Slash's 1979 Love Letter to "My Michelle" Hits the Web

A recently unearthed love letter written by a then-14-year-old Slash in 1979 proves that before the guitarist was providing riffs for Guns n' Roses and Velvet Revolver, he was a kid writing cheesy compliments and doodling pot leafs on looseleaf paper to impress girls. The blog Letters of Note, via Hard Rock Memorabilia, posted Slash's handwritten missive to Michelle Young last week, giving us a glimpse of Saul Hudson's teenage mind — he writes about how he regrets that his love of the guitar ruined his relationship with Young, who would later be the inspiration behind the Appetite For Destruction track "My Michelle."

In the letter, Slash ruminates on his weekend, telling Young that he went to the Los Angeles venue Starwood and "spent pretty much of my weekend on cloud 9 if you know what I mean." (Translation: He was stoned) "To get off the subject, you look really nice today, you get prettier & prettier every day," the young Casanova writes, adding, "The girls are pretty (I still think you cuter than any of the girls there)." Later, Slash brags about going to see an up-and-coming band called Quiet Riot the next weekend and predicts, "One of these days I'll play [Starwood]." While he never ended up playing the Starwood — it closed up shop just two years later — he ended up more than exceeding his own 14-year-old expectations.

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Song Stories

“Too Close”

Next | 1998

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'" 

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