Gallery 
December 2000
Page 110-111
Q&A by Hank Bordowitz


If rock stars are the legends of our time, the tall tales involving 
Slash and former Guns N' Roses cronies put him up there with Paul 
Bunyan.  Looking like Marc Bolan's more decadent descendant with the 
T-Rex top hat covering his dark, curly hair, Slash (a.k.a. Saul Hudson) 
became one of the visual focal points of the videogenic L.A. band that 
spearheaded the popular uprising of So-Cal metal in the late '80's.

By the early '90's, though, the dream was evaporating on two fronts.  
Their legendary abuse of chemicals began wreaking havoc with the band's 
personnel.  Then, self-appointed leader Axl Rose - the "Rose" in 
Guns N' Roses - started to take the legend seriously.  When that 
happened, the band split like an unstable atom, leaving just Rose and 
the name as its core.

With the exception of a 1993 album of covers and a live album that 
stiffed last year, not many notes have surfaced in the last decade.

Slash, on the other hand, went from walking the edge personally to doing 
it musically.  He started his own band, Slash's Snakepit, first as an 
interim super-group project that released the tepidily received 
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere album in 1995.  He then started honing his 
unique retro-rocking guitar style in the studio with a wide variety of 
performers.  More recently he revived Snakepit and recorded an album.  
He withdrew it from Interscope - the tattered remains of Geffen Records 
for whom he'd recorded since the GNR days - at no small cost.  Both sides 
agreed that the record and the company were incompatible.  As Slash put it,
they'd become a rap label.

The album finally came out on independent Koch records this fall.  
In anticipation of its release, Slash and his bank took to the road, 
opening for AC/DC.  On the day we talk, the band's equipment is being 
shipped to Michigan, where the tour will kick off.



Q. 
Did Guns n' Roses ever officially break up
A. 
The original band started the long and tedious process of breaking up as 
soon as Steve got fired. Guns n' Roses was an excessive band.  Steve wasn't
able to pull it together when the time came.  When he got fired. it was a 
big issue.

He started me playing guitar.  Our survival kept us going.  We managed to 
replace him.  When the whole desperation of finding a new drummer was 
coming to a head, I was like, Who's the best drummer I've seen that I 
can get to replace Steven before this band splits up?  When I went to see 
the Cult, the drummer was a standout.  That's how I ended up calling Matt 
Sorum.

Then the band got really huge and kept touring.  There were some other ups 
and downs that instigated Izzy's departure.  So Gilby Clarke came around.  
He was the first guy that I thought of that was more or less close to an 
Izzy type.  We kept going.  Then, finally, after that whole two-and-a-half, 
three years of touring and a couple of years before that of getting our 
shit together, I was like, I'm not happy.

So I put together Snakepit and we did clubs and festivals and everything 
in-between.  I loved that urgent thing where you really fucking sweat it.  
When I got back, the Axl situation was definitely worse.  The only original 
guy left in the band was fucking Duff.  I just wasn't into the whole thing. 
I quit.  

Inevitably, Duff quit.  Axl decided to take Guns n' Roses and make it his 
own thing.


Q.
The original Snakepit was a supergroup of sorts, with you, Matt & Gilby 
from GNR, Mike Inez from Alice in Chains and Eric Dover from Jellyfish.  
How did that come about?
A.
The first one was more or less a fluke.  Mike Inez, we just hang out 
together.  I might love Alice in Chains, but he and I were just good 
hang-out buddies.  I had a home studio that was right next to a walk-in 
snake room, which we just called the snake pit.

The first Snakepit record is like a glorified demo.  We put the music 
together, and we all had a great time doing it.  We were playing pool, 
going out, writing - it was just fun.  These were just the guys that I 
was hanging out with.  

Once that was done, me and Axl were pretty much at odds.  I was like, 
"Fuck all that drama, I'm going to go and finish this record".  The gaps 
between Guns N' Roses albums could be forever, and I didn't want to go back to being a junkie in between.  You grow out of some of this stuff after awhile (laughs nervously).

We went in, recorded the 14 songs, and that was that.  It was fun being in 
the studio.  At that point I had to find a singer for this thing.  I met 
Eric.  We were in a rush to finish before we got bored with it.  He and I 
would go into the studio and write in the morning and record vocals that 
night.  What ever was on the top of our head.  We had a lot of venting 
going on because Jellyfish had just broken up, so that whole album is 
based on fucking angst.

Q. 
I'd like to throw out an idea here.  Since that happened, you've worked 
with artists ranging from Rod Stewart and Steve Winwood to Chic, Herbie 
Hancock, and Michael Jackson.  You shared a stage with Luciano Pavaraotti 
and Puff Daddy....

A.
I do all that stuff on the fly.  I didn't expect anyone to know...


Q. 
It seems to me, that in the last five or six years, you got tired of 
being a rock star and decided you might want to try being a musician.

A.
I don't understand exactly what "rock star" means.  I love playing.  I 
love being in a musical environment (where) everyone is hanging out.  It's 
the musician kind of lifestyle.  I love being thrown into a challenging 
situation where I'm going to play in somebody else's environment and adapt 
and learn.

