Robin Finck, best known as Nine Inch Nails’ longest-serving guitarist, is selling a horde of guitars that have been played on some of the biggest stages in the world.

Finck’s new Reverb Shop plays host to over 200 pieces of gear that have been used throughout his time alongside Trent Reznor and during his stint with Guns N’ Roses.

Arguably the biggest draw of the collection is “Old Gold”, a Gibson Les Paul ’60 Reissue Goldtop guitar that was Finck’s main squeeze during Nine Inch Nails’ Downward Spiral era.

He played it for their iconic Woodstock ’94 performance and Self Destruct tour, and the guitar featured on every NIN tour until 2014. Its first ever appearance was in the March of the Pigs music video.

“This is the only guitar that made it out of 1994 intact,” Finck says. “I don’t know why or how because it’s also the guitar I played more than any other.”

Another Gibson also takes top billing: a 1990 Les Paul Custom in limited-edition Translucent White, which was the first Les Paul Finck ever bought.

“It’s the only guitar I had when I landed in Nine Inch Nails,” Finck says. “I’ve played it for over 35 years. It has always been favored.”

The guitarist also highlights a Gibson Les Paul Custom nicknamed “Nothingface”, which featured on five NIN tours, from Lights in the Sky in 2008 to Cold and Black and Infinite in 2018. It’s the guitar he gets asked about more than any other, owing to its bare-wood finish.

Other models include a Gibson ES-335 that featured on both GNR and NIN tours, a Gibson ’57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue that was used to record the nine-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy with Axl Rose, and a one-of-one Manson MA-RF-01.

“There is a deep history for me with, well, all of these guitars. But if you ask me which is the best guitar? It might be this one,” Finck says of the UK company’s custom build.

“I have been so fortunate to have played these on stages all over the world,” Finck says of the collection. “Now they’re poised to play with someone new.”

The Official Robin Finck Reverb Shop launches on November 11. Head to Reverb for more info.

In a week where two of their classic rock peers canceled shows due to medical emergencies and another scrapped their touring plans for 2027 entirely, it’s no small relief that Aerosmith – whose five original members are now a combined 378 years old – takes the stage as advertised on November 1 (insert your own day of the dead joke here) for the second of their two California, Dream On: Aerosmith & Friends concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.

The pair of shows was hastily announced just four weeks ago, and Thursday’s initial performance, which saw the Boston legends play live for the first time since 2023 (when their Peace Out farewell tour was scrapped after just three dates due to front man Steven Tyler suffering a fractured larynx) yielded more questions than answers.

Was it, as comedian emcee Bill Burr told the crowd, the first of the final two Aerosmith shows in history? Was it instead fodder for an unannounced documentary or concert film of some sort? Or, much like Brian Johnson’s unexpected return to AC/DC after overcoming issues related to hearing loss, had Tyler’s vocal cords sufficiently healed to the point that the band could resume its farewell tour?

While media in attendance on Thursday claimed Tyler was back in top form during the band’s six-song set – which saw them join forces with Dave Grohl before welcoming back original drummer Joey Kramer for the first time since 2020 for a show-closing performance of Walk This Way – reviews of the “& Friends” portion of the show (which featured the likes of Guns N’ Roses, The Black Crowes, Heart and Sammy Hagar) were more mixed. The same was true of the evening’s set list, which largely eschewed Aerosmith’s MTV hits in favor of deeper cuts from their 1970s catalog.

Although night #2 continued to dig deep, fans who grew up during the music video era were thrown a few more bones. In addition to Billy Idol and Steve Stevens and Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson making return appearances to respectively perform Livin’ On The Edge and Janie’s Got A Gun, Grace Potter delivers a rousing rendition of the 1989 power ballad What It Takes before yielding the stage to Train vocalist Pat Monahan.

After a passable take on the Toys In The Attic power ballad You See Me Crying (which features a cool solo swap between “house band” guitarists Phil X and Audley Freed), Monahan endears himself the crowd by saying that Aerosmith was his first concert as a Pennsylvania teen and proceeds to win them over further with an impressive Angel. He then welcomes back Potter for an inspired duet of the once-ubiquitious Cryin’, the most recent hit included in tonight’s oeuvre.

