Back in the ’90s, just after leaving Guns N’ Roses, when he was slinging his Les Paul solo, Slash hit local LA bars and clubs playing blues standards. The project was called the Blues Ball and, according to the musician, it wasn’t remotely serious.

“It was basically just a drunken excuse to go out and jam,” Slash tells Guitarist. But nearly 30 years later, his love for blues – and the gear that inspires it – has turned serious. The result was 2024’s Orgy Of The Damned, a blues cover album featuring a who’s who of all-stars – and plenty of vintage guitars and amplifiers, among them Magnatone combos that have replaced his beloved Marshall stacks.

“[The Magnatone] just sounds so much fuller in the low-end, and cleaner,” he says. “When you do a chord, you hear all the notes. It’s been a huge shift for me.”

Slash toured behind Orgy Of The Damned, resulting in a live album, Live At The S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival, which captured the blues-laden magic he had been conjuring with a collection of blues standards and rock staples.

The core band line-up comprised Teddy ‘Zig Zag’ Andreadis (keyboards, harmonica), Tash Neal (rhythm guitar), Johnny Griparic (bass) and Michael Jerome (drums). And with the festival’s name bearing an acronym for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N’ Tolerance, the event also supported various charities.

This endeavour is clearly more serious for Slash than his ’90s bar days, of course – but he is still focused on fun. “I’m not trying to be a ‘blues guy’,” he says. “A lot of rock guys do that, where they’re rock players and then suddenly they discover they’re blues guys [laughs]. I’m just doing an interpretation of stuff that really had a massive impact and influence on me when I first picked up the instrument.”

Blues has always been integral to your playing, but your live album, Live At The S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival, is a different level.

You hit the nail on the head. When I started playing guitar, there were a lot of blues-oriented rock ’n’ roll guys from the ’60s and early ’70s who were my first influences. But I got turned on to B.B. King right around that time by my grandmother, who was sick and tired of hearing me listen to all these blues guys [laughs].

She goes, ‘No, this is the real deal,’ so she really opened that door – the correlation between guys like Eric Clapton and where they got it all from. So it’s always been a major root of my playing.

And then, with different things going on in the ’80s, I incorporated my influence into playing with different kinds of musicians. When Guns N’ Roses came together, that was really an amalgamation of a lot of different styles that made that band. But, for me, the core of it is all the blues stuff.

Do you see playing the blues as very different from playing heavy rock?

I just approach the blues the way I approach rock ’n’ roll: I play for feel. And I’m not what you call a huge blues purist or any of that kind of thing; I just do what I do. But it’s a lot of fun and a great release for me. Back in the ’90s, we put together this band called The Blues Ball, which was a glorified cover band.

We played around LA and then it turned into sort of a bar-circuit touring band. I was out of Guns N’ Roses when I did this, and I was in between solo projects, so this was a great sort of fun filler for me.

Fast-forward a bunch of years, I’m back in Guns N’ Roses and we had a break between legs. I thought, ‘You know, I’d really like to go and record some of those songs with those guys.’ So I called them up and we put together a bunch of those songs that we used to play, plus a couple of other ones, and made Orgy Of The Damned.

While recording the recent live album, and on your blues tour in general, you used a lot of gear that we don’t see with Guns N’ Roses. Does the blues bring that out in you?

Definitely. While making Orgy Of The Damned, I used a Magnatone combo that I just happened to have, which actually opened a whole door for me. And I switched amp companies [from Marshall] because of that M-80 combo that I had lying around. Then I broke out a lot of vintage guitars for this because I had an idea in mind of the kind of sounds I wanted.

I picked up [a Gibson ES-335] maybe a year prior from Norm’s [Norman’s Rare Guitars] in the San Fernando Valley. So I pulled that out and I had a Strat, a Tele and a couple of old Les Pauls. I had an Explorer, a Firebird… That’s what I used to record the record.

To do the tour, I didn’t take all of those vintage guitars out, but [used] facsimiles – Custom Shop reissues of said guitars. But I did have a 335 from there, which was really probably the go-to guitar for the whole tour and the live record, along with a couple of Firebirds.

The Firebirds, with the P-90s, or whatever you call those – the mini-humbuckers, which are kind of like single coils – are great. And I only used two Les Pauls on the tour, a Standard and a ’59 reissue. The Explorer that I had on tour was a ’58 replica, which was an amazing-sounding guitar. I recorded Born Under A Bad Sign with that and took it on tour.

Oh, and I had a Travis Bean for slide, and a Jackson pedal steel that I used for [It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A] Train To Cry. That covered it. That stuff, with the Magnatone M-80 2x12 combos, was the sound.

Considering you’d used Marshall amps for so long, what caught your ear with the Magnatone?

It was a big deal for me. When we went in to do the record and started pre-production, I started jamming these arrangements and I just didn’t want to use my normal Marshall sound. I had a couple of Fender Twins, a couple of Fender Deluxes, a Vox half-stack, and a vintage Vox combo. I did have my old 50-watt Marshall with me – and I had that M-80 Magnatone.

What happened was, I went, ‘Okay, we’re going to do this song…’ and I imagined in my mind, ‘Let’s try this amp and this guitar.’ I went through different amps and when I got to the Magnatone, which had been given to me but I’d never used before, I ended up using it for every song.

And now, you’re using it live for your blues tunes, and with Guns N’ Roses.

It was a big revelation because it gave me the sort of power that I wanted, but it gave me a kind of clarity. I think I was starting to get tired – as much as I hate to say it – of the very predictable Marshall sound, which I’m sort of known for… but it was starting to wear on me.

I’d been using Marshall for so long that I’d never listened to anything else. I never gave anything else a shot because it didn’t have the Marshall mid-punch, this or that. But something about the Magnatone really worked and so I recorded with it, and when we did the tour, I just took those out and it really worked.

Unbeknownst to anyone else, I actually replaced my Marshalls on the next Guns N’ Roses tour with the Magnatones and that became my thing. I got together with Magnatone a little later and we designed the 100-watt [SL-100] model, which is what I’m using now.

You’ve noted being known for a specific tone, but you’re on stage paying homage to the likes of Peter Green, Albert King and other heavy hitters, while also being a notable player yourself. That’s a delicate balance to strike.

Right! Well, this is a renaissance period for blues guitar. There are so many really amazing purist blues guitarists, like, very well studied, very educated, great musicians going out there and doing a lot of blues stuff. I think we’re in a period for the blues now, more so than it has been in the last 20 years. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a renaissance.

But anyway, I just do what it is that I do. I don’t try to take it too seriously. That’s one of the reasons why some borderline corny covers have been done so many times in this performance. The whole thing is about the huge stepping stones for what I do, and I wanted to cover them. I just try to keep the melodies intact and honour the original compositions.

We took those and then just did our own thing and really didn’t think about anything else. The guys in my band, this is what they do for a living. They play with Walter Trout, so they’re those guys – blues guys. I get to do what I do on top of that, so it’s fun.

Listening to the live record, it’s clear that you had a blast on tour. Is there more blues in your future?

Right now, I’m juggling being on the road with Guns N’ Roses and doing some recording. I’ve got a new record with the Conspirators that’s already done, coming out at the top of 2027, and then, somewhere, I’m going to try to figure out where I can do another blues record.

There are some really cool tracks that I would like to go after with that, so I’m trying to figure out a window to do that. We need to take this to Europe because there’s a big demand.

• Slash’s Live At The S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival album and concert film are out now via EarMusic.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

By the dawn of the ’90s, Slash was on top of the world. His band, Guns N’ Roses, had conquered the globe with Appetite for Destruction, a love letter to ’70s boogie-rock with a healthy touch of Sunset Strip sleaze. It was so massive that the band remained a titanic force even after the grunge tidal wave had swept away many of their hard-rock contemporaries.

Slash, for his part, had almost single-handedly made the Les Paul cool again after a decade of Superstrat supremacy. His laid back, Stones-y approach to the instrument also stood cooly in contrast to the ever-more-histrionic shred wars that raged in the late ’80s, and made him a vital, refreshing guitar hero for those less technique-obsessed.

Still, though, he wasn't quite prepared when he got tipped to work with the single biggest name in all of music.

“I got a phone call from the guy who engineered all the overdubs on Appetite For Destruction,” Slash told Guitar World in a 1990 interview. “He said, ‘I'm working on the new Jackson project, and Michael asked if you wanted to come down and play.’

“I was in shock! I didn't know how to react. Like, ‘Why me?’ But what was then communicated to me was that Michael liked my playing and feel, and that's what he wanted.”

Slash would go on to make multiple contributions to what would become Dangerous, Jackson's third consecutive blockbuster full-length.

He’s often mistakenly given credit for playing the iconic opening riff to its lead single, the chart-topping Black or White (his contribution was more subtle), but where he did get to stretch out was on the swaggering Give In to Me.

Asked by Guitar World in 1992 about working with the King of Pop, the guitarist said, “I just finished helping him with his next video, Give In To Me. He gave me a lot of space.

“It's funny. Everybody thought I played the main riff in Black Or White, but that isn't me. To be honest with you, I don't know who the hell is playing that riff [ed: it's Tim Pierce]. Most people think that I played the whole thing because Michael really publicized that I played on the track. The only part I played is in the beginning, when the little kid is playing air guitar in the video.

“I played much more on Give In To Me,” Slash explained. “I played the whole rhythm part and solo. It was very loose. I was just jamming to the track, and Michael came down with Brooke Shields. I asked, ‘Is this cool?’ And he said, ‘Anything you want, Slash.’”

Slash and Jackson would go on to become frequent collaborators in the coming years. The Guns N' Roses man contributed guitar to every subsequent album Jackson released in his lifetime, and performed with him at the enormously successful Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration concerts in 2001, two of the singer's final ever shows.

Writing on Twitter in the aftermath of Jackson's shocking death in 2009, at the age of 50, Slash wrote simply, “He was a talent from on high.”

There are few pairings in rock more iconic than a top-hatted Slash wailing on a Les Paul in front of a stack of Marshall amps. Maybe that’s why, when he switched to Magnatone, he brought them into the band’s sphere in secret.

Marshalls have powered the sound of both Slash and Guns N’ Roses’ most iconic records, which made his switch to Magnatone in 2023 – a change inspired while working on his blues record, Orgy of the Damned – very surprising.

“It was a big deal for me,” he says of the switch in the new issue of Guitarist. “When we went in to do the record and started pre-production, I started jamming these arrangements, and I just didn’t want to use my normal Marshall sound. I had a couple of Fender Twins, a couple of Fender Deluxes, a Vox half-stack, and a vintage Vox combo.

“I went through different amps, and when I got to the Magnatone, which had been given to me but I’d never used before, I ended up using it for every song.”

Cue his eureka moment.

“It was a big revelation because it gave me a kind of clarity,” Slash continues. “I think I was starting to get tired – as much as I hate to say it – of the very predictable Marshall sound, which I’m sort of known for.”

Slash’s signature 100-watt, British-voiced Magnatone arrived ahead of his bluesy solo record, joining an artist roster that includes Billy Gibbons and Mike Campbell. A purple snakeskin practice amp also arrived earlier this year. But when returning to GNR after Orgy..., the amps were given little fanfare.

“Unbeknownst to anyone else, I actually replaced my Marshalls on the next Guns N’ Roses tour with the Magnatones, and that became my thing,” he reveals. “I got together with Magnatone a little later, and we designed the 100-watt [SL-100] model, which is what I’m using now.”

Orgy of the Damned, a musical side quest that saw Slash reconnecting with his blues roots, felt like fair game for him to try other amps and even, heaven forbid, play a Strat or two. With GNR, it was a different story, so he’s found a way to have them work side by side.

Slash’s full interview features in the new issue of Guitarist, which celebrates 100 years of the Gibson Flat-top acoustics. Head to Magazines Direct to grab a copy today.

A guitar used by Slash during Guns N' Roses’ Not in This Lifetime… Tour has just fetched £233,100 ($307,692) at auction via Propstore on April 30, making it the most expensive Slash guitar ever sold.

Slash played the Gibson Les Paul ’59 Custom Shop guitar during the 175-date run, which spanned from April 1, 2016, to November 2, 2019, and marked the first time the classic lineup of Axl Rose, Slash, and Duff McKagan had played together since 1993. Beyond stadium shows, the tour included a headlining performance at Coachella, and became one of the highest-grossing in music history, generating more than $584 million in revenue.

“Today’s auction delivered some truly exceptional results, with multiple records broken across the sale,” comments Mark Hochman, Propstore’s Music Specialist.

“The standout performance of Slash’s stage-used Gibson Les Paul guitar, which set a new world record for Slash memorabilia, was a real highlight.”

The guitar features a flame-patterned maple top that can be photo-matched to stage images of Slash during that era, a mahogany neck, a mahogany body with an Abilene Sunset Burst finish, and nickel hardware. Additional specs include a selector switch, two volume knobs, and two tone knobs.

There are several other trimmings that make it quintessentially Slash, including the serial number “LRP9 048” stamped on the reverse of the headstock, an autograph by Slash in black ink, and a piece of double-sided adhesive tape holding three of his personal guitar picks.

“The strength of the results and the level of engagement from collectors around the world during our Music Live Auction speak to the true enduring appeal of these iconic artists and the material connected to them,” concludes Hochman.

In more recent news, a pro guitar tech recently lifted the veil on what it’s like working with the Guns N' Roses legend.

Few artists in rock history have left a mark as indelible as Slash. From the opening riff of Welcome to the Jungle to the soul-crushing solo in November Rain, the top-hatted guitar legend has spent decades inspiring a slew of new players to pick up the guitar, me included. With his unmistakable tone, his cigarette perpetually dangling, and that iconic Gibson Les Paul slung low, Slash is the definition of a guitar hero.

In celebration of Guitar Center’s Guitar-A-Thon, the online retailer has pulled together the ultimate collection of Slash signature gear, including everything you need to get closer to that legendary tone. Now, as a Slash diehard, I’ve gone through the entire collection and handpicked a few of my favorites – and even added a few of my own suggestions. These are the items I’d pick up if I wanted to sound more like Slash, at various price points.

So, whether you’re a lifelong fan or a player chasing that classic rock sound, there will be something here for you.

Guitars

If you’re eager to replicate Slash's iconic tone at home, you're going to need a Les Paul as a starting point. Below, I've selected a couple of his signature Gibson models, from the AFD to Jessica, but I've also included a couple of wallet-friendly gems from Epiphone that may not say Slash on the headstock but will certainly get you close to his sound.

Okay, so we know that at the heart of his sound is a love affair with the Les Paul that has endured for over four decades, and for many, the two are inseparable, but Slash has used other guitars over the years, from his scarlet B.C. Rich to a Korina Flying V, and of course, a J-45 acoustic. So I've included a few of them at various price points, too.

Amps & Effects

In terms of amps and effects, Slash likes to keep things simple, using minimal pedals at his feet and a cranked tube stack behind him.

Of course, Slash was a major fan of Marshall amps in the past, having more than his fair share of signature heads and cabinets, but these days he's switched to Magnatone, so that's why I've included the M-80.

Accessories

It's fair to say that tone can start before you ever plug in. Slash’s signature accessories are the small details that make a massive difference.

I've included everything from his Ernie Ball signature strings to his go-to Dunlop picks to help you get even closer to the Slash sound without spending a fortune.

Round it all out with Seymour Duncan’s Slash signature pickups, the same humbuckers loaded into his beloved Les Pauls, and you can add that Slash DNA to your own guitar without having to buy an entirely new axe.

One of Slash's stage-used Gibson Les Pauls is headed to auction this month, where it's predicted to sell for up to $400k.

It's set to be sold off at Propstore auction house in London as part of the Music Memorabilia Live Auction collection, having featured in the top-hatted one's live rig for the Not In This Lifetime tour in 2016.

That run of dates marked Slash's return to the band after a 20+-year absence, having left after 1993's Use Your Illusion tour, when he went on to form Slash's Snakepit with Gilby Clarke.

Dates included performances at Coachella and a dizzying number of stadium shows. They played 175 shows in all, making it one of the highest-grossing in music history by generating over $584 million in revenue.

The axe has an estimated value of up to £300,000 (approx. $400,000), and the limited-edition Sunburst Les Paul Custom ‘59 also bears the Guns N' Roses guitarist's signature.

“The sale spans genres, generations, and defining cultural moments,” says Propstore's Mark Hochman.

It adds that the guitar “shows light performance wear, including indentations and surface scratches above the bridge,” thanks to Slash’s jewelry choices.

Other lots include a golden microphone used by Freddie Mercury and handwritten Beatles lyrics. The 400 items could raise up to 1.5m (approx. $1.9m).

Slash's most-played LP is ‘Jessica,’ a replica of the factory second that has become his go-to stage guitar for over 30 years. That guitar, however – which he used to track Guns' historic debut album, Appetite for Destruction – wasn't actually a Gibson; it was a Kris Derrig replica. It arrived in the studio at the 11th hour, and Slash believes it might have been “a gift from on high.”

Elsewhere, Slash has revealed that a new Guns N’ Roses album is likely to happen, although there’s no indication of a deadline for getting it done.

Slash reunited with Clarke and other GNR alumni for a charity fundraiser last month, and played a belting rendition of an Appetite classic.

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.

It 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.

“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.

Mike McCready is currently prepping the release of rock opera Farewell to Seasons. In its initial graphic novel form, it tells the story of the Pearl Jam guitarist and Seattle itself through four fictional bands. But there’s one group that shares its name with a real band: McCready’s first project, Shadow.

The hard-rock outfit was formed when the guitarist was in ninth grade at Seattle’s Roosevelt High School, and he feels they deserve more credit for what they were achieving at a young age.

“I felt like we never really got the props that we should have gotten over the years, because we were young and 16 and playing all around the Northwest and doing shows,” McCready tells Guitar World. “We broke up when everything started happening. I spent my 10,000 hours with that band.”

In the mid-’80s, Seattle was not the place to be; but LA most definitely was. So when McCready’s contemporaries started moving to the West Coast to make it, he made sure that Shadow – whose sound owed more to Iron Maiden and Van Halen than anything foreshadowing grunge – followed.

“Duff McKagan stopped by the Shadow house in ’84, and said he was moving to Los Angeles. And we were like, ‘There’s something to that.’”

By the tail end of 1986, McKagan and his band Guns N’ Roses had built a reputation on the Sunset Strip and released their first EP, Live ?!★꩜ Like a Suicide. Things never quite took off for Shadow, however – and it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

“We played a bunch of places. We opened up for Andy Taylor. I got to see some cool stuff – I saw Jane’s Addiction at a club; I saw the Welcome to the Jungle video shoot.”

One year into the move, McCready got sick with Crohn’s disease which, combined with a lack of record label interest, sealed Shadow’s fate.

“It was a year of me working at Aron’s Records, drinking too much, getting Crohn’s, and going, ‘I can't do this anymore.’ So I moved back and I gave up. I quit playing music for two years from ’88, ’89. I was done. And then I got a call out of the blue from Stone.”

Guitarist Stone Gossard had recently lost singer Andrew Wood to a heroin overdose, bringing his own dreams of rock success to a tragic close. He was seeking a new musical sparring partner, and hit up McCready after seeing him playing along to a Stevie Ray Vaughan record at a party.

“I had known him since seventh grade. And when we started playing together, selfishly, I was like, ‘Okay, this seems to be my door. I better walk through it.’ After going through LA and not making it and being depressed, all of a sudden this thing happens when I'm not looking for it.”

From there, history was made. Pearl Jam would go on to make Ten and become one of the greatest success stories to emerge from the Seattle scene. But McCready never forgot about Shadow, the band who kickstarted his path to lead guitar stardom.

Farewell to Seasons is released on October 6 2026 via Z2 Comics. Guitar World’s full interview with Mike McCready will be published in the coming weeks.

Joe Satriani has looked back on the time he recommended Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal for the Guns N’ Roses gig – after hearing Axl Rose was on the look out for the “craziest guitar player ever” to join the band.

In 2006, Guns N’ Roses were on the hunt for a new electric guitar player, following the departure of Buckethead two years earlier. They didn’t just want any ol’ guitarist to step in and fill the role, though – they needed someone who could match their outgoing bandmate for both ability and eccentricity.

When Satriani caught wind of this search via producer Eric Cadieux, he knew exactly who to put up for the job.

“One day [Eric] calls up and he says that Axl is looking for the craziest guitar player ever. It was one of the things that he was demanding,” Satch recalls in a new interview on the Appetite For Distortion podcast.

“And I think they already had Buckethead, and I was thinking, 'Who would I recommend? Who's the craziest and the best?' And I knew there was only one guy. It had to be Ron Thal – Bumblefoot.”

As Satch explains in the interview, he’d crossed paths with Bumblefoot years earlier, after a rather unfortunate communication error involving comments made in the press prompted the two virtuosos to smooth over the misunderstanding with an onstage jam.

Satch, unsurprisingly, was blown away by Bumblefoot’s abstract and expansive playing ability. He believed he would be perfect for Buckethead’s replacement.

He continues, “Ron came to my mind, and I said, 'Eric, you have to get this guy Ron Thal into Axl's band. And tell Axl that there's no one else who can stand next to Buckethead and look even stranger and play just as good,' because they're two premier guitar players.”

Satriani’s recommendation was taken on board, and he was given the green light to break the news of an audition to Bumblefoot himself.

“My conversation with Ron was pretty funny, because the last thing he expected was me to call him and say, 'How would you like to audition for Guns N' Roses?' He had accepted, I think, the fact that he was just the oddest guitar player.

“[He never thought] that the most accepted rock band at the moment was ever going to be calling him for an audition. But he did it anyway, I think as an experiment in life, just to see how much fun it would be. And he got the gig, because he was himself. And I think Axl could see right away he's a genius.”

Speaking about receiving Satch’s recommendation for the Guns N’ Roses gig, Bumblefoot once recalled to Guitar World, “He mentioned to me that he had dropped my name to someone in the Guns N’ Roses camp because they were looking for a new guy to replace Buckethead.

“He wanted me to know that if anyone from Guns got in touch it wasn’t a joke. And soon after that I heard from [GNR keyboardist] Chris Pitman.”

Bumblefoot ended up becoming a key part of the GNR legacy, contributing to Chinese Democracy and remaining a part of the touring band until his departure in 2014.

Slash is cryptically teasing something on his Instagram, but a comment from Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian tells us everything we need to know.

In the image, Slash’s number one Gibson Les Paul, which was built by esteemed luthier Kris Derrig (and not Gibson), is seen on the bench ready for 3D scanning, while Gueikian crops up in the comments saying. “Epic! Let’s go…”

That all but confirms that Slash’s iconic electric guitar is set for a reissue – and quite possibly a Murphy Lab replica at that.

Since Slash bought the Derrig Les Paul in 1987, it’s been his main guitar for recording, featuring on Guns N’ Roses’ 18x platinum-selling debut, Appetite for Destruction, and pretty much everything after the fact. Tragically, Derrig died of cancer that same year, meaning he never got to witness the legacy the top-hatted one carved out with his sunburst ’59 LP copy.

“That Derrig ’59 literally came in the eleventh hour when we were doing the Appetite record,” Slash once told Guitar World. “We’d just finished the basic tracks, and the guitars that I had just didn’t sound right. I was thinking, ‘What the fuck am I gonna do?’

“The Guns N’ Roses manager at the time, Alan Niven, brought this Les Paul to the studio for me, just as I was about to do all my guitar overdubs. It sounded perfect, man... like a gift from on high.”

“I took the Derrig on the road for all of 1987 into 1988,” he added. “In that short span of time, I beat the shit out of that guitar!”

That, then, makes the prospect of a Murphy Lab recreation – which copies it like-for-like, scratches, perfect imperfections and all – even more exciting. Although, as some fans have speculated, the guitar might end up with a price tag closer to the $20k mark than the circa $2k Slash is believed to have paid for it in ’87.

There have been Derrig Les Paul reissues from Gibson in the past, with a Custom Shop AFD model launched in 2016, but none that meticulously replicate every nook and cranny of Slash’s personal guitar.

The interesting thing about Derrig’s builds was that, at the time, Gibson was still a long way off buying into the reissue trend, and Slash’s wielding of the guitar was instrumental in turning the tide of the industry.

After those early tours, where it was more than beaten into submission, Slash retired it from the road, keeping it as a studio-only guitar. At the same time, he forged a relationship with Gibson and started playing legit Les Pauls in its stead.

“I never met Kris,” Slash told Gibson TV last year. “He passed away prior to me getting the guitar. But I have three of his guitars, and they're really well made and technically accurate, to the point that he had the details of a ’59 Gibson noted down by the millimeter.

“And he also made a point of getting original PAF [humbuckers] and getting them in there. He had a real attention to detail.”

There’s no word whether this project is right at the start, or nearing completion, and Gibson didn’t mention it when talking Guitar World through its grand plans for 2026 at NAMM. So patience might be key. But it's been 10 years since the last reissue, and given that it is believed to have been built in 1986, the time is now for an anniversary model.

Is one of the most famous ‘knockoff’ guitars in rock history about to get the reissue it deserves? Let's hope so.

Måneskin might be this decade’s most rock n’ roll rock n’ roll band – unrepentantly horny, loud and glam – assisted by guitarist Thomas Raggi’s raw, old-school noises, made the way only young fearless musicians can. With his main band taking a break, Raggi has created his solo debut Masquerade, enlisting a team of rock’s finest from the last 40 years. Tom Morello is the producer; drums come from Matt Sorum and Chad Smith.

Vocalists include The Prodgy’s Maxim, The Struts’ Luke Spiller, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos and Kasabian’s Sergio Pizzorno. The album’s lead single Getcha was co-written with Beck and features vocals from Jet’s Nick Cester.

With a lineup like that you could end up with a directionless hodgepodge – but instead Masquerade has a clear identity. Raggi’s raucous tone and the live vibe unify the record, which carries the carefree and raucous spirit of Måneskin, while venturing into new territory thanks to the diverse collaborators.

