Slash - GUNNING FOR GLORY WITH VELVET
REVOLVER
Slash The legendary guitarist
revamps the Guns N’ Roses formula
with former Stone Temple Pilots’
frontman Scott Weiland, and aims to transform
guitar rock with Velvet Revolver.
STRAIGHT
SHOOTER
Slash DOSES THE GN’R FORMULA WITH
A HIT OF STP
BY ART THOMPSON
You know a guitarist
has become golden when people refer to
him as an icon of his respective genre
– i.e. B.B. King for blues, Jerry
Garcia for hippy rock, Jimi Hendrix for
psychedelia, and so on. It’s a little
simplistic, but sometimes an artist’s
image, personality, and playing style
are so definitive that their social and
creative impact can hardly be acknowledged
without using the “i” word.
For example, who would
debate calling Slash an icon? Following
his rise to world-wide fame with Guns
N’ Roses, Slash became a figurehead
for a style of high-intensity rock that
was defined by two GN’R masterpieces:
“Welcome to the Jungle” and
“Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
Slash’s hard-ass riffs and searing
tone invoke the glory of ‘70s arena
rock, which had all but disappeared in
the big hair/pointy guitar/Spandex ridiculousness
of the ‘80s. Slash made it cool again
to sling a Les Paul, and his bad-boy image
was strong enough to live on in animated
form in the recent TV series, Kid Notorious.
Of course, even an iconic
musician has to figure out what to do
when the success train runs out of steam,
and Slash, being the restless animal he
is, had already begun aiming his guitar
in new directions as Guns’ creative
ammo began to misfire. As the band’s
trajectory started heading earthward,
Slash pushed on with his Snakepit project,
releasing It’s Five O’Clock
Somewhere in 1995’s and – following
his formal exit from GN’R in 1996,
his subsequent Blues Ball project, and
the creation of a fresh Snakepit lineup
– Ain’t Life Grand in 2000.
Snakepit soon slithered
away, but Slash kept his 6-string juices
flowing by indulging in session work and
guest appearances – even a sojourn
into the smooth-jazz realm with his popular,
flamenco-inspired “Obsession Confession.”
In 2002, a chance opportunity
to play a one-off benefit brought Slash
back together with ex-Gunites Matt Sorum
and Duff McKagan. The trio became the
nucleus of an entirely new band called
Velvet Revolver, which would attain critical
mass with the recruitment of Stone Temple
Pilots’ singer Scott Weiland and
guitarist Dave Kushner. The five recorded
the track “Set Me Free” for
the film, The Hulk, then settled in to
write songs for their debut album Contraband
(RCA). I spoke with Slash in Los Angeles
last October as the band was finishing
up the new album.
GP: How did the Velvet Revolver come
together?
It started when Matt (Sorum) and I decided
to put a band together to play for a benefit
for the family of (drummer) Randy Castillo
after he passed away in 2002. We called
up Duff, and he came down from Seattle,
and I enlisted Josh Todd and Keith Nelson
from Buckcherry, who were trying to get
something new going. As soon as things
started coming together, my wheels started
turning. So we got together and rehearsed
six songs, which was no big deal, but
when we got onstage, it was a very intense
experience. Matt and Duff and I decided
it was just too cool to forget about,
and we just started writing songs. For
a couple of different reasons, we decided
that Josh wasn’t the guy to sing
for this thing, and then we realized Keith
wasn’t the right guitarist, either.
So Duff called his guitar player, Dave
Kushner, who I’d known from junior
high school. Dave only came in temporarily
to fill the spot, but we just started
working and writing, and he ended up being
the guy.
GP: How did you get
Scott Weiland in the band?
He was the first guy that came to my mind
when we started looking for a singer.
It seemed like a pretty far-fetched idea,
but whenever the situation comes up where
you’ve got to find the right guy,
it doesn’t matter what band he’s
in. As long as he’s alive, there’s
a possibility. It took a long time and
hundreds of horrible auditions with other
singers, but we eventually got him.
GP: What do you look
for when choosing band members?
Having gone through a couple of personnel
changes in Guns, and putting together
couple of Snakepits, I’ve learned
that chemistry is a real important factor
in a great rock-and-roll band. You know
what it’s like to walk into a room
and feel comfortable because you know
everybody and you can communicate. But
you don’t realize how integral that
is to the whole thing until you start
screwing around with it. It’s like
taking a really good Strat apart too many
times and putting it back together –
you just keep getting further away from
what it was originally. Getting this band
together was a blessing for me, because
after playing with Matt and Duff in Guns,
I hadn’t found anything like it.
GP: Working with a
singer like Weiland must have been a change.