Earlier, blues rocker Marcus King kicks off the evening’s festivities with a fiery cover of Same Old Song And Dance, and he sticks around to perform two more songs (Draw The Line and Nobody’s Fault) with Jerry Cantrell, Mike Inez and guest singer Richie Kotzen. It’s admittedly strange seeing the latter on stage without a Fender, but his soulful, powerful voice proves to be one of the night’s highlights.

For sheer vocal power, though, tonight’s trophy goes to Lzzy Hale. Accompanied by Tom Morello, Hale performs knockout renditions of Kings and Queens and Round and Round, the latter of which sees Morello briefly play with his teeth. In the process, he shows off the underside of his guitar, which he’s adorned with the handwritten message Dream On.

Like most all-star jams, some performances during the 75-minute “& Friends” portion of the show are more uneven than others, and there’s certainly something of a “celebrity Aerosmith karaoke” vibe throughout – but everyone’s hearts (no pun intended!) seem to be in the right spots, so it’s hard to judge anyone too harshly.

The same can be said for Guns N’ Roses, who gamely cover four Aerosmith songs (and, to their credit, different ones than they tackled on Thursday) before performing two of their own. While Axl Rose’s current falsetto range lacks the power he once brought to Mama Kin, Slash seems like a kid in a candy store on S.O.S. (Too Bad), and it’s cool to see the band reunite with Use Your Illusion tour alumnus Teddy Andreadis on Rats In the Cellar, on which he plays harmonica. (“That was fun - rather festive!” Rose says afterward.)

For their final salute to Aerosmith, GNR cover the Rocks track Sick As A Dog, which features a notable solo by Richard Fortus prior to a dizzying outro lead by Slash. After, Rose tells the crowd that it’s a “great honor” for the band to have been invited to perform.

Including the three covers they aired on Thursday, “That was seven Aerosmith songs [altogether],” Rose says, “and I’m still nervous as hell because it meant so much to us.” It’s no surprise, then, that he seems more confident on Sweet Child O’ Mine and Nightrain, the latter of which sounds like a direct through-line from the band whose influence they wear proudly on their sleeves.

The Black Crowes’ performance, meanwhile, proves they might well be direct musical descendants. Their effortless takes on two other Rocks songs and a rollicking Let The Music Do The Talking earn loud cheers, but their cover of 1975’s No More No More – which features a tasty solo by Rich Robinson – impresses most tonight.

Tonight’s main event – which sees Aerosmith play one more song (their take on The Beatles’ Come Together) than they did on Thursday – kicks off with a literal bang, as fireworks accompany the classic Toys In The Attic.

Seeing Tyler with one arm wrapped around Joe Perry while holding a scarf-wrapped microphone stand in the other feels like you’re witnessing an iconic rock moment – only for the duo to top themselves later in the set when fog erupts as Tyler wails the epic coda of Dream On atop a grand piano before which Perry stands at center stage.

Back In The Saddle and Sweet Emotion serve as reminders that, unlike the locked-in tightness of AC/DC, there’s a loose, deceptive swagger to Aerosmith’s best material that makes the band sound in danger of going off the rails. It’s a neat trick – but not as neat as the one they have up their sleeve tonight for Walk This Way.

After introducing Kramer as they did on Thursday, the band begins the song only to suddenly slam on the brakes. “Something’s wrong – we’re missing something,” Tyler says. When Run-DMC subsequently join the group on stage, it feels like you’re witnessing the musical equivalent of a historical battle reenactment – one that changed pop culture forever.

Especially considering Tyler’s participation in the Ozzy/Sabbath celebration Back To The Beginning – one of only a handful of times he previously performed publicly over the past three years – one wonders if Aerosmith & Friends was designed as a similar vehicle to give fans a chance to say a proper goodbye to their heroes while they’re still with us. It seemed to serve a similar purpose for tonight’s guest performers, who repeatedly voiced appreciation for the chance to pay tribute to what’s arguably America’s greatest rock band.

Perhaps its primary purpose, though, was to give the band a chance to go out on their own terms. (“At the end of the world, there will only be cockroaches, Aerosmith and Bill Burr,” Tyler quips at one point.)

That said, whether Aerosmith & Friends marked a return, a farewell or both remains to be seen. It’s surely impractical to take a production like this on the road, or even to use it as the model for a residency (a format to which the band is no stranger).