Did you worry about making your solo record sound different from Måneskin?

No, everything came very naturally. It was cool to experiment with lots of other artists. But I grew up as a band member, so the approach was the one that I loved – jamming with the guests in this very nice studio and keeping the real sound of the room.

When I was super young I took lots of classes with guitar teachers, and I discovered lots of cool bands from the past. So my approach was to be like the best, stay in the same studio and play live. I hope you hear it on the tracks.

You first worked with Tom Morello in 2023 when he played with Måneskin on Gossip. How did he become your producer?

We have a really good relationship. After we met, he invited me to lots of shows in LA. I’d written lots of different songs and at one point I said, “Okay, maybe I can do a record.” It was very natural to ask to Tom to become part of this trip. He was super excited, actually.

After that I wrote different songs in different sessions. With Serge Pizzorno, for example, it was the first time I’d met him. We were in the studio in London, and we came out with this super cool song. I put the pieces together, went to Tom and we were all together on the whole track. Everything was very, very natural.

What did he bring to the album as a producer?

Lots of stuff – the way to arrange a song, and to put the guitar at the center. The whole songs and the singers are amazing, but my guitar is the main thing that’s connected to all the different vibes. Tom gave me lots of advice. It was super inspiring to have him playing live with me and giving me notes.

What’s the best advice he gave you?

One was to trust the first take. Lots of times I’d find a riff and say, “Maybe this is not the one.” He’s say, “It’s great!” You just have to trust yourself. Lots of times, you’re gonna be overthinking to find the perfect part. Sometimes the magic of the first take is the best.

He’s famous for always using the same guitar tone for everything. Did you do that?

I was super free – Tom gave me the space just to jam and experiment. After that he said, “This is the best of all the takes you did.” It was very cool speaking with him about the gear. I have my setup, of course, but I tried Tom’s pedalboard and amp for some songs. With my approach and Tom’s gear, we found a very cool sound.

Tell us about your own gear.

I have three main guitars – a Telecaster, a Stratocaster, like a relic, and a Squier. My main guitar is the Squier. It’s made in Japan so it's from the 70s. I have a Seymour Duncan SSL-5 in the bridge position. My first guitar teacher gave me that guitar. He was using it for, I don't know, 10 or 20 years. It’s a very important guitar for me.

I have lots of different pedals. I have an OCD, a wah, Strymon Mobius, a Deluxe Memory Man – that’s one of my favorites. Then I have a rotary simulator that gives that cool twist to the songs.

Is that the rotary on You Spin Me Round?

Exactly. Also in the solo of The Ritz; and with Måneskin I use that pedal a lot. I'm trying to find my marker. The fact that you can recognize me thanks to the rotary is a super cool thing.

Another thing I took from Tom is that you can recognize him thanks to the sound he has. I would love to do the same as a next step. I'm trying to find the right pedals so you can hear it and say, “That sounds like Thomas.”

I have two rotary pedals actually. I have one inside the Strymon Mobius, and the other one is the Strymon Lex. So for the recording of Zitti e buoni, the Måneskin song, I used that pedal.

My amp is a 100 watt Marshall Plexi, like Jimi Hendrix used. It’s a reissue. I put a master volume on it so you can turn it down. I have two OCDs. My clean sound is not a properly clean sound – it's more like a crunch, with a little bit of drive from the OCD.

After that I have my rhythmic sound from the second OCD with lots of drive. My solo sound that is the second OCD boosted by an Agata boost by Effeti di Clara. Sometimes, when I have to go very distorted, I use a Rat pedal. That’s a masterpiece.

Did you write the songs with the guests in mind, or did you look at a song and go, “I know who’d be incredible on this song”?

It was both. With Maxim, for example, I had in mind a rock song with some electronic elements. It was the first time I’d met him too. Matt Sorum is a really good friend of mine. I said to Tom, “I’d love to include Matt,” and me and Tom spoke about it. Then we said, “He's gonna be perfect on that song.”

Luke Spiller is a friend of mine and of Tom too. Upsahl is amazing on Lucy, I think she did an incredible job. The whole thing about this album is that we put two generations together. We have Upsahl and Luke, but we have Matt Sorum, Maxim and Chad Smith.

There are lot of solos on this record. Were they improvised?

Yeah, a lot. The approach I have is to improvise, but I like to add three or four important licks into the pile. I would play different solos then Tom would say “Okay, Thomas, come in here.” In the control room we took the best parts of those solos. I love that approach – it's important to me to find a very hooky part in a solo, and not be shredding around. But everything starts from improvisation.

Did you overdub your solos over the live tracks?

I did some overdubs, like in You Spin Me Round, for example. There are some harmonies around, and also in Getcha. But the idea was to have just one lead part, because another guitarist that inspired me a lot is Jimi Hendrix. The cool thing about that generation is that you have a combination between solo parts and chords because it was just one track, of course.

I’m the only guitarist in Måneskin, so as I grew up with the band my approach was like that, basically to cover the whole part with one guitar – like Led Zeppelin and the Red Hot Chili Peppers did. So yeah, I did some overdubs, but there should always be just one guitar to take the main part.

What do you want people to get from this record?

The main mission for me and Tom was to inspire a new generation of people to grab an instrument, the same way we did. I love it when someone tells me, “I love this riff you did, and that’s why I picked up the guitar.” So the mission is to try to create a new scene.

I’m 24 years old, and I’m very lucky, because my dad put me onto the huge bands of the past. But lots of people my age don’t know rock n’ roll is is real –not because they don’t like it, but because they don’t know it.

What are you going to take with you from this album when you go back to Måneskin?

Experimenting with different artists was very cool. But it was hard to find the right spot between my taste and the taste of the guest. I had to go into a new world every time. So I have the feeling that when we make our new record with the band, I'm going to be more open-minded.

Rock music is still the main thing to me, but I think my approach will be different. I can take the vibe from Damiano, Vic and Ethan. I would say “versatile” is the best word.

• Masquerade is on sale now.

Guns N’ Roses have shared not one, but two new singles, as speculation surrounding a potential new studio album from the hard rock giants reaches boiling point.

Nothin’ and Atlas arrives as GNR’s first new material since 2023, when Slash, Axl Rose, Richard Fortus, and the rest of the group dropped The General and Perhaps.

In turn, those standalone singles came after the original GNR members Slash, Rose, and bassist Duff McKagan reunited in the studio for the first time in 28 years back in 2021 for a four-track EP, Hard Skool.

Against the backdrop of a grueling touring schedule that has already taken the band all over the world, Slash and co. clearly remain in rude creative health, and the arrival of Nothin’ and Atlas further seemingly confirms a new Guns N’ Roses album is merely a matter of when, not if.

Naturally, both new tracks feature plenty of Slash six-string exploits. Nothin’ – a fairly loose, back-beat power ballad – leaves room for a particularly lengthy solo, while Atlas is more ‘GNR of old’, propelled by a rolling riff and a far more urgent lead effort.

Now with four singles in two years under their belt, the next step for Guns N’ Roses would seem to be a fully fledged record.

After all, Slash all-but-confirmed an album was in the works, telling Guitar World that “everybody is thinking about it”.

“There’s so much material at this point – it’s a matter of having the discipline to sit down and fucking get into it,” he admitted. “But the thing with Guns is, in my experience, you can never plan ahead. You can never sit down and go, ‘We’re going to take this time, and we’re going to do this.’ Every time we’ve done that, it falls apart.”

The wait might have to go on a little longer, though. The two singles arrive alongside news of yet more touring dates, with Guns N’ Roses set to embark on another world tour next year that will stretch from March to September.

That would seem to imply that GNR will be spending much of their time on the stage rather than in the studio – but, of course, there are always work-arounds.

Furthermore, a press release for the new announcement did tease: “Guns N’ Roses never stops with more touring on the horizon and other surprises.” Does “other surprises” mean ‘new album’? Who knows. It’s all speculation right now. But it does all seem to be falling into place.

After Slash and Duff McKagan exited Guns N’ Roses in the mid-’90s, things went kinda sideways for a bit. The band kept rolling, but it was host to a cavalcade of guitar players, from Buckethead to Paul Tobias to Robin Finck to DJ Ashba to Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal.

As you can imagine, all that change did not give rise to new music. It’s not that Axl Rose wasn’t writing tunes; it’s just that honing them proved… difficult. But things shifted for the better – on the guitar side, at least – when Richard Fortus, who at the time was touring with Enrique Iglesias, was drafted into Guns in 2002. Fortus brought immediate stability to a situation that was anything but stable.

23 years later, GN’R is still wreaking havoc on a stadium stage near you, but things are very different. “It seems to me that we’re much more unified,” Fortus says today – but that shift only came after Slash and McKagan re-entered Guns’ orbit in 2016.

“When I first came into the band, it was split into factions,” Fortus says. “There was Buckethead, Brain [Bryan Mantia, drums] and Chris Pitman [keyboards/bass] as one little faction. And then there was myself, Tommy Stinson [bass], Robin [Finck] and Dizzy [Reed, keyboards]. That was another faction. And there was Axl, a faction unto himself. [Laughs] It was a different feeling to the band, but now everything feels solidified.”

It hasn’t always been this way for Guns N’ Roses, who first welcomed us to the proverbial jungle in 1987 with Appetite for Destruction and then soaked us with an enduring November rain in the early ’90s.

Back then, lineup volatility and infighting were pretty much standard, but not anymore. Maybe it’s age, maybe it's the fact that drugs and alcohol are no longer part of the equation – or perhaps it’s the simple fact that the world doesn’t usually offer second chances, but it has done so for Rose, Slash and Duff. Whatever the reason, Fortus, who – for those keeping score – is Guns N’ Roses’ longest-tenured six-stringer, is having the time of his life.

“Sometimes Slash and I will play the same thing in harmony or an octave part that we’ve never played before or not worked out at all,” Fortus says. “It’s freakish to me how similar our approach is. It sounds a little metaphysical, but it’s really strange how in-sync we are.”

He goes on to say that the main reason for Guns’ modern-day harmonious functionality comes down to the fact that the band is “very united.” “That’s the biggest difference,” he says. “It’s night and day.”

And Slash is at the core of it all.

“Tommy Stinson led the charge when I was first brought into the band,” Fortus says. “He came from a punk-rock ethos of not wanting to over-rehearse, because it was pointless. You know, you do your rehearsing onstage, because no matter what you do, it’s not going to translate onstage, which is true in a way.

“But Slash comes from a completely different perspective. He loves to rehearse, so that when we walk onstage we never have to think about playing. I love that. I understand both sides, but I really enjoy having the music become muscle memory.”

Rehearsing is one thing, and it’s undoubtedly made Guns a tighter unit, but Fortus came into the picture during an era when being a GN’R guitarist meant you weren’t long for this world. That, along with the fact that he’s now occupying a role once held by Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke, means he’s needed to remain on his toes as Slash’s sidekick.

“It’s always fun,” he says. “But when Slash came in, I had to rethink everything because I needed to be able to support his tone, the way he plays and the way he creates. It’s been me thinking, ‘Okay, how can I do that?’ For example, I love P90 pickups, but they don’t work with Slash’s tone. So it’s been about me going back to the chalkboard.”

Guns N’ Roses has plenty of huge shows planned. Beyond that, there have been whispers of the band’s first new record since 2008’s Chinese Democracy, which is significant because GN’R hasn’t dropped a proper full-length featuring Slash and McKagan since 1993’s covers album, The Spaghetti Incident? But to date, we’ve only seen a few singles, like 2023’s The General and an EP from 2022 called Hard Skool. But that might change.

“I think we probably will [put out a new record],” Fortus says. “I can’t see us not doing that in the future, although it seems people don’t really care about albums anymore. It’s hard to say. I’m sure there are quite a few people that would. It's a great honor [to be in Guns], and I'm really glad to have been a part of it, and I think the band is on top form right now.”

You’ve been in Guns for 23 years now. Has the response the band is getting – compared to what it was when you started – been surprising?

When we started with Slash and Duff back in the band, the reaction was overwhelming, but that was expected. It wasn’t a shock to be playing stadiums and doing multiple nights, because it was a big event. What’s shocking is that every time we go out, it continues. We’re still playing stadiums. I expected it to die down once the initial reaction wore off, but it’s continued. It’s incredible.

GN’R was at a crossroads when you joined in 2002. How do you view your role now compared to then?

It’s been a pretty massive change. Robin Finck was my favorite guitarist I played with, besides Slash, and was the one I felt most unified with. With Slash, it’s a whole different level. I’ve never played with another guitar player I feel so in-sync with.

What’s an example of how things work between you two?

There’s a section in Rocket Queen where it’s completely open. I’ll play a solo and then Slash plays a solo, and it’s a completely different solo every time. The other night, I played a melody at the beginning, and when Slash played his solo, he quoted that melody.

I thought, that’s what I’ve always dreamed a band to be, you know? And he didn’t even realize he did it! It’s almost jazz – when someone plays a theme and someone else picks up on that theme. That’s as good as it gets. He’s such a natural musician. It’s such a joy to play with somebody like that.

You’re occupying a role once filled by Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke. Do you play their parts straight, or do you have freedom to improvise?

I can’t really speak to the Gilby thing as much, but with Izzy, there are certain things I view as integral. There’s never been a time when Slash has said to me, “I think you should copy what Izzy did here.” He’s very much in the moment. He’s come back to me and said, “I listened to this live recording we did, and I didn’t realize you were doing that. That’s really cool.”

But he’s never said, “I think you should do this…” He is very trusting with how I approach things. But there are things that – out of respect to the genius of Izzy and what makes this band legendary – I play what I think is integral to the song.

There are moments with a lot of the stuff that I interpret in my own way, but I feel very akin to Izzy’s approach and where he was coming from with the songs. I think about that spirit when I approach a song.

The recording of Chinese Democracy took place over many years. What was that like?

My parts on those songs came about very quickly, because they were already written when I came into the band. The only thing I wrote on that record was the chorus to Better. Everything else was done. I was just putting on parts, which was challenging because everything had to be structured with three guitar players.

We were working out parts that had come before, as well as for the new songs, so everything was very structured because everything has to have its place when you have three guitar players. You have to keep out of each other’s way.

That was something Buckethead did a really good job at. He understood how to make that work. He would lay out on the verses, come in on the choruses and then come in with a solo or play things that would augment what Robin and I were doing.

It must have been interesting to watch Buckethead work within the Guns paradigm, since he’s not traditionally been associated with that style of music.

True, but ultimately, he’s very musical. He understood the big picture of what was going on and always came at it from that perspective. He’s incredibly prolific, right? He’s put out, like, 137 albums or something. [Laughs] But he’s very much the type of guy that does his own thing.

That’s the aspect about the Buckethead – and Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal – era of Guns that sticks out, and perhaps why it was a little musically volatile.

It’s difficult for somebody that’s used to doing that. Ron was used to doing his own music. Being in a band is a very different thing than sitting in your studio or your bedroom and creating your own music. When you’re out playing bars and clubs as a band, it’s a very different thing, a very different dynamic.

When you look at what Duff and Slash have brought to the table over the last nine years, does any of what we’re talking about from the Chinese Democracy era remain?

I really don’t think so. [Laughs] There’s an organic quality that Slash and Duff bring that is inherent to who they are as musicians. It speaks to where they’ve come from and what they’ve brought back into this.

When you look at where you started when you joined GN’R and compare it to today, can you track the changes in your rig?

My journey has been very long and arduous when it comes to gear and the things I have to cover. [Laughs] A lot of the stuff I’m playing now isn’t the stuff I played on Chinese Democracy; I’m covering a lot of what Buckethead did.

I went through periods where I was using multiple amps and channels, but now it’s simplified. When we play live, we run a mono mix, and it’s an analog desk. It’s very old-school.

Does that help bring the classic GN’R guitar sound to the forefront?

I think it brings a lot more dimension and danger into the sound. Slash and I run mono rigs because it’s a mono PA, so it’d be silly for us to have stereo rigs. But I’ve simplified things; I have two amplifiers that I run and that I hit all the time.

I’m just running two single-channel amps, a 100-watt head, a Magnatone combo and a Magnatone Twilighter mono combo. I’m hitting them together throughout the night. I’m constantly on my volume knob, as is Slash. My clean sound is just dropping down the volume.

Where did that approach come from?

It’s very old-school. I simplified it and approached it in a Malcolm Young type of way. For the older stuff, my job is to support what Slash is doing, and for there to be a natural juxtaposition between two guitars.

So I wanted to go with a cleaner type of tone, similar to Malcolm, and how he spits around Angus Young’s tone. It’s the same type of dynamic. It’s also like Joe Perry and Brad Whitford; you can tell the district guitar tones apart and hear how one supports the other.

Has Slash been a big influence on how you look at gear since he rejoined?

Slash is a legend, so he has a sonic fingerprint that is very much him, although his tone has changed a lot since he first got in the band. I think he plays with a lot less gain, and his tone has gotten bigger, which makes my job harder. [Laughs] But obviously, my signature Gretsch has been the biggest piece in the puzzle for me – and lower-gain amps.

There’s an argument to be made that your Gretsch Falcon G6636TRF signature guitar is as synonymous with GN’R as Slash’s Les Paul at this point.

That’s pretty cool. I hate to keep going back to it, but Malcolm Young had the perfect rock rhythm tone. I’ve got to cover more ground than Malcolm, but I loved how huge-sounding the Gretsch is.

I love how there’s a lot of low-end and a lot of top-end, but I need to be able to do more than just that, so we’ve spent a lot of time working with Gretsch on those pickups. They were fantastic to work with.

What’s the secret sauce to those pickups that separates them from standard Gretsch Filter’Trons?

The key to my signature model is the pickups and electronics. We came up with something that is unique and not like anything else in the Gretsch line.

Those pickups are a hybrid of vintage Filter’Trons and vintage PAFs in tone and construction. John Gaudesi, who’s no longer with Gretsch, brought his pickup winder to rehearsal, and he had our front-of-house engineer in the control room, listening on reference monitors while we were in rehearsals.

My tech had four prototypes, and we’d swap the pickups in and out quickly, so we had a rotation of four guitars, and John would wind pickups based on our comments. We’d make comments, the control room would make comments, and he’d go, “I know what I need to do. Let me try this magnet or this wind,” and we narrowed it down until we came up with the right formula.

Some of the more fun guitar moments in Guns’ current show are the classics, like Paradise City and November Rain. How do you approach those?

I make subtle changes to things based on what Slash is doing, or on the way things are going in rehearsal or live. Things change all the time, and it’s been a process to where things just develop.

I’m sure it’s the same way if you watch a Rolling Stones video from 1981; it’s fascinating for me to watch how their guitar parts have changed so much since then and how different they were in ’81 from the original recordings. Songs just develop over time when you play them live every night.

When you came into GN’R 23 years ago, given all the early volatility, did you have a vision of how things would play out?

No. [Laughs] I just took each year as it came. I never had a big vision as far as how I saw things going. Nor did I anticipate still being here with Axl after a quarter of a century. I never really thought about it. I think about the next six months. What I’m consistently focused on is what’s coming up next, whether it be with Guns, another artist or whatever.

How do you see GN’R’s future unfolding?

I see us continuing to put out new music, but like I said, I don’t think about things more than a year out. That’s my focus. It’s always on the next rung in the ladder. I’m not looking at where I’ve come from or where I’m going, long term. I’m just constantly trying to move up.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Slash was there when, in the aftermath of Guns N’ Roses’ 1987 debut album, Appetite for Destruction, the band suddenly exploded onto a chaotic arc from Sunset Strip hopefuls to one of the biggest, most debauched rock acts on the planet – so it’s hard to imagine anything phasing him.

But when the guitar maestro considers how far GN’R has come since his and bassist Duff McKagan’s return in 2016, his mind is clearly blown. As he tells Guitar World, “It really trips me out that all of this has happened.”

From the outside looking in, of course, Slash’s return to the GN’R fold seemed inevitable. Behind the scenes, though, he and GN’R vocalist and leader Axl Rose barely spoke after the guitarist left the band in 1996, let alone thought about teaming up to take on the world again. And even when he did agree to cozy up alongside Rose again, he didn’t exactly have the long haul in mind.

“It sounds crazy, but when I first got involved again, it was just to do a couple of shows, one of which was Coachella,” Slash says. “We’d been getting these offers to do that event for years, so Axl and I got together, sat down, and hashed out a lot of stuff that had built up over the years. That’s when he said, ‘We get these offers to do Coachella. Do you want to do it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that would be fun.’”

So much fun, in fact, that Slash is still here, nine years later. But this isn’t your father’s Guns N’ Roses. There are no more hardcore drugs, no more binge-drinking benders, and no more infighting – the factors that tore the band apart in the first place.

“That’s the best way to put it,” Slash says. “But other than changes in the way things were handled back in the day, it’s just maturing… and maybe the lack of massive substance abuse on my part. [Laughs] I can't speak on everybody else’s behalf, but all those things play into it. It’s a perfect storm of a lot of things.”

That perfect storm has seen Guns N’ Roses go from a legacy act – who went through lead guitar players like it was going out of style in the early 2000s – to regrouping and picking up where they left off after the Use Your Illusion tour in the early Nineties.

“We did Coachella, and then we just kept going,” Slash says. “It never really stopped. The only thing that [temporarily] stopped it was Covid, because we were just going from tour to tour and having a great time.”

Having a cache of iconic songs to revisit surely made having a great time much easier. But for Slash, these aren’t just any songs. For the most part, these are songs defined by his riffs and his solos, which the guys who kept his spot warm for 20 years could never quite replicate.

Yeah, you could say Slash is Guns N’ Roses’ proverbial X factor. But it has nothing to do with top hats (though he makes those look damn cool), nor does it have to do with Les Pauls slung low (because those are always cool), but the vibe he elicits from the stadium-sized audiences GN’R perform to every night.

“I don’t want to sound cliché,” Slash says, “but every show is so contingent on the audience. That sort of reciprocal energy is what drives it, and that has been solid for this whole run since I’ve been back in it. That’s how it was from our inception back in the day, up until I left in 1996.”

The last part of that statement, specifically about leaving in 1996, is particularly critical when it comes to Guns N’ Roses. Despite their issues, Axl Rose and Slash epitomize that classic lead singer/lead guitarist dynamic. It’s magic – but in 1996, that magic died.

Yes, the post-Slash lineup of GN’R gave us 2008’s Chinese Democracy, and yes, it was kind of fun to see Buckethead shred with Guns N’ Roses. The same goes for Robin Finck and Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal – but we wanted to see the band that gave us Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion I and II.

We wanted Slash. We wanted him to welcome us back to the jungle, and we wanted him to dance with Mr. Brownstone (figuratively). And now that he has, Guns N’ Roses are stronger than ever.

“We’re fortunate to be a band whose material has stood the test of time like that,” Slash says. “And we’re fortunate to be appreciated this far out. To be able to maintain that much interest, you have to consider yourself really fucking lucky, and that’s the way I see it. It’s been quite a ride.”

That ride isn’t over yet. GN’R has shows planned around the world in 2025, aiming to circle back to America for yet another stadium-sized victory lap. After that, their long-awaited reunion album just might be in the works… but not until the time is right. More on that later.

For the time being, Slash is vibing and enjoying the ride in a way his younger self maybe couldn’t.

“I constantly have to stop and be thankful that we're able to do something that I love so much,” he says. “There's really nothing like it. To be able to go out there and play for three hours is really a blessing.”

The chemistry within Guns seems stronger than ever. How come?

I have no idea. [Laughs] I think a lot of the stuff that was an issue for Guns in the early days – especially in the Nineties – had to do with management issues and stuff that pitted me and Axl against each other. And it worked; it definitely worked.

But without that element, he and I get along great. Duff and I have always gotten along great, and I love working with Richard Fortus. He and I make a really great guitar team, and he’s just a good guy. We all get along really well, and we have a good time doing what we do.

What’s it been like playing beside Richard compared to Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke?

Richard is a great all-around guitar player. He can do it all. And the cool thing about him is that of all the guys who were in the band when I wasn’t – like Buckethead, Bumblefoot, and DJ [Ashba] – he was the only one I’d worked with prior.

He was there for a minute, and with all those guys in there, I don’t know how that would have worked when I came back. And there was a lot of expectation that Izzy was going to do this, but Richard was there that first day we started rehearsals, and I was given the opportunity to see if I liked working with him or not.

Although we did toy with the idea of Izzy coming back, Richard was always there. I felt really at ease and comfortable with Richard staying in when Izzy didn’t work out.

Izzy is such a recluse; it’s difficult to imagine him playing so many big shows on such a grand scale.

Well, it was weird coming back into it for me. So we had just started to rehearse, and the depth of the material at this point, and the level of playmanship and all that kind of stuff, since the Nineties, was where everybody had been growing as players.

We were all really eager to get better and just keep evolving. But I don’t know where Izzy would have fallen in at that time. I have no idea, because we never really got a chance to jam at any of those initial rehearsals for the Not In This Lifetime tour.

So I don’t know what it would have been like. Everybody has been constantly working this whole time and growing as musicians, but I don’t know what he’s been up to on a musical level.

Looking back, how did you write the riff for Appetite for Destruction’s first track, Welcome to the Jungle?

Welcome to the Jungle is funny because when that riff came to me, Axl had come over, and I played him that riff, right? And then, we had our first rehearsals at this guy Nickey Beat’s studio in Silver Lake in L.A., and on that first day, we were like, “What are we going to play?”

This is when the band first got together – the classic lineup with Steven [Adler] and Izzy. Axl goes, “Why don’t you play that thing you were playing to me earlier?” And that’s where Jungle started.

We all fell into where I had the riff – and Izzy and everybody just had different input. That’s how all our songs worked. No matter who came up with the initial idea, everybody was hands-on.

Did the solo come just as spontaneously?

