(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Music is about more than being some catchy tunes heard on the radio. These are the melodies that define who we are as we go through our lives, and whether that’s encountering a breakup for the first time or facing that ever-present teenage angst, everyone can normally count on their favourite artists to get them through in times when their friends can’t.
But for someone who is as soft-spoken as Slash is whenever he’s in front of the microphone, underneath that mane of curly hair is a metal demigod ready to jump out.
It’s not like Guns N’ Roses were far from heavy metal, either. There were moments on their albums that certainly sounded heavy compared to everyone else on the radio, but songs like ‘Paradise City’ were not going to give Metallica or Megadeth a run for their money in the underground. Regardless of which angle you approached the genre, though, you had to admit that Slash was well above all his peers.
And that didn’t come from simply being gifted with a fantastic set of hands. Slash took his time studying some of the greatest guitarists of his generation, so whenever you heard one of his solos on ‘November Rain’ or ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, fans were hearing the music stylings of everyone from Joe Walsh to Eric Clapton being passed down to the next generation. But some metal acolytes weren’t far behind.
Albeit ones that weren’t exactly comfortable with the heavy metal tag. Clapton always insisted that Cream were a heavy blues outfit, and as much as Jimmy Page’s taste colours everything that Slash played, Led Zeppelin could really be considered the godfathers of metal rather than the actual parents. But once Ozzy Osbourne screamed in agony on the first Black Sabbath album, everyone knew exactly what they were listening to.
This was evil music, and it was up to the rest of the rock faithful to decide whether they should get on board. There were pieces of blues and even hard rock in their delivery, but there was something baked into Tony Iommi’s riffs that seemed to summon the gates of Hell, even managing to sound heavier than anyone else when he was playing in standard tuning on their first records. So when ‘The Prince of Darkness’ soared over everything else, it felt like a Satanic ritual taking place over two sides of vinyl.
So while Slash had his favourite Iommi riffs, he knew Osbourne would always be a constant in his life, saying, “I’ve known Ozzy for a while; we met in the late ’80s. He’s one of those icons that I sort of grew up with, and I’ve had defined experiences listening to Sabbath and listening to Ozzy growing up. It’s like the background music to my life.” But Slash would have a few more years of experience before he truly fit into his heavy metal shoes.
Sure, songs like ‘It’s So Easy’ owed a lot to the punk movement, but when the guitar maestro’s 2010 solo album came out, he dipped his toes into everything he could find. Alongside working with Osbourne on ‘Crucify the Dead’, his work with Lemmy on ‘Doctor Alibi’ or ‘Nothing to Say’ with M Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold proved he had the precision to play something heavy when the time called for it.
But that’s not a case of Slash simply being greater than everyone else whenever he straps on a guitar. He knows that he isn’t gifted with God-given talent, but he will apply himself more than anyone ever could to make sure that he’s getting the sound that he wants to hear out of his amplifier, no matter how devilish it may be.
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