(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 5 December 2025 15:30, UK
No one is ever going to find a more easygoing presence in rock and roll than Slash.
He may have had his highs and lows throughout his time with Guns N’ Roses, but no matter what project he finds himself in, he knew that he always worked best when being treated like one of the band guys rather than this colossal guitar god. But that didn’t stop him from being a magnet to a few unsavoury characters every now and again.
Then again, Slash was always used to making music that had a bit more grime on it than normal. No one’s going to be making a riff like ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ expecting to hear a love song based around it, and when the rest of Guns ended up storming in behind him when that delayed riff started, it felt like the whole track was pulling the listener down to hell before the verses even kicked in.
But most of us should be thankful that all the original members of the band are still among the living today. Appetite for Destruction was more of a way of life for them rather than an album title, and it wasn’t long after they blew up that some people had started to fall through the cracks a little bit. Steven Adler was the first one to succumb to his drug addictions and be asked to leave during Use Your Illusion, but if there was one elephant in the room that no one wanted to address, it was Axl Rose.
Which is usually a bit complicated, considering he’s the lead singer. Rose was the one who was the de facto face of the band in many respects, and while he and Slash were looked at as a tandem, that wasn’t the full story. Slash was content to play his riffs and keep his head down low, but outside of wanting to make the most grandiose songs possible, like ‘November Rain’, Slash remembered that Rose would always be the one with the ailments when they hit the road.
While Rose did his fair share of partying back in the day, Slash felt that the frontman always ended up having something wrong with him wherever they ended up staying, saying, “Axl is like a magnet for problems. I’ve never met anybody like him. He’s the kind of guy that would get a toothbrush stuck down his throat because that particular toothbrush happened to be defective.” Listening to the gory details, though, it was usually about a lot more than a few toiletries falling by the wayside.
Make no mistake, the Guns N’ Roses that took to the road in the early 1990s was the stuff of legend and would have been considered one of the finest acts of all time, but that was only when Rose wanted to. The frontman would have gladly waited hours if he thought that his voice was giving him trouble, and while that led to many fans rioting during a few of their shows, it’s not like he couldn’t deliver when he felt the time was right.
Considering all the technical aspects of his singing voice, it also makes sense why Rose would want to take care of his instrument. He may have been drinking and smoking like every other rock star at the time, but if he wanted to preserve that massive vocal range that he had, he was going to need to take breaks now and again, which wasn’t exactly accommodating for a band that was supposed to travel around the world twice on their first major arena tours.
So while Slash was more than happy to get the job done no matter what the cost, anyone dealing with the problems that Rose was having would have wanted to walk as well. The singer wanted to be a stickler for perfection, but considering how long the world had to wait for Chinese Democracy, it turns out the biggest problem that Rose ever had was his inability to regulate what he was doing.
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