Thursday, October 7th, 2010 at 11:30am by Axl Rosenberg
Slash is friends with legendary producer Robert Evans (Chinatown, Marathon Man, uh, Jade), and plays the theme from The Godfather during his extended live guitar solos. Also, he’s obviously pretty famous. And by Hollywood standards, that makes him qualified to help run a production company. And by “help run,” I mean “take large paychecks to put his name on some shit so it will get more publicity while other people do all the work.”
“Unless you answer to Rob Zombie, what musician has a name better suited to horror film making than Slash? The iconic guitarist of Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver has teamed with Scout Productions to start Slasher Films. They will produce edgy contemporary horror fare with a nod to the thrillers of the ’70s and ’80s. They’ve set up their first: Nothing to Fear, a horror/thriller that follows a young family as it tries to reinvent itself by moving to a small town in rural Kansas. The family is tormented by an ancient demon with an insatiable blood lust.”
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 at 10:30am by Axl Rosenberg
The reason all the hair-metal autobiographies have been disappointing is because the best hair metal band, Motley Crue, did it first, and did a really killer job (treating it like an oral history told from lots of different perspectives = master stroke), and so there was really no place to go but down. Bret Michaels’ autobiography never actually materialized, Slash’s was good but not great, Steven Adler’s sucked, I only know one person who read Bobby Blotzer’s, and now all the Motley Crue guys are dipping back into that pool for a second or even third time, only without each other because after thirty fucking years they still haven’t figured out that the unit is stronger than each individual. At this point I think it would take everyone who ever worked on Chinese Democracy, including Axl Rose, all banding together to make a The Dirt-style Roshomon piece if anything is even gonna BEGIN to compete with The Crue’s initial tome.
Now glam’s ugly twin, thrash, has started to catch on that there’s an interest in these books. And they don’t seem to be following the same pattern as cock rock. Sure, Dave Mustaine went first, but no one seems to really believe a word of his book, and it’s certainly not a definitive snap-shot of the time and place the way The Dirt is for the Strip in the 80′s. And I obviously have a lot of faith in Phil Anselmo’s upcoming collaboration with MetalSucks’ own Corey Mitchell, but Pantera weren’t purely thrash, and weren’t around for the Big Four’s heyday.
So. Now Noise Creep says that Kirk Hammett is doing his autobiography. (The news actually originated in an interview with Ultimate-Guitar, but I can’t find it. If anybody does, drop me a line.) There’s no word on which lucky writer will score that coveted “with” credit, but here’s a choice quote from Kirk:
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 11:00am by Axl Rosenberg
‘Cause apparently he’s out. No word yet on whether he was quit or fired, but either way, this news should be about as shocking as the fact that Axl Rose walked off-stage during a show in Dublin last week. Why? ‘Cause Jane’s Addiction have had four bass players just since 2001. Either these dudes are really hard to get along with, or they have terrible luck. And I don’t believe in luck.
And it’s too bad, really, ’cause for people like me, who basically gave up on Jane’s Addiction when they heard Strays (y’know, from the band’s second reunion), having McKagan in the group was probably a good incentive to pay attention again. And McKagan seemed like a good fit for Jane’s Addicition, ’cause Jane’s and GN’R are similar in that they’re both bands that released a couple of killer records forever ago, and whose members manage to milk those records’ popularity to remain in the spotlight even as their work becomes increasingly lackluster.
No word on who Jane’s Addiction’s next soon-to-be-former bassist will be, although I’m really pulling for Jason Newsted. Meanwhile, I imagine McKagan will now go back to his non-solo solo project, Loaded, and calling Slash at all hours of the night, asking when Velvet Revolver can get back together.
Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 12:40pm by Axl Rosenberg
I think Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home” was actually the first “life on the road” music video, but regardless of who created the genre, it existed before Guns N’ Roses’ Nigel Dick-directed clip for “Paradise City,” and has continued to exist long since. (A recent example would be DevilDriver’s video for “Fate Stepped In.”) And they seem to be a rite of passage in some sense — even Metallica have made one.
But there was a candid quality to “Paradise City” that, even if it was ultimately manufactured, felt real-enough to differentiate it from, say, Warrant’s video for “Heaven.” Jani Lane just looked right into the camera, and all the “home movie” footage looked like regular, glossy MTV footage with some kind of after-effect added in post, and, generally speaking, the whole thing just seemed pretty staged. Whether “Paradise City” was entirely authentic or not is beside the point; Dick did a top-notch job of making it feel authentic, which was enough to sell GN’R's image as a “real” band to kids like Vince and myself, who thought they were the cat’s pajamas.
In that context, it’s difficult to watch Slash’s new video for “Back to Cali” without thinking that it’s intended to be a direct call-back to “Paradise City” — it’s got the grainy B&W footage, the odd and unnecessary use of random Dutch angles, the playing in front of crowds disproportionate to the band’s current success (The “Paradise City” footage was actually filmed when GN’R was opening for Aerosmith; Slash seems to playing mostly European festivals in this video), etc. I don’t know who directed it and I’m not sure why he or she would make such a decision; kids who know Slash as “that dude from Velvet Revolver” won’t remember the “Paradise City” video and won’t care, and I don’t really think it’ll do much for the nostalgia of old bastards like me.
