Slash and Duff on BBC Radio 6's Rock show now!

[Lineker10]

www.bbc.co.uk/radio6

[Booker Floyd]

For those interested, a recap of the show...

The host (Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden) plays "Slither" and welcomes the guys (Slash & Duff) onto the show, and mentions that the buildup to "Slither" sounds like GNR and then "Wheelands" vocals come in.  Slash says yes, theres a little bit of everything.

They comment that Scotts doing very well and that everything is blown out of proportion, especially on the internet.  They say that even MTV.com is guilty of this.  "Its almost like the tabloids, they get something thats even remotely entertaining and they just keep going with it..." Slash says.

Slash says Scotts been great the whole time, and he came to them in the beginning and told them that "I want to do this, but I got this problem Im trying to work out...I really wanna get over it."  Slash says theyve been through the same stuff and Duff adds "Weve been through it ten-fold as hard as he has."  Slash says he got himself in a precarious situation and the judicial system got ahold of him, and theres no messing around with it.

Slash believes the system is trying to make an example of Weiland, but theres millions out there that are the same.  "Some of the judges" the host adds.  He thinks the judge and D.A. dont want to be embarassed by letting somebody high-profile ("especially with this new band started") slip through the cracks.

Duff says that he and Slash took the Keith Richards route, going underground with their drugs and never really getting busted, while Scott hasnt had the same luck.  "Drug dealers do deliver to your house."  Duff clarifies that hes not condoning any of this.  Mentions that Scott would go to MacArthur Park in L.A. in a white limo, wearing a white dress and buy drugs.  "Sort of the George Michael underground, homosexual route" Bruce says.   Slash: "Well...but different" .  Duff: "Thats guy-on-guy action youre talking about there".

Bruce says "Enough about Scott," and states its about the music.  "Thats the only truth" Slash says.  They say theyre there to put out there music and play it.  Slash says the album will be out the first week of June, with Duff adding that the single airs April 5th, available commercially at the end of May.  "We could be playing the U.K. as early as June....but definitely sometime this summer".  Bruce says "Thats very exciting, youve beaten your former bandmate by about 20 years" which gets a big laugh from Duff to which he adds "Yeah, I dont know whats going on over there."  Slash: "Yeah, thats a whole other different kinda world".  Bruce asks if they will be featured at all on the new GNR album and Slash says hes wondered about that because around '96 there was pre-production (Duff: "We were gonna make a record you know?") and they (Axl, Slash, Duff and Matt) did write some stuff but he doesnt know if it will make it because its been a long time.  "I dont even know if Id recognize it now," Slash says of any music he might have written for the Guns record.  

Some brief conversation about Walt Disney being chyrogenically frozen (Bruce compared Pro-Tools preservation of music to the preservation of Disneys head, a comparison Duff said he liked).  Duff: "Youre chock full of information, you know that?"

Bruce asks if "Set Me Free" was the first single, because they just played "Slither".  Slash informs him that the song is one of the reasons VR came about, because it was an untitled track the band had written without Weiland for the Hulk.  Duff says "Ang Lee like passionately wanted us to do a piece for the Hulk...and also the producers of the Italian Job wanted us to do a cover of "Money."  Explains that they had no singer, STP had broken up, and both of their wives were friends. Duff and Scott talked about it.  He says Scott had already been interested and sending feelers to find out the situation.   Duff says he told the wives to knock it off because Scott was still with STP.  Slash reminds us that they auditioned singers for 8 or 9 months (Duff: "Where were you, Bruce?  Whats the deal?") after Scott had intially been thought of.  Then STP broke up and they agreed to do the song as a no-pressure kind of deal.  Slash says Weiland was the guy they wanted from the beginning.  He says that the song wasnt really released to the public, it was just in the movie and on the soundtrack, but its on the album and its an actual new record - its been remixed, but its their first song and what got them started.  

[Booker Floyd]

Host asks if theyre surprised by the amount of controversey that surrounds their previous band despite being inactive for so long, and Slash responds by saying its kind of a weird thing, but when you "slip out of a band" in the low-key manner that they did...

Bruce asks if its true that one unnamed member phoned up an accountant, asks how much money he had, and then said "Oh..I quit."  Slash says that would be Izzy, but theres a lot of stuff that led up to that, with one major blow being a valid enough reason to leave (no word on what that blow was).  So Izzy wondered "Is this worth it?  Should I hang in here for this?"  Bruce asks "Are we talking about a guy whose name begins with "A" and has three letters?"  Slash says it wasnt exactly a direct disagreement, "there was about 30,000 other people involved".  "He weighed his options basically, and he said 'Im outta here'..It was a really sad moment."  "There was others...there was a riot in St. Louis," adds Duff, "and we were in Manheim and theres 80,000 people and Axls not coming out to play.  There had already been a riot, like fans were looking for a reason to riot, and that moment I knew Izzy was gonna leave."

