Slash: The Rolling Stone Interview

"He was drawing from the time he could pick up a pencil," says Ola Hudson, who adds that he was weaned on her Led Zeppelin albums and raised in a very loving household. "I've been shocked at a lot of things I've read where it sounds like I left him on somebody's doorstep in a basket. They make it seem as if he never had a family and grew up on the streets like an urchin, but that's not true. It's just part of his image. He's not all leather and tattoos."

When his folks split up in the mid-Seventies, Slash had to get used to an unusual father figure -- David Bowie. "My mom dated Bowie right after my parents broke up," he says. "I hung out with him and his wife and their son, Zowie, when I was real young. I really didn't like him that much, because he was the new guy in the house. I was really resentful." These days, Slash has reconciled with Bowie and often spends time with him when their schedules permit.

If home life as a teenager seemed tilted, school was even worse. Shy and alienated, Slash preferred drawing pictures of dinosaurs or racing BMX bicycles to doing his homework. "I had long hair, and the schools I went to were filled with kids of bankers and real-estate agents," he says. "It wasn't like any of them came from the same background I had."

Repeatedly kicked out of school, Slash was a loner who never had many friends until he picked up the guitar. "The kids around me changed, and suddenly I got more popular because I was a guitar player," he says. He first became intrigued with the instrument after some coaxing from Steven Adler, a fellow BMX racer who later served as Guns n' Roses' drummer.

Before Guns n' Roses, Slash gigged with several bar bands and served a short stint in an all-black funk ensemble. Then he hooked up with Adler and Indiana exiles W. Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin in a succession of rock outfits until 1985, when the four teamed up with bassist Duff McKagan and formed Guns n' Roses.

After the enormous success of Guns n' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction, and the follow-up EP, G n' R Lies, the group found itself facing serious trouble. For starters, the band was ostracized because of the lyrics in the G n' R Lies song "One in a Million," which included references to "faggots" and "niggers." The charges of racism particularly affected Slash, whose father is white and mother is black. "When Axl first came up with the song and really wanted to do it, I said I didn't think it was very cool," says Slash. "But Axl gets very adamant about expressing himself, and his lyrics are very direct. He's very honest, and he's got his reasons. . . . I don't regret doing 'One in a Million,' I just regret what we've been through because of it and the way people have perceived our personal feelings."

Besides the furor over "One in a Million," a number of other crises threatened the band. Several members, including Slash, developed drug problems. The group began to slowly splinter, and it became difficult to organize sessions for a new album. An attempt to hold a series of rehearsals in Chicago failed miserably; a later effort to reunite to perform dates with the Rolling Stones led to Axl's threatening to quit; and Adler was dismissed last summer when he couldn't straighten himself out.

Eventually the band carried on. The Cult drummer Matt Sorum was recruited to replace Adler, and together with Slash, McKagan, Stradlin and keyboardist Dizzy Reed, the group laid down instrumental tracks for its new album last fall; all that remained at press time were the completion of Axl's vocals and the mixing chores. Following some of the interview sessions, Slash proudly played rough but nonetheless impressive mixes of the band's new material -- a Stonesy song featuring Stradlin called "Dust and Bones," a short catchy number titled "Double Talkin' Jive," a punkish tune dubbed "Shotgun Blues," a song about an Axl overdose entitled "Coma" and a duet between Axl and Alice Cooper on "The Garden." Additional songs recorded for the album include "Estranged," "Bad Apples," "Back Off Bitch," "14 Years," "Loco-Motive," "Perfect Crime," "Don't Damn Me," "Ain't Goin' Down," "You Ain't the First," "So Fine," "Don't Cry" and "Why Do You Look at Me?"