(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 4 February 2026 22:30, UK
There wasn’t a soul on Earth going to see Guns N’ Roses that wasn’t paying attention to Slash whenever he hit the stage.
Sure, he was a man of few words and didn’t really address the crowd that much from behind his signature top hat and mop of curly hair, but from the minute that he kicked off riffs like ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and ‘Paradise City’, he was out to kick ass and take names at every single venue the band played. He could easily level an entire room of guitar players with just his presence, but it took a team effort to make all of those great songs come alive in the studio.
While it’s easy to look back on the partnership between Slash and frontman Axl Rose, they weren’t really as connected as many people thought. If anything, they were rivals back in the day when Slash was trying to get his own bands off the ground, but when they joined forces for GNR, they were the perfect combination. The guitarist’s gritty licks with Rose’s voice were like a punk rock version of Jagger and Richards, but Appetite for Destruction really is the result of everyone playing together.
They wanted to make the kind of album that would level any other hair metal band that they played with, and a lot of the tunes came from hearing the entire band playing live in the room. The drastic change in tempo at the end of ‘Paradise City’ might not be locked into the grid that much, but when you hear Slash going for it towards the end of the solo, it’s easy to feel how infectious that energy is when Steven Adler kicks things up a notch, and Duff McKagan starts tearing up his bass.
But if there was a secret weapon of the band, it was always Izzy Stradlin. Most rhythm guitarists not named Keith Richards usually get demoted to being the least necessary part of the band, but Stradlin was often the glue that held everything together. His calm attitude made him the perfect foil to Slash whenever they played, but after he walked out, the lead guitarist admitted that his quiet friend wasn’t the easiest person to deal with.
Stradlin may have taken a step back after getting sober, but as far as Slash was concerned, it was better to have Gilby Clarke in the group anyway, saying, “I had to put up with Izzy the whole time. I never liked playing with him. It was wonderful to escape him on this record. It sounds tighter and so much cooler than anything we’ve done before. I always got irritated over Izzy’s way of playing. It didn’t sound right.”
It might not have sounded perfect, but that’s what gave it the mojo half the time. Stradlin’s way of playing rhythm and the occasional lead part is the engine of their debut, and even when they took things down a notch on their Lies EP, giving him the spotlight to come up with a song like ‘Patience’ helped give the band a lot more to work with than straight-ahead rock and roll tunes before making Use Your Illusion.
In fact, Stradlin wasn’t only a great rhythm guitarist; he was necessary for the band to survive. His presence might have bothered Slash on occasion, but there’s a good reason why the band suddenly stopped making records of original material once he left. His riffs were simply too important to suddenly drop, and even if Clarke was a fine guitarist, he wasn’t going to make up for what Stradlin played on tunes like ‘Dust N Bones’ or ‘Think About You’.
The focus might have been on Slash most of the time, but take this as a lesson to anyone that’s neglecting their rhythm guitarist in their band. They might not look like they’re doing all that much, but if you throw in some random person to fill in and play their parts, you’re going to lose the heartbeat of the group.
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