For two nights, though, the Aerosmith train managed to get back on the tracks – and, health permitting, here’s hoping it can keep a-rolling for just a bit longer.

Aerosmith & Friends: California, Dream On - Night Two setlist

1. Aerosmith & Friends: California, Dream On - Night Two setlist
2. Same Old Song And Dance (Marcus King)
3. Draw The Line (Jerry Cantrell)
4. Nobody’s Fault (Jerry Cantrell)
5. Kings & Queens (Tom Morello / Lizzy Hale)
6. Round & Round (Tom Morello / Lizzy Hale)
7. Livin’ On The Edge (Billy Idol / Steve Stevens)
8. What It Takes (Grace Potter)
9. You See Me Crying (Pat Monahan)
10. Angel (Pat Monahan)
11. Cryin’ (Pat Monahan / Grace Potter)
12. Janie’s Got A Gun (Heart)
13. Barracuda (Heart)
14. Let The Music Do The Talking (Black Crowes)
15. Get The Lead Out (Black Crowes)
16. Combination (Black Crowes)
17. No More No More (Black Crowes)
18. Chip Away The Stone (Black Crowes)
19. Mama Kin (Guns N' Roses)
20. SOS (Too Bad) (Guns N' Roses)
21. Rats In The Celar (Guns N' Roses)
22. Sick As A Dog (Guns N' Roses)
23. Sweet Child O Mine (Guns N' Roses)
24. Nightrain (Guns N' Roses)
25. Toys In The Attic (Aerosmith, with John Douglas on drums)
26. Back In The Saddle (Aerosmith, with John Douglas)
27. Sweet Emotion (Aerosmith, with John Douglas)
28. Dream On (Aerosmith, with John Douglas)
29. Come Together (Aerosmith, with John Douglas)
30. Walk This Way (Aerosmith and Run DMC, with Joey Kramer and John Douglas on drums)
31. Train Kept A Rollin’ (Aerosmith, with John Douglas)

Richard Fortus has been busy rock ’n’ rolling with Guns N' Roses for over two decades. Being part of such a high-profile band means he has managed to add quite a few guitars to his collection.

That includes a rather special Les Paul ’Burst, which he’d pick as the one guitar from his collection that he’d save from a burning building.

“I would grab the ’Burst just because of the value,” he tells Guitar World matter-of-factly.

“I originally started selling [guitars] because I wanted to buy a ’Burst. I was looking for something with a broken headstock, or snake bites, which would make it more reasonable… I guess,” he adds.

Fortus goes on to say that he probably tried out around eight ’Bursts before he finally found his perfect match – one that had all the right snake bites, AKA road marks.

He continues, “A friend of mine was traveling through town and had this guitar. He called me up, saying, ‘Hey, I know you’re looking for something with snake bites… You gotta see this guitar.’

“And as soon as I plugged it in, I thought, ‘Fuck. This is it. I’m screwed now because that’s the guitar. It’s just perfect.’ It’s the best-sounding,” he gushes.

“Those can differ vastly from guitar to guitar, mainly because of the pickups' sound. They just sound so different, but this one had everything.”

According to Fortus, his ’Burst can be best described as “the perfect-sounding Les Paul.”

The guitarist was so committed to his ’Burst quest that, around five years ago, he put up more than 200 pieces of gear as part of the Richard Fortus Collection at the Chicago Music Exchange – all in the hope of trading them for the ultimate collector’s prize: a ’Burst.

Guns N' Roses' Sweet Child O’ Mine has stood the test of time. Slash’s iconic intro riff must reverberate through every Guitar Center – and, for that matter, guitar stores around the world – at least a couple of times a day.

But what’s Slash’s secret technique to his perennial finger-twisting riff? According to the man himself, there isn't one.

“There's no secret technique,” Slash said in a 2009 interview with Guitar World’s readers. “That's just my pick-up-a-guitar and fuck-around-with-it style of playing. That whole riff was just a mistake – a joke, really.”

Slash then revealed the riff started as “a stupid exercise” that he kept going back to nearly every time he picked up his guitar: “I don't really know how to practice properly, so I like to make up things that are difficult to play, so that I can become better at what I do.”

By the point it actually became a song, Slash estimated that he had already “played that riff a million times” without ever thinking it would flourish into a song – let alone one of the band’s most enduring hits.

