
more dissolute atmosphere of the taproom.
Perched on
a Barstool is one Saul Hudson, colloquially known as Slash, Guns N' Roses'
guitar guru. Save for the hefty diamond studs glittering in both ears,
Slash -- sporting facial scruff, a backward baseball cap, a hoop in his
nose and a cigarette dangling from his lips -- might be any other wannabe
rock star enjoying a mid-afternoon cocktail.
Slash accidentally
arrived an hour early for his scheduled interview, but unperturbed by
the time mix-up, he waves to the waitress -- clearly an old acquaintance
-- grabs his vodka and cranberry from the bar and slides into a booth,
leaning forward conspiratorially. "Mr. T is sitting two tables away,"
he says sotto voice, excitement in his eyes.
Though jet-lagged
and unshaven, the guitarist proves loquacious, candid and relaxed. While
he's got the slacker-musician vibe in spades, his conversation moves between
topics -- from piercing ("The next time you see me, I'll have my
navel pierced") to Les Paul ("He wiped the stage with me once")
-- with frightening rapidity and surprising clarity, never straying far
from his current raison d'être, a down-and-dirty little rock & roll
lineup known as Slash's Snakepit. Featured on the band's 14-song debut,
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere, are ex-Gunner guitarist Gilby Clarke,
present Gunner drummer Matt Sorum, Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez and
former Jellyfish background singer and guitarist Eric Dover on lead vocals.
Slash waves
at the maitre d', who, kindly, has not asked the guitarist to extinguish
his cigarette despite stringent new anti-smoking laws in L.A. "That's
Don," Slash says. "He's from the Sherman Oaks Hamburger Hamlet
that was destroyed in the earthquake."
Slash drags
on his cigarette and downs a shot of Jagermeister. "This is the whole
scheme," he says, shifting gears. "Initially I was just writing
what I thought was cool. I was a kid in a toy store. I had a studio in
my house. Get up in the morning. Literally. Press ON. Plug in your guitar
and go. I don't look at stuff from the concept of writing the quintessential
hit record. Just guitar riffs.
"When
Guns got off the road," Slash continues. "I had the studio built
right next to my snake cage, a walk-in with all these 20-foot snakes in
it. It's Slash's Snakepit at this point, because all of a sudden there's
an all-girl band in San Diego called Snake Pit." He laughs. "Don't
ask."
Mr. T's voice
rises above the din, and Slash peers at him over the heads of the other
diners and grins, his eyes crinkling. "If Dean Martin were here,
that would be classic," says the 29-year-old guitarist. He settles
back into the booth and easily picks up his train of thought. "It's
like I'm owned by Guns N' Roses in a way," Slash continues in his
intimate, stonerish timbre. "It's our band. So if I write something,
my first and foremost priority would be to dedicate it to Guns."
He draws heavily on his cigarette as the maitre d' hovers. "At the
time, no one seemed to be interested in the material. Axl (Rose) said,
'That's not the kind of music I want to do.' I said, 'OK,' and took it
all back. We've had that happen too many times in Guns, when certain songs
just didn't make it, and they would have been killer. I didn't want to
lose any more material."
Slash wasn't
planning on a solo record -- "side project" being the much-preferred
term. "It's not a solo project," he says, "because everybody
in the band got to play whatever the fuck he wanted." The third original
member of Guns N' Roses to release a solo album (following bassist Duff
McKagan and ex-guitarist Izzy Stradlin), Slash wrote all the music to
the songs that appear on It's Five O'Clock Somewhere in his home
studio, completing the initial concepts and tracks in early '94. The LP
title was taken from a generous bartender at LAX airport, who gave Slash
an early morning drink with the dictum "Hey, it's 5 o'clock somewhere,
pal."
"The coolest
omen," says Slash, "was the night I recorded three songs and
mixed them that night, which I normally wouldn't do. I went to bed with
the DAT in my hand, all 14 songs."
"Actually,
I was going to have sex," he confesses with an impish grin. "I
took my tape and said (to wife Renee), 'Honey, I'm done.... ' And it was
like Godzilla came to town. It was so freaky, so surreal. I'm pulling
down my clothes, trying to get into bed, and all of a sudden the TV at
the foot of the bed, it just went."
The time was
4:31 a.m., Jan. 17, 1994. The Godzilla in question was L.A.'s 6.7 earthquake.
The Hudson home in the Hollywood Hills was totaled, but with the disaster
came the realization that it doesn't take much to make Slash happy.
"Everything
I really cared about," Slash says, "which is my snakes and cats
and Renee, were OK. I lost one guitar."
The laid-back,
classic yet punky rock & blues music found on It's Five O'Clock
Somewhere, co-produced by Slash and GN'R knob twiddler Mike Clink,
reflects Slash's easy going personality and tongue-in-cheek humor as well
as the input and feel of his comrades. Topics range from suicide to sordid
and amusing L.A. rock chronicles to relationships, with Slash writing
the words on two of the tunes, "Be the Ball" and "Take
It Away." With the exception of Clarke's "Monkey Chow,"
the rest of the cuts feature various songwriting conglomerations. From
the sensual, melancholic, harmonica-laden "Neither Can I" to
the Humble Pie vibe of the beefy first single, "Beggars and Hangers-On,"
to the biting indictment and equally wild musicality of "What Do
You Want To Be," It's Five O'Clock Somewhere offers more than
an hour of raucous rock & roll. And, yes, it's somewhere in the Guns'
musical milieu. Vintage Guns. The LP does, thankfully, lack the bombast
that has characterized recent Guns performances and songs like the melodramatic
"November Rain."