But, uh, whatever, I guess. “Back to Cali” is one of the better songs on Slash’s solo record; it’s basically just blues-based bar rock, which is to say, it plays to Mr. Saul Hudson’s strengths.
And here’s the “Paradise City” video, if you’re one of the aforementioned kids who have never seen it before…
I love reading groupie biographies. It’s sort of a hobby of mine. I’ve read everyone’s, from Pamela Des Barres to Catherine James to Marianne Faithfull (she counts), and am eagerly awaiting the memoirs of Cherry Vanilla, the woman who heroically blew half of New York to get David Bowie on the radio. Some women go sexually apeshit on rock stars, others enjoy reading about it while maintaining a happily gonorrhea-free existence. It’s just how it goes.
When I first heard of The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage, I was rather intrigued. Mind you, I had some preconceptions because of the key words: “slut” and “Iran.” It’s one thing to fuck everyone from Autograph to Winger and write about it, but controversy for the sake of controversy is quite another beast (with two backs, har har).
Though I tried to brush off the combination of these topics as calculated edginess, I couldn’t help but soften to Ms. Roxana Shirazi. Her story runs the gamut from depressingly sad (getting bullied in middle school for being a foreigner) to hilarious (watching as Matt Sorum interrupts himself during a threesome to do push-ups because he’s in ‘such good shape”) to horrifying (falling in love with Dizzy Reed and having to abort his baby). Everything aside, she’s just a girl who loves her rock’n’roll. Naked or otherwise.
I’m filing this under the “Laugh At Others’ Misfortunes” category because it’s always funny to see people that aren’t you get hurt. But the truth is, the incidents in question aren’t nearly on par with, say, Bret Michaels getting whacked in the head at last year’s Tony Awards, mostly because they’re not really brought about by outrageous acts of stupidity, whereas Michaels’ injury was clearly, despite his claims, entirely of his own doing.
First, some dude managed to get up on stage during a Slash solo gig in Milan and tackle the frizzy haired guitarist. Note that Slash barely even stops his solo – apparently his guitar was broken after the incident, but he didn’t even notice at first. What a pro! (And don’t worry, my fellow guitar fetishists – the instrument was repaired and back in action two nights later.) Still, if the guy shouted “PARADISE CITY WITH FERGIE AND CYPRESS HILL SUCKS!” right before he tackled Slash, then he’s my hero.
Our friend Amy Sciarretto from Noisecreep reports that Birmingham City University (in England, not Alabama) is naming an award after everyone’s favorite heavy metal grandpa: the Ozzy Osbourne Development Award “will be bestowed upon the student that makes the most significant progress on their degree in the Media and Communication/Music Industry degree.” I assume that the Osbourne family donated a nice chunk of change to get the award named after him, but this doesn’t really make that much sense to me. For one thing, I don’t know if Ozzy has really shown any musical development in, oh, the last hundred years or so, and as much as I admire a lot of his past work, you’ll never convince me that the bulk of the credit doesn’t lie with his collaborators – especially given that the dude doesn’t actually play an instrument. And beyond that, fuck has Ozzy got to do with media and communication? If we’re talking about his work with various reality shows and what have you, well, then, shouldn’t the award be named after Sharon, since we have her to thank for Ozzy’s wonderful non-music endeavors.
But whatever. This piece of news got me thinking: what other awards could we name after heavy metal musicians? And so, after the jump, my suggestions for new university kudos monikered in honor of various other members of the heavy metal community.
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:
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.
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 11:30am by Axl Rosenberg
I don’t think anybody with half a brain really ever believed that Scott Weiland was still sober. Sober people can take their coats off like a big boy, and Scott Weiland cannot. And sober people generally don’t fall off the stage and forget the words to, ironically, a song called “Dead and Bloated,” as their band mates exit the show “in apparent embarrassment and disgust.”
But that hasn’t stopped Scott Weiland from swearing up and down that he’s clean, and even writing a song about it.
So he probably feels at least a little embarrassed that STP bassist Robert DeLeo has now publicly admitted that Weiland is now “popping pills.”
Well, no, not really. But Velvet Revolver do accompany her on “Kissed It,” a new track from her forthcoming album The Sellout. (Hm. Interesting title.) And by “Velvet Revolver,” I mean, “The track listing says “featuring Velvet Revolver,” but of the four current members of that band, only three appear.
MetalSucks Maniac K-milo just sent us a link to the below video of Jane’s Addiction performing a new track, “Soulmate.” We can assume it marks the co-writing debut of one Mr. Duff McKagan, who is now the bass player for the band.