“One day, while I was playing the riff, Izzy [Stradlin, former Guns N' Roses guitarist] started playing some chords, and the thing just took off! I think that just goes to show the value of doing things on the guitar that get you out of the box.”

Recording it was another matter altogether. “That solo intro seemed impossible, even though I'd played the riff alone, without the band, for years,” he admitted. “I almost never do more than two or three takes, but that one took at least eight. It was pretty frustrating.”

However, in recent years, Slash has sought to clarify the warm-up exercise origin story.

Speaking on the Eddie Trunk Podcast in 2022, the guitarist insisted, “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.”

Irrespective of how the riff came about, Slash wasn’t even a fan of the whole song – even going as far as to tell Duff McKagan, “We’ve got to get rid of this song somehow.”

His bandmates made the right call. When it was released in June 1988, Sweet Child O’ Mine topped the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and became the band’s only number one single in the States.

As Slash himself put it, “To this day, I find it incredibly ironic and hilarious that it turned into a song, especially such a successful one.”

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.

In 2023, Greta Gerwig's Barbie became a worldwide phenomenon – and, alongside it, a soundtrack that featured musical heavyweights such as Billie Eilish and Haim.

However, an even bigger surprise appearance came by way of Slash, who added his quintessential classic rock flavor to the track I'm Just Ken – sung by Ryan Gosling *ahem* Beach Ken – which also featured Wolfgang Van Halen and former Guns 'N Roses and Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese.

Slash further committed to the shtick by wielding his Les Paul at the 2024 Oscars, alongside Gosling... and a hundred Kens. And, according to the actor himself, that now-iconic performance hinged on Slash's appearance.

“I was just hoping that Slash would show up,” Gosling reveals in an interview with Josh Horowitz.

“I basically sold them on this idea that the only way I could do it is if we had – I forget what the number was – but, like, a hundred Kens, and a Busby Berkeley [pioneering film director and musical choreographer] number and Slash. I thought I gave them an impossible [task]. And they were like, ‘We'll do it.’”

There was one further – and significant – hurdle to overcome, however.

Gosling continues, “[They said], ‘Slash is going to be in Thailand the night before, he can't…’ And I was like, ‘Well, then I can't, because it's all about Slash at the end. We don't have Slash, we don't have a show.’”

Thankfully, Slash was also keen on the idea. “They're like, ‘Slash says he'll get on a plane and he'll do it,’” Gosling recalls.

“So we were rehearsing for weeks with the idea that Slash might come, even through to the dress rehearsal, right before we did the show. I came down the hallway and I saw this guitar case, and it had a skull with a top hat on it, and I knew that Slash had arrived.”

As for the Guns N’ Roses guitarist’s performance, Gosling aptly says, “He shredded. He was so cool. He had been working on the part, memorizing it. He just couldn't have been cooler, and he saved the day. I don't think that show works without Slash at the end.”

The Barbie movie spawned many trends, including ones that impacted the guitar world. Beach Ken turned out to be a guitar aficionado after all – even donning a Gibson Jerry Cantrell acoustic in the movie.

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.

Last night (January 30), a huge number of pop and rock A-listers came together for FireAid, a benefit show that aimed to raise money for victims of the devastating fires that tore through the Los Angeles area earlier this month.

As is often the case at star-studded benefit concerts, there were a number of surprise guests, most notably the surviving members of Nirvana, who played a four-song set with St. Vincent, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, and Dave Grohl's daughter Violet, on vocals.

Unlike Nirvana, the Black Crowes were featured on the bill beforehand, but they had a surprise of their own.

For a rendition of Led Zeppelin's folky classic, Going to California, the Crowes recruited none other than Slash.

Few prominent rock bands are better-equipped to tackle the Zeppelin catalog than the Black Crowes. After all, many a year ago, they played a number of full, Zeppelin-heavy shows with Jimmy Page himself, the highlights of which were captured on the double live album, Live at the Greek.

Indeed, their take on the Zeppelin acoustic showcase is a beautiful one, with the Guns 'n' Roses guitarist – armed with a Gibson acoustic that, interestingly, doesn't appear to be his signature J-45 – and Rich Robinson, playing his Eastman 12-string, perfectly locking in with one another.

After thanking the city's first responders, Crowes frontman Chris Robinson said by way of introduction, “We're gonna play something we thought was appropriate for the evening.”

