He may have spent much of his Guns n' Roses prime shirtless, drunk and surrounded by snakes, but Slash brought good taste and restraint back to hard-rock guitar. "It was a stripped-down rock & roll sound compared to what everybody else was doing," says Slash. He could riff like Joe Perry, and intertwine, Stonesstyle, with Izzy Stradlin. And lyrical solos like the from-the-mountaintop grandeur of "November Rain" were permanently laced into the songs' fabric. "It's hard to play those solos any other way," says Slash. "It will sound wrong."

Key Tracks: "Sweet Child O'Mine," "Welcome to the Jungle"

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