Did you have to alter your guitar approach
on this record to accommodate his style?
Not really. Over the years, I’ve
established my sound, and it’s relatively
simple for me to hear what’s right
and what’s not. These guys are very
aware of sounding current and all that,
but, for me, if it sounds good, that’s
all that matters. That said, this has
been one of the first times I’ve
been able to go in the studio and play
with some different guitars and amps.
Our producer, Josh Abraham (Limp Bizkit),
was really open-minded about letting me
go for whatever sounds I was looking for.
GP: Can you give us
some examples?
On one song, there’s a Tele that’s
blowing through the roof with distortion,
and it’s combined with a baritone
guitar. Those two guitars sound amazing
together! On the same song, I also used
a Strat, and that’s really different
for me. I think the main thing was just
getting different amp sounds. I used a
Vox AC30 for the first time along with
my Marshalls, and that’s something
I’ve never done before. We also had
a lot of little Fender amps in the studio
that we’d push with different pedals
for oddball sounds. I wanted to give some
character to the new songs, but if I only
heard the Marshall and my Les Paul on
something, that’s all I’d use.
GP: Have you felt fenced-in by producers
in that regard?
It’s not so much about being fenced-in,
but I get intimated by schedules. For
example, I did a session with Eddie Kramer
for a kids’ record called Sing a
Song for Six Pence. All these different
guitar players were on it, and I went
in and just used what was there in the
studio at the time – a Les Paul and
a Line 6 amp. I’ve very conscious
of taking up too much time when I’m
playing on someone else’s record,
so I try to blaze through things quickly
and not get too hung up about sounds.
GP: But you’re
not that way when working on your own
records?
Well, when we were doing Use Your Illusion
for Guns, I used a lot of different equipment,
though, for some reason, it doesn’t
sound like it. I had a few different guitars
going, but I think it was pretty much
my basic amp setup. This time, I had access
to a lot of different amps, and I actually
had sounds in mind that I thought would
be cool. So it worked out a little differently
because I felt relaxed enough to do whatever
I wanted.
GP: Do you prefer
tracking to tape?
Yeah. I think that most people who are
concerned with sonics prefer to hear that
girthy thing that tape provides. You can
hear the absence of groove and vibe on
records that are made entirely on Pro
Tools only because it makes it easier
to do overdubs. We didn’t do any
Pro Tools editing, though. We made sure
we had our stuff together before we started
tracking. Some things are sacred, and
one is having the ability to just play
the damn song.
GP: How do you track
your overdubs?
I like to create as live an experience
as possible, so I’ll stand in front
of the monitors in the control room with
a subwoofer that makes the floor move
a little bit.
GP: Can you describe
the songwriting process for Contraband?
Everything was driven by a riff that one
of us came up with. Then we started putting
ideas together until we had a beginning,
a middle, and an end. When Scott came
in, the process changed somewhat because
we started jamming more and letting Scot
decide if he felt inspired to sing something
to what we were playing.
GP: Are the guitar
parts developed in the same collaborative
way?
Yeah. “Set Me Free” actually
started with something Matt came up with
on guitar. It was very basic, but sometimes
the best way for me to write is to expand
on someone’s very sparse idea, because
it’ll inspire things I wouldn’t
write myself. In this case, it was all
these different ideas for chord voicings
throughout the chorus. Then there’s
the stuff where I came up with a riff
and maybe a verse, and, of course, it
all changed once the guys put their tag
on it.
GP: Are you pretty
quick about coming up with solos?
I’m a little more focused now, and
I think I’ve become more calm about
listening to what I’m doing. Maybe
it’s just experience. A lot of the
solos on this record are very spontaneous.
Some of my playing is almost Jimmy Page-like
in the sense that it’s like making
noise that becomes something.
GP: Will you try to
duplicate those solos live?
That’s sort of tricky, because the
more you play something, the easier it
is to understand where the notes fall,
and then you become meticulous about it.
I try not to do that. I’ve found
that you can play a basically improvised
solo, but structure it so that the key
notes land on certain parts of the beat
– that way it still sounds spontaneous.
GP: How does working
with Dave compare to working with Izzy
(Stradlin)?
Izzy and I had a simple, unsaid agreement:
I’m in my world, he’s in his,
and we’ll work on the same song together
using completely different approaches.
Dave is a little more similar in style
to me, but he uses more effects. So he
has his own trip, too. It’s almost
the same in a way. If there’s something
we’re doubling up on, we’ll
work on it to try and come up with something
a little more interesting. And we still
do it from across the room.
GP: Are there certain
guitarists you find particularly inspiring?