Just last year, Slash teamed up with Chris Robinson for a cover of the Steppenwolf-via-Hoyt Axton song, The Pusher. The song – which was made famous by the classic film, Easy Rider – served as the opening tune on Slash's blues covers album, Orgy of the Damned.

“When I called him about it, he loved that song,” the top-hatted guitar hero told Guitar World last year. “It was cool that he was so passionate about it, and excited about coming in and doing it.”

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.

2024 Year in Review: Sure, he’s been keeping busy enough with Guns N’ Roses and his solo band (fronted by Myles Kennedy), but when he’s in creative mode, Slash has proven himself to be an unstoppable force.

This year’s blues album, announced back in March and titled Orgy of the Damned, ended up being one of the most talked- about releases of 2024, with the Les Paul devotee roping in star guests like AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson, Gary Clark Jr. and Demi Lovato for modern takes on old-school classics by Robert Johnson, Peter Green and Howlin’ Wolf.

“It was building up in the back of my mind for so long that it finally pushed its way to the fore,” Slash said of the release in his September GW cover story.

“One of the great things about blues is the stories that it tells, especially for people who are struggling,” he observed.

The guitarist also put together the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival tour, enlisting modern luminaries such as Eric Gales, Samantha Fish and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram for a joyous celebration of all things flat five.

The top-hatted gunslinger also joined forces with Ryan Gosling and Wolfgang Van Halen for a show-stealing performance of Barbie tune I’m Just Ken at this year’s Oscars ceremony.

The Allman Betts Band have managed to round up some stellar guests for their ongoing Allman Betts Family Revival. However, on Monday night, at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, it reached new heights with Slash joining the bill.

The Guns N' Roses guitarist's special appearance came late in the second set, as he delivered blues-heavy shredding on the Muddy Waters-penned-turned-Allman-Brothers-classic, Trouble No More.

The highlight of his performance, however, was his solo on Dreams, which included an impressive blues-rock run on his goldtop Les Paul, propped on his knees, and trading solos with pedal steel virtuoso Robert Randolph. Slash closed the set with his own take on 1969's Whipping Post, from The Allman Brothers Band's self-titled debut album.

The star guitarist joined a lineup of marquee-worthy names, which, apart from Randolph, also included Larry McCray, Maggie Rose, Luther Dickinson, Jimmy Hall, Lamar Williams Jr., Sierra Hull, Sierra Green, Lindsay Lou, Grace Bowers, Jackie Greene, Jake Shimabukuro, and Donavon Frankenreiter.

Led by Devon Allman and Duane Betts – the respective sons of Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts – the Allman Family Revival started in 2017 as a star-studded celebration of the legendary catalog of The Allman Brothers Band and has since become an annual live event.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Allman said, “We never would’ve thought that this is what it would become, ever. It’s a kind of family reunion. We get to see everyone and celebrate one of the best songbooks in rock & roll.”

And as for Slash's involvement in this year's event? “I think he’s wanting to jump into some circles that are a little more blues-oriented,” he commented. “We’re just happy to have him.”

Soundgarden’s surviving members recently reunited for the first time since 2021 to perform a six-song set at a benefits concert in Seattle.

Stepping out for a brief encore as part of the 13th annual SMooCH concert in aid Seattle Children’s Hospital’s uncompensated care fund on December 14, Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron, and Ben Shepherd enlisted some notable help for the occasion.

Seattle-based singer-songwriter Shaina Shepherd fronted the band in place of the late Chris Cornell. The set, made up almost entirely of Soundgarden songs, was bookended by Hunted Down and a cover of the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams. Guns N’ Roses star Duff McKagan provided support on Kickstand and that raucous set closer. Outshined, Flower and Beyond the Wheel also featured on the setlist.

Thayil, whose signature Guild guitars finally landed late last year, donned another interesting Guild for the performance. The electric guitar features Guild’s offset Surfliner body, but unlike the Fender-style headstock of the standard production models, it has the Gibson-esque shape as seen on his signature guitars.

He also brought out his go-to SG-alike Guild Polara guitars, while McKagan made light work of a Fender Telecaster on Kick Out The Jams.

