It's the anti-Chinese Democracy. If Axl's masterwork was a solitary quest for perfection, Slash's solo debut is a freewheeling group hug. The former G n' R guitarist doesn't sing, of course, but his snake pit runneth over with all-star cameos. Wolfmother's Andrew Stockdale gets his Zep on, Fergie plays Eighties metal vixen, Adam Levine massages a ballad, Ozzy phones one in from the depths, Lemmy barks some Seventies punk, Iggy slithers, Grohl crushes. Slash didn't need to give two songs to his hammy touring vocalist Myles Kennedy, but the guy's Axl-scat is pretty tight. Sure, the songs are Velvet Revolver-minus, but every solo Slash plays is like a crotch-rocket ride to the corner of Fire Street and Hair Boulevard.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.