I remember doing the solo, but I can’t remember how we ended up in C#. [Laughs] I remember changing a couple of notes around the chord changes, and the solo just came together. But all of that material on Appetite, musically, almost wrote itself.

I can’t remember too much time being spent on any one particular song where we were trying to get the arrangement right. Everything had to be done in the studio at Nickey Beat’s, and entire songs came out of it. And Jungle was one of those, where it really came together in the time it took to have a session.

Is it true that you didn’t initially like Sweet Child O’ Mine?

Yeah, I have to admit I did have a thing with it. [Laughs] It was a riff I came up with, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, but it inspired the whole song. I always say this, but to me, we were like a Motörhead-type hard rock band, so any kind of ballads were sort of uncongressed. [Laughs] But it really became part of our set.

We played it one time opening for Ted Nugent, and when it was time to play that song, I was like, “Oh, fuck…” [Laughs] And, of course, I had to remember how to play the riff accurately by myself in front of everybody every time we played, which, at the time, I was a little drunk, and you never knew what was going to happen. [Laughs]

How do you feel about the song now?

As luck would have it, it was the single that actually broke the band. It’s a great song, and I don’t have any issues with it. I had issues with it back in the early days when I’d go out and play it, but it’s become one of the big tentpole songs in the set. So it is what it is. [Laughs]

When people talk about your guitar solos, November Rain always comes up.

Yeah. But all the solos, that one included, were very spontaneous and at-the-moment when the song was written. You figure out what the chord changes are going to be and then just do whatever you feel. The November Rain solo, which sounds so structured to me now, was just what happened in the moment.

Can you visualize how you came up with it?

The first version of November Rain we did was on acoustic. Even though Axl wrote it on piano, we didn’t always have a piano, so we used to play it on acoustic, and that solo was there. That was just the spontaneous way it went.

I think what happens is you come up with a basic melody that comes to mind when you play the song, and the more you play the song, the more it starts to have a vocal life of its own. That’s what a solo should be. It’s an extension of whatever the song is. It’s another melody, a counter-melody, or an extension of the vocal, but it should be lyrical and melodic.

How do you feel about those solos when you play them now?

I have to admit, it feels weird. Like, if I get hung up one night and don’t feel like playing the solo for Sweet Child O’ Mine and I play something else – and that does happen, especially if I break a string – it feels weird if I don’t play the solo the way it’s supposed to go. I know people get really disappointed if I don’t play it the way they’re used to hearing it.

That’s the double-edged sword. It’s cool because it means something in the context of the song; it’s not just a ripping solo that comes, goes, and is forgettable. It means it has some tenacity.

But then again, you can’t just go off on a tangent like I would like to do sometimes in songs like that. [Laughs] Because it just doesn’t feel right. You feel like you’re missing something if you don’t play it the way that you hear it, or heard it originally, you know?

Those solos sound so well-planned, like mini-compositions. It’s hard to believe they were just off the cuff.

Yeah, they really all were. I don’t remember ever sitting down and figuring any of them out. Especially Jungle. I remember going into that, and it sounds very structured to a point, but that’s just what the chord changes were. It’s interesting to think back on sometimes. When you’re onstage, your mind wanders, and I’ll go back and think about stuff like that. [Laughs]

When you play Rocket Queen live, it features an open-ended jam.

That whole jam section has been there since the Nineties. When Guns was doing the stadium tours back then, we started to extend parts of certain songs to make jams out of them and really just made them up on the spot. You really didn’t know what the structure was.

How has that evolved since you’ve been playing with Richard?

[Initially] he was doing a solo section, I was doing a solo section, and then it would get back to the arrangement of the solo section of the song, which is a slide solo thing, and it’s evolved a bunch of different times in different ways.

And now we’ve added a piano part and some more chord changes, and Richard does this fucking ripping solo, and I go into a voice-box solo afterward. We’ve been doing it that way on this tour, and it seems to hold its own that way, so it feels a bit more structured now.

But whenever we do any kind of jams, very little time is spent working shit out. You just go for it by the seat of your pants and see what happens. [Laughs] And since you’re playing however many nights a week, you can remember what was fucked up from the night before and work on it in the moment.

On the gear side of things, you’re forever associated with the Gibson Les Paul, but you’ve been using everything from B.C. Rich Biches to Gibson ES-335s.

It’s just one extended evolution, right? It started out with gear that wasn’t mine back in the day, and then in the Nineties we had a touring apparatus where we needed to have reliable shit. I was using three Marshall Jubilees back then, which were a new thing at the time.

I happened to get them because, if I remember correctly, they came from Guitar Center, and I got them for cheap, or if not, for free… somehow. I can’t remember exactly how I got them, but I had them. [Laughs]

So those were in my touring rig. Then I had two Les Pauls I got from Gibson, which are affectionately named Jessica and Stephanie. I still use Jessica, and I still have Stephanie. And then, during the Nineties, because there was so much material on the Use Your Illusion records, I started picking up different guitars for different sounds.

You had a B.C. Rich Mockingbird back in the day, too.

The Mockingbird was actually the first professional, brand-name guitar I ever got. I was always a big fan of B.C. Riches, and I worked in a guitar store in Hollywood that was a B.C. Rich authorized dealer.

I had a lot of interaction with B.C. Rich as a kid, and when we were doing Use Your Illusion, I actually had enough money to buy a new guitar, so I picked up a used Mockingbird, an early-Eighties one, which I still use on the road.

I also picked up an Eighties Les Paul goldtop that was really amazing, and some other odds and ends while we were making the Use Your Illusion records. When we went out on the tour, I took all that gear with me, and I still use some of it.

You’ve incorporated a lot of other instruments since then, right?

Yeah, I picked up a lot of stuff over the 20 years when I wasn’t in Guns N’ Roses, like different types of Les Pauls. I started working with Gibson on a lot of signature models, the double-necks and so on. And with Guild, I designed a [Crossroads] double-neck acoustic-electric that I predominantly used for Civil War in the early Nineties.

That’s still around and I still use it. But lately, the mainstays are a killer B.C. Rich Bich and the guitar that’s a replica of the guitar I recorded Appetite on… which was a replica of a Gibson Les Paul.

A replica of a replica!

Yeah. [Laughs] That’s on the road with me. And I’ve been really into Gibson ES-335s lately. I have one of those on the road, and some really amazing handmade [Leo] Scala guitars, but I don’t take vintage guitars on the road as a rule. I’m too hard on them, so I pick up new stuff. I’ve gotten different things for different songs, basically.

For amps, I switched from Marshall to Magnatone in the last couple of years. And on the What You Want and What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things tour, I’ve been using newly co-designed 100-watt Magnatone heads and matching 4x12 cabs.

When you returned to Guns nine years ago, did you imagine you’d be packing stadiums with the world at the band’s fingertips again?

No, I didn’t! It’ll be 10 years in March 2026, and I’m tripping that so much time has gone by. Like I was saying before, I’m blown away that we’ve managed to have such a great following this whole time.

Is there a new album in GN’R’s future?

There’s so much material at this point – it’s a matter of having the discipline to sit down and fucking get into it. But the thing with Guns is, in my experience, you can never plan ahead. You can never sit down and go, “We’re going to take this time, and we’re going to do this.”

Every time we’ve done that, it falls apart. It just spontaneously happens through some sort of inspiration that triggers it. And the next thing you know, it’s off and running. So it’s coming. I know it’s coming because everybody is thinking about it. It’ll just happen when it happens.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Have you ever found yourself in the audience at a concert, mindlessly strumming along, pretending that you're the band's lead guitarist? Heck, ever do that while listening to music at home?

Well, if you fancy yourself as something of an air guitar pro, you'd be pleased to know that there's an actual, bona fide Air Guitar World Championships .

As the current air guitar world champion, Aapo Rautio, recounts in The Guardian, his crown has been a long time coming, as he's been practicing his craft since he was a kid.

“I was always ‘playing’ air guitar, miming along to the biggest rock tunes with my imaginary instrument,” he relates. “My parents were music fans – my dad loved Bruce Springsteen and U2. AC/DC was the first band I discovered on my own. Angus Young, the lead guitarist, was my hero.”

As Rautio relays, stepping on stage for the first time gave him a taste of what it feels like to be a rock star – and he was officially hooked.

He continues, “When I stepped on stage, I did my routine to AC/DC’s Whole Lotta Rosie. The crowd started chanting ‘Angus,’ just like on the live recording, and it hit me: this is what it feels like to be a rock star. I made it to the finals, playing to hundreds of people in Oulu’s market square, and I was hooked. I got the nickname ‘Little Angus’ that day.”

And if you're wondering what the competition actually involves, Rautio describes it as “intense but joyful” experience.

“Contestants have 60 seconds to give everything – explosive energy, perfect mime, rock star charisma – on an invisible guitar,” he explains. “Judges score you on a scale from 4.0 to 6.0. In the case of a tie, there’s an ‘air-off’ between the final two contestants: a song plays and you improvise.”

Preparation is everything. For this year's championship, Rautio chose an Avenged Sevenfold song. He listened to it on loop for weeks and, akin to a world-class athlete or performer, made sure his body was well up to the task: “By the time competition day came, I could feel the song in my bones,” he recalls.

Fast forward to the actual show day, and when the scores came in, Rautio had tied with Japanese champion Yuta “Sudo-chan” Sudo. And, like every other battle of the bands (or, in this case, air guitar battle), it was time for a tie breaker – appropriately labelled, in air guitar circles, as an “air-off”.

“We went head-to-head to Sweet Child o’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses. When I heard the song, I felt relieved because it was one that I knew, and more than anything I was so excited to perform one more time. When they announced I’d won, the square erupted.

“The moment is hazy. I think I blacked out from shock,” he recollects. “Then everyone started singing Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World and lifted me on to their shoulders. Justin Howard – AKA Nordic Thunder – a former champion and one of my closest friends, was hugging me. I cried.

“I was Finland’s first air guitar world champion in 25 years. The previous Finnish champion, Markus ‘Black Raven’ Vainionpää, was there, too. He gave me the biggest hug and said it was ‘about damn time.’”

Despite being a guitarist and a drummer in an actual band, Rautio asserts that the air guitar community is truly one-of-a-kind, a family with the ethos of “make air, not war” summing up the spirit that permeates the championships.

“Before you go on stage, every competitor comes and hugs you. Then, for 60 seconds, you’re allowed to be free, silly, the biggest rock star in the world,” the air guitar champion concludes.

And, like every other niche, air guitar enjoys a contested history – with Woodstock ’69 largely cited as one of the documented events where air guitar originated.

Richard Fortus was part of Guns N’ Roses’ post-Slash era that saw the likes of Buckethead, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, and DJ Ashba all come and go. But when the top-hatted maverick returned to the fold in 2016, Fortus remained part of the picture, and that’s seen his role in the band change over time.

“It’s been a pretty massive change,” Fortus tells Guitar World, reflecting on how different things are now compared to when he joined. Back in 2002, the band was at a crossroads, with Axl Rose and company labouring over Chinese Democracy between relentless touring.

“Robin Finck was my favorite guitarist I played with, besides Slash, and was the one I felt most unified with,” he continues, revealing his second favorite GNR player. “With Slash, it's a whole different level. I've never played with another guitar player I feel so in-sync with.”

Fortus has been responsible for covering the parts once played by Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke – the latter of whom temporarily joined Alice Cooper’s band earlier this year after Orianthi withdrew due to injury. So, does he play their parts note-for-note?

“I can't really speak to the Gilby thing as much, but with Izzy, there are certain things I view as integral,” Fortus underlines. “There's never been a time when Slash has said to me, ‘I think you should copy what Izzy did here.’

“He's very much in the moment. He's come back to me and said, ‘I listened to this live recording we did, and I didn't realize you were doing that. That's really cool.’ But he's never said, ‘I think you should do this…’

“He is very trusting of how I approach things,” he continues. “But there are things that – out of respect to the genius of Izzy and what makes this band legendary – I play what I think is integral to the song.

“There are moments with a lot of the stuff that I interpret in my own way, but I feel very akin to Izzy's approach and where he was coming from with the songs. I think about that spirit when I approach a song.”

Fortus played a role in Chinese Democracy – when it was finally released into the world in 2008 – and is set to feature on its successor. Speaking in the same issue of GW, Slash has seemingly confirmed their plans to write his first album with the band in decades. But they’re also in no rush to finish it.

Slash has also discussed how he wasn’t convinced about Sweet Child O’ Mine’s potential at first. Fortus, meanwhile, experienced a first during a recent show in Saudi Arabia, when the gig was so hot that it melted his pickups.

Guns N’ Roses’ full cover story can be read in the new issue of Guitar World. Head to Magazines Direct to grab a copy.

Sweet Child O’ Mine may be Guns N’ Roses’ calling card – and for many guitarists, their entry point into the band and even Slash’s repertoire. However, the Les Paul slinger admits he wasn’t so keen on what would become a career-defining song – and, according to rock ’n’ roll lore, even deliberately tried to sabotage it.

“Yeah, I have to admit I did have a thing with it,” he says with a laugh in a new Guitar World interview.

“It was a riff I came up with, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, but it inspired the whole song.”

Slash wasn’t a fan of the D, C, G chord progression, and according to a previous interview with Duffy McKagan, he even said, “We’ve got to get rid of this song somehow.”

“I always say this, but to me, we were like a Motörhead-type hard rock band, so any kind of ballads were sort of uncongressed,” he continues. “But it really became part of our set. We played it one time opening for Ted Nugent, and when it was time to play that song, I was like, ‘Oh, fuck…’

“And, of course, I had to remember how to play the riff accurately by myself in front of everybody every time we played, which, at the time, I was a little drunk, and you never knew what was going to happen.”

And like many other iconic riffs, there are tons of tales surrounding its inception – including one that it was originally crafted as a warm-up exercise, a rumor Slash disputed in 2022.

“Somebody else said that and it just became one of those things,” he said on the Eddie Trunk Podcast.

“I was sitting around the house where Guns used to live at one point, in ’86, I guess it was, and I just came up with this riff,” he continues. “It was just me messing around and putting notes together like any riff you do. You're like, ‘This is cool,’ and then you put the third note and find a melody like that. So it was a real riff; it wasn't a warm-up exercise.”

Elsewhere, Slash once told Total Guitar that, had the band not been in the same room together at that time, he might not have shared the idea with them – meaning that the riff, and subsequent song, would have been lost forever.

For more from Slash, plus new interviews with Chris Buck, Samantha Fish, and many more, pick up issue 597 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Slash has revealed that a new Guns N’ Roses album is an inevitability, and the band has plenty of material ready to go.

The album will be the band's first since 2008’s Chinese Democracy, and Slash’s first with the group since the 1991 double-album, Use Your Illusion, and the ill-fated The Spaghetti Incident? album two years later.

However, the top-hatted electric guitar hero was quick to temper expectations. It doesn’t sound like it’s coming anytime soon.

“There’s so much material at this point – it’s a matter of having the discipline to sit down and fucking get into it,” he says in the new issue of Guitar World. “But the thing with Guns is, in my experience, you can never plan ahead. You can never sit down and go, ‘We’re going to take this time, and we’re going to do this.’ Every time we’ve done that, it falls apart.”

Slash co-founded the band in 1985 and they quickly exploded onto the scene with their debut album Appetite for Destruction, which became one of the best-selling debut albums of all time.

After a tumultuous tenure peppered with extracurricular activities from all those in the band, Slash left in 1996, forming Slash's Snakepit, Velvet Revolver, and Slash ft. Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators in the interim. He also released a blues-honouring solo album, The Orgy of the Damned, last year, featuring a wide-ranging cast of guest stars.

He then rejoined GNR in 2016, after the likes of Buckethead, Robin Finck, DJ Ashba, and Richard Fortus all featured during his time away. The latter remains a part of the group.

They’ve toured extensively since – including a recent Saudi Arabia show that was so hot it melted Fortus’ pickups – but this is the first time that new music has been actively discussed.

Slash wants to ensure the band learns from the mistakes of the past rather than forcing the ideas to come.

“It just spontaneously happens through some sort of inspiration that triggers it,” he admits. “So it’s coming. I know it’s coming because everybody is thinking about it. It’ll just happen when it happens.”

Elsewhere, GNR have paid tribute to the late John Sykes with a thunderous cover of a Thin Lizzy classic, and Zakk Wylde has discussed the time he came close to joining the band.

GNR are the cover stars of the latest Guitar World issue. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

Chris Buck has reflected on the time Slash came to his and his band's aid while Cardinal Black were prepping for their first-ever tour of the US.

For the majority of bands, the reality of touring can be gruelling – especially for any musicians who are hoping to traverse the vast expanse of the Atlantic ocean to bring their music to new live audiences.

Buck is one of the finest UK blues rock electric guitar players of his generation and a man who is painfully aware of the logistics behind such a tour – having embarked on his first headline stint of North America with his band, Cardinal Black, earlier this year.

Not only did it require a serious financial commitment to get the kit and necessary personnel over to the venue, but also a sizeable administrative headache, not least when it came to visa applications.

Fortunately, Buck had an ace up his sleeve when it came to securing that all-important visa.

“Our lawyer said, ‘You need a letter from an industry expert,’” Buck remembers in the new issue of Guitar World. “So I texted Slash. Our lawyer goes, ‘That’s not the Slash, is it? Fucking hell – it could have just been your manager.’”

Safe to say Slash, who has passionately championed Buck in the past, was eager to help out, and within the hour the Guns N’ Roses guitar legend had supplied his endorsement. The visa was, of course, approved.

Cardinal Black subsequently kicked off their first North American tour at the Gramercy Theatre in New York in early August. It was a hugely successful stint, with the band at one point requiring a venue upgrade because they sold out so quickly – much to the surprise of the venue owner.

It’s not the first time Slash has helped Buck with his various visa-related obstacles, either. The pair’s connection goes back years, when Slash unexpectedly invited a then-21-year-old Buck to jam in front of 12,000 people after he’d seen clips of the emerging guitar star’s playing.

Indeed, Slash revealed last year how he had first come to Cardinal Black’s aid – and then went one step further to help them organize a gig.

“I helped him to get a visa to come here, and then I called the Troubadour to get him a gig,” he said at the time, before paying tribute to Buck’s playing. “You see all these young blues artists really going for it and getting really fucking good.”

Sure enough, Buck and Cardinal Black played their first headline show at the storied Troubadour in Los Angeles in July 2024, and later returned to the historic venue for their 2025 headline tour.

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the newest issue of Guitar World – a bumper blues issue that features interviews with Slash, Buddy Guy, Samantha Fish and more.

Ahead of Cardinal Black's US tour, Chris Buck sat down with Guitarist to look ahead to the milestone shows.

Slash has never been slow in offering props to his fellow players. Game recognizes game. But when the Guns N’ Roses icon shared a video of shred enigma Buckethead tearing it up in a live jam with Primus frontman/bassist Les Claypool, it really struck a chord – and Buckethead wanted to repay the compliment.

Buckethead, AKA Brian Patrick Carroll, took to Facebook to thank Slash, and to share some thoughts on what it was actually like to be lead guitarist in Guns N’ Roses and not be Slash.

That, when you think about it, is pretty mind-blowing, and yet Buckethead held that job down for nigh-on four years between 2000 and 2004. He admits it wasn’t easy. In fact, no matter how technically on-point he was, Buckethead feels he just couldn’t quite nail Slash’s style.

“Just wanted to say that Slash is one of the greats of all time, as everyone knows,” he wrote. “He was involved in writing music and his guitar playing transcends decades, and to reach such a wide amount of people playing really incredible guitar is such a rare thing. In the time that I was involved in attempting to play his parts never really could I have captured the essence of him.”

Should this surprise us? Perhaps nobody could. We can imitate other player’s styles but we can never truly replicate what makes them them. It would always be a performance with an asterisk next to it.

That W. Axl Rose hired Buckethead for the job was fascinating in and of itself. At a certain remove, these two players could not be much more different.

Slash is hewn from the classic-rock of the ‘70s, his bearing of the Gibson Les Paul an anachronistic counterpoint to ‘80s Sunset Strip’s fevered obsession with all things pointy and Floyd-equipped. He is leather trousers, plaid shirt and aviators.

Buckethead? He looks and sounds like he has been dropped here from the moon. He plays the guitar with the eponymous family-sized KFC bucket on his head, identity shielded by a mask, and has a preference for next-generation electrics and custom-built Gibson and Jackson guitars.

Even when he picks up a Les Paul it is bone-white and equipped with arcade-style buttons for engaging a kill-switch on command. Okay, so maybe they both have a taste of top hats, kind of. Stylistically, they orbit different suns.

Slash did not hold back in his praise for the “next-level” Buckethead and Claypool, and the clip he posts of Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains performing live is pretty darn gnarly. It could do with some exposure, too.

C2B3, as it they were known, comprised Buckethead on guitar, Claypool on bass/vocals, Parliament-Funkadelic alum Bernie Worrell on keyboards, with former Primus drummer Brain supplying the beats. They played on the outer limits. They were not for everyone.

“This is some of the FUNKIEST music you'll ever hear!” writes Slash. “Buckethead and Les Claypool of Primus creating pure magic together. The bass lines are absolutely insane and Buckethead’s guitar work is next level as always.

“If you love funk, progressive rock, or just incredible musicianship, this jam will blow your mind! Both legends pushing each other to new heights. Support Buckethead whenever you can!”

Earlier this year, Buckethead gave a rare interview to Bootsy Collins – but answered the questions through his guitar.

This month on Cover Stars we pick up the phone to ask Gilby Clarke why he chose his 1969 Fender Telecaster for the cover of Guitar World’s November 1992 issue – and more to the point, where is it now?

Would he even remember? This was a wild time in the history of Guns N’ Roses. Use You Illusion parts one and two had established them once more as the biggest rock band on the planet, and the circus of the live show had brought controversy, riots, all kinds of nuttiness.

But of course he remembered. He’s still got it, and Clarke says this is one electric guitar he is not parting with.

How’d you get this guitar?

“I worked at Hogan’s House of Music in Hawthorne, California, when I was younger. I bought it there. I paid $300 for it in 1980.”

Did you modify it? And what sort of rig did you pair it with?

“It was modified by Jim Foote at Music Works in Lawndale, California. I had it painted black, and they added binding along with a 1959 Gibson PAF pickup. Then I found the pickup in a drawer, but it wasn’t working, so they gave it to me. I sent it to Seymour Duncan to rewind it to the original specs. And, of course, jumbo frets were de rigueur back then. I played it with a 50-watt Marshall JMP and a 4x12 cabinet.”

Was this Telecaster part of your main Guns N’ Roses touring arsenal?

“I actually never played it live with Guns N’ Roses, but I used it on a lot of recordings. I used Teles quite a bit back then; the middle pickup would be for verses and the bridge for choruses.”

What notable recordings did you use this guitar on?

“I used it on Guns N’ Roses’ The Spaghetti Incident? and the 1995 Slash’s Snakepit record, It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere. I always tried to use the opposite of Slash. I would use a Tele, Gibson Les Paul or my [Silvertop Custom Deluxe] Zematis through a ’62 Fender Deluxe. And I usually had to run a Marshall Bluesbreaker [overdrive] pedal to add a little more gain. I also used it in the music video for the Kill for Thrills song Brother’s Eyes. You can find it on YouTube.”

Why did you choose this guitar for your GW cover shoot?

“It was my first cover, and Slash had already been on a lot of covers. I knew he’d use a great vintage Les Paul, so I had to up my game. But I only owned four guitars when I got the Guns N’ Roses gig, and, of course, I got more for the Use Your Illusion tour. But all of those guitars were on the road, so this was my only guitar at home in L.A., where the shoot took place. I’m glad, though.”

Do you still have this guitar?

“Of course! But I only record with it. It sounds so good with the original PAF pickup. I haven’t modified it since back then; it’s exactly the same. It still feels like a vintage Tele, even with the humbucker in there.”

Editor’s note: In the November 1992 issue of GW, this guitar is identified as a Fender Custom Shop Tele. “They got it wrong,” Clarke says today.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Former members of Thin Lizzy, alongside Guns N' Roses guitarist Richard Fortus and the 45-piece RTÉ Concert Orchestra, are set to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott at Dublin's 3Arena on January 4, 2026.

The roster of musicians performing on the night includes Grand Slam – the band Lynott formed in 1984 – Richard Fortus, as well as Thin Lizzy's Ricky Warwick and Marco Mendoza. There will also be a performance from Moonlight – The Phil Lynott Enigma star Peter Smith, who plays Lynott in the rock/theater production.

To end the night, Thin Lizzy's Eric Bell and Darren Wharton will deliver a selection of the band's greatest hits.

“Fans from across the globe are expected to gather for this once-in-a-lifetime celebration of the life, music, and enduring legacy of one of Ireland’s most iconic musicians,” reads an official statement.

As the co-founder, lead vocalist, bassist, and primary songwriter for Thin Lizzy, Lynott, also known as “The Ace with the Bass,” cemented his legacy not only with his band's repertoire and ensuing success but also with his distinctive pick-based playing style.

During his final years, he was heavily affected by substance dependency, and on January 4, 1986, he died of pneumonia and heart failure due to septicemia.

In a recent interview with Guitarist, Thin Lizzy's Scott Gorham revealed Lynott was responsible for recruiting the late John Sykes, who arguably helped save Thin Lizzy for one final studio album.

Before there was Guns N’ Roses there was Hollywood Rose. And before there was Slash, there was Chris Weber, a teenage riffmeister with a love for sleaze-meets-glam guitar.

He joined Hollywood Rose after meeting Izzy Stradlin through Tracii Guns, and he can’t forget how Axl Rose’s voice made him feel: “At times it sent shivers up my spine.”

The early lineup consisted of Weber and Stradlin – both playing bass and guitar – Rose and drummer Johnny Kreis. With a loan from Weber’s parents, they recorded a demo in 1984, which featured two future GN’R songs, Anything Goes and Reckless Life.

