Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 10:30am by Axl Rosenberg
In 1987, $lash wrote the main riff for “Sweet Child O’ Mine” as a joke during warm-up for band practice, and after Izzy Stradlin and Axl Rose recognized its potential and turned it into an actual song, The World’s Best Jew ‘Fro argued against its inclusion on Appetite for Destruction, thinking it was too ballad-y for a hard rock album. Now, twenty-four years later, $lash has finally taken his revenge on the song that gave him his career: wearing a variation of his signature top hat that was apparently fashioned from some old clothes Rob Halford recently donated to the Salvation Army, $lash appeared on the Super Bowl half-time show with The Black Eyed Peas to assist Fergie in what Vince rightly referred to as a “mutilation” of the song.
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 12:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
Slash allegedly plays on the new Rihanna single, “Rockstar 101.” I say “allegedly” because there’s barely any guitar in the damn song, and what guitar there is sounds like it could have been played by just about anyone with fingers and five free minutes to spend in the studio. But apparently the guitars are by Slash, and he was supposed to be in the video, too, but couldn’t make it ’cause I guess he afraid he was gonna make Fergie jealous. So Rihanna decided she was just gonna dress-up as Slash, which is, uh, an interesting solution.
Meanwhile, Nuno Bettencourt is part of Rihanna’s band now, and he’s in the video, but he never gets a close-up. In fact, most of the time he’s either in the background or out-of-focus.
So, to review: Rihanna would rather have a fake Slash in her video than a real Nuno.
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 10:30am by Axl Rosenberg
Ever seen Woody Allen’s Zelig? It’s a pseudo-documentary about a guy who immediately assumes the traits of whomever he’s with at the moment; put him in a room full of Chinese people and he’ll turn into a Chinese man, move him to a room full of Hasidim and he’ll suddenly appear to be Hasidic, and so on and so forth. It’s a(n obvious but still pretty funny) metaphor for a guy with no personality of his own.
Now, consider Slash. Guns N’ Roses folklore tells us that Slash is not the best judge of his own material, and often wanted to scrap some of Guns’ best songs; and, unfortunately, evidence suggests that this folklore is fact, and that Slash is a pretty ho-hum songwriter. Axl Rose has his legitimate insanity and over-sized, not entirely comprehensible artistic vision, but all Slash really seems to have is a desire to be like his heroes in Aerosmith and AC/DC, which is to say, a legacy act and purveyor of catchy but fairly middle-of-the-road rock. Consequently, a lot of the pressure on Slash-penned songs in the post-GN’R era is not just on the guitar playing of the Artist Formerly Known as Saul Hudson, but on the performances of whatever singer he’s working with at any given moment. Slash songs can be like underwritten roles in movies that way; you need the best character actors available to give them some personality, or they risk becoming boring.
Slash has personality (or at least persona) to burn, and it’s no shock that on Slash, his first solo record, he keeps up his up his end of the bargain in the guitar solo department. Despite the fact that he was never a revolutionary musician, Slash was always a very distinctive musician; a lot of people play the way he does, but no one sounds quite like him. But it is kind of a shock that on this, the album which is supposed to be a distinct and unique artistic statement outside the confines of his collaborations with various bands, Slash has very much allowed himself, like Zelig, to blend in with whomever was in the room at the moment.
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 10:00am by Axl Rosenberg
There are now six songs* available online from Slash’s Slash, his forthcoming sort-of-but-not-really solo debut (as though Slash’s Snakepit wasn’t a solo band) that I care far too much about. If you include bonus tracks, that’s actually more than a full third of the album; if you don’t include bonus track, it’s (obviously) even more.
So I now feel pretty confident in saying this album won’t be horrible, even if it’s obviously never going to live up to GN’R, and features appearances by Kid Rock, Fergie, and the girl from Maroon 5.
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 10:00am by Axl Rosenberg
So the Australian branch of iTunes has apparently uploaded thirty-second clips of all the songs from Slash’s forthcoming, self-titled solo album, and, of course, someone has uploaded all of those clips to YouTube. Gotta love the internet! So I thought we’d play one of our favorite games here at MetalSucks. It’s called “Let’s make premature judgments based on not very much actual music at all.” Listen to the clips in the video below, and then get my thoughts after the jump.
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 10:30am by Axl Rosenberg
Crazy/Beautiful is a 2001 teen soap opera movie in which you get to see the bottom of Kirsten Dunst’s rack; alas, “Beautiful Dangerous” is not a sequel in which she finally takes off the rest of her clothes. Instead, it’s a new Slash song that will feature vocals by Fergie, and which Slash debuted while guesting at a recent Black Eyed Peas performance.
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 3:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
I know that opinions about Slash are decidedly mixed. Some people never liked Guns N’ Roses, or hate Slash’s Snakepit, or hate Velvet Revolver, or whatever – I bet that of the five people who remember what the fuck Slash’s Blues Ball was, at least two or three of them hate that, too.
But nothing – and I mean absolutely, unarguably NOTHING – that Slash has ever done has been as bad as this re-recording of “Paradise City” with Cypress Hill and Fergie Methfacerson:
HOLY FUCKING SHIT, DID ANYONE REALLY THINK IT WAS OKAY TO BEGIN ANY VERSION OF “PARADISE CITY” WITH A RAPPER SAYING “YES YES Y’ALL?” IS THIS ONE OF THE BEST HARD ROCK ANTHEMS EVER, OR A FUCKING LIMP BIZKIT SONG?!?! HOW THE FUCK DID FERGIE END UP NOT BEING THE WORST PART OF THIS?!?!
If I was Duff McKagan – who actually wrote the main riff for “Paradise City” – I would kick Slash in the nuts. And then, when he was doing on the ground clutching his bruised testicles, I’d kick him again, and demand that this recording can only be released if done so under the title “Paradise Shitty.”
This re-recording, which makes me wish I was a fan of Disturbed or Drowning Pool so that I’d feel a little more dignified than I do for supporting Slash, comes from a two-song CD single that was released in Japan this week. After the jump is the other song from the single, “Sahara,” which features some Japanese vocalist I’ve never heard it. It’s also a terrible song, but at least it a) doesn’t rape any of my childhood memories and leave them weeping on the cold tile floor and b) has a guitar solo that sounds like every other Slash guitar solo, which is okay because I love Slash guitar solos.
At the risk of sounding like an overzealous Pantera fan, $lash performing “Sweet Child O’Mine” with that scary looking manimal (I refused to believe it’s a woman) from the Black Eyed Peas is where I draw the line. Unless he saw a freak that bore some vague resemblance to a white lady and thought he was doing another gig with Michael Jackson. I guess that’s forgivable.
