The musician John O’Brien, who passed away in August, was best friends with Dave “Slash Couldn’t Even Spell My Damn Name Correctly in his Autobiography” Kushner. And so the guitarist — unsurprisingly, the only member of Velvet Revolver to drop off the face of the planet when the band went on hiatus four years ago — organized a reunion of his most famous project for a memorial concert in O’Brien’s honor, which will take place on January 12 at the House of Blues in Los Angeles.

Yes, that means that Scott Weiland is going to be performing with Velvet Revolver again.

And while the gig is currently scheduled to be a one-off affair, now Kushner tells Rolling Stone that Weiland could ultimately end up coming back to the fold for good:

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In October, Axl Rose told That Metal Show that Duff McKagan’s Loaded featuring Duff McKagan was going to open some shows on GN’R current North American headlining tour. But then we didn’t hear anything else about it for over a month, so I think most people either assumed it wasn’t happening, or forgot about it all together.

But now it’s actually happening, and is happening this week, no less, in Seattle and Vancouver.

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It’s not hard to come up with theories as to why Slash has gotten so lame over the years — aging, sobriety, marriage, fatherhood, pacemaker, Fergie, etc. — but has anyone ever considered that Slash just might not be real? I mean, I know a truly silly number of people who have been Slash for Halloween over the years (both Vince and myself have done, in case you’re curious), and the reason is, he’s both recognizable and incredibly easy to imitate. Get a dark, curly wig, a top hat, and a cigarette, wobble around drunkenly, and, every now and then, remove a piece of paper that says “MY LEGACY” on it, place it on the ground, drop trou, and poo. Presto, you’re Slash.

But has anyone ever considered that the reason Slash has gotten so lame, and is so easy to impersonate, is because he’s not real? Y’know, like Santa. Like, maybe Slash seemed a million times cooler when I was a kid because my mom was Slash and my mom did an awesome job because she wanted her little gift from God to be happy, but now every time I see Slash it’s just some out of work record executive trying to bring back the good old days, or, worse still, Dj Ashba?

This is the theory that South Park posited on Wednesday night (about Slash not being real, not Slash being Dj Ashba in a disguise), with rather amusing results. (Two words: “Vunter Slaush.”) I can’t for the life of me figure out what spurned on Trey Parker and Matt Stone to include this storyline, although, yes, it does seem like Slash is always in too many places at once. I also feel like these guys lampooned Slash once before — I distinctly remember him being in some All-Star Charity Concert on a past episode — although I can’t seem to find that episode now, so maybe I’m imagining it.

ANYWAY, here are the clips from the episode relevant to Slash, courtesy reader Hetal Bhatt… you can watch the full thing here. In case you need some context for these clips, basically, the boys are trying to get Slash to play the half-time show for their new sports league, the Crack Baby Athletic Association. Yep yep.

-AR

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One of these men will not be on the new Kyuss album. Guess which one?

Kyuss Lives!, the ridiculously monikered Kyuss non-reunion which replaces Josh Homme with some dude no one has ever heard of, are apparently “thinking of doing another record,” according to this interview with vocalist John Garcia. I object to the use of the word “another” because in case these dudes haven’t noticed, they’ve never made a record before, but I’d like to think that the phrase “thinking of”* means “it’s not written in stone yet,” “there’s still time to stop the madness,” and “we said this to gauge the reaction of fans, possibly as represented by an incredibly smart, exceedingly handsome Jewish blogger from New York.”

So, assuming that Garcia was, indeed, trying to get a message to me to see what my thoughts were, I’d like to now respond by saying: I don’t think this is a good idea.

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I tried to land an interview with Slash when his solo album came out, but, alas, it was not to be. (Must be ’cause of all the nice things I’ve said about him over the past couple of years.) But one of the things I wanted to ask him about were how involved, or uninvolved, he was with the lyrics on the album. Each song is sung by a different celebrity singer who would be perfectly capable of writing his or her own lyrics, and the few times Slash has tried to lyrics, the results have been pretty disastrous. (Remember “Be the Ball,” the Slash’s Snakepit song about pinball? Yeah, no reason you would, but did I mention it’s about fucking pinball?) But the lyrics to at least one song in particular – the Ozzy-crooned “Crucify the Dead” – seemed so Slash-specific, I thought he might have had a hand in them.

See, “Crucify the Dead” features such lyrics as “Your ego cursed you till you bled,” “Decisions past leave you alone,” “Someday you look back and you wonder why you let it all slip away,” and a reference to – CAPTAIN OBVIOUS ALERT! – “A loaded gun jammed by a rose.” So, y’know. It seemed pretty clear that the song was aimed at one of Slash’s former collaborators. And I don’t mean Rod Jackson.

Well, Ozzy has answered my question – kind of – in a recent interview with VH1 Radio:

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One last thought about Slash’s solo album, and then I promise to shut up about it for awhile.