By that time, of course, Weber was long gone. But would they have got there without him? “Who knows?” he says. “I was a riff-driven lead guitarist, and GN’R ended up musically driven by great guitar riffs. Maybe they’d have found their way there eventually – but I think I laid down the foundation.”

Reporting that he has “no real regrets,” he adds: “Changing anything might have altered what the band ultimately became. Maybe I wish I’d been treated a bit more fairly by some of the record executives along the way, but I was part of the creation of one of the biggest bands of all time.

“And I co-wrote songs on two incredible albums, including one of the most iconic rock records of all time. That’s a nice legacy.”

How did you first meet Izzy Stradlin?

“I’d been asking Tracii for a year or so to join his band, but he said it was a one-guitar setup. He got sick of me asking and introduced me to Izzy in 1983 at the Rainbow. We sat talking in Tracii’s truck. Izzy told me about his vision for the band, and I was sold immediately.

“He was the absolute coolest guy I’d met in the scene. He had the look and an easygoing personality – but underneath it all, he was focused and driven. I was all in for whatever band he wanted to create.”

When did Axl come into the picture?

“Izzy introduced me to Bill, as he was still going by – I never did call him Axl – within a week. We went to his girlfriend Gina’s apartment on Whitley Avenue, right above Hollywood Blvd. It was a cool old rundown apartment from the ’30s with one of those old elevators where you had to pull the gate closed to get it to move.

“I generally liked him. He wasn’t as cool as Izzy, but I did like him. I was amazed by his voice, but it wasn’t until we started writing and rehearsing that I finally got to hear the incredible tone and range he had. Initially, he mainly sang in a lower register. But soon he started to sound high, growly and powerful.”

What were the first songs that you worked on together?

“Anything Goes, which was called My Way Your Way (Anything Goes), Reckless Life, Killing Time and Shadow of Your Love. We listened to a lot of Aerosmith’s Rock in a Hard Place and Thin Lizzy’s Black Rose.

“Axl liked Black Rose so much that I ended up paying for a tattoo inspired by the album cover. I also bought him his first tattoo: a broken heart with lightning bolts.”

What’s the story behind Hollywood Rose’s demo?

“Every band needed a demo tape to give to promoters and record companies. Unless you already had a good following, promoters required one too. I borrowed $500 from my parents and we booked time in a studio. The demo was later released as The Roots of Guns N’ Roses.

“Izzy, Axl and I had been working on the songs at my parents’ house. We didn’t have a drummer or bass player yet, so we looked in the local papers and found Johnny Kreis. He learned the songs on the day of the recording, and we knocked ’em out in just eight hours. Izzy and I traded off on playing bass.”

How did your sound differ from what Guns would become known for?

“Our sound was rawer – less effects and more in your face. I had a candy apple red Starbody guitar with a Charvel maple neck and a Kahler locking bridge. It only had one knob: volume! I had a Flying V as a backup, but I rarely used it.

“I used a Marshall JCM800 and a Marshall 4x12. I had two Marshall half-stacks, and Izzy used one. The only effects pedal I used was an MXR Distortion+, with no channel switching. If I wanted less distortion I just turned my volume down!”

What was the label interest like in the demo?

“I think Columbia or CBS showed some early interest, but I let Izzy focus on that. I was just happy to be in a gigging band. Besides, I was 16 or 17 years old; I had no clue about the business. We did go to a couple of meetings in Century City and met with a few people, but nothing came of it while I was in the band.”

What led to Axl firing you and bringing Slash in?

“The truth is I was never fired. We played a show at The Music Machine in West LA, opening for Stryper. During the set Axl and I bumped into each other. He got mad, probably embarrassed, and quit. After that, he joined up with Tracii for a stint with LA Guns.

“Izzy started playing with the band London for a bit, then The New Hollywood Rose formed with Slash. I was off in NYC at that time. I stepped in and played a final show with them when Slash wasn’t available sometime around New Year's 1985, at Dancing Waters in San Pedro.”

Did you get along with Slash?

“We were friends – we went to Fairfax High together. We’d hang out at his house, with his snake in the snake closet, and did some considerable drinking! He was a great guy. I wasn’t mad at all when he began playing with Hollywood Rose. He was technically a better lead guitar player than I was at the time, and stylistically much more bluesy and melodic.”

You co-wrote Anything Goes, which ended up on Appetite for Destruction. What’s the story behind the song?

“I’d been listening to Aerosmith’s Rock in a Hard Place a lot. I loved Jimmy Crespo’s riffs – they were so swanky and loose. That was the inspiration. Izzy’s part, while seemingly completely different, works as a perfect complement to my guitar arrangement. I’m not sure who suggested that the verses get a halftime treatment, but both versions work.”

How about Reckless Life and Move to The City?

“My riff for Reckless Life inspired Izzy’s rhythm part. Originally the drums sounded more like Mötley Crüe’s Red Hot. I used to love playing that intro live; I used the Kahler to make it sound like a revving engine.

“I wrote Move to the City after I’d left the band, using a Tascam 244 and a Dr Rhythm drum machine. I gave the song to Izzy and he put his guitar part over it. We collaborated on the lyrics; he sang them on that first recording. I think I had a Shure SM58. I never played the song live with the band; but it was put on Live Like a Suicide along with Reckless Life.”

There’s been a lot of debate over this: is it true you co-wrote Shadow of Your Love?

“I remember writing it. Early on, all of our songs were collaborations. The same is true for Back Off Bitch. All these songs are either on our early Hollywood Rose demos or in rehearsal video footage. But the powers that be decided not to grant me co-writing credit on those – alas.”

How do you measure your impact on the sound, vibe, and songs that would become synonymous with GnR?

“Those songs allowed us to play that initial night that Slash and Steven Adler came to at Gazzarri’s. I moved the sound into something way more guitar-based than what Axl and Izzy might have done by themselves. I’m sure glad they did what they did; Appetite is a masterpiece and an important part of music history.”

What gear are you using now?

“As a psychotherapist, I do music therapy with many of my clients. Waterstone has provided me with several guitars and basses which I solely use in the work. They play great and look cool as hell. The Starbody guitar was kind of a one-trick pony – one knob and all attitude. These days, I’m after more nuance and feel in my playing and recording.

“I’ll always be a Marshall guy at heart, but the Vox AC30 is a beautiful amp. It’s rich and punchy in all the right ways. I’ve been using it exclusively for the past decade.”

Slash’s B.C. Rich Warlock had been missing for 30 years when it miraculously reappeared at auction in 2016. Nine years later, Slash’s heavily used and highly angular axe is set to go under the hammer once again.

The Guns N’ Roses man is usually seen slinging Gibson Les Pauls, but his affinity for B.C. Rich has seen him wield Warlocks and Mockingbirds throughout his career.

Julien’s Auctions, which sold off the guitar in 2016, noted that Slash had ordered the axe from Hollywood Music Store in Los Angeles in early 1984 before using it across 18 of GNR’s formative shows around Hollywood. That makes the Warlock – confirmed as authentic by Slash and his original guitar tech, Jason Solon – perhaps his most-used electric guitar of the period.

Slash has also signed the body of the guitar in felt-tip pen, complete with a sketch of a skull and crossbones wearing a top hat, natch.

Julien’s added that it was on this guitar that Slash chiselled out the riffs of GNR classics Welcome to the Jungle and Sweet Child O’ Mine, and was also used to record demo versions of the tracks, before he pivoted to Les Pauls and Marshall amps.

Despite that, the guitar still got plenty of playtime over the following years, and it can be heard on two live releases – Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide, and Lies. The story goes that the guitar was retired from touring in 1987 but was never seen again, before re-emerging at auction in 2016.

The guitar had surpassed its $60,000 - $80,000 estimate in just three bids as it sold for $96,000. This time around, an estimate of up to $200,000 has been mooted, with bids starting at $130,000. The auction is open for another 14 days.

Listed by the Gotta Have Rock and Roll auction house, further details of the guitar’s prominence have also been revealed. It was used, the website says, “at significant events including Guns N' Roses' first show with the classic lineup at the Troubadour on June 6, 1985.

“This instrument was pivotal throughout the band's pre-fame era, used in multiple performances and recordings, including seminal tracks from ‘Appetite for Destruction,’” it continues. “It was retired from active performance in January 1987 and comes with an original Anvil hard case as well as a detailed timeline.”

Head to Gotta Have Rock and Roll for more.

On the topic of Guns N' Roses guitars, Richard Fortus experienced a career-first in Saudi Arabia when a gig was so hot it melted his pickups, and Slash says he became “disillusioned” by Marshall amps before his switch to Magnatone.

Slash has opened up about his high-profile collaboration with Magnatone, after the Guns N’ Roses electric guitar hero seemed to switch his tried-and-trusted Marshalls for a signature amp built by the boutique guitar amp designer.

In late 2023, Slash took the guitar gear world by surprise when he announced he was working with Magnatone on a signature amp after spending 30 years playing Marshalls.

A few days after the news broke, Marshall set the record straight by affirming that Slash would still play his stacks, and that the new partnership with Magnatone – which resulted in the SL100 – would run alongside his existing collaboration with Marshall.

Now, Slash has spoken out about the move, which he says came about after he began to feel “disillusioned” with the sound of his Marshalls and other existing amps.

Speaking in a new interview with Magnatone, Slash explains, “I pretty much made my home with Marshall for a lot of years, and then over time I started to get… I don't know what's the best word for it, a little disillusioned with maybe the consistency of my sound with the Marshall or whatever it was.

“There were things that I wanted to achieve that I wasn't really getting out of those amps,” he continues. “And then I played a Magnatone one time, just by chance.”

Accidentally happening upon a Magnatone turned out to be a huge lightbulb moment for Slash, who at the time was looking for a way to reinvigorate his sound in the lead up to his blues solo record, Orgy of the Damned.

“I think Richard Fortus gave it to me,” he continues. “I mean, I went to go do this blues record a couple years ago. I wasn't looking for a wall of sound for the blues record. I wanted something that was more like a combo, 50 watt or less type of deal.

“So I pulled out all these old combos that I had, and I saw the Magnatone and I was familiar with them because Billy Gibbons was using them.

"I ended up using it for the whole process. Out of everything that I had, I kept going back to that amp. And then when we went to the studio, I did a whole record with that amp. "I started to get less and less of what I was expecting out of the gear that I was using,” he notes. “But then when I stumbled on the Magnatone side, ‘Oh, fuck.’”

It wasn’t just a studio thing, either. As Slash reveals, he also took his 50-watt Magnatone combos on tour with Guns N’ Roses, and used them in place of his previous Marshall rig.

“Going out with Guns N’ Roses a couple years ago, I took my 50-watt Magnatone combos and replaced the Marshalls on that tour, for the entire tour, and it worked great.”

In other Slash new, Marty Schwartz recently recalled the time he bumped into the GNR icon – and revealed that Slash had watched his tuition videos in the lead up to the blues record that feature his now-prized Magnatone combos.

One of the UK’s cultural institutions, the annual music extravaganza that is Glastonbury Festival, has just kicked off – and while tents have been pitched, flower crowns assembled, and the artists are up and running showcasing their wares on the highly coveted stages, The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde is giving her two cents about the impact of global warming on the festival season.

“I trust you’re all surviving the heat waves,” writes Hynde in a recent Instagram post. “I'm remembering the last couple years when we supported Guns N’ Roses, and then the Foo Fighters in stadiums (to pay for the clubs which I prefer playing). It was so hot I had to strap ice packs around my waist. And I realized then that outdoor events are going to come to an end. It’s too hot.”

Over the past week, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued several extreme heat warnings and advisories due to high temperatures and humidity blankets engulfing much of the central and eastern U.S.

Bonnaroo 2025 was, in fact, recently cancelled due to extreme weather, with organizers stating that the weather forecast was showing unsustainable conditions for campers.

As for Glastonbury, this year's festival could be one of the warmest on record, with the BBC reporting that, “Sunny spells will once again break through though and it'll be warmest day of the festival [on Sunday] with a high of 28°C (82°F). Quite a way off the Glastonbury record of 31.2°C (88.2°F) in 2017. Regardless, it’ll still be one of the warmest festivals in its history.”

Nevertheless, the legendary festival is already off to a good start, with a plethora of guitar-wielding acts to boot – including all three of this year's headliners: The 1975 on Friday, Neil Young on Saturday, and Olivia Rodrigo on Sunday.

Zakk Wylde has opened up on time he came close to joining Guns N' Roses, and revealed how the ill-fated audition to link-up with Slash and co ultimately resulted in his departure from Ozzy Osbourne's band – and the formation of Black Label Society.

The Pantera electric guitar veteran recalled his experiences of jamming with GNR during a new interview with Billy Corgan, whose podcast is becoming something of a hot spot for high-profile tidbits. In the past, Gene Simmons has discussed Ace Frehley’s near-disastrous Kiss audition, while Corgan spoke about the differences between rock and “indie” guitarists with Richie Sambora.

With Wylde in the intervew chair, Corgan zoomed in on a lesser-known footnote in his storied career, which took place during the recording of Ozzy’s 1995 album, Ozzmosis. At the time, Guns N’ Roses were a guitar player down, and Wylde was on a list of potential recruits.

“I think Gilby [Clarke] had left the band and so Axl [Rose] was like, ‘Well, who are we going to get on guitar?’” Wylde recalls. “I guess Slash just threw around and my name came in the mix.”

It was Rose who reached out to him. The band was eager to test the waters with a guitarist who had previously been able to fill the sizable shoes of Randy Rhoads and Jake E. Lee in Ozzy’s band.

“I knew Slash when I first joined Ozzy, that's when Guns were blowing up,” he continues. “I knew Steven [Adler] and then I obviously knew Matt [Sorum] from when he was with the Cult. So everybody kind of knows each other. Axl called me up. He was like, ‘Zakk, do you want to get together and jam?’ I was like, ‘Alright, yeah, we’ll see what happens.’”

Wylde met the group at a rehearsal space and started “jamming and noodling ideas”. He also recalls they went as far as “recording a couple of riffs”, one of which became The Rose Petalled Garden from Black Label Society’s debut LP, Sonic Brew.

After their jam, Wylde notes “nothing was materializing”, to the point where Ozzy was left quizzing him over his availability: “Are you going to do this thing with the fellas or are we doing this thing?” Wylde recalls Ozzy asking him. The guitarist, however, was equally in the dark about the situation.

“Nothing [with Guns N’ Roses] was happening,” he continues. “I remember Oz was getting ready to release the Ozzmosis album and getting ready to tour. Oz was like, ‘Zakk, sit down. I’m going to get Joe Holmes to come play for a little while and then we’ll see where it happens from there.’”

Ultimately, the GNR gig didn’t come through for Wylde, he was no longer “playing with the boss”, and the guitarist was left in a difficult spot. He needed another creative outlet to turn his attentions to.

“When we were doing Ozzmosis, there was this place called Bruise on 34th in Lexington,” he goes on. “The pub had been there since 1908. So, I would go after we got done tracking and I'd be drinking till six in the morning every night, hanging out at the jukebox.

“They had the Stones on there, Bob Seger, Neil Young, the Eagles, all this amazing mellow acoustic stuff. I remember just going back into my room with my acoustic and writing. That’s when I did [my solo album] Book of Shadows.”

After a short tour in support of the album, Wylde realized he “wasn’t ready to be a singer-songwriter yet”. He wasn’t, however, willing to accept that “the dream was over”, despite acknowledging that Ozzy and GNR were moving on without him. And so, he set about building Black Label Society from the ground up.

“I went from playing with Ozzy in arenas, stadiums, and festivals to playing in clubs with like five people,” he says. “There were no other eggs in my basket.”

History dictates that BLS would ultimately be a success, and Wylde would even later return to the Prince of Darkness – but his tale may have been very different if the GNR gig worked out.

Be they in small, dingy bars or massive stadiums, gigs are always hot and sweaty affairs. Guns N’ Roses guitarist Richard Fortus, however, has seen the band’s white-hot rock ’n’ roll reach new heights after a show in Saudi Arabia was so hot his pickups melted.

Sharing photos of the state of his electric guitar post-show, a strange-looking substance can be seen oozing out from the pickup mounts. It looks like something from the Alien franchise – and certainly not something Fortus will want to inhale.

Granted, it’s just wax, used to minimize mechanical vibration, but still, it looks grisly.

The pickup-melting gig occurred at the Mohammed Abdu Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during the seventh date of the band's latest globe-trotting tour. It followed a Japan show that saw them deliver a thunderous Thin Lizzy cover in tribute to the late John Sykes.

Efforts were made in order to mitigate the impact of the blistering temperatures, but the heat remained relentless. Fortus and company had waltzed onto the stage a little after 10pm in the hope of more appropriate climes for a three-hour riff fest, after temperatures had reached 113º Fahrenheit during the day.

Still, the later stage time wasn’t enough to stop the twin humbuckers on Fortus’ signature Gretsch Falcon from reaching melting point.

“Well, this is a first,” Fortus’ Instagram caption reads. “It was so hot in Saudi Arabia that the wax in my pickups melted!”

He also praised fans for a “great time” and thanked those who have picked up one of his signatures (despite the less-than-ideal sales pitch).

For some science, the wax used in pickups is usually an 80/20 mix of paraffin and beeswax, with the former having a melting point of around 115-154º Fahrenheit.

That gives a fairly grim impression of how sweltering the show was – and seeing pickup wax drip down the body of the guitar like a candle murder scene is a first for this writer. Yikes.

Given his rock pedigree, a Gretsch guitar may seem an interesting weapon of choice for Fortus, but he says the guitar is the perfect counterpart to Slash and his beloved Les Pauls. As such, his two signature models – a vintage white Bigsby-equipped G6636T and a black V-Stoptail-styled G6636 – are designed with GNR live shows in mind.

“I bought my first Gretsch when I was about 16 years old, which was a 1966 Tennessean. I’m a big Billy Duffy fan and I was also listening to a lot of AC/DC. I guess it was a tone I gravitated towards from an early age,” he told Guitar World in 2021.

“What brought me back to Gretsch in terms of them being the main instruments I play on stage is when Slash and Duff came back into the band. I was trying out different guitars and when I landed on Gretsch, it really seemed to come together.”

Thankfully for Fortus’ Gretsch, GNR have concluded the hottest leg of their current tour and will now travel to Europe ahead of a show in Georgia on May 30. Far more tolerable temperatures of around 73º Fahrenheit are expected. The guitar can breathe.

Gun N’ Roses guitarist Slash may have rubbished talk of his legendary Sweet Child O’ Mine riff starting life out as a warm-up exercise, but the same cannot be said for another iconic ’80s riff – Alice Cooper’s Poison.

In a new interview with Guitar World discussing the origins of the 1989 hit – which became the shock rock icon’s first ever top 10 hit as the 1990s dawned – Cooper’s Trash era guitarist John McCurry has lifted the lid on the riff’s unlikely origins.

McCurry got the gig in Cooper’s group shortly after completing work on Julian Lennon’s fifth album, Mr. Jordan. Before that, he’d played on records by Cher, Billy Joel, and Bonnie Tyler, and so he came into the writing process well-equipped for whatever Alice Cooper threw at him.

“Alice is one of the nicest people I’ve met, never mind working with,” he reflects. “Poison and my contribution to the song came about when Alice asked me to try to come up with an unusual riff to start the song and sort of weave it through the song.

“While in the studio, Alice and Desmond [Child, producer] came to me in the live room and told me they were working on another song for the record, and Alice really wanted a signature riff for it,” he continues. “He gave me a few examples of what he was looking for, and I happened to have a riff I used to warm up with from a couple of years before.”

The riff never got a verbal reaction from Cooper – Child was far more forthcoming – but McCurry didn’t need it. The pair knew the riff would be a hit.

“When I played it for him, he just smiled and patted me on the back,” he continues. “Desmond heard it and agreed it was right for the song. I was thrilled, of course, and even more so when it became the intro of the song Poison.”

Interestingly, it was the second time McCurry had worked his warm-up riff into a song, but Cooper’s hit greatly outshadowed John Waites’ Encircled, which had arrived two years prior with that same hook.

“McCurry told me that Alice was looking for something that sounds a bit like Sweet Child O' Mine, that kind of attention-grabbing riff and a big banger to start the album,” says Chris Sutton, author of Alice Cooper in the 80s [via The Booked On Rock Podcast].

Fortunately, the camps were able to come to a quick agreement so that the riff could happily live its double life as a Cooper and a Waite song.

“All they did was change the key and change the tempo,” Sutton reveals. “Poison is in the key of D, and the John Waite song is in the key of E.”

For good measure, the riff is also reprised in the intro of Cooper's Bed of Nails, with the impeccably named guitarist Guy Mann-Dude employed to add a little more shred to the record.

Guitar World's full interview with accomplished riffer for hire John McCurry will be published in the near future.

Guns N’ Roses are back out on the road and have continued a heartfelt tradition by bolstering their setlist with a Thin Lizzy classic – which has seemingly been included as a tribute to the late John Sykes.

Slash and co. are currently out in Asia, and during their show at the K-Arena Yokohama in Yokohama, Japan, on May 5, bass player Duff McKagan assumed vocal duties for a cover of Thunder and Lightning.

The song is taken from Thin Lizzy's 1983 album of the same name, which proved to be the band's last LP following Phil Lynott's passing in 1986. It was the only Thin Lizzy record to feature guitarist John Sykes, who was brought in to replace Snowy White. The record was one Lizzy's heaviest outings, boasting a heavy metal panache with Brian Downey on drums and Sykes' union with Scott Gorham proving fruitful.

Sykes, who passed away aged 65 in December last year, would go on to join Whitesnake for a two-album spell afterward, and it seems Guns are using the song as a way to pay tribute to the underrated guitarist.

Going off fan-filmed footage, the song gets no introduction, but it does see Slash swap his trusty Les Paul for a black Gibson SG, which is a rare sight.

The bassist's voice helps give the song a strong punk flavor – it already had the snarling attitude – but it is Slash and Richard Fortus’ interweaving lead lines around the 2:30 mark that really steal the show. They have no right to make countering guitar solos work as well as that. Slash solos a handful of other times across the song, his wah pedal seeing plenty of action throughout.

“Mr. Duff McKagan,” Axl Rose can be heard bellowing above the applause once the final notes had rung out. “A little thunder and lightning.”

Tributes poured in for Sykes after news of his passing broke. Elsewhere, Steve Vai – who had to follow in his wake in Whitesnake – recently spoke about the challenge he faced when it came to following in his footsteps.

It's not the first time GNR have paid tribute to late guitar heroes during their sets. In the wake of Chris Cornell's untimely passing in 2017, Soundgarden's set list staple Black Hole Sun was weaved into their live shows as a mark of respect.

McKagan would go on to front the surviving members of Soundgarden during a charity show late last year, and it’s been confirmed the band will get together again for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction later this year.

Guns’ latest tour run, which began at South Korea’s Songdo Moonlight Festival Park on May 1st, is the first tour to feature new drummer Isaac Carpenter who was announced just 24 hours after the departure of long-serving stickman Frank Ferrer.

In April, Slash made a surprise appearance at former Hannoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe’s show at the Whisky A-Go-Go, Les Paul, top hat and all.

Last Saturday, former Hanoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe's show at the Whisky a Go Go looked a little different than usual – with a certain guitar legend joining the ranks.

Monroe introduced none other than “Mr. Slash” – before diving straight into their rendition of Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride, with Slash wielding his characteristic Les Paul Standard and satiating the appetite of the classic rock fans in the audience with an abundance of guitar solos.

Monroe then prefaced the next tune, his own, Dead, Jail or Rock ’N’ Roll, with, “Last time we were here, in ’89, we played with Slash on this stage. I don't remember what we did... maybe the same song.”

A bit more recently than 1989, the Guns N' Roses guitarist had guested on Monroe’s single, I Live Too Fast to Die Young, from the 2022 album of the same name.

At the time, Monroe had commented, “Slash is one of the nicest guys that I know and one of rock's greatest guitarists as he's maintained the spontaneity, the human touch and the heartfelt kick-ass attitude in his playing. I figured this would be a good one for him to play a solo on. He said he loved the song and that it's super-catchy.”

Slash’s penchant for collaborations cannot be understated – with the guitarist guesting on no fewer than 10 tracks over the past two years alone, including a surprise appearance at the 2024 Oscars for I’m Just Ken, from the Barbie movie.

“I like playing and I like working, for want of a better word,” Slash told Guitar World. “I’m really not good at just sort of sitting around and spinning my wheels. I can do it for a few hours, or a day, but I can’t go weeks like that. My mind would go crazy.”

Last year, the veteran guitarist organized the inaugural edition of the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival in celebration of his blues album Orgy of the Damned – with a handpicked lineup including the Warren Haynes Band, Larkin Poe, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Samantha Fish.

Alice in Chain's founder, lead guitarist, main songwriter, and co-lead vocalist Jerry Cantrell has etched his name in the rock history books as an integral part of the hugely influential '90s grunge guitar sound. However, as an aspiring artist cutting his teeth in Seattle, Cantrell sought every way possible to make a mark – including attempting to hand over an Alice in Chains demo tape to a certain classic rock band, back in 1988.

“Like all young artists, sometimes you run into somebody that's one of your heroes and, you know, pass them on your demo tape or whatever,” he explains on the Broken Record podcast.

“I lived right behind the Seattle Center, and that's where they [Guns N' Roses] were playing. So, I handed it to his [Axl Rose's] security guard, and his security guard threw it away as they were walking, so it wasn't Axl's fault.”

Fast forward to Cantrell actually making it with Alice in Chains, and he eventually got to know the Guns N' Roses members personally. Naturally, he relayed this anecdote from these early days…

“Now, I told Axl that story too, and we laughed about that as well!” he concludes.

Years later, in a true full circle moment, Alice in Chains would go on to tour with the classic rock greats as the openers of their 2016 reunion tour.

