(Credits: Far Out / Kreepin Deth)
Fri 5 December 2025 0:00, UK
Iconic is a word tossed around far too liberally by many a lazy journo, but Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash towers in the hard rock landscape with idolised stature.
He’s also easy to tell from his silhouette alone. Landing in the middle of Los Angeles’ rock scene still sporting spandex and voluminous, hair sprayed Barnets, 1987’s Appetite for Destruction debut didn’t just flaunt a distinctly harder and meaner sound at odds with the power ballads clogging the radio, but dropped a tougher ensemble that reeked of the Hollywood streets over the MTV escapism plaguing the day’s hair metal poster bands.
Slash hoarded the lion’s share of Guns N’ Roses’ visual identity. It’s likely that the first impression of the band the moment ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’s opening riff leaps out of the speakers, is his long mane of black hair, aviator shades, and most essential, his defining stove pipe hat.
Forging such a distinctive feature of Guns N’ Roses’ aesthetic, it’s easy to imagine Slash cycling through all the various headwear he could think of before arriving at the top hat, the eureka moment he’d found his niche in fashion flair. It turns out, however, that Slash’s immortal flat-crown accessory was brought about by a bout of impulsive five-finger discount.
In the mid-1980s, an upcoming gig at Sunset Boulevard’s famous Whisky a Go Go prompted a 20-year-old Slash to consider his sartorial dress for the evening. Perusing around Melrose Avenue’s litany of boutique clothing shops, a vintage top hat was spotted in the Retail Slut store, winking at the young guitarist for a quick nab. “I was just cruising around looking for shit to pilfer,” he confessed frankly on The Howard Stern Show in 2020.
Now, a top hat isn’t the sort of item one would imagine can be stolen inconspicuously, but Slash had mastered the art of sly nicking. “Just walk out casually” was the sage advice offered by the Guns N’ Roses axesmith. It’s unclear when the cash began filling the band’s coffers as fame and fortune hit them hard with dizzying speed, but the thrill of a little petty theft never quite went away. “I sort of got past my klepto phase, but every so often I would lift something that wasn’t going to turn anybody a huge profit,” stating his ethical code clearly.
Karma did what karma does, however. Battered one night at Riki Rachtman’s Cathouse club, later to find national fame as the host of MTV’s Headbangers Ball, a passed-out Slash awoke from his drunken fug to find his robbed top hat missing from his bonce. Can’t complain. But eager to avoid any further just desserts, Slash decided to fork out for the next stove pipe.
One imagines Slash to unveil an entire wardrobe of prized top hats to complete his rock get-up for the day, but by all accounts, he’s only in possession of four, the most recent gifted by Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister.
Deeper than mere rockstar theatre, however, is Slash’s eagerness to keep a little piece of himself away from the character on stage, the first flaunt of the top hat building a necessary filter between the stage and the crowd. “From that night on, my hat became something that I feel comfortable in,” he concluded to South Africa’s Sunday Times in 2018. “It has also become something I can hide behind, as even though I love performing, I have never been good at looking into the eyes of the audience who are watching me. So, my hat and my hair in my face has just been my thing ever since.”
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