I love having my own band, but between gigs and tours, I love to be able to 
go out and say to someone, "Hey, remember when were talking about this 
song?  Let's go into the studio and go fucking do it."  Then a year goes
by and they're on tour and you're going to be in the same town and it's 
like, "Why don't you come on up and we'll jam that tune we wrote and 
recorded together?"  That's my passion.  That's what drives me. 

Q.
You did sessions with Carole King and Insane Clown Posse?  That's really 
going from the reblime to subdiculous.

A.
It's funny that you singled those two out.  Those are great examples of 
really great sessions with really great people.  Totally on different 
sides of the spectrum, but that has really nothing to do with it.  Fucking 
Carole taught me a whole bunch of shit that day that I played on that 
record.

Q.
What did she teach you?

A. 
About soloing within the context of the arrangement of the song.  I came 
in not knowing what I was getting into.  I had the right thing in mind, 
and she sort of coached me through the arrangement.  It became more of a 
team effort, like let's make this song really sing.  She was just great to 
work with.  She's tough as nails, the consummate New Yorker, and she's a 
lady.

Working with Insane Clown Posse, they gave me this thing.  They said, 
"This is how it goes."  I heard it and I was like, "I can play that."  We 
had a great time and that's why it's almost indispensable to have those 
kinds of opportunities.  You definitely can't lose from it.  All you can 
do is gain.  I've had some sessions that were not necessarily as pleasant.

Q.
Which session was that?

A. 
When I played with Bob Dylan.  We weren't necessarily on the same page.  
Consequently, the most important part that I added to that particular 
track was taken off and the part that I liked the least was kept on.  
From that, I learned how to walk into a studio with just some of the most 
bizarre characters and go, Okay you're that way, and I'll just do my thing.  I had just come fresh from an Iggy Pop session for Brick by Brick, which was bliss.  Then I walked into a Bob Dylan thing, and I didn't realize how difficult this guy was to work with.  No one told me.

Q. 
So, what about the latest edition of Snakepit?

A.
While I was doing all those sessions and jamming at different gigs with 
different people, in the back of my mind, I was going That Snakepit thing 
was a fucking gas.  I started putting together different musicians that 
I'd met in the course of my travels, and I put together another Snakepit.  
Then the magic happened.  So, we kept going, booked a couple of impromptu 
gigs here and there while we were putting the songs together.  

We hooked up with Jack Douglas...(who) recorded Aerosmith and John Lennon.  He was the guy I wanted to produce Guns when we first started.  When I first brought his name up, and this was in 1985, 1986 with Guns, they took a good look at me, a good look at the rest of the guys, thought about Jack and said, "No.  Uh-uh."  Our chemical dependencies would have imploded.  It would have been a disaster.

Anyway, we've come full circle.  He's doing great.  He stopped smoking, he 
stopped everything.  A sober, very fucking vibrant Jack Douglas came to a 
gig we played in Miami.  He showed up and it was probably one of the most 
volatile gigs of the whole impromptu Snakepit pre-production tour.  Jack 
goes, "I'll do it."  So he got right in the thick of it.  The whole thing 
has just been a blast.


Q. 
How does it feel to be an opening act again?

A. 
I opened for the Stones, Aerosmith, AC/DC on tours.  It's very cool.  The 
last good rock and roll tour I'd been to in recent memory was the last 
AC/DC tour.  I would play with them, even if it was in Guns N' Roses.  
I'm having more fun being street level rather than walking around with 
this stadium status kind of mentality.

Q.  
The album rocks, but the title track, "Ain't Life Grand" sounds like 
something you could have a swing band on.

A.
That's the only song me and Rob wrote the lyrics on together.  When it 
just had a working title, it was called the "Super Song".  Every time we 
played it, girls used to come over, taker their clothes off and dance.




Ain't Life Grand - review (inset on page 111)

Lotta water's gone under the bridge since Slash helped teach a generation
of rock fans to "Use Your Illusion."  You'd hardly know it listening to 
his latest opus with the new, younger, leaner, hungrier Snakepit.  He 
still gets that big-bottomed sound out of his guitar, still nicks licks 
from the likes of Ted Nugent, Hendrix and Rick Derringer, and still sounds 
like he's having more fun doing it than should be allowed by law.  While 
most of Ain't Life Grand treads heavily in the sleazy hard-rock garden 
he's hung out in since the mid-'80s, its songs are performed with lots of 
verve and a heavy helping of humor.  "The Alien," for example, finds the 
title character taking a look around after bumming a ride from outer 
space, and deciding he'd rather not hang out.  The chorus of "Mean Bone" 
goes  "I've got one mean bone in my body, and I want to pick it with you."  You can take that any way you want.  The band seems up for anything Slash wants it to dish out, from the hardcore four of  "The Alien" to the strip-club swing of the title track.  Rod Jackson has a classic-rock voice, and the whole combination makes Ain't Life Grand one of those albums that would have sounded as good ten years ago as it does today.  It'll probably age pretty well, too. -H.B.