"Guns
have a tendency to sort of close themselves off," says Slash through
a mouthful of salad. "I hang out all the time in general, so I don't
feel totally alienated. In Guns N' Roses, because we get whisked off in
a limousine and Lear jet, this whole thing of flying coach and getting
in a van is great (for me). It's so much more fun. After you've played
100,000-and-some seaters, where do you go? The Empire State Building?
Not to knock what Guns does -- that's great -- but Guns can't go backward
to the point where we all pack up in a van and drive up to a show."
A flaxen-haired
woman quietly appears at our table and announces that she's from Geffen
and will be waiting outside with a car when Slash is through. The guitarist
seems slightly surprised but replies politely and makes no move to leave.
To the world at large, the term "rock star" would certainly
seem to suit Slash, yet it's far from the truth. The axman even cops to
what seems to be a touch of genuine insecurity. "Go figure,"
Slash says, swigging from his drink. "When I first did the Snakepit
thing and people wanted to hear it, I was really shy. I didn't play it
for anybody. But it's been well received. If you communicate with the
people you're dealing with and drop your guard a little bit, you realize
that's who you're dealing with," Guns N' Roses' cadre of handlers
makes the inner workings of the controversial lineup virtually impenetrable.
The status of GN'R appears to the outside observer to be neither here
nor there, with the band lying low subsequent to the 28-month world tour
supporting Use Your Illusion I and II, which ended in early
1993. The most recent collective stirrings from Guns N' Roses are the
reliable grapevine gossip that Guns were rehearsing with ex-Ozzy Osbourne
and current Pride and Glory guitarist Zakk Wylde filling Clarke's slot.
Slash, however,
seems to wish that the band would be in a different place at this juncture.
The guitarist had high hopes that the Guns' recording of "Sympathy
for the Devil" for Interview With a Vampire would motivate
the band to record again.
"It didn't
work," Slash says. "We didn't all show up at the same time in
the studio -- put it that way. And that was pretty indicative of what
I didn't want to happen." He's confident, though, that Guns N' Roses
will fall into place when they're ready. Meanwhile, there's Snakepit to
keep him busy.
"When
the Snakepit thing is over, and I've got that out of my system,"
says Slash, "we all seem to be pretty amicable about how we feel
about each other as far as Guns are concerned. I just want to do a really
cool Guns record, and I don't want to push it 'cause I don't feel like
we have to rush it out to keep up with the Joneses. So when everybody
feels comfortable doing that... I don't know exactly where (Rose's) head
is at, as far as what that should sound like. It changes from month to
month."
"But we
talk," Slash continues. "We're fine. All the rumors and all
that kind of stuff, it's between us. It's sort of like getting involved
in someone else's marriage: You don't know what's going on, but people
love to write about it. Me and Axl and Duff are obviously way the fuck
more close and personal than they can even possibly put out in some magazine.
That goes back to when Guns started, before we even got signed. The first
quote that was in Music Connection was 'They'll be great if they
live long enough.'"
Drugs, and
by proxy, death, are a big part of the GN'R myth, playing roles in song
and on stage tiffs. "The only reason I'm working so much now,"
says Slash, "is that the last time Guns took some time off, that's
straight where I went (to drugs), before the Stones gigs." (Which
prompted the infamous Guns onstage "breakup" at L.A. Coliseum,
with allusions by Rose to a certain band member who was "dancing
with Mr. Brownstone.")
"This
time around, having been really down and out and strung out and losing
Steven (Adler, original drummer)...," Slash says. "Izzy, obviously,
is doing doughnuts in Indiana somewhere. His own band doesn't even know
where he is. I don't want to go through that again. I got off dope. It's
been six, seven years."
Where Slash
pulled through, others haven't. "Lower," a low-key, voice-box-enhanced
song on It's Five O'clock Somewhere, was colored by the suicides
of Slash's ex-gal pal porn actress Savannah and Kurt Cobain, which occurred
within months of each other.
On a more upbeat
tangent is "Be the Ball," a twisted tale inspired by Hunter
S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and written from the point
of view of a pinball in a machine. Slash raises his eyebrows and says,
"I'm pretty offbeat."
Slash laughs,
stirring his nuclear-looking orange dipping sauce into psychedelic patterns.
"The whole thing has been one long circus ride," he says. "From
the beginning. Everything has been this huge trial and error, not knowing
where we were heading because we didn't really care. That's for me personally.
For Axl, he probably had visions of 'November Rain' all along. I don't
know. Everybody's got great stories, with the exception of Warrant."
"I ended
up doing Snakepit," Slash says with a shrug. "I'm a through-and-through
musician. I don't have any outside hobbies other than home life. I have
dinosaur toys everywhere. Little things like that. As long as I have an
appointment tomorrow so I can jam, so I have somewhere to go. It's as
simple as that.
"I don't
want to sound shallow," Slash says, stubbing out yet another cigarette,
"but I don't have any aspirations like someday I want to be a fucking
president or actor. I'm a one-trick pony."
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