The band were performing under the moniker Nudedragons, an anagram of Soundgarden. It was the first time Nudedragons had been used for a concert in 14 years, after Soundgarden debuted the name to perform a surprise set in 2010.

Thayil, Shepherd and Cameron had reunited in 2021 to perform with Brandi Carlile.

Since Soundgarden’s disbanding, Thayil has formed 3rd Secret, a supergroup of his own featuring Matt Cameron and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic. He’s also provided a guitar solo on I Quit, a solo track from Melvins' man Dale Crover, which features a new tuning he invented.

It is believed that Cornell’s final Soundgarden recordings will see the light of day after Cornell’s estate and the band’s surviving members settled their long-running lawsuit last year, but if anything happens beyond that is yet to be seen.

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.”

Jerry Cantrell says he has “the worst gutter mouth in the world” when it comes to tracking guitar solos, and the making of his dark and brilliant new solo album, I Want Blood, was no exception.

The Alice in Chains man has previously stressed that he’s still committed to the grunge icons but is currently happily riding the wave of his solo career right now, having recently followed up 2021’s Brighten with a far grittier, electric guitar-littered affair.

He’s tapped Metallica’s bass player Robert Trujillo and Guns N’ Roses’ low-end bringer Duff McKagan for the record, which shares some closer sonic similarities to his Alice in Chains albums. It’s also one that he says features “some of my best songwriting and playing”.

McKagan has previously spoken about how “Jerry fights for his leads” and how he swears like a sailor while committing them to tape. Now, the guitarist has admitted to his explosively expletive approach to tracking solos.

“Making music is a really joyous thing in the end, and the process is enjoyable too, but it’s a battle, man,” Cantrell says in a new interview with Total Guitar. “You don’t have to travel very far to bump into the edge of your limitations. But that’s also part of the process and also part of the challenge.

“If you’ve ever been in the studio with me, you’d think I had Tourette’s,” he continues. “I’ve got the worst gutter mouth in the world. When I get frustrated or blow something, it erupts. It’s not at anybody, it’s just the situation.

“If you’re faint of heart and can’t stand some blue exclamations from time to time, it’s probably not very f*ckin’ peaceful to be with me in a studio. But it’s actually pretty funny.”

Earlier this year Cantrell made headlines when he announced his beloved ‘Blue Dress’ G&L had been stolen, only for him to later – and somewhat sheepishly – admit it had just been misplaced.

Cantrell's TG chat also find him, naturally, talking tone. While he isn't wholly convinced by amp modelers yet, he's now opened up about how he was suitably flabbergasted when he discovered the tonal benefits of digital amps via Metallica.

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.

If you haven’t noticed, Slash is literally busier than ever before. And we’re not just talking about his ongoing Gun N’ Roses duties, his Capital One commercial, his new Orgy of the Damned album or his S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival.

We’re talking about guest appearances, people. Since 2023, the guitar icon has appeared on a whole lotta tracks – and it’s not by accident. As Slash recently 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.”

Yeah, no kidding. Based on the volume of side hustling Slash has done lately, his inability to sit still checks out. Here’s a quick guide to his 2023 and 2024 guest appearances… so far.

Ian Hunter – Defiance (2023)

Of all his recent guest spots, Slash’s sinfully bluesy cameo across Ian Hunter’s Defiance – which also features Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo – is his most, shall we say, familiar.

For those accustomed to Slash’s Les Paul-laden licks heard on GN’R, Slash’s Snakepit and Velvet Revolver classics, with its slinky riff and tone-soaked solo, Defiance is quintessential Slash.

Chris Janson – 21 Forever (2023)

Slash tapped into his country side for this guest spot, and he did so alongside fellow guest star Dolly Parton. How’s that for a crossover? But then again, Slash is no stranger to slow-burners, so his understated solo is low-key on-brand.

Ryan Gosling – I’m Just Ken (2023)

Can this track’s philosophical lament over Ken’s lot in life as “number two” behind Barbie be compared to Slash’s career beside Axl Rose? Who knows! But if we dig out of the emotional depths of plastic dolls turned real-life, the guitarist – in conjunction with Wolfgang Van Halen – simply does what he does best: rip some sleazy riffage.

Demi Lovato – Sorry Not Sorry [Rock Version] (2023)

Slash was known for peeling off the occasional solo for Michael Jackson, and in 2023, he did so for Demi Lovato by livening up Sorry Not Sorry with a chugging riff and a solo that exposes a new generation of listeners to Slash’s magic.