In other Jerry Cantrell news, the guitarist recently opened up about temporarily losing his trusty G&L 'Blue Dress' Rampage – the guitar behind practically every key Alice in Chains record – last year.

Yet another eyebrow-raising best guitar riffs of all time list has been published, and – as is usually the case with such round-ups – it has drafted up some rather interesting results.

The 40-strong list comes from uDiscoverMusic, which is part of Universal Music Group’s stable. With that in mind, it's noting that, in the list, the top five riffs all come from Universal artists or bands signed to one of its numerous subsidiaries.

Other notable caveats are that some big hitters and popular Guitar World poll-toppers are questionably relegated to more humble positions (or omitted entirely, in some cases) and the most ‘modern’ offering of the compiled list dates back 22 years to 2006.

That means that none of the riffs of our best riffs of the 2010s poll feature, as the likes of Tool (7empest), Arctic Monkeys (Do I Wanna Know?), and Gary Clark Jr. (Bright Lights) all miss out.

However, there is never an exact science behind compiling such lists, and while the resulting run-down leaves plenty of room for commenters to swing an argument, it’s still an interesting list nevertheless – even if there are some totally bizarre absences.

Kirsten Hersh’s acoustic-led Your Dirty Answer creeps in at the 40th spot on the list, hailed for its “pulsating main guitar riff” and deemed more worthy of a spot than White Stripe’s Seven Nation Army, which is left out entirely.

Eddie Van Halen and Van Halen make one sole appearance with Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love peaking at a fairly lowly 25, one place behind Johnny Marr's spangly This Charming Man riff, and two behind Mark Knoplfer's dancefloor-filling antics on Money for Nothing.

Led Zeppelin’s hip-shaking Whole Lotta Love, which topped Guitar World’s poll of the 50 best guitar riffs of all time in 2023, has to settle for 7th place, not even making it into the top 10. AC/DC’s Back In Black, triumphant in NME’s 2012 poll, falls to 16th.

They weren't the only world-conquering riffs to be humbled here, either. Crazy Train (15), and Enter Sandman (14), both nestle outside the top 10, while The Kinks' You Really Got Me (10) just makes the top bracket.

ZZ Top's ever-cool La Grange (9), Hendrix's Purple Haze (8), and Link Wray's hugely influential 1958 cut Rumble all follow, before Guns N' Roses Sweet Child O' Mine – which Slash says did not come from a warm-up routine, despite popular belief – kicks off the top five.

But it's Nirvana's '90s-shaping Smells Like Teen Spirit that reigns supreme, edging out Smoke on the Water (4), The Rolling Stones' (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (3), and Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode, despite the poll describing the four-chord smash as “unoriginal”.

UDiscoverMusic notes: “The four-chord pattern of the riff is unoriginal but the quiet-loud dynamic contrasts of the song, and Cobain’s visceral delivery, add to the potency of one of the best guitar riffs of the ‘90s”.

As reported by Guitar World, “while the Studio preamp, Boss DS-1, and Small Clone provide the essence of Cobain’s guitar tones on the song, several other production flourishes influence the finished recorded sound.”

Luckily, replicating the song's iconic tones can be done on the cheap. Check out Guitar World's guide to nailing Smells Like Teen Spirit's tone.

Check out uDiscoverMusic to see the riff list in full.

Having last played live in 2023, Guns N’ Roses have announced a massive world tour, which will take them through Europe and the Middle East, including a number of countries the band have never played in before.

Accompanying them will be a fascinating array of big names from the worlds of punk, hip-hop, and rock.

The tour's first leg – during which the band will go through Eastern and Central Europe, including Georgia for the first time – will see them accompanied by rockers Rival Sons, while the second European leg will feature Public Enemy and the Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter.

Prior to that, the band will perform two shows in the Middle East, including one in Saudi Arabia.

Though the band didn't perform live in 2024, Guns N' Roses' members, Slash in particular, have kept plenty busy.

Slash ventured into new waters with Orgy of the Damned, a blues album that found the top-hatted Les Paul slinger saluting some of his earliest influences with the assistance of his Rolodex (AC/DC’s Brian Johnson, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Iggy Pop, Gary Clark Jr., ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, and the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson, to name but a few guests).

After the album, though, the guitarist unveiled something even more spectacular.

“After I finished up the [Orgy of the Damned] record, the next thing is always figuring out a tour,” Slash told Guitar World earlier this year.

“My manager told me that a promoter that he was talking to was interested in doing a blues festival and putting something together like that with me. And I just thought it was a great idea. So I jumped at it and started putting together some suggestions for blues artists I thought would be great to have on the bill.”

And so the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. traveling festival, a modern-day Lollapalooza of the blues featuring, at various times, Warren Haynes, Keb’ Mo’, Larkin Poe, Eric Gales, Samantha Fish, and Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, was born.

Despite his Guns N' Roses touring commitments, not to mention those he also has with Myles Kennedy & the Conspirators, Slash told Guitar World that he wants to hold the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. tour “annually, or semi-annually.”

For tickets and more info on Guns N' Roses' 2025 tour, visit the band's website.

Guns N' Roses 2025 tour

Friday, 23 May 2025 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Kingdom Arena

Tuesday, 27 May 2025 Abu Dhabi, UAE Etihad Arena

Friday, 30 May 2025 Shekvetili, Georgia Shekvetili Parka ^

Monday, 2 June 2025 Istanbul, Turkey Tüpraş Stadyumu ^

Friday, 6 June 2025 Coimbra, Portugal Estádio Cidade de Coimbra^

Monday, 9 June 2025 Barcelona, Spain Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys ^

Thursday, 12 June 2025 Florence, Italy Firenze Rocks *^

Sunday, 15 June 2025 Hradec Kralove, Czechia Rock For People *^

Wednesday, 18 June 2025 Dusseldorf, Germany Merkur Spiel-Arena ^

Friday, 20 June 2025 Munich, Germany Allianz Arena ^

Monday, 23 June 2025 Birmingham, UK Villa Park ^

Thursday, 26 June 2025 London, UK Wembley Stadium ^

Sunday, 29 June 2025 Aarhus, Denmark Eskelunden +

Wednesday, 2 July 2025 Trondheim, Norway Granåsen Ski Centre +

Friday, 4 July 2025 Stockholm, Sweden Strawberry Arena +

Monday, 7 July 2025 Tampere, Finland Ratina Stadium +

Thursday, 10 July 2025 Kaunas, Lithuania Darius and Girėnas Stadium +

Saturday, 12 July 2025 Warsaw, Poland PGE Nardowy +

Tuesday, 15 July 2025 Budapest, Hungary Puskás Aréna +

Friday, 18 July 2025 Belgrade, Serbia Ušće Park +

Monday, 21 July 2025 Sofia, Bulgaria Vasil Levski Stadium +

Thursday, 24 July 2025 Austria, Vienna Ernst Happel Stadion &

Monday, 28 July 2025 Luxembourg City, Luxembourg Luxembourg Open Air &

Thursday, 31 July 2025 Wacken, Germany Wacken Open Air *

*Festival appearance

+ Special Guest Public Enemy

^ Special Guest Rival Sons

& Special Guest Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock SEX PISTOLS featuring Frank Carter

Duff McKagan has seen it all, done it all and survived it all – by the slightest of margins. The stories of his escapades as the bassist of Guns N’ Roses, a band whose members practically had their humanity ground out of them by sheer fame and debauchery, are legend.

Fortunately, Duff was in control of his intake during the band’s glory years, resulting in the classic Appetite For Destruction and Use Your Illusion double albums, on which the bass playing is a thing of rock ’n’ roll beauty. “My drinking never got in the way of writing bass parts,” Duff told Bass Player. ‘I was writing music with other drunks at the time! So we were all on the same playing field.”

Like his bandmates, the hell-raising stories about McKagan are numerous. And yet these frankly unnerving escapades seem worlds away from the now 60-year-old bassist who’s spent the last few years touring with the reformed Guns N’ Roses alongside guitarist Slash and singer Axl Rose.

“Axl was never a drunk, but he was never around for the writing of the music. He would come in once something was done. On Appetite we didn’t have a PA in our rehearsal room, so he couldn’t sing stuff even if he wanted to. But Slash and I have been songwriting partners for the major part of my career.”

We could fill pages with bullet-pointed lists of the mad things that Duff did before 1994, when a brush with death caused him to clean up, sober up, get ridiculously fit and go on to a very productive post-GNR career.

In a YouTube interview for Beneath The Bassline, Duff recalled the time his belt buckle gave him a problem during a Guns N’ Roses show.

“I had this killer Chrome Hearts belt that I wore for every gig. And we had this grated stage that we would take all around the world with us, but if it got wet out then that stage would get slick. One show I slipped and the belt got stuck in the floor. We were in the middle of a song!

“I had roadies help me to take the belt off, but it was like that moment in the film where the mini Stonehenge comes down.”

The interview also finds McKagan looking back on the band’s appearance at London’s Live 8 event in 2005, and in particular, meeting Paul McCartney.

“There was a lot going on backstage. There was the Who, Madonna, and Pink Floyd were going to play. We hit the stage, and there’s Paul McCartney. He looks at me and he says, ‘Hey, Duff.’ You only play three songs, so there’s no time to warm up and you’ve got to hit your nut real quick, but all I can think is, ‘Paul McCartney knows my name. How the hell did that happen?!’”

While McKagan's punk-rock roots are well documented, his childhood musical education actually has its foundation in R&B heavyweights like Sly and the Family Stone. At the same time as he discovered punk, he also discovered Prince.

“Meeting Prince was the most freaked out I've been. He was on the Diamonds and Pearls tour in Berlin, and we had a night off, so we went and saw him. Suddenly some big dude says, ‘You can come back and say hi.’”

“I only started playing bass when Guns N’ Roses started, and at first it was more like Prince’s bass playing,” McKagan told Bass Player. “He played bass on his first four records and he had a high-end to his sound. I incorporated that into my sound in Guns N' Roses, which you can hear as early as Appetite for Destruction.

“It's all there, and you can hear the nice round bottom, like a full bottom, but very pronounced. I was at that age when I played drums, guitar and bass, and this guy was only six years older than me, making his own records and playing everything. I was completely enamoured by him.”

This 1960 Melody Maker was nudged in a more Les Paul-like direction, with the addition of a humbucker at the bridge, when Rory Gallagher acquired it in 1985 originally for slide work. However, when a certain member of Guns N’ Roses turned up at a Los Angeles gig to pay homage to Rory, it came in handy for another purpose, as his brother Donal Gallagher explains.

“In March of 1991, we’d arrived back in LA after a long flight from Sydney. Oddly enough, we’d left Australia on 2 March, which was Rory’s birthday. I’d kind of planned the flights so that Rory would get two birthdays [after crossing the International Date Line].

“The first gig in LA was at the Roxy down on the Strip. Anyway, thanks to this sort of Lost In Translation flight experience, everyone was not in the best of humour. So I was just trying to get everyone’s spirits up for the show and kick off the whole tour at the Roxy.

“And somebody said that Slash from Guns N’ Roses was there and the bass player, Duff McKagan, and that they’d come to see Rory. So I went backstage and said to Rory, ‘There’s a guy out there called Slash, who’s come to see you.’ I didn’t personally know too much about him.

“I kind of knew of the band but not much about him as an individual – but Rory’s eyes lit up and he went, ‘Oh my God.’ I said that they were asking if Slash could come up and have a jam. And Rory said, ‘All right.’”

“Rory gave me chapter and verse about how Slash was great and a brilliant player and then he said, ‘Oh, go and find the Gibson Melody Maker’ for him. A lot of the gear still hadn’t arrived by airfreight from Australia at that point, but luckily the Melody Maker had and it was just out in the truck, so I brought it in.

“Rory said, ‘Oh, he’ll like playing that.’ If Rory ever invited another guitarist up for a jam session, he’d make sure that they got a guitar that Rory considered they’d be very comfortable with.”

“So, anyway, at the end of the show we signalled that it was time for the jam session and Slash comes up and I said, ‘Oh, Rory wants you to have this guitar for the jam.’ He strapped it on [with approval] and went, ‘Oh my God, a Melody Maker, how did he figure that out?’ But that was Rory. And it was an excellent jam.”

• The Rory Gallagher Collection will be auctioned at Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, on 17 October 2024.

A woman raising money for the construction of an LA children’s hospital was pleasantly surprised when an electric guitar she thought was worth $5k turned out to be a “holy grail” prototype that sold for four times that amount.

Gabby recently took the Gibson Les Paul to Pawn Stars’ Rick Harrison, only to find it wasn’t just a regular DJ Ashba signature guitar. Instead, it was the prototype model, which had been used relentlessly on stage by Ashba with Guns N’ Roses before its strange disappearance some years ago.

The guitar had been donated to Gabby and her boyfriend to help raise funds for the cause but no paperwork or backstory about the instrument was provided. So, Ashba himself was drafted in to get to the bottom of the case.

“I'm so excited to see which guitar it's gonna be,” the guitarist says during his visit to the famed second-hand store. “I'm praying to God it's the one I'm hoping because I lost one years ago that meant the world to me.”

His prayers were answered: “I can recognize this guitar a mile away,” he says after laying his eyes on it. “This right here is the Holy Grail. There's only one of these made in the world.”

The prototype saw a lot of action under Ashba’s fingers before it inexplicably went missing.

“This was the prototype. Once we locked in on this design, Gibson only made 100 of them. I actually played it on some of records with Sixx:A.M., and a lot with Guns N' Roses. I abused it. There's even still probably beer stains and stuff on it.”

The guitar deviated from the traditional Les Paul template in a few ways. Chief among those were electrical reconfigurations.

“The weird thing when I joined Guns N' Roses is that playing a Les Paul, obviously it's the right guitar for the sound of the band, but I could never get used to the two volume knobs,” Ashba explains of their creative process. “So I had 'em take one off. So there’s only one Volume, two Tones.”

Other changes include a kill switch disguised as a three-way toggle in its traditional spot, with the switch proper moved to sit alongside the Tone and Volume knobs. Another key difference is a slight prototype mistake – his name is inscribed onto the truss rod cover upside down.

“It's a really special guitar, I would love to have it back,” Ashba continues.

With that information at Harrison’s disposal, the Pawn Stars salesman offered Gabby $20k for the one-of-a-kind instrument in an exchange that also saw Ashba reunite with his long-lost love.

“I'm super stoked that I'm able to get way more than anticipated for the children's hospital, and that the item gets to go back to DJ,” Gabby says. “That was a cool life moment for me.”

Dave Navarro has recalled the time he was offered the opportunity to join Guns N’ Roses, which he ultimately turned down.

In 1991, Navarro was in the market for a new electric guitar gig following Jane’s Addiction’s split. Guns N’ Roses – who were on the hunt for a replacement for the outgoing Izzy Stradlin at the time – came calling for his services, but it wasn’t to be.

According to Navarro himself, there was too much disparity between his own playing style and the musical output of Slash and his fellow GNR bandmates. In other words, it simply wouldn’t have been a good match.

“I don’t think that would have been the right call at the time,” Navarro says in a recent interview with Guitar Player. “I’ve played with Slash a million times since then. I love playing with Slash. But I think I’m a little more left-of-center than they were.

“Guns was pretty much a straight-up, in-your-face rock band, which I fucking love,” he continues. “But as a guitar player, I like to get down on my knees, turn delay knobs and make a bunch of noise like Kraftwerk or some shit. [laughs] That does not work for Guns N’ Roses.”

They did try to work on a compromise, but none could be found. Speaking to the Appetite for Distortion podcast in 2021 (via Blabbermouth), Navarro revealed, “We talked nearly every day about ideas and the way the band could work with me in it.”

Though he passed on the Guns gig, Navarro soon found himself tasked with replacing John Frusciante as the new guitarist for Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“That was a very difficult role to step into,” Navarro reflects of his time with RHCP. “They were so set on what they were. It really was another trial by fire. All of a sudden, I had to work within another context that had completely different influences, and these were musicians that I’d never worked with in my life.

“There’s no question that I became a better guitar player as a result of having done that. Playing with Flea and Chad Smith was a crash-course masterclass in musicianship.

“I’m really grateful for the time spent with them, but it was a bizarre concept to join the group, and a very bizarre time.”

In related news, Navarro recently sat down for a sprawling interview with Guitar World, during which he recalled the first time he and Frusciante finally played together after decades of friendship.

He also discussed his battle with Long Covid, and revealed he stopped playing guitar for a year after the death of Taylor Hawkins.

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar Player, which features the full interview with Dave Navarro.

From his earliest days with Guns N’ Roses, it was clear that’s Slash’s lead guitar style – be it the direct, deep-in-the-pocket pentatonic licks and gritty double-stop bends of Welcome to the Jungle or the emotive, vocal-like phrasings that characterized Sweet Child O’ Mine – was heavily steeped in the blues.

And yet, he came up in a time and place – 1980s Los Angeles, to be exact – when hard rock had largely eschewed those stylistic hallmarks in favor of an acrobatic and highly technical approach that emphasized speed and flash over feel and, sometimes, taste.

Or, as Slash puts it, “There were a ton of, you know, tremolo-bar fucking fiends going around,” he laughs. “But that never really spoke to me. I was just doing my own thing because that’s what I wanted to do. I wasn’t really interested in all that other stuff.”

That said, Slash also emphasizes that there were plenty of guitarists in the scene that he appreciated and admired.

“Lately I think about it and I go, ‘Oh, yeah, there were some really great guitar players,’” he says. “Like, Paul Gilbert is an amazing fucking guitar player. Jason Becker was insanely good. Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, who’ve been around forever, they have their own unique personality, just the same as Stevie Ray Vaughan or Johnny Ramone.”

In Slash’s estimation, good guitar playing is about having your own style, whether you’re a blues man or the most high-octane shred demon.

“No matter what type of playing it is, the really good ones that stand out are the ones that have their own unique personality,” he says.

“That’s what I’ve always been attracted to. It doesn’t matter whatever technique it is that they’re using, as long as it’s theirs,” he laughs. “I mean, Yngwie? Yngwie means it. He fucking owns that shit, whether you like it or not.”

As far as using the blues as a launching pad to create something wholly unique, Slash turns to the man largely credited with kickstarting the Eighties shred craze – Eddie Van Halen – and makes the point that, even as he was rearranging the rock guitar landscape, he was also a blues aficionado at heart, acknowledging the influence of players like Billy Gibbons, Jeff Beck and, most prominently, Eric Clapton, at every turn.

“That was the coolest thing about Eddie for me,” Slash says. “All the great ideas he had that were uniquely his own, all these left-field kind of things, underneath all that was a really tasty blues guitar player. He just added all these other ways to branch out his expression on top of that. And that’s why nobody could ever touch him.”

• Slash's inaugural S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival is under way – see here for dates and ticket details.

Back in November 2023, Slash had just completed six months of touring with Guns N’ Roses, a jaunt that took the band everywhere from Budapest and Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi and Oslo, and then wrapped with yet another run of stadium dates across the U.S.

Heading into the holidays, the 58-year-old guitarist was staring down an eight-week break before returning to Europe for a long headlining run with his other band, Slash Featuring Myles Kennedy & the Conspirators. And so, he did what most of us would do at that moment: take a breather and enjoy some well-earned rest and relaxation.

We’re kidding, of course. What Slash actually did was head right back into the studio, this time to cut a solo album that paid tribute to the blues artists that inspired his own musical development and guitar style. And he did it with the help of some of his famous and extremely talented musician friends, among them Iggy Pop, Gary Clark Jr., ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson.

The result is the recently released Orgy of the Damned, a star-studded affair that sees the guitarist reinterpret a host of blues and r&b classics, from Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor (with AC/DC’s Brian Johnson and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler), Willie Dixon’s Hoochie Coochie Man (with Gibbons) and Stevie Wonder’s Living for the City (with Tash Neal), to Robert Johnson’s Crossroads (with Gary Clark Jr.), Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well (with Chris Stapleton) and many other iconic tunes.

Slash has long flirted with the idea of doing a blues covers album (he also led a short-lived covers band, Slash’s Blues Ball, that he gigged with in the ’90s following his initial departure from Guns N’ Roses), but it took until this decidedly not-very-un-busy moment in his life for it to finally happen. Why now?

“I think it was building up in the back of my mind for so long that it finally pushed its way to the fore,” he tells Guitar World nonchalantly. As for carving out time in his schedule to get it done, he merely shrugs. “I had the short break, and I knew it wouldn’t take long to do and that it would be fun to do. So it was, ‘Let’s make the record…’ ”

No time like the present – even if it’s a busy one. “Well, I like playing and I like working, for want of a better word,” Slash says. “I’m really not good at just sort of sitting around and spinning my wheels. I can do it for a few hours, or a day, but I can’t go weeks like that.” He laughs. “My mind would go crazy.”

Fortunately for Slash and his mind, he won’t be spinning his wheels any time soon. Rather, he’s spending the summer not just on tour, but leading his very own branded music extravaganza – the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival.

An anagram for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N’ Tolerance, the new outing sees Slash and his band – former Blues Ball members bassist Johnny Griparic and keyboardist Teddy “Zig Zag” Andreadis, along with drummer Michael Jerome and singer and guitarist Tash Neal – headlining a nightly celebration of the blues that features, depending on the date, a lineup of performers that includes the Warren Haynes Band, Keb’ Mo’, Larkin Poe, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Samantha Fish, ZZ Ward, Robert Randolph, Eric Gales and Jackie Venson.

The result is, well, an actual blues ball, with each show presenting a range of acts that reflect the breadth and scope of the form, and who expertly telegraph the myriad ways the music is interpreted by contemporary artists and absorbed by contemporary audiences.

“It’s going to be a whole day of really cool music,” Slash says. “And maybe reminiscent of a period gone by that used to happen a lot more often, where people would go out in the summertime and have these outdoor amphitheater gigs with a bunch of different bands and players would just jam. And you know, I’ve sat in with guys doing blues songs here and there, but I haven’t done full sets like this, and in a festival-like setting, since the ’90s. So I’m really excited.”

He believes audiences will be similarly enthused. “I just want people to have a really great time,” he says, “and go home feeling satisfied after having food and drinks and hanging out with people and listening to great music. That’s my hope. So we put it together to have a bunch of great players just playing from the heart all day and giving it their best.”

Prior to the tour’s kickoff, Slash sat down with Guitar World to discuss the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival, making Orgy of the Damned and some of the unusual (well, for him) gear he has been using as of late. He also dove into his love for and history with the blues, how he approaches playing the music, and why he believes this traditional style still has resonance in the modern world.

“One of the great things about blues is the stories that it tells, especially for people who are struggling,” Slash says. “And it also offers a reprieve for the people who are performing it, where they can play something and just feel better after all the fucking grind or whatever it is that they’ve been going through.

“So to me, blues concerts and blues festivals are really about people all getting together to enjoy the moment, where you don’t have to worry about the pressures of life for a little while. And I think that’s really what this festival is – a celebration of a moment to sort of let it all go and just have a good time.”

How did the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival come together?

“After I finished up the [Orgy of the Damned] record, the next thing is always figuring out a tour. And my manager told me that a promoter that he was talking to was interested in doing a blues festival and putting something together like that with me. And I just thought it was a great idea. So I jumped at it and started putting together some suggestions for blues artists I thought would be great to have on the bill.”

The artists involved represent so many different expressions of the blues.

“All the players are really, really cool. And they’re all people that, with the exception of maybe Eric Gales and Warren Haynes, are relatively new to me.

“I mean, some people have been around – like, Kingfish has been around a lot longer than I realized, but because of social media, all of a sudden I became very aware of him, more than I had through regular word of mouth. And some of them are fairly young, new artists, which I think is very cool to have. But overall it’s a really nice mix.”

A particularly cool aspect of the tour is that you’ve partnered with various charities – the Equal Justice Initiative, Know Your Rights Camp, the Greenlining Institute, War Child – and will be supporting these organizations with proceeds from ticket sales.

“I thought it’d be great if we could help make this into something a bit more communal, and make the gigs more inclusive and more about bringing people together as opposed to driving everybody apart, which has been sort of really what this country has been doing for the last five years, you know? Like, we’ve been seriously focusing on division.

“So we started looking into some different charities that would be in line with important causes, like racial injustice and mental health – organizations that help people on the fringes, who are kept on the fringes because of certain discriminations and things like that. All around, it just seemed like another really good way to bring people together, in addition to the music.”

It’s a way to address personal and societal struggle, which are themes inherent to blues music.

“Absolutely. The blues has always functioned as a release for people that are having hard times – both the people playing it and the people listening to it. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people are having a hard time these days.”

What was your earliest exposure to the blues?

“I think it was a little different from some other people. When I was really young, I lived in England [Slash’s father, Anthony Hudson, is British; his mother, Ola, was American], and it was all about the bands that my dad was listening to heavily, which was the Kinks and the Who and the Yardbirds and the Moody Blues and the Stones. That was, like, the big thing.

“For the first seven years of my life, I listened to that shit day in and day out, every minute of the day. And it was great. But when I moved to the States, all of a sudden it was all these different artists. It was Led Zeppelin and Joe Cocker and the Beatles… obviously the Beatles were the Beatles, but they were bigger in America at that time. It wasn’t such a big deal in England. And my grandmother being American was like, ‘Well, you know, all those rock guys get it from this.’ And she played me B.B. King.”

That took you back to the source, so to speak.

“Well, on my mom’s side of the family, my grandmother and my cousins all listened to a lot of blues and r&b and soul music. A lot of funk, too. And I had two cousins, Wayne and Edward, who were a fucking monster rhythm section, bass and drums. They never took lessons, but they could pick up an instrument, hear a song and play it.

“So I began to be exposed to all that once I moved to the States – a lot of Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and Little Walter and all this cool stuff. But I was just a little kid – I didn’t really know what it all was, I just liked it. And so later on, when I finally did pick up the guitar, I started learning stuff by the rock guys that I had rediscovered for myself out of my parents’ collection.

