“If you were to listen to anything I do, you can see how big the blues influence is”: Slash is getting ready to unveil his blues solo album – one of the most anticipated guitar records of the year
The Guns N’ Roses icon is poised to reveal all about his forthcoming blues album – including the guest singers he's enlisted – which will follow the star-studded formula of his 2010 solo record
It can sometimes be anti-climactic when artists make announcements of announcements, but in the case of electric guitar icon Slash, it's different: an upcoming announcement due Friday will reveal the full details of his hotly anticipated blues solo album.
As per reports from last summer, we already knew the “blues-oriented” sequel to his debut solo album will feature numerous guest vocalists. Now, we're ready for our interests to be piqued further when we find out who exactly he's enlisted for what sounds like something of a bucket list album for the guitarist.
“I'm a rock guitar player that's firmly rooted in blues,” Slash said in a teaser video. “If you were to listen to anything that I do, you can see how big the blues influence is, and I always thought that I'd wanna record a record of it at some point. And we got together and did it.”
We reported on several tasty tidbits from the guitarist last summer, including the fact that pop queen-turned-rockstar Demi Lovato is one of the names set to feature.
“It's been totally under wraps, but it's definitely coming out next year,” Slash said of the album back then. “There's not really much more to tell you at this point, but [Lovato and I] definitely recorded something.”
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The track will bring the pair’s collaborative relationship full circle, after Slash lent his chops to a rock version of Sorry Not Sorry, which helped Lovato launch her shock – and impressive, we must add – stylistic rebrand that also saw her tap up Nita Strauss’ services.
Slash has remained tight-lipped about the juicy details regarding their song together, with the guitarist simply calling it “a completely different type of song” compared to Sorry Not Sorry, and that it provides a platform for the vocalist to showcase how “diverse her voice can be”.
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The original success of Slash's debut solo release, which featured Ozzy Osbourne, Fergie, Chris Cornell, and Myles Kennedy among its guest vocalists, helped kickstart Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, one of Slash’s other musical projects.
Slash and co are currently on a tour that takes them across South America before dates in Australia, Asia, and Europe. The shows marked the first opportunity to hear Slash’s recently unveiled signature Magnatone amp.
Details of the record will be unveiled Friday, March 8 at 7 a.m. PST / 10 a.m. EST, and you can expect Guitar World to deliver the news hot off the press.
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A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.