Slash

IF YOU’VE EVER WONDERED WHAT THE sound of a band breaking up sounds like, listen to Guns N’ Roses’ cover of “Sympathy for the Devil,” which was recorded for the Interview with the Vampire soundtrack in the fall of 1994. If there is one Guns track I’d like never to hear again, it is that one.

Tom Zutaut arranged the whole thing and it was a great idea: it’s an amazing, classic song, the movie was going to be huge, theoretically, it would get us all in the same room working again, and it would give the public “product” to tide them over. We weren’t touring The Spaghetti Incident and we had no plans to start writing the next album, so Tom was being practical—this might be our only new release for a while. I’m amazed that Axl even agreed to do it, because by then he had stopped talking to Tom Zutaut altogether. All in all, Axl had eliminated and replaced everyone who had helped the band build from the ground up back in the day. He always had a reason: I believe in Tom’s case, Axl claimed that he caught him trying to pick up Erin at some point. But don’t quote me on that.

Anyway, I was up for the idea of doing this cover because I was very familiar with the Anne Rice books; I thought they were great, which is why I had a hard time imagining Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise playing those roles. Anyway, Axl and I went to screenings of the film separately, and completely disagreed on what we saw. I hated it; I thought it was crap.

I called Tom right afterward. “Hey, Tom, it’s Slash,” I said.

“So what did you think?”

“I thought it sucked. I hated it,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It was that bad. Tell the producers to license the Stones’ version because we’re not doing it.”

Axl, on the other hand, loved the movie; he thought it was brilliant and he wanted to do the song. I couldn’t have been more disappointed, pissed, frustrated, and confused. The only upside I saw to signing off on it was that it would accomplish what we’d been unable to do to any degree in the past seven months: it would actually get all of us into the studio.

We booked time at Rumbo; we did the basic tracks with Mike Clink over a few days. Duff, Matt, and I showed up together every day, basically going out of our way to do something that only Axl wanted to do, and not once did he show up to a session. From the basic tracks through to the final overdubs, we never saw or heard from Axl. We were already recording against our will, so his disregard for our time and commitment definitely inspired a very uninspired instrumental track. And needless to say, the level of bitterness and resentment reached an all-time high. It added insult to injury that after we’d completed our thoroughly average version of “Sympathy for the Devil,” it took him more than a week to even show up to the studio to do his vocals.

Once he got around to listening to the track, he had some constructive criticism. Via a lot of communications between middle people, I was told that I needed to rerecord my guitar solo so that it sounded more note for note like the Keith Richards original. Now that really pissed me off, most of all because the message reached me three times removed like we were playing a game of telephone.

My first reaction, of course, was “no.” I stood behind what I’d done, because why would I copy Keith if the song was supposed to be our version? The reply, through handlers, was: “If you don’t change it, I won’t sing.” I swallowed my pride—yet again—and went in to record a more Keith-like intro, though it was the last thing I wanted to do: Keith’s playing is so awesome on that song that I didn’t want to even come near it, but I did. And doing so left me feeling even more pissed off and put out than ever.

A week or so after that I heard that Axl had finally scheduled time to go in and record his vocal tracks, so I went down to see him in person. I waited for three hours. When he finally showed up, he came into the lounge and proceeded to talk to me from behind a magazine, without looking me in the eye, for about fifteen minutes…. I couldn’t deal with that at all, so I took off.

When I got a DAT of the song with Axl’s vocal on it, I noticed that there was another guitar layered on top of mine in the solo. Axl had gotten Paul Huge to double over me. In other words, that guy copied what I was playing on another track and they layered them. It was like really bad plagiarism.

That was it—having another guitar player record over me without telling me was as much disrespect as I was willing to handle. I washed my hands of that song, I washed my hands of Guns for the moment, and I focused my energy on my own songs and my own project, Slash’s Snakepit’s debut, It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.

ONCE THE SNAKEPIT GOT GOING, I WAS completely content. For the first time in years, touring was easy, my bandmates were loads of fun and low on drama, and every gig was about playing rock and roll—not proving something or putting on a huge spectacle. Everything rolled on: the record sold, the tour was fine; I was on the road with no end in sight. We were in the midst of booking another leg when I was informed by Geffen that they’d sold a million copies of It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere and had turned a profit so they saw no reason for me to continue our tour. I was to return to L.A. because Axl was ready to begin working on the next Guns N’ Roses record. They’d thought it through: in case I objected, they made it clear that the financial tour support for Snakepit was over.

I returned to L.A. dreading what lay in store for me and I had good reason to; what lay in store was the beginning of the end—the conclusion of unfinished, unpleasant business. All things considered, the end had begun long ago; I was just coming home for the funeral. It’s funny, when fans ask me, as they do almost every day, whether Guns, in its original form, will ever reunite, it is hard to take them seriously. That question is so asinine to me; if they knew the real story, they’d already know the answer. But my response is always the same: “Take a look at what everyone is doing now. Duff and Matt and I are part of a really successful band. Izzy’s content doing his thing; Steven, too. And Axl is touring with the ‘new Guns.’ No one is making phone calls to see when we can get the band together again.”

That’s the lowdown of where we’re all at. Once you take that into consideration, the answer to the reunion question should be pretty clear, if you ask me. Are we cool?

12. Breakdown

Sometimes the truth lies is in front of your eyes and makes so little sense that you just don’t see it; it’s like confronting your reflection in a fun-house mirror—it’s hard to believe that the twisted figure staring back is you. Guns had become a similar monster; we were such a bizarre version of what we once were that I could barely recognize us. But unlike the fun house, I couldn’t escape; when I turned away from the glass, the reflection was still there.

I was ordered to come back off the road; I was told to stop something that I was enjoying in every way. I was reluctant to do that. I wanted to keep the tour going beyond Japan; I wanted to take it to Australia, I wanted to finish what I’d set out to do. It might seem inconsistent, because Snakepit was seen as an in-between project and a bit of a party band, but I was ambitious about it. When I set my mind to achieving something, I put blinders on, I put my head down, and drive ahead until I get it. And I hadn’t quite gotten what I’d aimed for on that one.

I had been that single-minded and determined when I brought the record to Geffen. I didn’t consider and didn’t realize what was going on with the label in 1994 when I showed up for my meeting. The entire record business was on the verge of a massive shift; all of the majors would be combined, sold, or dissolved within the next few years. At the time I didn’t know or care. I played Snakepit for Zutaut, they agreed to put it out, and that was all I cared to hear. I didn’t sense the confusion that was going on up there or in the industry at large and I didn’t acknowledge the very obvious anxiety that was circulating about the next Guns N’ Roses album. I had no idea that David Geffen was about to sell the company, and that the prospect of a new Guns record might have changed that, but even if I did, there wasn’t much I could have done to deliver it “on time.”

Looking back, I realize that while they thought I was putting the future of Guns in jeopardy by pursuing Snakepit, they decided that it was more important to humor me, so they went the whole nine yards to let me get it