“It was Cream and Zeppelin and Rory Gallagher and Eric Clapton, and it was that stuff, maybe Clapton, that took me back to B.B. King again. And I remembered B.B. King from my grandmother. So it was a sort of full-circle moment of realization. Because my grandmother had told me, and I didn’t really get it at the time – I mean, I got it, but it wasn’t really important to me [Laughs] – that I was listening to all these British artists, and they were all heavily influenced by these Black artists from America. And she wanted to make sure credit was given where credit was due.”

She had a good point.

“She was right. And all things considered, my favorite British guitar players are amazing, but they all pale in comparison to the original guys, because that was their own personal technique, from its origin, and everybody after that was just picking up on it and taking it somewhere else.

“But those early blues guitar players from the ’50s and ’60s – and, of course, it goes further back than that – there was a thing there that was just raw and amazing and unique, you know?”

When it came to recording Orgy of the Damned, in addition to stepping outside your usual musical zone, you also tried out some different gear. We can see you playing a Gibson ES-335 in the video for Killing Floor, and you’ve talked about using a Fender Strat on Oh Well and a Telecaster on Living for the City. Will you be bringing any of those guitars on the road for the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival?

“The 335 is something I’ve always dug, but it just never fit with my thing. I used one with Velvet Revolver for a minute, but it just never seemed right. But interestingly, I had gotten this really pretty 1963 ES-335 [this guitar was recently recreated by the Gibson Custom Shop as the Slash 1963 ES-335 Collector’s Edition] a few months before I had the idea to do this record.

“And then when I had decided I was going to do the record, I was like, 'Oh, cool – I can use this guitar!' So it became a part of the record, and I’m definitely going to be using it on the tour. I also have a really cool old [Gibson] Firebird that sounds really nice that I might bring out, and my ’58 replica [Gibson] Explorer, which is a great-sounding guitar that I’m definitely going to bring out. And there will be Les Pauls.

“I don’t think I’m going to bring any ’58s or ’59s, but I’ll use the Custom Shop equivalents. As far as Teles and Strats go, it was great to use them in the studio, but I doubt I’ll bring them on the road. I can make those sounds pretty much with any of my Gibsons, at least close enough to pull it off.”

You also used some smaller combo amps on the record. Will any of those make it to the stage?

“Funny enough, I only used one combo on the record – a Magnatone M-80, which started a whole big thing with me. I got that Magnatone a few years ago – I think it was [Guns N’ Roses guitarist] Richard Fortus that turned me onto it. But I’d been hearing about it from other people, too, like Billy Gibbons.

“I’ve always been such a Marshall guy that I’ll listen to tons of different amps, but nothing really measures up for me. So I’m always sort of like, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever…’ But I got this Magnatone, and when I went into pre-production for this record, I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna use some old combos instead of just my regular Marshall setup.’ Which is not to say that I couldn’t have done the record with a Jubilee, but there’s a certain Marshall sound that I was trying to get away from.”

“But what I did was I took a 50-watt Marshall in, and I had a Dumble Deluxe combo that Dumble built for me – I think it was the last amp that [Alexander “Howard”] Dumble made before he passed away. And then I had an old Vox, some old ’50s Fender Deluxes… I took all this stuff in to the studio, and I would get set up and go through these different amps, and I would end up with that Magnatone every fucking time. [Laughs]

“I did all the pre-production with the Magnatone, and then I used it for the whole recording session. I went on to design a 100-watt Magnatone [the Slash Signature SL-100], which I’ve been using on the road.

“But the Magnatone I’m using right now is a little 50-watt M-80. There’s two versions – the combo, and then a head with a 2x12 cabinet. I’m probably going to take the head with the 2x12 cabinet out on the tour.”

As far as your setlist for the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival goes, I imagine much of it will consist of the covers we hear on Orgy of the Damned. A lot of those are also songs you played with Slash’s Blues Ball in the ’90s. Clearly, you have a lot of history with these songs.

“Yeah. And they’re songs that had a big influence on me prior to Blues Ball. We picked the songs because they meant something to me then, and there’s some others that are just great blues songs. But what happened was, the Blues Ball was something that was just a fun, fuck-around kind of thing.

“We did a lot of gigs and it was a blast, but it wasn’t something I took really seriously. It wasn’t going to be my next sort of career move. I ended up doing [Slash’s] Snakepit again after that, then Velvet Revolver and so on. But I had always wanted to record the blues stuff. And so when it finally came back around 30 years later that we were going to record this material, Ted [Andreadis] managed to pull out some of these old Blues Ball set lists.

“And I was like, ‘Yeah, this song, this song, this song.’ And then I had a couple that we didn’t do in Blues Ball, like Killing Floor, but it’s always been one of my favorite guitar riffs of all time. So we got some songs from the old set lists and then a couple different songs that were newer for us and put it all together.”

Orgy of the Damned provides a great cross-section of blues classics. Can you point to additional blues songs that you would consider essential listening?

“I was talking just recently with someone about Spoonful [written by Willie Dixon], which is something that was a big influence on me and that I was actually considering doing for the record, but Killing Floor won out.

“And then yesterday I was listening to a song, I Was Blind, by B.B. King, which is maybe less known compared to some of his other ones but that I love. [Jimmy Reed’s] Bright Lights, Big City is another influential one that we might put into the set for the tour.

“A more obvious one for guitar players would be [Willie Dixon’s] I Ain’t Superstitious – there’s so many different versions of that song, even prior to Jeff Beck doing it, which are really, really cool. I’ve always dug that song. Mojo Hand is something that’s really cool from Lightnin’ Hopkins and is another one I think we’ll probably do on the tour.

“We were talking about Rory Gallagher earlier – Cradle Rock is a good one there. And along those lines, Gary Moore’s Still Got the Blues. And a song that’s not necessarily a blues song but that we might do on the tour is Use Me, by Bill Withers. I’ll probably put it in the set because I just love that riff. So there’s just a lot of cool stuff. I could go on and on, you know?”

There’s still so much guitar information and inspiration to be gleaned from the classic artists. But do you listen to any of the newer, for lack of a better term, ‘Instagram famous’ technical players?

“You know, there’s a lot of really great players out there that I’m aware of in that sort of world, but I don’t necessarily know their names. They’re really amazing and doing all kinds of crazy shit, and a lot of it is interesting or entertaining to watch for a minute. It doesn’t necessarily stick with you, but it’s bitchin’. [Laughs]

“You’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s pretty tricky!’ For me, I think it’s when somebody is playing in such a way where there is a mix between some new-school technical stuff and some old-school styling, that’s what catches my attention. Techniques are cool, but they’re only great if they fit into the music in an emotional context, or if it’s a fluid part of a melodic run, like it just came naturally.”

Can you give an example?

“A great example, and I can’t remember the name of the song, but there’s a B.B. King song where he plays a lick and then he throws in a diminished scale. I mean, I know what that is, right? [Laughs] I recognize it, but it’s part of the solo so you don’t really think about it in technical terms; you just hear melodically that there’s something really cool going on.

“And really, he’s just playing a regular pentatonic thing, with three notes or four notes of a diminished scale added in. But it’s right between keys, and it’s so perfect. I don’t hear guys doing that so much. It always seems so planned out and articulated.

“Whereas sometimes the natural sort of passing tones that you do as you’re playing produce these really interesting things, when you’re not thinking about what scale it is or what technique you’re using. I think I tend to like that more.”

When you’re playing blues, do you think about the history behind it? Or, conversely, do you consider how to present it in a modern context?

“Actually, when it comes down to it, it’s neither of those for me. It’s just a fun thing to do. I did pick these songs because I innately felt a connection to them on a deeper level than just, ‘Oh, that’s a cool song,’ but it was also really just something that I wanted to do for fun. So I tried to have a good time with it and not take it too seriously.

“That was one of the reasons I brought all the different singers in for the record, as opposed to having Ted and Tash just sing, which is what we’ll do onstage. Because I didn’t want people to think it was a serious new band record that I was doing. It was just about doing something that would be fun to listen to, and that would maybe turn some young people on to some old songs that they might not have heard before.”

I imagine you have similar aims with the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival.

“With the festival, I have no idea what it’s gonna be like, but I have a feeling I’m going to really get off on it. There’s going to be a lot of jamming and a lot of discovery and a lot of learning for me as a player. I probably want to do it annually, or semi-annually, or something like that.

“And going forward, I would probably want to put out some bluesy records outside of Conspirators and Guns N’ Roses, things that are more oriented and focused in that way, where I can play that stuff and write that stuff for my own personal satisfaction.”

That sounds like a fun prospect.

“Yeah. And so going back to what you were asking before, I don’t know that I would necessarily think about, ‘Okay, well, here’s how to introduce blues to the modern era…’ I would definitely be very cognizant of the old sounds and a lot of old tones and all that kind of stuff, because I want to preserve it for me, feel-wise.

“But I think that when you put your own personality on it, and you live in the modern era, if you’re not trying to emulate being something from way back when it just takes on its own sort of fresh tone anyway. Kingfish plays really great, old-school blues. But he does it in his own way, and that alone makes it fresh. And that goes for anybody doing it; play what you love, and make it your own.”

• Orgy of the Damned is out now via Gibson Records.

Before taking over low-end duties from the late Dusty Hill in ZZ Top, Elwood Francis was a DIY punk who traveled the world as a tech for some of rock’s biggest stars. With an affinity for Frank Zappa and a knack for tearing into guitars with reckless abandon, Francis worked with Joe Perry, Steve Vai, Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke before a case of burnout led him to step away from the industry.

But when Billy Gibbons came calling, it led to a wild adventure that’s seen Francis go from restringing “pain in the ass” fuzzy guitars to brandishing a 17-string bass for ZZ Top. “I don’t know if I can put it into words,” he says. “It’s just a weird feeling stepping into that role.

“I stepped away from social media because, man, I’m not the most confident person, and Dusty was immensely talented. All I gotta say is the fans have been really cool about it.

“If there had been too much backlash, I would not be doing it. I wouldn’t be able to handle it – I’m just trying to help out. It was never my intention to play bass in fucking ZZ Top.”

You’re playing bass now but you’ve always been a guitarist. What drew you to the instrument?

“My mother’s record collection, I guess. She had good records, like Bill Haley and all that. But Frank Zappa was the one that made me really want to play guitar. The way Frank played guitar solos is how they should sound – especially his ’70s output.

“It was such a barrage of notes, and sometimes it was pretty sloppy. Such a barrage and so different. It was a different choice of notes; it just grabbed me. I never would have thought people could reach that. I’m never going to be that good.”

Can you remember your first guitar?

“It was a Harmony; the one with the little Hershey bar pickups. I don’t have the guitar, but I’ve still got that pickup. I’ve always taken my guitars apart, painted them, and kinda devalued them in every possible way.”

There’s something about making a guitar your own rather than keeping it pristine that appeals.

“You’ve got to make it your own. The value and the resale thing never came to me until much later. When you’re young, all you know is, ‘My fucking Harmony is brown, and I really don’t like the way it looks. I don’t want to play a brown guitar!’”

You started in the punk scene before moving into the guitar tech world. How did that happen?

“My first band was when I was 15, and it was called the Armpits! I was already a sound tech, but I didn’t know there was such a thing as guitar techs. I did road work, setting up gear and I had access to reel-to-reel to record. I’ve still got that – it’s fucking horrible.”

You were Joe Perry’s guitar tech in the ‘80s. What got you into that field?

“It was Joe Perry! I would get little kits, start messing with fuzz boxes and try and modify stuff. I didn’t mind fucking my own shit up, but just from meeting and talking to Joe Perry, that’s how I ended up doing guitars. He asked me to take care of his guitars, and I’m like, ‘Okay, yeah, I can do this.’”

How did you and Joe first meet?

“I was in Boston doing the local scene thing. Joe was doing The Joe Perry Project, and I was with a sound company doing sound. My brother a front-of-house mixer, took a job with The Joe Perry Project, and I would go visit them. I met Joe through my brother and we started talking.”

Joe is very adventurous with gear now, but maybe not as much back then. What were the keys to his rig in those days?

“He was still using his Aerosmith rig with a custom pedalboard that was shaped like a big ‘A.’ For the Rocks tour they had all these racks built, and he would carry two stacks, if I remember correctly.

“The cabinets were on swivels, so they would aim the bottom cabinet at his ears with the top cabinet aimed down. So there was a point on stage where you were in the direct line of fire, and it could be incredibly fucking loud.

“It had a distinct sound. I remember using a lot of Bill Lawrence products, and they even had their guitars wired for three-pin connectors. But when you got in that line of fire where it crossed, it was fucking brutal, man.

“He used that pretty much up until Aerosmith got back together. Then he went to just a couple of pedals – a delay, octave, not much at all. But we had these splitters built to where it was just a pile, you know, a wall of different amps, which sounded fucking awesome.”

Did Joe offer you any words of wisdom about guitars that stuck?

“We talked a lot. Obviously, I picked things up, whether it was intentional or not. But what I got from Joe mostly is how all his alternate tunings worked. I had no idea so much Aerosmith stuff was in open tunings.

“And just the tone he’s got – I don’t know how to put it into words. There’s just a cool factor, you know? It’s not like he’s teaching, but if you open your eyes and pay attention, you will learn.”

You eventually got to work with Steve Vai. Being a big Zappa guy, picking Steve’s brain must have been fun.

“Steve was fucking awesome. I was one step away, you know, one degree away from Zappa. I went out there all bright-eyed and full of enthusiasm. I bounced between Steve and Aerosmith until there was a conflict; and Joe gave me my start, as much as I loved the Steve Vai job.”

Steve must have been pretty different from Joe.

“They both sound like their personalities. I hear his sound and I hear Joe’s personality, and it’s the same with Steve. They’re so in tune with playing from the heart. But I lean towards Zappa, and Steve had that.

“This was when Floyd Roses were getting big. I had never seen a Floyd Rose – though I lied and told him I had! He’s like, ‘Man, can we make this whammy bar go backward? I want to pull up. Can you dig it out back there?’

“So it was stuff like that; creating something new and being involved with pushing designs. And now, if you fucking look at it, everyone has a floating whammy bar.”

Not long after, you worked with Guns N’ Roses as a tech for Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke.

“I met the guys in Guns when they opened for Aerosmith. I liked to smoke pot, so once Aerosmith started doing their no-drugs thing, I had to move on. And Izzy happened to call me and ask me to do his guitars, which was perfect fucking timing.

“I started doing that, then about a year and a half later, Izzy quit. There was a whole lot of sitting around, but they paid me. I sat at home, not knowing what the fuck was going on, but the checks were coming. And finally, they called me and said, ‘Izzy quit,’ and my checks stopped.

“But about a week later they’re like, ‘We got this guy Gilby,’ and the checks started again. I’m like, ’Okay, cool,’ and I went up there, and Gilby was fucking awesome.

“At that point, it was the eye of the hurricane; then it got a little bit crazier, a little bit weird, and I left. I had enough of touring, I was approaching 30, and I needed to take a break. I took a break until I got a call from Billy; I went down there, and that was it.”

How did you help dial things in for Billy?

“He has a very different way of doing things. You have to learn that way, and you have to learn his touch. He’s playing with .7s, really distorted, and not loud at all. And he plays the guitar so low that if I wear his strap, I can’t even play the guitar in tune.

“I’ll try and make a D chord in the cowboy position, and I’m naturally pulling the strings off the fucking neck! His way is all about homogenization of the guitar tone.”

And he’s more into pedals than some people realize.

“Yeah, and he knows exactly what he wants. Steve Vai was on an adventure. Billy does not do that, especially when touring. It’s set a certain way, and we’re going to do it like that, and there’s no stepping off. It’s by the book, whereas Steve was a lot more experimental.”

Is it true Billy loves cheap pedals from Amazon?

“He doesn’t use pedals a lot. They’re just for an extra flavor, so he can change them all the time. And he does buy these cheap Chinese pedals – the smaller, the better. I’ve seen him go through boxes of those fucking pedals!”

What was the key to working with Dusty?

“I don’t think I did anything with Dusty’s sound. Billy knows what he wants and he has no problem describing it. Dusty wouldn’t tell us what to do; he was just like, ’Give me my bass and let me perform,’ while Billy was thinking about other things.”

After Dusty passed, was there any trepidation about stepping in on bass?

“When I first started doing it, Dusty was just sick and going home for a few weeks. It was entirely different; I was just helping out. I didn’t have to worry about the weight of the crown because I was just helping.

“They pulled me aside and said, ‘Can you honestly say you can’t play his parts?’ I said, ‘I can do it, but I don’t think people would enjoy me doing it.’ They said, ‘You can cover him for a few weeks.’

“Originally, it was going to be three weeks, but it didn’t turn out that way. We’d done some gigs when Dusty passed; and by that time, I wouldn’t say I was comfortable – because I’m still not fucking comfortable.

“I had a piece of paper on the rise the first two shows for if I got in trouble; and by the third show I got rid of that and just did the show.”

What’s it been like stepping into that role?

“It’s just weird. Dusty is their bass player. I’m not the bass player. I’m not in the band. I’ll never be in the band. I shouldn’t be in the band. It’s Dusty’s thing. Sure, I’ll still play with them, but it’s a weird thing, man. I get shit for playing with a pick, but it’s not a big deal.

“Billy requested I play with a pick. So right off the bat, things are different, because not only did Dusty play with his fingers, but he was a master at it. His fingers were misshapen through a lifetime of playing bass. He could play like a machine gun with three fingers, and I’ll tell you what – I’ve had problems with some of those things.”

You’ve been playing with a pretty wild 17-string bass here and there. What’s the story there?

“I did it to myself… I hate playing that fucking bass! I found it late at night while internet surfing on one of those Chinese websites. I couldn’t believe they were making something like that.

“I took a screenshot and sent it to Billy, saying, ‘We should order one of these and I’ll play it. It’ll be hilarious.’ Three fucking months later, we fucking got it. It came in all the way from China, and Billy pulls out this big-ass yellow 17-string bass and he’s like, ‘Okay, we’ll play it for a song, right?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I guess I can do this.’

“We decided to keep all the strings on it because it’s even more absurd. Man, the guitar tech barely got the thing ready for the show.

“We don’t do soundchecks; I didn’t even play the guitar until the first time, so it was a baptism by fire while we were out on stage. I was like, ‘God damn, this thing is hard to play!’

“I was seriously struggling – you don’t always know where you are, and if you look at it from the bottom, it’s a big blank neck; I was having trouble finding the frets to play.

“Once it was over, I was like, ‘Okay, cool. Hope everyone laughed.’ I thought it was over – but the son of a bitch went viral, and I woke up to all these messages and links to all this fucking bullshit.

“I’m like, ‘Great… now I got this reaction, Billy’s never going to not let me play it.’ And now, at this point, more people ask me about the 17-string bass than they do the fuzzy guitars!”

The fuzzy guitars must be a hell of a challenge too.

“The biggest challenge with those is changing the strings. You would not believe what a pain in the ass that is. Playing them is okay, and it’s just for one song. With the 17-string bass, I was thinking, ‘I’ll never have to play it again’ – but now I’ve got to play it.”

ZZ Top is set to get back on the road, but are there plans for any new music?

“We’re touring at least up until November. As for new music, I can only repeat what Billy has said: there are songs with Dusty on them in the can. I don’t know anything more than that.

“Billy says he wants to do another record, but officially, I’m not part of that. I just know what Billy has said; I can’t talk about what will or won’t happen other than that.”

• ZZ Top head back out on tour starting August 9.

Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan has recalled the life-changing moment when he met his future bandmate Slash, just a few weeks after he decamped to Los Angeles. In typical Slash fashion, the over-the-top encounter left a lasting impression on McKagan.

“Moving down there, I met Slash and [drummer Steven Adler], like almost immediately, within a couple of weeks, through a newspaper ad,” he discloses in a career-spanning interview with Stereogum.  

“When I first met him, like the night I met him, was at Canter’s, a deli in LA. He was living in his mom’s basement because he’s like 18. And he starts playing guitar – and then he brings out his snake. And I’ve never been around a snake.”

Elsewhere in the interview, McKagan remembers how playing with Slash on Iggy Pop's Brick By Brick was a career-defining, pinch-me moment. 

“I got a phone call at my house. I just got my first phone and house. You pick up the phone back then. ‘Hello? Hey, is this Duff?’ ‘Yeah, it’s Duff.’ ‘It’s Iggy.’ I thought it was one of my friends fucking with me,” he says. 

“‘I want you to come play on my record, man. Would you be into that?’ And I’m like, ‘Who is this?’ And they won’t say who it was. I hung up the phone and the phone rang again. It was him. ‘Hey, man. No, really, it’s Iggy.’”

He continues, “We got these demos from Iggy on a cassette, me and Slash. We learned the songs and went in and played with Don Was. Kenny Aronoff played drums. Consummate professional. 

“Slash and I were good players at that time. But doing the thing with Iggy, we played a show with him, after the record was released, down in downtown LA. At that point in my life, I was like, ‘Man, I’ve done it, I made it. I fucking made it.’”

Blues guitar is a high-risk endeavor. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s easy or safe just because there are fewer notes in the scale. If you want a safer pursuit, take up whitewater rafting, spelunking or snake milking. 

An easier way to pass your practice time would be to woodshed, build up speed and throw in some neoclassical tonalities. Stick some compression and delay on it and everyone on TikTok will think you are a genius. But blues is not that. Blues is making more out of less and that leaves a player wholly exposed. 

Personality counts. Charisma matters. It is like stand-up comedy; you have to tell a story, you have to tell it well, and come the end of it you have to arrive at a punchline. Quarter-tone bends have to be on-point, and pity the fool who incautiously mixes major and minor note choices, slipping out of key and souring the jam. 

The audience expects. They want to hear soul in the vibrato. And if they don’t, you die. Maybe that’s why Slash has decided to record an album of (mostly) blues covers. It’s the old BMX bandit in him. No longer willing – or foolish – enough to put limb on the line on two wheels, he’s putting his reputation out there on the precipice by pulling together a blues band and welcoming a rotating cast of A-list singers to the studio for Orgy Of The Damned. 

And what the hell, the band would track the album live in the studio while they were at it. This was the approach that worked so well on 4, Slash’s most recent album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. On Orgy Of The Damned, veteran producer Mike Clink, who famously presided over Guns N’ Roses as they cut the most dangerous hard-rock debut of all time, Appetite For Destruction, in 1987, would be on hand to make sure the tape was rolling. 

“From my first real session, back in 1986, up until now, we have progressed into a technological kind of arena where producers don’t do anything that is not safe,” says Slash, joining us on from his UK tour with Kennedy and co. 

“Everything has to be mapped out. Everything has to be recorded a certain way. Everything has to be separated. Everything has to be Pro Tooled to death, and it’s really hard to find engineers who will let a band just play in a room and mic them, and just go for it! So yeah, 4 was a fun record for me, and then doing this one with Mike Clink, he just let us do our thing.”

There are a few ways of looking at Orgy Of The Damned and what the track choices tell us about Slash. There is a case to be made that there’s an autobiographical thread to this, a through-line that takes us from Robert Johnson to T-Bone Walker, from Peter Green to Stevie Wonder, from the young Saul Hudson growing up in England before crossing the Atlantic, establishing himself on the West Coast and becoming Slash – Guns N’ Roses guitarist, Gibson Brand Ambassador, rock icon. Slash isn’t so sure. At least, this wasn’t the intent.

“No, I didn’t think about it in terms of any kind of retrospective look at my upbringing, but I guess when you think about it, that’s sort of what it is,” he says. “It’s stuff that I have been influenced by, and stuff that I like from early on up until this point. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but it’s an interesting way to look at it…”

Alternatively, we could interpret this album as a statement on how far the blues has evolved, and how the blues has given guitar-driven rock and pop the raw materials to sustain itself, and how it can in turn accommodate those new sounds and still retain its essence. It’s one of those myths that blues is somehow preserved in aspic and resistant to change when its prime movers had done nothing but innovate ever since first putting together a I-IV-V progression. 

Freddie King was injecting funk, soul and R&B into the blues way back in the ’70s with the stylistically audacious album Burglar. Gary Clark Jr., who features on Orgy Of The Damned singing and playing guitar alongside Billy Gibbons on Hoochie Coochie Man, said in TG just a couple of months ago that you don’t preserve an art form by keeping it stale. 

“All the guys that came before me were pioneers in terms of moving it forward,” Clark said. “Robert Johnson. Muddy Waters. Son House. All these guys put their own flavor into this music and evolved it. We sometimes look at it as this thing to preserve, but the guys who were making it weren’t preserving it. They were trying to push the boundaries. 

“If you’re trying to do Muddy Waters, that’s some big shoes to fill, and I don’t really want to spend my time trying to be that guy. People used to tell me all the time, ‘Just play the blues, you gotta preserve the blues!’ And I’d think, ‘Yeah, but look at Buddy Guy with a record like Sweet Tea – what the hell is that?’ Why would people want me to sound like Buddy Guy’s old records when even Buddy Guy doesn’t sound like that anymore? What kinda sense does that make?”

He has a point. Not to mention that blues standards are standards because they have been reinterpreted over and over again. Who even wrote Key To The Highway? The credits go to Charles Segar and William ‘Big Bill’ Broonzy, but the story goes that those lyrics had been passed around the American South in one form or another.

Contested origin stories are part of the blues folk mythos. They deepen the mystery, as though songs have a mortal life force all their own. What we do know is that their version of Key To The Highway was recorded, cut to vinyl and became definitive, and it has since been covered by Little Walter with Muddy Waters on guitar, Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, The Tedeschi Trucks Band, B.B. King and now Slash, with Dorothy on lead vocals, and he surely won’t be the last. 

Once you read who is involved with this project and the songs that they will be recording, Orgy Of The Damned, officially Slash’s second solo album, is not your regular blues record. 

