Slash & Burn

It’s 3pm on Thursday March 13 and your hard living, hard rocking, hell, hard everything correspondent is shooting the breeze in Dublin’s Westbury Hotel with Duff McKagan.

Topics discussed so far with the Velvet Revolver bassist include who’s going to blag the support if Led Zeppelin tour (“My understanding is we’ve got it”); the perils of gigging in Dubai (“They jail you just for having shit in your bloodstream”); and the band’s second sold-out Ambassador gig tonight (“I’ve got all my Irish relations coming up from Cork, so there’s like two hundred people on the guestlist”).
None of which would have been on the agenda if Duff hadn’t severely modified his lifestyle four years ago when his pancreas exploded, causing third-degree burns from his intestines all the way down to his thigh-muscles (see the hotpress.com archive for the far too gruesome details).
How hard has it been for the former Guns N’ Roses man and all-round rock ‘n’ roll legend to curtail the, ahem, appetite for destruction that at one point found him guzzling 25 bottles of wine a day?
“It’s easy,” he deadpans. “I just look at Scott and say to myself, ‘Thank God you’re not doing that shit anymore!’ It’s like last night after the gig when the guys were trying to get me to go out with them. Any slight regrets I had about heading back here instead went out the window today when I heard the same old stories – ‘This guy got into some cocaine and became a fucking asshole, and there were these fat chicks in the lobby…’ It’s always fat chicks and cocaine! I’m a father – I’d rather play bass in my room or do a fucking crossword puzzle than be around that shit.”
Delivered with a smile rather than a sneer, I assume Duff’s disapproval is of the pantomime variety. How comprehensively wrong I am is evident a week later when Scott Weiland tells the Glasgow Carling Academy crowd, “You’re watching something very special… the last tour by Velvet Revolver”, and immediately becomes their ex-singer.
Did he jump or was he about to be pushed?
Duff & Co. claim the latter in a swiftly issued statement, which reads: “Velvet Revolver is all about its fans and its music, and Scott Weiland isn’t committed to either. His increasingly erratic onstage behaviour and personal problems (seemingly a reference to his continued drug use) have forced us to move on.”
Weiland, who within hours of returning to the States commits to a 50-date Stone Temple Pilots reunion tour, has a rather different view of things.
“In response to the comments regarding my commitment to the band,” he snipes, “I have to say it’s a blatant and tired excuse to cover up the truth. Which is that the band had not gotten along on multiple levels for some time. Personally speaking, I look forward to the future and performing with a group of friends I’ve known my entire life, people who always had my back.”
Irish fans were particularly perplexed given that both of Velvet Revolver’s Ambassador shows were absoloute belters.
Fast forward to last Thursday at the Nokia Theater in New York’s Times Square where Slash is playing a Road Recovery: Music Without Drugs benefit that despite a top ticket price of $500 is completely sold-out.
“Jerry Cantrell, Tom Morello, Perry Farrell, Wayne Kramer, Sen Dog from Cyprus Hill and Denis Leary are all going to be on stage with me, so I’m really pumped,” he beams. “We had another jam session the other night in LA, which was more or less the same bunch of people plus Flea, Steve Vai, Dave Navarro, Travis Barker and the drummer guy from The Police – what’s his name? – Stewart Copeland. You would have been pleased ‘cause we did Thin Lizzy’s ‘Jailbreak’ followed by Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’.”
Do we have Slash’s permission to look at this superstar jam to end all superstar jams on YouTube?
“Absolutely!”
Good news given that the Troubadour gig also featured killer covers of ‘Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World’ and ‘Insane In The Membrane’. Most people who’ve gone through the internecine band shit that he has would want a holiday, but not Slash.
“Time off is a bit of a nebulous concept where I’m concerned,” he laughs. “I have at my wife’s insistence been known to spend three or four days at home, but I like touring and going to the gig wherever it is. I had another really cool night there recently jamming with Snoop Dogg, Terry Riley and Black-Eyed Peas. In fact I’ve some recording coming up with Snoop.”
I think we’ve just gotten ourselves an exclusive there. Returning to the day-job, what the fuck’s been going on with Velvet Revolver?
“You know what? The only reason we were in Ireland was that the gigs were sold-out and we didn’t want to let the fans down. We’d actually started to audition (a replacement for Weiland) before we went to Europe because we just didn’t want to have to deal with him anymore. Even though we managed to pull the shows off, there was a complete disconnect between Scott and us.”
The word on the industry grapevine being that, save for a couple of humdinger rows, the rest of the band didn’t speak to Weiland for the duration of the tour.
“That’s pretty much it,” Slash acknowledges. “I’ve got an Africa fundraiser next week with Nile Rogers – whom I’m a huge fan of going back to his Chic days – and then the priority is finding a new singer. There’s a show we’re putting together on May 19 in Las Vegas where we’re going to have a lot of people you’d know come up and sing – but I’m not going to name any names. It’s going to be fun, and there might be some new guys up there as well who we’re looking at.”