Duff McKagan – Hope (2023)

While McKagan played most of the guitars himself on Lighthouse (with a well-loved Burny Lawsuit Les Paul), he called upon his GN’R bandmate for Hope, a track filled with slinky riffs, gnarly tones and a vibe-filled solo that hovers over the track, setting the tone for one of this overlooked album’s most memorable songs.

Fear – Nice Boys (Don’t Play Rock ’N’ Roll) 

Slash’s music is an amalgam of blues and punk. So as far as vibe checks go, Slash’s guesting on this Fear track makes sense. There’s not much here by way of solos, but in keeping with the punk theme, Slash lays down one hell of a rhythm part.

The Dandy Warhols – I’d Like to Help You with Your Problem (2023)

The Dandy Warhols, who, by the way, already have two killer guitarists in Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Peter Holmström, cozied up nicely with Slash on I’d Like to Help You With Your Problem, which is graffitied with the GN’R legend’s wah-coated ostinato patterns, volume swells and descending Locrian flourishes.

The Shins’ James Mercer jumps into the fray as well, adorning key moments in the song with a “high Viking-rock wail,” as Taylor told Guitar World.

Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes – Going Home (2024)

For Mark Knopfler’s remake-for-a-good-cause track Going Home (Theme from Local Hero), Slash goes back-to-back with Peter Frampton and Duane Eddy, each taking a few bars.

Slash doesn’t dominate this track, but given that we’ve just lost Eddy, recently lost Jeff Beck, and Frampton is winding down, this moment will forever be poignant.

Bear McCreary – The End of Tomorrow (2024)

Sure, it’s a bit more alternative than we’re used to hearing from Slash, but he does slip in enough gain-drenched licks to make himself known before letting loose a monster of a solo. So again, this isn’t your typical Slash fare, but his solo shows that he still knows how to mark his territory.

Michael Schenker – Mother Mary (2024)

A reinterpretation of the UFO classic, it sees Slash and Schenker trading licks and makes fiery showcase for the rock legends’ respective solo-ing styles.

“When Slash came to the studio, I had my amplifier set up, and Slash actually played through it,” Schenker recently told Guitar World. “But I had already recorded my parts, and so we decided it was much better if we kept that and had Slash fill in the gaps where I left space for him.”

The GN’R man’s deft weaving creates a clever ‘push ’n’ pull’, adding a whole new dynamic to the song that really feels like they’ve gone toe-to-toe in the studio.

• See S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival for Slash’s live dates and ticket details.

Kathy Valentine is best known as the Go-Go's bassist, but her 2005 solo release, Light Years, showcased her versatility as a multi-instrumentalist with a strong songwriting-first mindset.

That album was bolstered by appearances from esteemed musicians like KISS guitarist Ace Frehley and Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke – and in a new interview with Guitar World, Valentine has revealed how they got involved.

“Gilby is a friend since my early days in LA and is just a sweetheart. I adore him and his family. It felt safe to work with him, mutual respect and genuine friendship,” Valentine says.

“Ace was gentle and kind. I met him at a birthday party of mine he came to. He offered to play on my solo record, and I thought, ‘Sure, he'll never show up.’

“But he did, and he was amazing. We recorded at Gilby's studio. He came in and noodled some solo takes on Bad Choice, and after a few, Gilby and I looked at each other slack-jawed and said, ‘That's it.’ He wanted to do more, so I said, ‘No, this is the one. Thank you.’”

In a 2005 interview with Classic Rock Revisited, Valentine spoke at length about her experience working with these two high-profile collaborators.

“I was friends with Gilby when he was in a band called Candy. We go back for years and years. We live in the same neighborhood and we have always been in touch,” she said.

“In 1990, we did a tour together with a bunch of people called The Wild Bunch. We stayed in touch and he was actually the first person I asked to help me. I trusted him to be supportive.

“I really like that Ace is playing on a track that is not anything like a KISS song. It is more like a Blondie song. He really did a great solo that is in a really different context than people are used to.”

The Go-Go's were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, just a year after Kathy Valentine released her memoir, All I Ever Wanted, which chronicles the band's wild journey.

Guitar World's full interview with Kathy Valentine will be published later this month.