“For me, it was just a fun thing; songs that I really dug, and I just did my own spin on it. But that said, it wasn’t intended to be a traditional blues record,” says Slash.

“There are so many great, very traditional blues artists out there that keep that flame going, but I wanted it to be, ‘This is me, doing what influenced me to be who I am.’ And I bought all of these eclectic, different kind of singers into it – maybe just because subconsciously I didn’t want people to think I was trying to do the same kind of record that all these really hardcore blues artists do.” 

The Blues Ball is back in play

We should introduce the band. The lineup is a “reincarnation” of Slash’s Blues Ball, the guitarist’s mid-’90s blues project that gave him something to do after his exit from Guns N’ Roses. Teddy Andreadis plays keys. Johnny Griparic plays bass, with Michael Jerome on drums. It was Griparic who suggested Iggy Pop guest on the record. Tash Neal rounds out the lineup on guitar and vocals, stealing the show on the cover of Stevie Wonder’s Living For The City.

“Tash is fucking amazing,” says Slash. “I first heard him sing at a blues event that I was involved with in Los Angeles, with a bunch of cool players all jamming one night, and I was just floored, because I had never heard him, never met him. He and I struck up a relationship, and his band opened up for the Conspirators back in 2019, doing a US run, and we were just amazed by his band. 

“We would go out before our set and just watch them play every single night, so when I was putting this blues thing together I thought he would be a great guy to come in and sing, and play guitar, because he is a great guitar player. He plays a lot on the record.”

No one in the band knew what this record was going to be, at least not at first. They had a list of tracks and were workshopping the arrangements before being told how it was going to go down. Andreadis will be singing live with the band, and as far as he knew, he was going to be singing on this record, too. 

“I never told them that I was going to pick different singers,” says Slash. “Teddy was always the singer in the original lineup of the Blues Ball back in the ’90s, so I sort of had this thing in my mind. As we were learning the songs I had this thing in my mind, who the singers should be.”

The record opens with The Pusher, a song written by country/folk singer-songwriter Hoyt Axton and made famous with the version by Steppenwolf that featured in the 1969 movie Easy Rider. For this countercultural anthem, The Black Crowes’ singer Chris Robinson was a perfect fit. 

“When I called him about it he loved that song,” says Slash. “It was cool that he was so passionate about it, and excited about coming in and doing it.” 

There would be Brian Johnson of AC/DC doing his best Howlin’ Wolf on a raucous take on Killing Floor, with Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler playing the harmonica. Demi Lovato sings on Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone by The Temptations, complementing the blues with a Motown soul classic that demanded a different treatment from the band, and, again, like Freddie King, shows how far you can push things on a blues record. 

“Like I said, it’s not a real, traditional kind of blues record,” Slash says. “Obviously, there is a lot of blues on it! I don’t know about comparing it to that great, great f*cking Freddie King record, but it is off the beaten path.”

Some of Slash’s choices are no-brainers. Paul Rodgers steps up for Born Under A Bad Sign, having already sung Albert King’s The Hunter on Free’s seminal 1969 debut album Tons Of Sobs. Chris Stapleton has the chops on vocals to guest on a cover of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac classic Oh Well that turns into a riotous eighth-note pummelling, which by its climax is more Motörhead than British blues. And Beth Hart dropped by – literally dropped by – for a totally smoking performance on T-Bone Walker’s Stormy Monday. 

“That was a funny take, because I talked to Beth on the phone; she was excited about doing it, and she called me back and had this idea about doing it in a minor key, which was a fucking great idea,” Slash says. “It made it a different version to all the other ones out there. 

“We rehearsed it in minor, like, the last day of rehearsal, and we ended up doing it in minor, and then I think Ted had the idea of transposing it back to major at the end, which really was cool. So we had just learned how to do that, and we went into the studio the next day, and we were basically going to rehearse it – and Beth showed up. She just came in! She just jumped on the mic and sang it, and that’s the only take and it was a rehearsal take. It really was almost like a live jam in a club with a guest vocalist. Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen, so the spontaneity in that was great. It was flying by the seat of our pants.”

Stormy Monday is where you can really hear the benefits of recording a band live in a room. There’s a dynamic range and an energy that feels like the documenting of a performance, not just a take. When Hart dials her voice back to a whisper, Slash takes the guitar there, too. 

It sounds like he ditches the pick for this and is just kissing the string with his thumb, letting the amp clean up. 

“You know what? I do play a lot with my fingers, back and forth with my pick and my fingertips, but I can’t really remember,” he says, admitting that Hart’s ambush caught him and the band unaware, but these moments can be the making of a record. They give it life, especially when everyone is setup together and the tape is rolling.

“It’s great, maybe it’s because I am not that comfortable in the studio when you have too much time to sit about and think about what you are going to do,” he says. “So when you are doing sessions and you’ve got a lot of overdubbing, and you’ve got to come in again, you can overthink this stuff. 

“When you are playing live, you are just in the heat of the moment, performing, just using your wits at the time. Just play! And if you’ve got a good guitar sound and the band is locked in, it sometimes provides much more exciting guitar. 

“I just think playing live as a band is the only way to do rock ’n’ roll anyway. Rock ’n’ roll and blues – and jazz – has to be performed live with the band together in one room. It’s not something that could be pieced together because the feel gets lost. So I try to keep everything as live as possible.”

That might explain the pounding Motörhead treatment on Oh Well. The one-two punch of Slash and Neal’s guitar turns it into a powerhouse jam. Listen to it on headphones and you will pick out all these overtones, moments of illusory musical information. It sounds like there’s an acoustic guitar buried deep at the back of the mix, doubling the riff for texture, but there’s not. There might have been had they had more time, but overdubs for this album were kept to a minimum. 

You might hear a couple here and there, such as the talkbox work on Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone, which was rehearsed with Slash using a wah pedal and talkbox at the same time. Now, listen back to Oh Well again and what do you hear? Yeah, the helter-skelter take is classic Slash – getting carried away with himself, more ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke than Big Bill Broonzy – but there is something off-menu as far as guitar choices go.

“Yeah, for me that song was one of my favorites,” he says with a chuckle that’s as good as an admission that, yes, he did get carried away. 

“I remember when they used to play it on the radio back in the ’70s, and I always loved it. Y’know, I’ve jammed the riff a few times but I have never played the full song. My take on it is a little bit more hard-driving than most, right? It was a hell of a lot of f*cking fun to play. And I’m playing a Strat, too, which you never hear me use.”

Wait. Record scratch. Time out. He what? 

“It just sounded like a Strat to me,” he says. “I used a Strat on that, and I used an old ’50s Tele on Living For The City.” You think you know someone and then this…

Old, new, borrowed and blue

As it turns out, doing Orgy For The Damned was as good excuse as any to play around with his rig. 

“Anything, everything is an excuse to buy a new guitar!” protests Slash. This in part led to his new signature guitar amp collaboration with Magnatone. 

In the video for Killing Floor, Slash is playing a 1963 Gibson ES-335. It’s Neal playing the Les Paul. And your eyes did not deceive you, those were vintage Fender tube combos in the background. 

“What happened was that, when I decided I was going to do this record, I pulled out a bunch of my old vintage combo amps and whatnot because I knew it was going to be a more laid-back [recording process],” Slash explains. “It is still sort of a rock ’n’ roll tone. I just wanted it to be less Marshall-y. And have a little bit more of a clean, gritty sort of a sound to it. I had those amps that I pulled out, and then I pulled out some vintage guitars I had.

“I’m funny with amps. I have obviously been a Marshall guy forever, and I love Marshalls – nothing gets the Marshall sound, right? But I also love old Fender Deluxes. 

“I love old Fender amps for lots of different kinds of things, and they pop up here and there for clean stuff on a record or whatever. But I pulled them out, a couple of old Fender ’50s Deluxes. I had a Dumble Fender Deluxe that he (Alexander ‘Howard’ Dumble) built for me, just before he passed away. I think it was the last one he ever built. And I had an old Marshall 50-watt, which I don’t usually use but I thought might be applicable for this.”

Enter, the Magnatone. There was a moment’s pause, panic across the internet, when the news broke that Slash was teaming up with Magnatone for a signature amplifier, that this amp would be in his backline when touring with Kennedy and the Conspirators. The official press release never mentioned a continuation with Marshall Amps. Slash leaving Marshall seemed unthinkable – and it was. A hastily released clarification was issued. 

He was adding to his backline, not decommissioning the Marshalls. When his signature Magnatone SL-100 arrived, finished in green snakeskin vinyl, it was clearly inspired by vintage Marshall Super Leads, with traditional British valve amp accoutrements such as the quartet of EL34s augmented with switchable Lo and Hi gain modes, a tube-buffered effects loop, and a master volume because 100 watts of this could take some heads off. The collaboration on the amp started here.

“Funnily enough, I had this Magnatone M-80 50-watt that Billy Gibbons gave me a long time ago that I had never used before,” Slash says. “I had never even heard it! He gave it to me, I put it with a bunch of stuff and never listened to it, and so then I had a Vox that I brought out. I wanna say something else, oh yeah, a vintage Mesa/Boogie, like, an early Mesa/Boogie. 

“I was trying all these amps, and going through the songs, and it was all very laid-back and relaxed, and I tried that Magnatone and it sounded amazing.

“Everyday I would say, ‘Okay, we’re going to play this song and I am going to try a couple of amps with it, a couple of different guitars.’ And I ended up back at that Magnatone. I ended up doing that whole record with the Magnatone and ended up designing an amp with them as a result.”

The moral of this story is that, when the Reverend Billy F. Gibbons gifts you an amplifier, you put it in rotation. Also, do whatever you can to get him to guest on your record. Gibbons’ turn on Hoochie Coochie Man is a high-water mark for the sessions and it gives one of Chicago’s greatest blues standards a little Texas flavor, with Gibbons playing rhythm guitar, singing, and taking one of the solos.

“Billy, he’s just hands down one of my favorite guitar players, ever since I first heard him back when I was a kid, and he just has this laid-back kind of approach,” Slash says. “There are three of us doing solos on Hoochie Coochie Man, but he is the one that’s got the clean tone. 

“I think he's the third solo in. That was something that he did just off the cuff, and it is so note perfect that I actually had to learn it! Ha! Just to learn it! Because his selection of notes on that little solo are just so great, not to mention his vocals are great. And also the same with Gary Clark Jr. He and I played back and forth, but his solo is so indicative of what makes him such a fabulous blues player.”

Riding with the King

What makes a great blues player? There are no rules per se. You don’t need expensive guitars. 

Robert Johnson inaugurated the art form with a Depression-era Gibson Kalamazoo flat-top. A suit is traditional but non-essential. You don’t need heavy strings and a bear trap grip for a fretting hand. 

Billy Gibbons is proof of that. His electric guitars are strung up with .007s after some friendly advice from B.B. King that amounted to: “Why are you working so hard?” But that was exactly the opposite lesson Slash took from B.B. King, whom he was lucky enough to jam with at the Royal Albert Hall in 2011, when he joined the King of the Blues with Ronnie Wood, Derek Trucks, and Susan Tedeschi on The Thrill Is Gone. B.B. King makes a great blues player.

“He was the guy, when I was a kid, way, way before I ever thought of picking up a guitar, he was the first traditional blues artist that I was exposed to,” says Slash. 

“My grandmother played me B.B. King and it stuck with me. I heard a lot of blues artists after that, all around the family and stuff, but B.B. King, the first time I ever heard it, it really stuck with me, and so he ended up being my favorite blues guitar player out of all the greats that I really dig. He is sort of my top guy. And I think one of the reasons I love Jimmy Page is because he plays very much like B.B. King.”

Slash played with B.B. King on a couple of occasions over the years, but the first time the occasion escaped him. It was one of those LA nights that got lost to the drink.

“I can barely remember it!” he says. “But he was so cordial to me, and so almost fatherly and nice and generous with his time. That had a positive affect on me. And I played with him a couple of times over the years, and the last time I played with him was at the Royal Albert Hall, and Ronnie Wood was there. 

“It was just a lot of fun. I remember being a little bit nervous, and not really feeling comfortable trying to play, but I was there, so… whatcha gonna do? But it was a really nice moment to spend with him. He was a really sweet guy, and a genuine road dog. 

“This was a guy who spent 70 per cent or even 80 percent of his entire life working, and I have always admired that. I've probably modeled myself after that because I am a total workaholic. I go, ‘Well B.B. did it, so I can do it!’ Anyway, it was just a great moment. Just being in the same space as one of your all-time favorite and most influential artists.”

B.B. King was a stickler for details. His many Gibson ES-variant Lucilles were modified to remove the f-holes so that feedback wouldn’t be an issue. He took a pride in his intonation, took every precaution; his bridges were augmented with a TP-6 tailpiece with fine tuners. His ear was as good as a Peterson Strobe Tuner.

B.B. might have given Slash the appetite for road miles, but maybe this is where he gets his appreciation for good intonation at all times. You would be hard pushed to call Slash neurotic, but on matters intonation he is not far off.

“I don’t know, but my ear is pretty sensitive to being out of tune, and I appreciate you saying that,” he says. 

“That’s a compliment, because one of my biggest pet peeves about my playing is intonation. Sometimes a lot of it has to do with in-ears because you can go so high that you can’t hear it anymore because you don’t have the space of the room to really fill out the note. My pet peeve with intonation is something that I am still working on!”

Lightnin’ in a bottle

Not all of the tracks on Orgy Of The Damned were chosen by Slash. It was at Iggy Pop’s request that they covered Awful Dream, the old Lightnin’ Hopkins tune from 1960’s Mojo Hand. 

A more obscure country blues cut, Slash wasn’t initially familiar with the arrangement, such as it is; Hopkins' style is so spare that invites reinterpretation, as though his songs arrived fresh on record already as blues standards. It’s like there’s dust on it. 

Listen to the original and you can hear why it works for Iggy Pop’s voice. Maybe it was Hopkins’s choice of words, or how his acoustic guitar had this sleepwalking slow shuffle rhythm to it, or maybe his voice, which managed to have this reedy top-end and yet be canyon-deep at the same time, but he was one of those musicians who gave the blues a supernatural feel, as though it was coming from the beyond – a haunting. 

Slash and Iggy are faithful to that spirit, if not the arrangement, making it sound as though the guitar itself had been exhumed from the Mojave before being brought up to pitch and recorded.

Slash says of the track: “Iggy came in and he and I just sat on stools,” Slash recalls. “And I hadn’t ever actually learned the song because it was so loose to begin with; I just did my own thing, how I remembered it would go. Iggy had all the words down and we sat and jammed it. I think we did it a couple of times, and then just did it from top to bottom live like that. It was a really great outlet for Iggy. He really cherished the moment to do that, and I love that feeling.”

Lightnin’ Hopkins played Gibson and Harmony acoustics, but Slash’s choice for Awful Dream was more inspired by Lead Belly and Blind Willie McTell – a Fraulini 12-string with a longer baritone scale. 

“I got turned onto these guitars by Cher’s son,” he says. “These 12-string guitars were built like baritone acoustic guitars in the ’40s. So they are tuned really low, and they’re 12-strings. Just amazing sounding.” 

Hendrix agreed. In the 1973 documentary Jimi Hendrix, there is footage of him playing Hear My Train A Comin’ on a downtuned Zemaitis 12-string acoustic. And there’s something undeniably gnarly about a downtuned 12-string – those low open strings sound like a death rattle.

Spare a thought for Teddy Andreadis, who will be singing these tracks when the band takes to the stage at Slash’s S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival, which kicks off in July and tours across the US, with Warren Haynes, Keb’ Mo’, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, Samantha Fish, Larkin Poe, Robert Randolph, and Eric Gales all confirmed among the lineup. 

S.E.R.P.E.N.T. stands for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality, N’ Tolerance. It’s a celebration of the blues, a chance to play these songs live, but it’s also to raise money for good causes, with a dollar from each ticket sold going to charity.

“We are trying to do something that supports people coming together and not pointing fingers at people, and ostracising different races, people of different genders, all that kind of shit,” says Slash. “That’s the driving force behind the festival, but blues is all about bringing people together.”

Looking at the bill is proof positive that there is no one way to play the blues, and that’s the point. If there was, it would be easy. But it’s like the great contemporary jazz guitarist Julian Lage says: everyone has their own shuffle that’s unique to them. Use yours. 

That rhythm is just as important as phrasing a lead, note choice, tone. Listen to the pocket on Hoochie Coochie Man. Listen to Slash’s leads on this record. None were worked out beforehand. You’ve got to know where to start, where to finish, and which notes to avoid. All else is up for grabs. Make it your own.

“That is what’s great about blues guitar,” Slash says. “It’s all the same chord changes. It’s all more or less the same notes, but it’s just the way that the individual’s personality chooses how to play them, and that’s what makes all these blues guitar players so fucking great. You can really hear their personalities in their melodies, and in their solos, and in their rhythms, and just the way that they play it. 

“It's such a diverse canvas, because you just have these three chords, 12 notes and a couple of different octaves, and the different things that people do with them are so much more different than all the technical players out there who are spending so much time on all this technique, and all of these fucking different kinds of picking techniques and scales. It’s all brilliant. It’s amazing. But it’s hard to tell a lot of those players apart because they are all doing more or less the same kind of thing at blinding speed. 

“If you just listen to blues players, man, there’s so much personality and individuality between all these different guitar players, and it is one of these things I love about it. It’s not something you can necessarily pick up from watching tutorials on YouTube. It’s just something you feel.”

• Orgy Of The Damned is out now via Gibson Records.

Gilby Clarke has launched a Reverb store featuring a “cache of beautiful gear the guitarist used in the studio and on tour with Guns N' Roses, Heart, and more.”

The guitarist – who replaced Izzy Stradlin in GNR during the Use Your Illusion tour in 1991 – has listed over 60 items, including mint condition guitars, guitar amps, and stomped-on effects pedals.

Two standout listings include a custom-made ESP Telecaster-style guitar, modeled after Clarke's much-loved '68 Telecaster, and a pristine condition 1975 Gretsch White Falcon. Notably, the ESP was used by Clarke during his Guns N’ Roses and Slash's Snakepit days, and also starred in the former's performances of Wild Horses.

There's another Snakepit axe in the form of an ESP Custom Shop Hybrid II that Clarke played on the Late Show with David Letterman. It features a bridge humbucker and a “typical Fender-style” neck pickup. 

“It's an interesting combo,” says the listing, “but it sounds great.”

There are several Fender amps listed, including a Deluxe combo and multiple Bassman heads, though the one that Clarke used during Heart's '03 tour has already sold. 

18 pedals had also been put up for sale, but they have already been sold. The list included a Dunlop 535Q Cry Baby, an Electro-Harmonix Screaming Bird, and a Coffin Case BDFX-1 Blood Drive “used on many recordings in Gilby's studio.” 

If blowing your life savings on a '70s Thinline Tele isn't your bag, cheaper listings still available include a Kustom '72 Coupe ($690) – because who doesn't want an amp on wheels?! – and a signed poster ($400).

Check out the full listings over on Reverb. 

Kiko Loureiro also recently opened up a Reverb store to sell off a load of his Megadeth equipment.

In recent years, we’ve seen more than a few canny luthiers – such as Dennis Fano and Patrick James Eggle – blend together elements from classic vintage guitars to create modern electrics that are built to an exacting contemporary spec yet sound and feel as if they were made in the ’50s. Now, another name can be added to the wishlist of anyone who enjoys the blend of usability and vibe such guitars offer: Ivison Guitars. 

Based in Worcestershire, UK, Neil Ivison is its proud founder – but he says it’s almost by accident that he fell into making his high-end, vintage-style electrics. He must be doing something very right, however, because bands such as The Hives and Guns N’ Roses have started using his guitars. 

The Dakota model in particular seems to be a favourite, with its blend of Les Paul Junior and Firebird styling cues and just a touch of Telecaster spank and snap – plus versatile range of tonewood and electronics options. 

We join Neil to talk about the somewhat charmed life of his guitar-making enterprise, and learn why it’s been driven by player satisfaction and word of mouth all the way to the main stage of Glastonbury…

How did you get into guitar making?

“Well, I’ve been playing since I was 12, and then I was in various bands and what have you. I ended up as a touring guitar tech for about 15 years – went all over the world with various bands. My son was born in 2012 and I decided that [touring] is a young man’s game; I was away from home so much I was missing my son grow up. So I came off the road about a year later. I did various things and thought, ‘Well, I’d like to try and keep my hand in with guitars of some description.’” 

“I was still playing live myself, but I thought I’d set up a little guitar repair business and see how that went. So I started doing that, just in the garage at home, and it was going well. Then somebody asked, ‘Have you ever built anything of your own?’ And I thought ‘Well, no, I haven’t.’ 

“At the time, I had a nice ’59 double-cut Les Paul Junior, all-original with no neck break, that I’d saved up for. I’d bought this thing when I was in America and it was beautiful. But it wasn’t a joy to own because I was also bloody scared of leaving it in the house if we were away. 

“Or when [my son] Sam was a toddler, if it was on a stand I’d say, ‘Oh no, stay away from the guitar!’ in case he’d knock it off the stand and break the headstock! [laughs] And again, playing live it was like, ‘Ah Christ, I don’t want to leave this in the pub in case it gets pinched.’”

“So I thought I’d have a go at replicating that guitar as closely as I could. I went down a rabbit hole with that and made a double-cut Junior-style electric. Essentially, it was a replica with my own headstock on, at that point anyway, and it came out really well. I was like, ‘Oh bloody hell, this is alright.’ I lent it to a couple of mates and they asked if I could make them one. 

“Then someone else asked, too, and within six months it spiralled into this little business. I started making these vintage-correct copies of Juniors and that’s where I honed my craft, I suppose. People were really bowled over by the fact the guitars felt vintage and I’d gone to as much effort as I could to make them sound old as well.

“So I did that for a couple of years, and it got to the point where we had to knock down the garage and build a workshop in its place because it had gone so well. It had turned into a job – I was only hoping it was going to be something I could waste a lot of time doing [laughs]! It was like so many things in life – it sort of comes and gets you. But it was great and I adored it.”

How did you move from near-replicas of Les Paul Juniors to original designs?

“Eventually, I thought, ‘Well, it’s time I had a go at building my own thing.’ So I came up with a guitar called the Hurricane, which had a slab body, like a Junior, with a thin maple top carve, PAF in the bridge and a P-90 in the neck. I’d repaired [session guitarist and journalist] Ed Oleszko’s ’56 Special with a PAF in the bridge and the old P-90 in the neck – and it was a great-sounding combination. 

“It had just two controls – volume and tone like the old Junior – so it was basically a mash-up of a Junior, Special and ’Burst. That was the whole idea. I came up with my own body shape and it got good reviews. I also found as soon as you start building your own stuff – with your own input and your own design – it’s far more rewarding. I’m full-time now and in my sixth year of doing so, so everything’s happened really quickly.”

The Hurricane is a great guitar, but it’s the slightly more workmanlike Dakota that’s ended up being used by the most high-profile players among your customers. How did the design take shape?

“Well, Stu Robson of Sunbear Pickups is involved in this story because we’ve been working together for [some time]. Basically, he came to me at a guitar show when I was still doing the Juniors and said, ‘I’m just starting out making pickups – would you be interested?’ We had a chat and immediately I knew; you could tell he was into it. Everything from the magnets to the nickel content of the screws… Straight away I thought, ‘This is my guy.’ 

“At the time I think I was using Mojo pickups, but as I was new and just starting out [I said], ‘I sort of need a ‘name’ [pickup maker] for a bit of brand confidence, then at least there’s a name people have already heard of attached to it [as a pickup supplier]. So Stu offered to wind me a set: ‘If you don’t like them, you’ll never hear from me again,’ he said. So he wound me a set, and from pretty much then on we’ve worked together and grown together, really, which is nice.”

“Going back to the design of the Dakota, Stu said to me one day, ‘Have you ever tried Firebird pickups?’ I hadn’t, but I wanted to build something with them. He was just starting his Sunbird range [of Firebird-inspired pickups]. 

“I happened to be down at [vintage retailer] ATB Guitars in Cheltenham because I do all their repairs – I have done for quite some while, six or seven years – and they had a Cardinal Red Firebird in, a beautiful-looking thing. I picked it up and tried it and thought it was great. I was sitting there playing it, and it slowly started slipping down off my lap! I kept bringing the neck up, and well… you’ve played a Firebird, you know exactly what they’re like. 

“They’ve got this neck-heavy thing with those banjo tuners and there’s just nothing you can do about it. They look cool as – but, to me, nothing about them is ergonomic or [built] with a player in mind, because it was a car designer who designed it. I just thought, ‘There must be a way I can make this more ergonomic but still keep the sound…’”

“So I came back home – it was literally that evening that I got a bit of paper and thought, ‘That would work if I raised up the centre…’ I wanted to keep a bit of the old Junior and Special flavour to it as well, so I kept the long-tenon joint as opposed to the through-neck and obviously raised the centre to get the Firebird look. 

“I asked Stu to send me a set of these pickups – and it was a bit of a revelation. As you know, they do that ‘fat Tele’ thing that everybody likes and the bridge pickup can be really spiky and get ‘country’. But the neck pickup on a Firebird, and on the Dakota with Stu’s unit, is one of the best I’ve ever heard. They’re a little bit Strat-y and they just sound really good. 

“I sent it to a few people and thought it looked great. I thought, ‘Well, surely somebody has done this before.’ You know, somebody’s [surely] put the Firebird into the single-cut shape. But even now, I’m still waiting for someone to say, ‘Oi! That’s my design!’ But I think it’s actually mine. So I’m quite chuffed about it.”

The crowning moment for the Dakota, so far, must be when it ended up taking centre stage in the BBC’s coverage of Guns N’ Roses headlining Glastonbury in 2023. How did Richard Fortus come to play one?

