Recently, in an interview for an American magazine to promote his latest album, Slash once again managed to divulge some honest truths about his relationship with Axl Rose by answering “Axl Rose hates me” when asked if he believed that he would ever make peace with the Guns N’Roses singer. ”So this makes it difficult. But if we walked past each other and all of the animosity shared between us was left behind, I am certain that we could have an exciting conversation.”

Slash also gave his opinion of Chinese Democracy, Guns N’Roses’ latest album released in 2008. Unlike what we might have expected, Slash highlights Axl Rose’s talent. ”It’s a perfect Axl album. It is exactly the type of album I was expecting him to produce, according to the kind of music that we made during our later years together. The album is very heavy, dark and depressing. But it’s one hell of a record.”

Let’s remind ourselves that in 1995 Slash put an end to his collaboration with Guns N’Roses as a result of his stormy and confrontational relationship with Axl Rose. Since then, the guitarist has kept going with various other bands. First of all he formed Slash’s Snakepit until 2001, followed by Velvet Revolver with two fellow Guns N’Roses members: Matt Sorrum and Duff McKagan. As for Axl Rose, he has continued with Guns N’Roses and decided to seize the name “Guns N’Roses” and all of the band’s rights, without the preliminary consent of the other band members.
In 2009, in an interview featured on the website spinner.com, Axl dismissed all possibilities of any Guns N’Roses reformation as expected by the fans: ”I suppose that Duff might be able to play some guitar or something else, but there is no way that you will see me doing anything with Slash” he explained before adding ”His opinion about me is certainly engraved into his mind. Slash should never have been in the band and he should have left after Lies [NDLR : album sorti en 1988]at least. I think of him as a cancer that needs to be removed and avoided, the less we hear about him… the better”. In the end, Axl basically ended up calling him a “limelight whore”.

Outstanding guitarist Slash was elected as the second best electric guitar player in the world following guitar legend Jimi Hendrix by Time magazine in August 2009. Today, he has just released his first solo album, plainly called Slash, on which he called upon various guest musicians. Since this is a major album for Slash, he called upon the services of Eric Valention (Queens of the Stone Age, The All-American Rejects) for the production, Chris Chaney (Jan’es Addiction) on bass and Josh Freese (Nine Inch Nails) on drums. Slash himself was in charge of the musical arrangements and the writing of songs, he also had a personal approach to choosing the guests to appear on each of the songs on the album. ”The concept is simple,” Slash explains, ”they are artists with which I have wanted to collaborate for a while and with which I thought it would be great to create something. I was very impressed by what each of them was able to bring to the project. They all fully invested themselves and we had some excellent times when making this album.”.

As for the rumours surrounding the possibility that Guns N’Roses might reform – if you still have hope that this could happen despite what you have just read – Slash came back on the subject in a clear manner by answering a question that appeared in Rock Hard (n°98) on the subject of his autobiography (published in 2007) and on the reason for his book: “And then there was all of this shit about my relationship with Axl and the fact that we might “reform” Guns N’Roses. It took massive proportions on the internet! It was very frustrating for me not to be able to have cut this rumour from the stem…”

To this we can also add the new controversy surrounding the track « Crucify The Dead » from Slash’s album, sung by Ozzy Osbourne, and more specifically on the following exert: “A loaded gun jammed by a rose, the thorns are not around your head, your ego cut you ‘til you bled.” It seems inevitable that by mentioning a “gun”, a “rose” and ego, everyone will think that it’s aimed at Axl Rose. However, the guitarist defended himself on the subject: ”That was Ozzy. He said that the song represents the situation in which he found himself with other musicians. Yes, there are some key sentences in the song that are very suggestive of my experience. But, no, it’s an overview of a collection of problems.”

The guitarist will be at Hellfest on Saturday 19th of June and his album can be heard on the AOL website. It compiles 14 tracks with an amazing range of vocals. It features some rock classics such as Iggy Pop, Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), but also a few pop and hip hop artists such as Fergie (Black Eyed Peas), Nicole Sherzinger (Pussycat Dolls), Adam Levine (Maroon 5) and many others…

Translation by Izzy