Slash and Gilby Clarke play together again as former Guns N’ Roses bandmates reunite for fundraiser show
Slash, Clarke, Duff McKagan, and Steven Adler brought the house down by taking an Appetite for Destruction classic for a spin
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Slash reunited with his former Guns N’ Roses bandmate Gilby Clarke at a charity show in West Hollywood on Monday night, and they tore through a classic hit.
The pair, alongside longtime GNR bass player Duff McKagan, former drummer Steven Adler, and Faster Pussycat vocalist Taime Downe, performed the swaggering Appetite for Destruction cut, It’s So Easy at the Troubadour as the Rock For Jennifer – Loud And Legendary fundraiser.
The show was organised to honor the legacy of Jennifer Perry, the venue’s chief booker during the 1980s. That was a time when GNR made it their stomping ground, who passed away in February. She was also a vocal supporter of Poison and Warrant before they blew up, and was heavily involved in numerous editions of Ozzfest.
Article continues belowIt felt right, then, that this throwback reunion of GNR alumni from various eras would be the feather in the night’s cap. And as video evidence from the night suggests, they nailed it.
“This is pretty cool,” Slash had said before McKagan propelled the group into the punk-tinted smash. “Jennifer would have wanted to be here.”
Clarke appeared on the band's covers album, The Spaghetti Incident?, but departed in 1994. Slash followed him out the exit in 1996, leading to a revolving door of players in his wake, which included Buckethead, DJ Ashba, and Bumblefoot.
The Slash-Clarke partnership continued into their collaborative project, Slash’s Snakepit, with Clarke left to dwell on what could have been had they stayed in the band.
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“Slash went through the same thing as me – he had all these songs, but Axl wanted to go in a different direction,” he told Guitar World in 2024. “The truth is, between my songs and Slash’s, we could have had the next Guns N’ Roses record.”
More recently, Clarke was emergency cover for Alice Cooper after Nita Strauss had to step back from a tour, only for her stand-in, Orianthi, to be sidelined on the eve of the shows.
Slash, meanwhile, who paid tribute to Ozzy at the Grammys, has also teamed up with Joe Bonamassa for a special charity show, but the pair were shown up by a youthful shredder who appeared alongside them.
A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.
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