SLASH: 1965 – 2009
Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 2:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
With Velvet Revolver on what is starting to look like a permanent hiatus, Slash has been off recording a Santana-style all-star solo album with lots and lots of famous collaborators. It’s actually kind of a brilliant idea, and you wonder why he didn’t do that instead of Slash’s Snakepit Mach 2, a fun band that was really never gonna pay off for him.
Now Slash has announced his first solo offering: a two-track Japanese (and thus “internet,” whether Saul Hudson likes it or not) single called Sahara, which will offer both that song, with some Japanese dude I’ve never heard of on vocals, and… a re-recording of “Paradise City” with vocals by Cypress Hill and Fergie.
Fergie.
Yes, while Axl Rose has been busy ripping off other people, Slash has gone the Chuck Mosley route and decided to rip-off himself. But whereas Chuck was at least bright enough to recruit an actual original member of his former band to participate, Slash invited only Josh Freese, who played drums for a chunk of the Axl Rose-Chinese Democracy sessions and wrote the title track to that album.
And then there’s Cypress Hill and Fergie.
Neither of them were ever going to make a suitable substitute for Axl Rose circa 1987, and I guess I at least don’t feel any serious animosity towards Cypress Hill. “Insane in the Brain” or whatever the fuck it was called was a fun song in 199whateverfuckingyearitwas. And the idea of collaborating with some gangsta rappers seems true enough to the ideals of the GN’R of yore; that band wore N.W.A. and Public Enemy merch, and seemed reasonably dangerous enough for that not to feel embarrassing. So the idea of doing the song with that particular duo is silly, but it’s silly in the way a lot of Slash stuff has been silly, and I’d be happy to write it off as a “whatever” kinda thing. (Some idiot in the comments section will inevitably point out that Slash is also half-black, but that’s neither here nor there in this instance. He’s also half-Jewish, but I don’t wanna see him record with Matisyahu any time soon.)
But man, if I could get a time machine and show the Slash of 1987 the Slash of 2009 playing with Fergie… I think I could convince him to O.D. just to prevent it from ever happening. How ridiculous. The only connection between these two artists should be that they’ve both suffered drug habits which have done serious damage to their health – Slash has a pacemaker, and Fergie has a face that alerts anyone who ever looks at her that she did crystal meth.
RANDOM THOUGHT: Holy shit, do you think that Fergie will be the new singer for Velvet Revolver?!?!?!
And none of this is taking into account the absurdity of the notion of Slash making any kind of improvements to his performance on Appetite for Destruction. Why don’t we just re-animate Da Vinci and see if there’s anything he wants to do with the Mona Lisa? Hey Slash: ask George Lucas how going back and tinkering with his beloved classic worked out, dude.
One last thing to really ice this cake: the main riff for “Paradise City” was written by… Duff McKagan.
-AR
I would LOVE to see Fergie fronting Velvet Revolver. Especially if she pees herself onstage again.
+1
that’s rock n’ roll right there.
Haha when I saw the article the first thing I thought off was Fergies stained Knickers. Actually
that’s the first thing I think about whenever I hear about her.
Notice in the picture that she has leather pants tucked into boots. You’d never know if she peed herself
I totally fapped to that pic when it came out
I’d have to assume that’s a carefully calculate maneuver on her part.
title is misleading.
Agreed, that almost gave me a heart attack when I read it.
agreed i almost had a heart attack as well
I almost had an orgasm.
fuck slash.
I LOL’d
Scared the crap out of me when I read that.
the headline scared the fucking shit outta me. don’t do that again. i almost cried. seriously.
on the note of the album, i firmly believe it’s gonna be his best work in a long long time. fergie is inexcusable, but nothing wrong with cypress hill. slash fans should know that he’s performed with them for over a decade now. and cypress hill is awesome to boot. remember, AXl routinely wore NWA shirts back in the day. GNR always embraced hip hop. Axl basically is rapping in paradise city and several other classic GNR songs too.
it should be noted that other guests on the new album include Ozzy, Alice Cooper, Chris Cornell, Flea, Iggy Pop, Steven Adler and others. so weigh the good with the bad and see there are going to be some very good cool collaborations on some good songs on this album
Ozzy’s a douche. Alice Cooper is, uh… alice cooper, chris cornell is an arrogant prick, steven adler is boring. The only good one you listed was flea.
An L.A. “who’s who”, then. Blech…I personally woulda been more impressed if say Kim Thayil guessed, or Bobby Liebling, or Troy Sanders. Alice Cooper’s the only guy on there I’ve got any respect for. Say what you want, that guy had an absolutely smokin’ band a couple years ago on that black sab/queensryche/Alice tour.
Dudez, you really got my heart pumping mercury there for a second…jerks! lol
Isn’t stomping all over your legacy something you’re supposed to do as you get older? I thought that was one of those unspoken laws of rock.
+1
u just scared the shit out of me. fuck you sideways 4 that title
HA I thought the same thing…
Ok, for those of you who didnt know this already…. GN´R SUCKED!! Axl Rose is a fucking Rat and Slash is a fucking Bitch so…. Im not surprissed at all…
obvious troll is obvious
gnr sux anyway
Love the title. Sad it’s not true.
can’t wait for the future article “bearbomb anally raped , tortured, murdered… nobody attends funeral”
Now THAT would make for a good read. Well played sir.
You know, I actually couldn’t care less if Slash recorded a song with Fergie. Whatever. But rerecording Paradise City with her on vocals is a bit too far.
hey, hate the title if you must but i’m sure it made people read the post. maybe in a frantic but they read it. heh. death sells!!
This man is a cartoon, not a musician.
If Slash hadn’t totally jumped the shark before, this would have been it.
This doesn’t really bother me. She’s a good singer and as far as pop albums go, her solo album was pretty good. He probably just wanted a different vibe and wanted some famous people that could sell a few albums – big whoop. At least it isn’t taking 15 years to release!
Musicians past their prime rerecording songs past their time. No care.
I like how there’s an ad for Slash’s custom Epiphone right next to the end of the piece. Serendipitous, playa.
http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=128624
…and Nicole, fuck yeah!
for someone to hate Chuck Mosley so much as you claim you do, you sure do spend a lot of time talking about him. even when you’re not directly talking about him, you refer to him….wtf?
1965 – 2009.
hahaha…hohoho. very funny, ya’ buncha’ fuckwads. In other thoughts, if Slash and co. would hook up with Hugh Dillon – Velvet Revolver would surely come alive again. God, I miss the Headstones – they were a fucking GREAT live act.