Everyone who buys/downloads/whatever Slash the album will get “Nothing to Say,” a collaboration the axe-slinger player did with M. Shadows from Avenged Sevenfold. It ostensibly sounds like an A7X song with Slash on guitars. But what’s really interesting is that there’s an alternative version of the same exact song, this one entitled “Chains and Shackles,” on the Australian version of Slash. And this being 2010 and the internet being what it, we have both versions of the song, and therefore have a nice example of the various ways in which you can make a piece of music sound completely different from itself.

“Chains and Shackles,” you see, doesn’t have M. Shadows vocals or lyrics or melodies – it was done with ex-Queens of the Stone Ager Nick Oliveri instead. The intro, main riff, and even a large chunk of the guitar solo is completely identical in both songs – but the production style is completely different on each one, the outro is different, and “Chains” is a good minute shorter. That song has clearly been designed to sound like something off of Songs for the Deaf, and succeeds every bit as much as “Nothing to Say” does at sounding like a A7X tune. I don’t know if Oliveri and/or Shadows were personally involved with all of the changes made to each variation of the song or not, but it’s funny to see that Slash really IS like Zelig – a chameleon who just blends in with the crowd.

Here are the two versions of the song side-by-side:

By the way, if you’re wondering why one of these ended up on the album proper and the other only made it as an Australian bonus track, well… guess which two musicians share the same manager?

-AR

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.

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My never-ending pursuit of rock star book excellence continues. This week it’s Saul Hudson of Guns N’ Roses fame with his 2007 autobiography Slash, co-authored by Anthony Bozza, and it is the epitome of a killer rock star autobiography.

I had serious doubts about whether or not I was going to like this book. First off, I have no love for Guns N’ Roses beyond Appetite for Destruction. I was one of the band’s biggest fans behind the strength of their Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide EP and AFD. Once Lies came out though, I was done. Couldn’t stand it (the non-Suicide tracks, that is) or them. So that was strike one.

Strike two came in the form of co-author Anthony Bozza, who also performed the same chores on Tommy Lee’s horrendous autobiography Tommyland (read my review here). What a terrible book that was; I lay much of the blame on Bozza’s shoulders.

Obviously, I was skeptical about reading Slash.

I’m happy to report that my skepticism was unfounded. Slash kicks ass!

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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.

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Scott Weiland’s been out of Velvet Revolver for quite some time now, and there’s still no word on their search for a new singer. I had assumed that they hadn’t announced anyone because they just couldn’t find someone famous enough. I mean, let’s be real – they’re not gonna hire some unknown. If they did, they’d fail to be a supergroup – they’s just be Slash’s Snakepit III. As it stands, Slash doesn’t know Dave Kushner’s name (he repeatedly identifies his co-guitarist as “Dave Kirshner” in his autobiography), and he’s known Kushner since they were kids; what the fuck would he do with an unknown singer?

I guess there must be some other issue, though – ’cause Corey Taylor, front man for Slipknot and Stone Sour, recently revealed that he tried out for the spot:

“I had a meeting with those guys, we did some demos together, and it just didn’t work — for whatever reason… It was just really cool. It was one of those things where it’s like I could have got to jam with legends, man, in my opinion. But, you know, it was cool, and I still know those guys, I still hang out with them, and I still have nothing but respect.”

So I gotta wonder why this didn’t work out. Taylor’s voice is comparable to Weiland’s, he’s well-known, he’d probably bring in some young kids who might otherwise not give a shit about Guns Without Rose, and he’s a very charismatic and entertaining band leader. So did his personality just not gel with that of the dudes in VR? Were they worried that with two other bands, he was already over-committed? Did Roadrunner (the label that distributes both Slipknot and Stone Sour) put the kibosh on the whole thing, as they allegedly did when Taylor almost replaced John Bush in Anthrax? We might never know, but I find the whole thing pretty curious.

Weigh in with your thoughts on Taylor as the new Axl Weiland below. And while you’re pontificating, enjoy this bootleg video of Taylor performing “It’s So Easy” with Slash. It might be the closest we ever get to seeing  a Taylor-fronted VR.

-AR

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.

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I know we (well, I at least) give Slash a lot of shit around here – but it’s only because the dude was my hero growing up (I had his poster on my wall, was him for Halloween at least twice, etc.), and it’s always disappointing when one of your heroes, say, starts gigging with the alien “chick” (recent evidence suggests she may, in fact, be a dude) from Black Eyed Peas.

But Slash turns 44 (!!!) today, and it’s pretty much a miracle the guy is still alive. So I am going to take this moment to celebrate him by pretending that he’s still the way I’d like to remember him:

-AR

Directly from the horse’s mouth comes the news that “guitarist n’ songwriter [emphasis added to point out mental retardation] Dj Ashba… officially replaces current NIN guitarist Robin Finck” in Guns N’ Roses. “Once Dj’s name was in the hat, the hat disappeared!!” benevolent dictator Axl Rose exclaims, doing his best impersonation of my Uncle Morty.

Showing that Rose at least has a sense of humor, the statement concludes: “Now, one step closer to the abyss, Ashba joins a band who’s all time roster is nearly as long as it’s [sic] founder Axl Rose’s rap sheet!” Oh, Axl, you scamp.

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