Also keeping him away from the missus is the promo he’s been doing for the three limited-edition Slash Les Pauls, which were launched worldwide on April 1 and once sold out won’t be reproduced.
“I’m playing the Gibson USA model tonight,” he reveals with the air of a proud father. “It’s a good, solid Les Paul with a great neck, Seymour Duncan Alnico II pick-ups and a vintage Sunburst finish. Technically there are some other cool things, but I’d be lying if I told you I knew how to explain them! It’s one of the best live guitars I’ve had in a long time, and a huge, huge honour to be recognised like this by Gibson.”
How hands-on was he with their design?
“It’s serious shit, so very. The finish, the way the neck is cut, what size frets, the pick-ups, the hardware – I controlled everything down to the letter.
“They’ve also brought out another guitar as part of their Gibson VOS ‘Inspired By’ series, which is a replica of the 1988 Les Paul Standard that I’ve had from the early days of Guns N’ Roses right up to now,” he reveals. “All the hairline scratches, all the gouges, all the cigarette burns, all the cracks where I broke the neck off have been lovingly recreated. So much so that when I went to Gibson in LA to pick up my original guitar, which I’d loaned them, I walked off with the replica in my case by mistake. To make jumping on a plane and playing easier, I’ve an A rig in America and a B rig in Europe – one of which has my real Les Paul Standard, and the other a copy.”
Remaining in muso mode for a moment, who’s his favourite among the current crop of six-string sharpshooters?
“I love Jack White and his old school, use-what-you’ve-got kind of approach,” Slash enthuses. “He’s influenced by a lot of the same shit that I was, is very natural and has a good imagination. Above all there’s a human quality to his playing, which we’re hearing less of because of the over-reliance on ProTools and Auto-Tune.”
Given that playing one of his own would be a bit masturbatory, what songs does Slash favour when he’s trying guitars out in a shop.
“Led Zeppelin ‘Black Dog’, a 1976 Jeff Beck track called ‘Come Dancing’ and Ted Nugent’s ‘Cat Scratch Fever’, which was one of the first rock riffs I learned when I started playing a Les Paul. His personality can grate, sure, but he’s a seriously bad ass guitarist.”
Which having consulted my American to English dictionary, I can confirm is a compliment. Going back to Led Zep – no sooner had Duff told Hot Press that Velvet Revolver had the reunion tour support in the bag than Slash was denying it.
“So it was you who spawned that rumour!” he says mock – well, I hope it’s mock – angrily. “Duff must have been joking or something like that because there was, and still is to my knowledge, no Led Zeppelin tour. Although were that to change and we had the right singer, we’d be the first to apply!”
Boosting their chances is the fact that Robert Plant was at not one, but two of Velvet Revolver’s recent UK gigs.
“Yeah, he came to see us in both Manchester and Wolverhampton, which left me completely star-struck. As did Jimmy Page coming to another of our gigs in London. I was like, ‘Fuck!’ but he’s a great guy and very down to earth so it wasn’t a problem. We’ve hung out a few times since then, and had some great conversations about guitars and production.”
Slash, then aged 12, was given his first guitar by his grandma who one imagines would be very proud of all he’s achieved.
“Wonderfully she was still alive when Guns N’ Roses were taking off, so she knew the present hadn’t gone to waste!” her obviously still doting grandson says.
Did she go to any G N’R gigs?
“No, they were a bit too crazy for her!”
Before putting the same question to Slash, I’m going to recount what Duff said when asked to pinpoint the moment when Guns N’ Roses achieved greatness.
“When the five of us sat down, plugged in, turned up and played our very first chord together,” he said with boyish wonderment, “lightning struck. We knew that this was what we’d all been waiting for. Our intent wasn’t, ‘Oh, we’re going to sell millions of records!’ We didn’t write songs to be hits, we wrote them for ourselves. What fucking moved us. All the other shit was what ruined that band. The fame and getting huge just fucked it all up.”
As eloquent a rock ‘n’ roll eulogy as I’ve heard in a long time.
“For me,” Slash proffers, “it was between 1988 and 1989. We did a small headlining tour after we’d finished with Alice Cooper, which was when as both musicians and performers we felt like we owned it. In particular, there were three shows at a place called the Perkins Palace in Pasadena where it was like, ‘Wow, this is a great band. There’s no end to where we can go.’ Right after that we opened for Aerosmith and became really big.”
How does Slane ’92 rank in the pantheon of great Guns N’ Roses gigs?
“I remember the place, but not the performance,” he confesses, “which is indicative of how blurred my life had become. It was certainly important in terms of us making the step up to outdoor venues, which we hadn’t seen coming. One minute you’re the perennial support band, and the next you’ve got 50,000 people coming see you.”
Did Slash think in 1992 that he’d be as happy and healthy as he is now?
“Happy I’d have hoped for, but going running to keep fit? Man, that’s a fucking miracle!”