“It’s quite a funny story, actually. It was one Sunday afternoon and we did a roast and I was asleep on the sofa – as you do after Sunday dinners – and the phone went off. It was Richard Fortus and he said, ‘Hey, man, I really love your guitars. I’ve been following you for 18 months and would love to try one sometime.’ 

“So I said, as I do for any [overseas] musicians who ask, ‘Whenever ,you’re playing in the UK, I’ll bring one out to you.’ I’ve done that with Electric Six and with The Hives – they both play my guitars. He said, ‘Oh, great – actually we’re over in June.’ I said, ‘Oh, cool. Where are you playing?’ He said, ‘Oh, we’re headlining Glastonbury and headlining Hyde Park.’ I was like, ‘What the…? It is that Richard Fortus, who’s had Guns N’ Roses in his biog for the last 22 years!’ 

“Richard’s such a nice guy and he’s completely gear-addicted. He’s had every sort of vintage guitar you can think of and he’s right into it – the winds of the pickups, all the different woods. He said to me, ‘Have you ever done a Korina with Firebird pickups?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ve not, but leave it with me.’ We arranged to meet in Bath on the Friday night and they were playing on the Saturday. 

“I took it down and he said, ‘Oh, we’ll meet in Vintage ‘n’ Rare.’ [Paul] Tucker had stayed open for us, so we could try it and he opened the case and said, ‘Oh, man, I’ve lusted after one of these for 18 months.’ He played it for ages and we’d gone back and forward a bit on the spec of the pickup and the pots, but we’d got that sorted. 

“I [was concerned that Glastonbury] was a televised gig and the pressure was going to be on, but he was like, ‘Yeah, I know, I appreciate that. But I want it.’ He took me for dinner and we just chatted about his family and stuff, and the guitars he’s had – and he was a really nice guy and a great player, too.” 

“I came back up the motorway and thought, ‘That was a bit surreal.’ Then he messaged me after dinner and said, ‘I’ve been playing this in the hotel room, I’m definitely going to play it tomorrow. I’ve shown Slash and he likes it, too…’ I decided not to tell anyone about it because I know my luck and I thought, ‘Well, at the last minute he may decide not to use it.’ 

“So my wife, Rachel, and I sat in front of the telly to look out for it. Second song in, I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d said to the BBC, ‘What I want you to do is a nice zooming in shot from the back of the crowd up to the Pyramid Stage…’ because that’s what happened and there he was, playing it.

“After that, the phones went and didn’t stop till the Sunday night. It was really great; people were saying, ‘He’s playing your guitar, I knew it from the pickguard…’ or ‘I knew from the shape…’ Straight away, that confirmed that I’d got it right – it was distinctive enough to be an Ivison.”  

• For more information, see Ivison Guitars.

Gilby Clarke’s versatility is not a trick of the light. His influences include The Clash and Mick Ronson, while his resume lists time with Guns N’ Roses, Slash and Nancy Sinatra. 

Whether rocking stadiums as GN’R rhythm guitarist at the height of their fame or providing tasteful leads in the studio, Clarke’s mindset remains the same: “I just consider myself a guitar player,” he tells Guitar World. “I don’t consider myself a rhythm or lead player.”

He continues: “Most people know me from Guns N’ Roses, where I was a rhythm guitar player, but before Guns, I was the only guitar player – and since Guns, I’ve been the only guitar player.”

Many will have first encountered Clarke as the man who postured beside Slash during GN’R’s wild Use Your Illusion tour from ‘91 to ‘93, over nine legs and 194 shows. Supposedly, 209 shows were canceled – indicative of the madness inherent in Guns’ world then.

Clarke’s era ended with a solo 1994 record, Pawnshop Guitars, and assisting with the 1995 Slash’s Snakepit record, It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere – born after Axl Rose rejected the pair’s songs. 

Clarke is diplomatic. “It was totally Axl’s prerogative,” he says. “To me, we had some good songs, and those records are great. But imagine what me, Slash, Matt, Duff, and Axl could have done with some of that stuff.”

He isn’t crying over spilled milk; he’s rattled off six solo outings since, with 2021’s The Gospel Truth considered his best. 

“It always starts with the guitar,” he explains. “Rock music has taken a lot of abuse lately – but I go to shows, and people are still screaming. To me, that says rock is doing pretty good.”

Clarke adds: “I've never considered myself a solo artist; that happened accidentally. But I love the process, and The Gospel Truth was great. I’ve fine-tuned what I do and got the formula down. I’m looking forward to what comes next.”

What was your aim as a young musician?

“What inspired me to play guitar was odd. It was a visual and not a musical inspiration. I was growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, and one day I went into a head shop and saw a poster of Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival. He’s wearing a blue outfit with his white Strat and I was like, ‘That’s the coolest-looking dude I’ve ever seen. I want to do what he does!’ That was my moment.

“From there I listened to Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper and whatever else was popular then. I started a little three-piece band, then I got a British girlfriend, and she switched gears for me – she turned me onto The Clash, Mick Ronson with David Bowie, and T. Rex. That’s when my melodic style took shape. I was never into shredding; I always liked the guys who were there for the song. That’s dictated what I’ve done my entire life.”

Your first proper band was Candy, which was more pop-leaning.

“Oddly enough, Candy happened under similar circumstances that Guns N’ Roses did later. Candy was a band that was playing around and was doing well. A lot of guitar music around Hollywood in the ‘80s was not my cup of tea – I liked the bands, but it wasn’t the kind of music I wanted to do.

“Everyone had the Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen thing happening, but I wanted to be like Rick Derringer and Mick Ronson. So I answered an ad in The Recycler: ‘Guitarist wanted who is into Bowie and T. Rex.’ I was like, ‘Man… I’m there!’”

You had a hand in writing Candy’s minor hit, Dance America. What gear did you use?

“I’ve used the same gear the whole time – there’s been no change. I play the same type of guitar and use the same kind of amp now that I did with Candy: a Gibson Les Paul plugged into a Marshall 50W.”

What attracted you to that combination?

“I’ve looked at it like, what I do is just rock ’n’ roll and should be treated as such. I know there are certain guys, like Joe Satriani or Steve Vai, who have their distinct thing. I want a rig that’s versatile enough to let me be myself but can handle anything, be it Candy or Guns N’ Roses.”

How did the Guns N’ Roses thing come up?

“With Guns, a lot was going on there at the time. They’d already made changes with Steven Adler and brought Matt Sorum into the band. And they’d added Dizzy Reed on keys too.

“Interestingly, I wasn’t listening to Guns much then, and aside from Izzy Stradlin, I didn’t know the guys. Izzy and I knew each other and had many of the same influences, and we got along, but I didn’t know Axl or Slash.

“One day, I heard rumors from someone who said, ‘Izzy is quitting Guns, and they’re getting Ronnie Wood.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, no. Ronnie Wood is in the Stones.’ 

“But to my surprise, Slash called me, saying, ‘Hey, man, we're looking for a guitar player. I don’t know if it’s temporary or permanent.’ And then he goes, ‘We’ve got a bunch of shows, and we can’t cancel them.’”

What was the audition like?

“I was working a night gig doing sound around town at small clubs, and I had zero time, but Slash wanted me to come down the next day. So, I had no time to learn the songs and was literally in my car listening to them on the way to the audition. Luckily, they chose three easy ones and had me return the next day.

“I heard nothing after that, and then a friend said he got a call from Slash to come down, so I thought, ‘Okay, I guess I’m not getting the gig.’ But three or four days later, Slash calls and says, ‘You got the gig. We leave next week. Learn the whole catalog.’

“I was like, ‘What? The whole fucking catalog? Don’t you have a set of 20 or 25 songs?’ Slash goes, ‘There’s no setlist. Axl just calls ‘em out, so you gotta know the whole catalog.’

“So, I had one week to learn 50 fucking songs; I was glued to my cassette player. I walked out on stage for my first show with no cheat sheets and having learned all these new songs in one fucking week.”

Guns N’ Roses was chaos by that point. That must have been a shock to the system. 

“I’d played arenas, though never stadiums, so that wasn’t too far-fetched. But I know what you mean – the whole Guns machine surrounding them is crazy. But oddly enough, I was already in with the guys; they were beyond cool with me.

“I’d been around; it’s not like I was Joe Schmo coming into the band. They were respectful, and Slash wasn’t like, ‘Do it this way or stand here;’ they let me be me.”

What advice did Slash give to you?

“There were important parts to the songs, but Slash said, ‘Put your stamp on the songs. I want you to play the songs how you'd play them and make them yours.’ That was great advice because it took a lot of the pressure off trying to be Izzy.

“I was anxious and wanted to play the songs right. I wasn’t paying attention to the girls backstage, the drugs, and the drinking; I had to remember these 50 fucking songs and not mess up on stage.

“If you’ve ever seen Slash give that look to whoever when they hit a bad note… You get that look once, man. You don't want it twice. Slash and Duff told me to lay back, and I live by that advice to this day.”

You got on well with the guys in Guns – so what led to your solo record, Pawnshop Guitars?

“We were on tour for two and a half years, and it was silently implied that we’d take a break. Going in, I was already a signed writer for Virgin Music and had a ton of new songs, which I presented to Axl and Slash for Guns’ next record. But they wanted to start fresh; so I said, ‘Hey, I want to use these songs; I’m gonna make a record,’ which they were cool with.”

Axl and the other guys guested on Pawnshop Guitars – but the wheels came off shortly after. 

“Slash was there; I couldn’t get him out of the studio! We had a strip club across the street, and it was a great excuse to hang out and make music for a few months. But as I was wrapping up the record, Slash called and said, ‘Hey, Axl has changed gears. He wants to go in a different direction, wants nothing to do with the early stuff, and he doesn’t want you in the band anymore.’

“I was like, ‘Okay… what did I do?’ A week later, Slash calls back, saying, ‘Forget all that. Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. I chatted with Axl; we’re back, and we’re good.’

“But after that my checks stopped coming in. I was like, ‘Oh, okay. Guess I am out of the band.’ So I was never fired from Guns – my checks just stopped coming, and it was very odd. I don’t know… Axl just wanted to go in a different direction, and that was it.”

What led to the Slash’s Snakepit record, It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere?

“Slash went through the same thing as me – he had all these songs, but Axl wanted to go in a different direction. Like me, Slash wrote all these songs and Axl didn’t like them, so that’s how the Snakepit thing happened.

“The truth is, between my songs and Slash’s, we could have had the next Guns N’ Roses record… if we’d just put a little bit of time into it.”

Did Axl, Slash, and Duff call you when they reunited in 2016?

“When they initially reunited, they did not call me. The day before that went public, Slash, Duff, Matt, and I were set to play at a birthday party, and just as we were going on, Slash and Duff pulled out, and they never said a word to me.

After Matt and I played, he said, ‘I think something is up.’ I was like, ‘Yeah? Really?’ But they never asked me. It was always Duff and Slash joining Axl’s existing band. But later, they did call me and ask if I’d be up to do guest spots, which didn’t work out.”

Many people are surprised you and Matt weren’t asked, considering your era is widely considered Guns’ second classic lineup. 

“I get that. We can all speculate, but only three guys know the answer. When I see them, it’s the last thing we will discuss. But look, I can speculate – and honestly, I get it. I know what’s going on without anything being said.

“I agree, though; everybody agrees. And when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame happened, and the five original guys are alive, it’s like, ‘They should be playing together.’ But if you can’t get those guys together… I don’t know.

“I know that Matt and I would love to do it, and I agree with most people. But I understand what went down and is still happening.”

• Keep an eye on Gilby Clarke's site for information on his latest tour dates.

In the early ‘90s, Guns N’ Roses underwent a personnel change that saw the departure of electric guitar player Izzy Stradlin. As such, Slash and co – who were in the midst of the Use Your Illusion tour at the time – were in need of a new guitarist who could hold down the Guns rhythm slot for the foreseeable future.

In 1991, Stradlin was formally replaced by Gilby Clarke, who would serve as Slash's right-hand man for a three-year period that saw him close out the Use Your Illusion tour and feature on 1993’s The Spaghetti Incident?.

Speaking in a new interview with Guitar World, Clarke reflected on his whirlwind Guns N’ Roses career, recalling how he ultimately ended up landing the role as Slash’s sideman.

And his audition – as they so often are in such rock ‘n’ roll circumstances – turned out to be a rather stressful affair. Why? Well, such was the hurry with sourcing Stradlin’s replacement, he didn’t even have time to learn the songs.

After receiving a surprise call from Slash himself, who mooted Clarke for an audition, the guitarist then set about squeezing the slot into his hectic schedule – a schedule that didn’t grant him time to properly get to grips with any Guns N’ Roses material.

“I was working a night gig doing sound around town at small clubs, and I had zero time because Slash wanted me to come down the next day,” Clarke recalled. “So, I had no time to learn the songs and was literally in my car listening to them on the way to the audition. 

“Luckily, they chose three easy ones and had me return the next day. I heard nothing after that, and then a friend said he got a call from Slash to come down, so I thought, 'Okay, I guess I'm not getting the gig.'” 

Fortunately, Clarke was indeed offered the job a few days later, but if he thought his audition required a quick turnaround, he had another thing coming. As it turned out, Guns N’ Roses had a hectic touring schedule meticulously planned out, so Clarke had to learn the entire GNR back catalog before hitting the road.

“Slash calls and says, 'You got the gig. We leave next week. Learn the whole catalog.'” Clarke continued. “I was like, 'What? The whole fucking catalog? Don't you have a set of 20 or 25 songs?' Slash goes, 'There's no setlist. Axl just calls 'em out, so you gotta know the whole catalog.’

“So, I had one week to learn 50 fucking songs; I was glued to my cassette player. I walked out on stage for my first show with no cheat sheets and having learned all these new songs in one fucking week.”

Clarke evidently did his job as any top professional would, and was able to keep up with the Use Your Illusion tour’s manic schedule. In fact, at the time, the two-plus year event was not only the band’s longest tour, but also one of the longest tours in rock history: 194 shows in 27 countries.

Head over to our full interview with Clarke to read how the guitarist’s time with Guns N’ Roses eventually came to an end.

If you think Tommy Stinson landed the world’s easiest gig when he joined Guns N’ Roses in 1998, you’ve got another thing coming. Sure, playing a handful of gigs and recording little more than a song a year may not sound like much. Add a healthy salary retainer and infrequent rehearsals, and it begins to sound better than even the cushiest corporate engagement. But make no mistake: being the bassist in Guns N’ Roses takes work. Case in point: Chinese Democracy.

The follow up to Guns N’ Roses’ 1993 effort, The Spaghetti Incident?, the record's extreme budget ($13 million) and absurd incubation period (10 years) made it the butt of many jokes. But behind the scenes, things weren't so funny.  

“Chinese Democracy was unlike any other record I've made – or would want to make again,” Stinson told BP. “The only thing I could grasp is that I had the kind of punk-rock attack that Duff did. I wouldn't be afraid to say I stole some of his stuff, but the whole thing was an exercise in patience. It got to be really dumb.”  

A rotating cast of drummers and guitarists and unhealthy record-label relations turned the production into a nightmare, and Stinson was there on the sidelines.

Speaking to Bass Player in April 2009, Stinson took a second to talk Guns, gear, and what went into making Chinese Democracy.  

How did you get the gig with Guns N Roses? 

“My friend Josh Freese was playing drums with the band. I ran into him in a Hollywood rehearsal hall, and he mentioned that Duff had quit. Then he asked if I knew any bass guitar players. We just kind of laughed about it, because it sounded like a funny thing for me to go audition. Guns N' Roses were never my thing when the band first came out – they just weren't my style. I thought at least it would be fun to play with Josh. I learned five or six songs for the audition, but we basically just jammed, and it was pretty fun. They seriously needed a bass player, so they asked if I'd do it.” 

Do you and Duff know each other?

“I met him a few years back. and he seemed like a really sweet guy. He wasn't really a metal guy – he had punk roots. He didn't seem to have any issues with me – I just don't think he wanted the gig anymore.” 

Describe the writing process for Chinese Democracy. 

“I came in around 1998, when the band was still writing the record. It was Paul Tobias and Robin Finck on guitar, Dizzy Reed and Chris Pitman on keys, Josh on drums, and me. Everybody was just slowly starting to bring in ideas.” 

“We were set up at Rombo Recorders, a big studio out in the middle of nowhere. A funny thing – Captain & Tennille owned it. The whole thing looks like a boat. Anyway, we all just started hammering ideas out. Essentially it was eight guys collaborating, and to be thrown into that kind of environment – eight guys from very different walks of life – was very crazy. I'd never worked in that way.”  

How did you work out your ideas in a civil way? 

“We each had to give reasons for liking or disliking something – you couldn't just be bullheaded. We had to function as a democracy, or we'd end up hating each other. Collaborating was good for that. I think every one of us learned from it.”  

When it came time to track the bass, was there still that spirit of collaboration? Or were you left to your own devices? 

“We were all left with our own devices to come up with individual instrument parts. The broader song ideas had to be hammered out.”  

Street of Dreams stands out for having cool, counter melodic bass work.

“That's one of the places where I tried to play melodically. Axl had the majority of that song written, and I brought in the bridge bassline and progression.”  

It has a few licks that seem to reference Duff's playing, was that intentional? 

“When I started hammering out those Guns N’ Roses songs, I started to really dig into what Duff was doing – I really liked the stuff he played. I'd be lying if I said his playing didn't seep into my subconscious - like the way he uses grace notes.”

Josh Freese left Guns N' Roses in 2000 and was replaced by Brian Mantia. What did that mean for the tracks you had recorded with Josh? 

“I had to redo them. I probably ended up completely re-recording each part five or six times over the years. It was tough. What really happened was the record company stood back and left Axl to his own devices. Axl had all these ideas, and he needed somebody to help interpret what he wanted. He had to basically produce himself, and that's not what he went into this wanting to do. There are a lot of reasons the album took so long to make, but I think the record company really dropped the ball.” 

What do you see as the root cause for that?  

“I think everything changed when Geffen merged with Interscope. When that happened, Axl was told that A&R Executive Jimmy Iovine would play more of a role in making the album happen. What Jimmy did instead was throw other people into the mix who weren't very capable.” 

What happened when producer Roy Thomas Baker was brought in?  

“He wanted to re-record everything, because he felt he could get better tones. In my opinion, he wasted many years and many millions of dollars trying to get us better sounds that we could have addressed in the mixing stage. I'm not a proponent of his style of producing. I think Iovine put Roy Thomas Baker in the producer seat because he didn't think the raw sounds were good enough. Then Roy came in and would try every Marshall guitar amp in a five-state area to find the right guitar tone. And he wanted to do that for every part of the album.”  

What amps did you use for Chinese Democracy? 

“A 1x15 Matchless combo that's a great-sounding bass amp – real dirty and beefy. We'd usually mix that with a DI signal.” 

Which amps did you like to use live?  

“Around the time we played the Rock in Rio festival in 2001, I was using SWR amps. We were gearing up for a massive production, and I thought, if I'm going to be playing for 300,000 people, I should probably have a big amp! I bought three Megoliath 8x10 cabinets, six Big Bertha 2x15 cabinets, two Mo’ Bass heads and a power amp. It sounded great. We had dress rehearsals and all, and then we found out we were going to use in ear monitors! Of course, the reason we're using in-ears is so Axl can hear himself sing. One of his biggest problems with the old band was that they were louder than hell, and he could never hear his vocals on stage. Well, we didn't really know that until we got down to Rio. Here we are with this big wall of amps, all turned down to one or two.”  

What was that Rio gig like?

“Crazy. The only thing anyone could hear in our in-ears was the sound of the crowd coming through Axl’s was vocal mic. It was like a jet engine. After that, I did make use of the 8x10s since the cabinets had a low end that translated well when mic’ed. For most of Chinese Democracy, I used a DI, my Matchless amp, and the SWR as my big loud amp.” 

“After I realised our stage volume had to be a lot quieter, I had to make some real adjustments. I ended up talking to Ampeg, who was doing a reissue of the flip-top B-15 1x15 combo – all hand-wired and really nice. Now I put those behind the stage and crank them – they sound awesome - running that sound to my in-ears and the front of house. I keep a couple of Ampeg 8x10 cabinets onstage at a low volume, just to get a little low-end.” 

Did you modify your Fenders?  

“I did. I've always used EMG pickups. They give me a lot of growl and grit when they hit the preamp of an SVT.” 

How did you come to prefer a PJ pickup configuration? 

“I started doing that when I got the Guns N’ Roses gig. I figured Duff played that kind of bass, so I should use something similar to try to match that sound.” 

What other gear have you been using? 

“This is the only band where I've been able to play a Gibson Thunderbird. I used to have a ’63 Thunderbird that I loved, but it just broke too many times. I used a new Thunderbird on the song Chinese Democracy. I also played a StingRay on a few tunes. The StingRay didn't sound right for the older Guns material, but I liked the tone for some of the newer stuff, like Better. It's great for drop-tuned stuff.”

“Until recently, I never really cared about basses except that they work, but lately, I've gotten the idea of finding the right tone for the right song. I've really gotten into Hofner Beatle basses, because they do something that no other bass does. I have two ‘67s, one's beat up and the other one's clean. They're a blast to play, but I could never use them with Guns. If you want to know how manly Paul McCartney was, check out those old Hofners. Those have a lot of low end!”  

Slash has released a statement clarifying that he will not be ending his partnership with Marshall amps despite his new collaboration with Magnatone.

Last week, it was reported that the US boutique amp brand had tempted the Guns N’ Roses guitarist over to its artist ranks, and that the pair were working together to create a “killer” new signature amp.

This sent the rumor mill into overdrive, with many questioning whether the guitar hero’s new allegiance to Magnatone spelled the end for his decades-long professional relationship with Marshall. 

It certainly would have been a significant shake up of the status quo. Slash was, after all, Marshall’s first-ever signature artist, and has been loyal to a suite of Silver Jubilee heads over the years, as well as his AFD100 Appetite For Destruction model.

Well, it has now been affirmed that Slash will continue to play Marshall amps alongside his new Magnatone units, and that the two are not parting ways.

In a statement, Slash said: “To clear up any misconceptions that might arise, although Magnatone and I have been working together to create a new Amp, I still maintain my long relationship with Marshall and look forward to continued collaboration with their incredible team.”

So there you have it: Slash will continue to be flanked by his trademark Marshalls for the foreseeable future – just don’t be surprised if you notice that a few of them in his backline have been swapped out for a Magnatone or two.

One Magnatone that will make it into Slash’s setup will be the 100-watt M-80 signature amp that the two parties have been working on, which was born out of the Gibson Les Paul loyalist's affection for the standard 50-watt version.

“I used a Magnatone 50-watt M-80 in the studio earlier this year and was blown away by how it sounded,” said Slash when the news was reported last week. “Since then, I've been working with Magnatone on a 100-watt version of the M-80 and I absolutely love what they have come up with. It’s killer.”

It won’t be long before that amp gets a release, either: according to the brand itself, it’s slated for a release early next year, so you can be sure Slash will take one on the road when he goes on tour with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators.

For more information on the tour – and the amp – visit Slash and Magnatone's individual websites.

Update (11.13): Slash has confirmed he will continue to use Marshall amps alongside his new Magnatone offerings.

Resurgent U.S. high-end guitar amp brand Magnatone has pulled off one of the biggest coups in electric guitar history, announcing a partnership with Guns N’ Roses’ Slash, who will have a new-look backline when he tours the States with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators.

You think you know someone. C'mon, we all knew Slash; he wears a top-hat, sunglasses 24/7, even in the shower... He likes Gibson Les Pauls and enjoys the company of snakes in his downtime. Oh, and he plays through Marshall amps.

All that looks set to change with Magnatone’s announcement and Slash revealing that he has been working with the brand on a “killer” 100-watt version of its flagship British-voiced Super Super Fifty-Nine M-80 tube amp.

“I used a Magnatone 50-watt M-80 in the studio earlier this year and was blown away by how it sounded,” said Slash. “Since then, I've been working with Magnatone on a 100-watt version of the M-80 and I absolutely love what they have come up with. It’s killer.”

Slash joins Billy Gibbons on the Magnatone roster, with the ZZ Top frontman collaborating on a limited-edition M-80 signature amp, covered in custom crocodile skin finish. They only made six of them, and each was signed by Gibbons, and had his own settings taped to it.

Perhaps Slash will go for a snakeskin effect on the covering. What we do know is that his signature M-80 will be co-developed with long-serving Magnatone engineer and “tube amp guru” Obeid Khan, and it will come with a matching 4x12 cabinet. 

Unsurprisingly, Magnatone’s higher-uppers are delighted by this news.

“We could not be more excited that Slash embraced our quality engineering and commitment to tone excellence as the platform for designing his next generation of Signature amplifiers,” said Rod Washburn, general manager. 

“We are thrilled to welcome Slash to Magnatone and with his signature tone and style, our Master Collection of models will be taken to the next level,” said president and CEO Ted Kornblum.

There is no confirmation that Slash has officially decommissioned his trusty phalanx of Marshalls, with whom he has enjoyed a longstanding relationship, single-handedly responsible for re-popularizing the superb 2555X Silver Jubilee. 

Slash was Marshall’s first-ever signature artist, putting his name to the Silver Jubilee-inspired JCM 2555SL, channeling the spirit of ’87 once more for the AFD100 Appetite For Destruction head. He has also used a variety of modded JCM800 heads over the years.

The M-80 is not a radical departure. It traffics in British-voiced tube tones, with a complement of EL34 power tubes under the hood. The M-80 is a Magnatone hybrid of sorts, bringing together the gain stages of its Super Fifty-Nine MKI and MKII amps, and making them footswitchable.

Who knows exactly what specs the Magnatone Slash Signature 100-Watt Model will have, but we won’t have to wait too long to find out – Magnatone says it will be coming out in early 2024, and if you’ve got a ticket for Slash ft. Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators in their upcoming tour, you will see and hear it in action.

Head to Slash for dates and ticket details, and stay tuned for more on this amp.