{"id":915445,"date":"2026-11-13T02:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T02:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/915445\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T02:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T02:14:11","slug":"in-1988-slash-met-his-guitar-idol-now-he-could-walk-into-the-guys-house-if-he-wanted-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/915445\/","title":{"rendered":"In 1988, Slash met his guitar idol. Now, he could walk into the guy\u2019s house if he wanted to"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Slash<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n

November 12th, 2026 \u00b7 9:00pm GMT <\/p>\n

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<\/a>, however, went one better. <\/p>\n

He ended up buying his idol\u2019s most prized guitar<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

For the Guns N\u2019 Roses guitarist, Aerosmith\u2019s 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\u2019s Rocks<\/a> that he ignored a girl he had spent months trying to impress, simply because she was the one who put the record on. \u201cI ignored her completely and just kept playing the album over and over,\u201d he later recalled, and she eventually walked out.<\/p>\n

Perry\u2019s influence stayed with him, however, and by 1988, the pair finally crossed paths when Guns N\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey 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,\u201d Perry recalled in conversation with Guitar Player.<\/p>\n

The friendship stretched well beyond the stage. He remembered Slash and Axl Rose wandering into Aerosmith\u2019s 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 \u201cready to blow the top off the world, which they did, and still do\u201d.<\/p>\n

There was another connection between the two guitarists, one that involved a particularly desirable piece of rock history: a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard.<\/a> Teen Slash was fascinated by the guitar Perry played for Aerosmith\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

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\u2019t hesitate to snatch it up. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Speaking about him today, Perry doesn\u2019t just praise his playing. He describes him as someone he would trust unequivocally: \u201cAnd Slash is one of those guys I\u2019d give the keys to my house to.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still November 12th, 2026 \u00b7 9:00pm GMT There are plenty of ways to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[20278,309044,55666,236,88,91527,27717,146510,25605,55667,2156,162215],"class_list":["post-915445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-1980s","tag-309044","tag-aerosmith","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-gibson","tag-guns-n-roses","tag-hard-rock","tag-heavy-metal","tag-joe-perry","tag-rock-music","tag-slash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}