Steve Lukather and I are friends, and
he never ceases to amaze me as to what
you can do on guitar. We jammed at a blues
bar recently, and where my way of doing
things in that situation is taking a Bic
lighter and using it as a slide, his is
finding all the different possibilities
of a I-IV-V progression. It blows my mind,
because I really don’t know much
about that stuff. Jeff Beck is another
guy who never ceases to amaze me –
even when he’s just screwing around!
I’ve played with Jeff a few times
and it has always been cool.
GP: What has been
the toughest thing you’ve done?
I played with Ray Charles and his orchestra
a couple of times in the studio recently.
They were making a movie, and they needed
to recreate a recording session. So they
handed me these chord charts, and, man,
one was a real up-tempo thing that was
quite challenging. I’m playing with
these guys who have played these songs
a million times, and they don’t like
to screw around. I don’t read music
– the best I can do is a chord chart
– so that was an experience. Ray
was easy on me, but I saw how he would
come down on his band members for screwing
up.
GP: Between your high-profile
gigs, you’ve always kept working.
What drives you?
I’m scared I’m going to forget
how to do it! I realize I’m still
learning, and I guess I’m a bit paranoid
about maintaining my chops. I need to
play in front of audiences to keep my
spirit up, and I need to do sessions in
order to force myself to learn new things.
But the bottom line is, I just can’t
stand sitting around and doing nothing.
PHOTO CREDITS: MITCH
JENKINS; GLEN LA FERMAN; KEN SETTLE; ANNAMARIA
DI SANTO; MARTY TEMME; CHRISTINE KOHOUT
KUSHNER
VELVET’S SECOND BULLET
To fill the rhythm guitar
spot in Velvet Revolver, the band called
on Dave Kushner, who Slash had known since
junior high school. Kushner’s savvy
use of effects and punk-influenced style
turned out to be exactly what Slash was
looking for in a rhythm guitarist.
GP: How did you get
into Velvet Revolver?
I was playing in a band with Duff (McKagan,
bassist) called Loaded – which was
his sort of side project – and we
were also doing another thing called Chopper.
Then Duff started doing this thing with
Slash, and eventually they asked me to
fill in on guitar.
GP: Was it immediately
clear to you what your role in the band
would be?
No. It took me a while to find my place
because they never actually told me I
was in the band. I just kept showing up,
and they kept telling me, “Come back
tomorrow.”
GP: Did that make
it difficult to know how to approach the
songs?
I knew how well Slash and Izzy (Stradlin,
GN’R co-guitarist) had worked together,
and I thought, “Gee, should I play
like Izzy, or play like me, or what should
I do?” It took a while for me to
get comfortable enough to just do my thing,
and a lot of that involved trying not
to play whatever Slash was playing. For
example, if he played an open chord, I’d
play a barre chord. If he did a single-note
line, I’d try to do a root-and-a-fifth
version of it. Sometimes, I’d just
do some crazy textured thing with tons
of effects.
GP: What has been
the biggest challenge for you in Velvet
Revolver?
I’ve got to stay on my toes, because
those guys have been playing together
for so long – especially Duff and
Slash. They’ll work on something
and get it right away, and I’m always
the guy going, “Wait a minute, how
did you play that?” I’ve become
a better rhythm player because of Matt
(Sorum, drummer) and Duff, and the level
of professionalism in this band has helped
me grow more as a musician than any other
band I’ve been in.
GP: What gear did
you use on the record?
I played through a Bogner Ecstasy head
with Bogner cabinets, and all kinds of
Boss and Dunlop pedals. Sometimes, I use
Dunlop bass wahs because they have a lower
frequency sweep, and I’ve also been
using the Dime Distortion and Dime CryBaby.
Another distortion pedal I used a lot
on this record is the Line 6 DS-4, which
I like because you can program it for
four different effects.
GP: What about guitars?
I’ve got a Fernandes Ravelle and
a Monterey. Both are heavy like Les Pauls,
but they’re not as dark sounding,
and they definitely keep us from looking
like a band with two guys on Les Pauls.
GP: Do you prefer
to track your guitar parts with effects?
Yeah. On “Superhuman,” there’s
a part in the verse that has this nasally
Line 6 distortion tone, then there’s
an octave distortion of the pre-chorus,
and then a straight tone for the bridge.
I recorded it all live. I had all the
pedals plugged in, and I was just dancing
around stepping on buttons.
GP: Can you give us
a basic Kushner distortion recipe?
I keep the Ecstasy on the Red channel,
and I overdrive it in weird ways to make
it sound either really buzzy with no bottom,
or like that old, funky Hendrix tone with
too much feedback. I’m always looking
for ways to sound like I’m not just
playing through the usual stuff. –
AT
Photo by:
Christine Kohout Kushner
