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November 12th, 2026 · 9:00pm GMT
There are plenty of ways to impress your musical heroes, like writing them a letter, dedicating a song to them or spending years trying to imitate their playing. Slash, however, went one better.
He ended up buying his idol’s most prized guitar, held on to it for years while the man asked for it back, then gave it to him as a birthday present. It turned out to be a rather good way to mend a friendship, and Joe Perry now says he would trust Slash with the keys to his house.
For the Guns N’ Roses guitarist, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry was never just another rock star, but one of the reasons he picked up a guitar in the first place. As a teenager, Slash became so absorbed by Aerosmith’s Rocks that he ignored a girl he had spent months trying to impress, simply because she was the one who put the record on. “I ignored her completely and just kept playing the album over and over,” he later recalled, and she eventually walked out.
Perry’s influence stayed with him, however, and by 1988, the pair finally crossed paths when Guns N’ Roses were beginning their first tour, having already started to make waves with their debut album, Appetite for Destruction, opening for Aerosmith that summer, which gave the young band an opportunity to watch their heroes at work.
“They paid their dues, and that summer they opened for us, and we saw them going from learning and being a club band to becoming an arena band,” Perry recalled in conversation with Guitar Player.
The friendship stretched well beyond the stage. He remembered Slash and Axl Rose wandering into Aerosmith’s dressing room after shows to ask questions and chat, and he could see something special taking shape. By the end of the summer, he said, they were “ready to blow the top off the world, which they did, and still do”.
There was another connection between the two guitarists, one that involved a particularly desirable piece of rock history: a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard. Teen Slash was fascinated by the guitar Perry played for Aerosmith’s Live! Bootleg, an unusual sunburst that looked nothing like the typical cherry-red models; then, years later, during a Japan tour, his management contacted him about a guitar of potential interest.
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Indeed, the instrument seemed suspiciously similar to the one that previously belonged to Perry and actor Eric Roberts, and upon recognising its distinctive scratches and details from photographs, Slash knew exactly what he was looking at, and didn’t hesitate to snatch it up.
Later, Perry tried to buy it back, but Slash, an Aerosmith fan to the core, refused to let it go, and the friendship suffered for it. Then, at his 50th birthday party in 2000, just as he was about to play with Cheap Trick, his guitar tech appeared holding the Les Paul, along with birthday wishes from Slash.
Speaking about him today, Perry doesn’t just praise his playing. He describes him as someone he would trust unequivocally: “And Slash is one of those guys I’d give the keys to my house to.” Slash might not literally need to let himself into his house, but the point is that he could. For the teenager who once abandoned a date over a Joe Perry record, that is quite a remarkable place to end up.
