What Slash's Former Bandmates Have To Say About Him

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there wasn't a bigger band on the planet than Guns N' Roses. Busting out in 1987 with "Appetite for Destruction" and continuing on through "GNR Lies" and the ambitious "Use Your Illusion" double album, Guns N' Roses provided the blueprint for hard rock of the era. Along with the shrieking, sinister vocals of Axl Rose, the sound of Guns N' Roses was defined by the soaring, clear, and virtuosic lead guitar work of the enigmatic, top-hatted Saul Hudson, better known by the stage name Slash. Slash's astonishing work elevated his band out of the widely dismissed Los Angeles hair metal scene from whence it came.

Following a band breakup that was worse than you thought, Slash went on to a solo career and to lead numerous other hard and heavy bands, including Slash's Snakepit and Velvet Revolver. He's worked with a number of singers, guitarists, bassists, and drummers, and they seemingly all have a lot to say about their colleague. Here's what Slash's bandmates really thought about the legendary guitarist.

The heart of Guns N' Roses was the fruitful musical partnership between guitarist Slash and lead singer and primary songwriter Axl Rose. The latter previously toiled in Los Angeles for a long time, seeking a collaborator like Slash. "I saw all these people trying to be Eddie Van Halen. And it took five years to find somebody who played more from the heart rather than just trying to be the fastest and trying to do this and that to be a big rock star," Rose said in a 1988 interview (via Reddit). "He'll be very quiet most of the time and won't let a lot of himself out until he picks up the guitar, and then his heart and soul seems to pour out through the guitar."

After not playing together and being out of contact for about two decades, Rose and Slash reunited for a Guns N' Roses tour in 2016. It would mark the first time the guitarist would play music that Rose recorded without him, namely tracks from the 2008 album "Chinese Democracy." "I didn't have to tell Slash anything about working on the 'Chinese' songs or how to play them. He just embraced them and worked really hard, and I had no idea how they were going to sound," Rose said at The China Exchange (via YouTube) in 2016.

Guns N' Roses employed two primary guitarists in the late 1980s: Slash and Izzy Stradlin. They often worked together on building the skeletons of what would become the band's songs. "Musically, we contributed stuff mutually, and we tried to put in more effort than the others," Stradlin told Popular 1 in 2008 of his process with Slash. "And at a personal level, well, we took many drugs together in the '80s, and after a while we got sick of it and quit. I still consider him a friend."

No one has been in more bands with Slash than Duff McKagan, who played bass in Guns N' Roses and in Velvet Revolver. He also did early work with Slash as he was getting his band, Slash's Snakepit, started, per All Music. He's well acquainted with Slash on a professional and deeply personal level. "When I first met him, like the night I met him, was at Canter's, a deli in L.A. He was living in his mom's basement because he's like 18. And he starts playing guitar, and then he brings out his snake. And I've never been around a snake," McKagan told Stereogum. "And he's like, 'She's so sweet.' It was like his dog, you know? By the time we had a snake handler in our trailer, we weren't at all freaked out by it because we've been around snakes because of Slash. He's a foremost expert on the planet on snakes."

A palpable creative animosity between Slash and lead singer Axl Rose underpinned some of the biggest scandals to ever hit Guns N' Roses, and it led to the guitarist taking his original songs away from the band to fuel a new project, Slash's Snakepit. Recruited for lead vocals: Eric Dover, veteran of alternative rock bands like Jellyfish and Imperial Drag. From the very start, even during his audition, Dover characterized his experience as one of hard work and attempting to keep up with the prolific Slash.

"He played me some music. Played me what became the song 'Beggars & Hangers-On,' and I kind of wrote the lyrics on the spot and sang it, basically. And that was a lot of the great thing, the challenging part about working with Slash was the music was pretty much already done, the rest of it was the intensity of writing lyrics pretty fast," Dover told AL.com. "I can listen to Slash play all day because he has the phrasing that I want to hear, and really nobody quite phrases and milks a note quite like him. It's pretty cool."

With Guns N' Roses dormant by the early 2000s, Slash formed the alternative-metal supergroup Velvet Revolver with, among others, journeyman guitarist Dave Kushner. At that point, Slash was about two decades into his status as one of the most famous and beloved guitarists on the planet, but he still experienced stage fright. "I remember Slash would get super nervous. Like, every time. And he would tell me, I'd be like, 'Dude, you're nervous?' He'd be like, 'Yeah, I'm f***ing nervous. Aren't you?'" Kushner told Rob's Guitar School on YouTube. Kushner enjoyed a casual familiarity because they shared history. "Playing with Slash was an education in and of itself. But I've known Slash since middle school, and we also hung out in the same circles. I was always very comfortable around him, but there's no denying I looked up to him," Kushner told Guitar World. "But what was always so cool is that Slash is just a dude."

Former Guns N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum experimented with songwriting and guitar in the new project, with encouragement from Slash. "Velvet Revolver came around, I started writing more. I wrote the riff for a song called 'Set Me Free' on the first album," Sorum explained to iHeartRadio. "I remember playing that for Slash and him kinda looking at me and going, 'Oh! That's pretty good!' That really opened up my songwriting. The fact that I had acknowledgement from this great guitarist."

Since 2010, Slash has headlined the collective Slash, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, a backing band featuring the singer of Alter Bridge and his assembly of musicians. While he's definitely the star of the operation, Slash remains collaborative and inventive. "I come into the second record, and I've got my guitar, and I'm like, 'What do you think if we tried this', and you're sitting there with Slash. He doesn't need any help, but he was so cool and accommodating," Kennedy recalled to Sirius XM's "Trunk Nation" (via Ultimate Guitar). "But as the years have gone on, and we've made all these records, one thing that continues to amaze me is just how much he understands — not just the rift thing, but coming up with chord progressions that really lend themselves to coming up with compelling melodies."

Drummer Brent Fitz spoke out about his frontman's retreating nature. "Slash would say to most people his shyness is reflective in a lot of his vocabulary but his personality comes out in his music," he told Wall of Sound. "He doesn't have to speak something, but when he says it musically it speaks volumes and mountains. That's special. I think when you interview Slash, he's a very thoughtful person, a well-read dude, and a great guy to hang with, and funny. He's quiet but such a powerful personality. It's like he leads but doesn't have to say anything."