When it comes to making fun of Guns N’ Roses and Poison, we thought we were actually good. Guess what? Slash is better.
Few excerpts from the interview Classic Rock Revisited conducted with our new hero:
Classic Rock Revisited: [One of the] singers I would have loved to have seen on your solo album . . . is Axl Rose.
Slash: You know, I will be honest with you, even at the sake of it going public, when I was in the middle of this process there were a lot of singers names who flew through my mind during the process. You are living in Singer Land so all you are thinking about is singers. The thought of him crossed my mind at one point. I thought, “Axl could sing the shit out of any of these songs.” I, obviously, never made the phone call because I wanted to put the record out in this millennium.
Classic Rock Revisited: Legend holds that you tried out for Poison but didn’t make the cut. Is that true?
Slash: Yeah, I did. I was living in L.A. and I had just gotten done working in a band with Axl, actually, called Hollywood Rose. Steven Adler was in that band as well. I just quit. I told Axl I couldn’t handle it anymore and I walked. That was right after the first time Axl and I ever worked together. Matt, the original guitar player for Poison, who was actually a pretty cool guy, had gotten his wife pregnant or they were getting married or something like that. He was moving back to Pennsylvania. He goes, “You should try out for Poison.” I hated Poison but in those days you did whatever you had to do to keep moving. Being very ambitious, as I was, I went and auditioned for Poison. I ended up being one of two guitar players left that they were going to pick from. I remember kicking the shit out of the songs they had. There was no denying that I could play them but there was an issue about makeup and stuff. Bobby Dall asked me what kind of shoes I was going to wear. I was like, “What?” It was kind of obvious that this was going to go nowhere. As I was walking out of the audition, C.C. Deville was walking in. He had on pancake makeup and a ton of hairspray. I actually remember thinking right then, “That should be the guy.” The next day I got a call from Bobby and he said, “You know, you are great and all but I think we are going to pass on you and go with this other guy.” It was C.C. and it really did make all the sense in the world. I was in a couple of bands after that and then we started Guns N’ Roses.
Read the entire interview here.