And, um… y’know, it’s hard to judge ’cause it’s not the highest-quality recording, but it doesn’t do much for me. I dunno. I think it needs a stronger hook or something. But check it out and let us know what you think…
Carlos “Master of Lists” Ramirez strikes again! This time our friend and favorite Zakk Wylde’s guitar squeal impersonator has compiled a list of the “Top 10 Heavy Metal Books” for Noisecreep. Check it out here.
It’s a very good list (and includes an entry by a sometimes-MS contributor!), but I am a little bummed that Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City didn’t make the cut. To be fair, that book is primarily about hair metal (Klosterman writes briefly about Slayer, and his complete lack of understanding of that band’s work borders on embarrassing) and has a Kiss cow on the cover of more recent editions (as though Gene Simmons didn’t look bovine enough already), so it’s possible Carlos didn’t consider it a “metal book;” still, it’s a great read and I think deserves it’s moment in the “top ten list” sun.
So what would I bump from Carlos’ otherwise excellent compilation? Probably Garry Sharpe-Young’s Metal: The Definitive Guide. Not because it’s a bad book, but because I’ve never read it. Not the best reasoning, I know, but, hey. Blow me.
There are some other famous metal tomes missing from the list, but… for the most part, I think Carlos nailed it. Slash’s autobiography, for example, really does not deserve a spot here.
Check out the rest of Carlos’ list here, then come back and argue about which books, if any, he missed.
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 3:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
It doesn’t feel like spring out today – it feels like summer. The sun has been going down later and later and the weather has been getting nicer and nicer, and now, all of sudden, it’s 90 (!) degrees out. I don’t think it will last all that long – the East Coast often gets one last snowstorm in April before the nice weather begins in earnest – but it has made for some very relaxing, long walks as of late. (Not hurting: that the ladies of NYC have wasted no time adjusting their wardrobes appropriately. It’s like a Rock of Love casting call out there, except, mercifully, with fewer surgical “enhancements.”)
The problem is, when the doom n’ gloom of metal is your music of choice, it can be hard to find an appropriate soundtrack for such a beautiful day.
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 1:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
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?
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.
I don’t know how this hasn’t made more headlines, given all the hype around Slash’s forthcoming solo album, but: Letters of Note, a website that collects “correspondence deserving of a wider audience,” has unearthed a letter that a fourteen year old Saul Hudson – that’s Slash to you – wrote to Michelle Young, a girl who had recently dumped him for talking about his guitar too much (!), and who would go on to be the subject of Guns N’ Roses’ classic, “My Michelle.”
The letter, written in 1979, features the (not too shabby!) doodles you see above, plus heartfelt Slashian poetry as this:
Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 3:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
Slash has been unveiling a song a day from his new, self-titled solo album, so at this point, if you’ve wanted to hear the entire record, you pretty much have. But if you’re like me, and you were too lazy to keep checking back all the various websites where the shit has been streaming these past week, AOL now has the entire album in one place. I’ll try to write a full review in time for Slash‘s release on Tuesday, but the short version is: “Hey! It’s not the total face-raping I was expecting!” Which I guess would make it Slash’s Death Magnetic. So, April Fool’s on me, I guess.
I don’t think it will come as a galloping shock to anyone to learn that the rumors are true: Duff McKagan is the new bass player for Jane’s Addiction. Slash basically spilled the beans in an interview a couple of weeks back, and then some photos of Duff working with the band popped up online, and now he’s actually gigged with the group – that grainy video up top is footage of Duff’s Addiction covering Led Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love.” I’m excited that Duff will now once again be in a band that plays for more than fifty people a night, although I’m sure the dudes in Loaded are pretty bummed. Of course, between this and Slash’s solo album, I’d wager we won’t get any new developments on the Velvet Revolver front until 2012, if ever.
Finally: the drums on Slash’s solo album were recorded by Josh Freese, who also played drums on the nu-GN’R song “Oh My God,” which featured a guitar solo by… Dave Navarro. Small world. But I find it funny that Slash and Duff are now both working with dudes who have played with Axl Rose more recently than they have.
Past behavior is always the best indicator of future behavior. Which isn’t to say that people can’t change; they just usually don’t change, because, well, changing means taking a good, hard look in the mirror, admitting your faults to yourself, and then working on those faults. And most people just don’t wanna do that, ’cause, y’know. Even if the end result is good, the process kinda sucks.
Which is why I will never, ever again pay to see Stone Temple Pilots or any band featuring Scott Weiland, and why, even if I was offered a free ticket, I’d have to think long and hard about whether or not it was worth the schlep. Because watching that strung-out, off-key motherfucker try to take his coat off for five minutes is all the “performance art” I’ll never need this lifetime, thank you very much.
But Vince is a much bigger STP fan than I ever was, and I believe him that the band put on a killer show at SXSW a couple of weeks ago, and that Weiland “appeared sober.”
But I’m not convinced that Weiland actually is sober.
See, Blabbermouth had two interesting stories about Mr. Weiland over the weekend. In the first, he fell off the stage in Sioux City, Iowa:
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.