Dickinson asks what they were feeling at that time and Slash says he and Duff are the textbook definition of tenacious, that theyre persistent, and "any other words that have to do with being just...fucking thick-headed.  Wed hang in there just to keep the thing going."  Duff: "And we had legions of fans that we just didnt wanna disappoint.  That was the thing that really...we never did this for the money, or any sort of spotlight, you know, its really just about doing what we do and not trying to follow a trend or anything and writing music thats honest to us...and doing this, a whole generation followed us."  He says Izzy left and they were still doing stadiums and werent just going to give up.  Slash says they were touring and the way they saw it was 'dont let the fans down and try to keep the band together' and "its our life, you know?"  Bruce asks how they coped with the ups and downs.  "Just deal with it," Slash laughs while Duff says there was a real black period for him.  "I really started to sedate myself and drown myself, and find any drug I could."  Bruce says that while he doesnt advocate violence, he wouldnt have been surprised to see somebody just knock Axls lights out.  Slash says he doesnt want to get into all of that because in the early days when they really didnt know each other, it might have seemed like they could settle it that way, but it didnt work like that later on.  Slash says he feels its almost their fault because "we got into the habit of appeasing  this guy, and we could make work happen...or something to that effect...which was kind of a snowball thing.  And then...with all due credit, Axls a brilliant guy and the band is great and we just kept going and we just kept thinking 'Okay, well fix, well fix it, well fix it, well fix it' but it was an innertube with like 75,000 patches on it."  

Bruce says he played "November Rain" the other day and says "Okay, it was the tinkling pianos and the rain and the orchestras and all that, and Ive gotta confess that my head did bounce off the desk after about 8 or 9 minutes, but suddenly the guitar kicked in at the end and I was like 'This is the bit Id been waiting for!'"  Bruce tells Slash that hes one of the last great talking guitarists, a guitarist who can really tell a story with the instrument.  Bruce says he doesnt know anybody else that can bring so much out of the guitar but still rock and still make it heavy without sounding cliched.  Slash says there was a moment where Eddie Van Halen ("One of the greatest guitarists ever") was influencing everybody, but Slash says he was a Clapton guy, a Muddy Waters guy, or Angus Young.  "I like rock and roll...like pure, straight-ahead blues rock."  Slash says when he thinks of G.I.T.  he thinks of guys with whammy bars and there fingers criss-crossed, but theres an emotional thing that Eddie had..."Thats why I never even tried to pick up on it.  It was so uniquely his own, that everybody else tried to jump on that bandwagon and theres a certain kind of soul thats like a personal thing that you cant borrow from somebody else...you can pick up a couple notes here and there and sort of take that for what its worth and develop your own style and its coming from the heart.  People jump around showing off how much noise they can make, but if theres no depth to it, then its just noise."  He says he appreciates Bruces words.  Bruce says hes a big, big fan of Slashs guitar-playing.

Bruce mentions martial-arts and Duff says that after the Illusions tour he started drinking a lot and snorting as much coke as he could.  Describes going back to Seattle and waking up one day to an incredible pain, and luckily a friend had come in and saw him in bed.  Thats when he found out his pancreas exploded.  Duff believes he was close to dying ("5 minutes from the slab") and he was rushed to the hospital and he survived it, which was "pretty intense".  Says that he tried stopping many ways, but being there 12 days with IV morphine was what he needed.  "I asked the doctor to kill me, cause it hurt so bad."  He explains that enzymes from the pancreas cause third-degree burns on the intestines and in his case went all the way down to the thigh muscles.  He explains that doctors usually split a guy open to let some of the steam out, so it was pretty serious.  "Then they were afraid of me dying from D.T.s"  They said if he left the hospital and had a drink, he would die.  Says he was steered to 20-time world champion kickboxer Ben Jenerkeidis (?) who really took Duff under his wing ("I cut all my hair off").  "I was still in Guns, and I was sober and doing martial arts and I realized it was just not Guns N' Roses anymore...and I was doing martial arts everyday and just getting clarity, self-confidence, self-discipline...I could look in the mirror every night and not look at little white lies to get through the day.  It was a big, like seat change for me."  He says Scott had been to rehab numerous times and it wasnt working, so he went to Duff who took him to a Kung Fu master up in the mountains ("It sounds very mystical and stuff") of eastern Washington and told Scott "'Theres no way out dude.'  You can only take a 4-wheeler up to this place".  Bruce: "This is like Karate Kid."

Slash says that right before Guns broke up, there was no fluid creativity and definitely not a meeting of the minds, and when they quit they had a whole new reality check.  "I kept myself together by just jamming constantly.  I ran into a brick wall when the whole business started to change."  Says his eyes were opened when he experienced problems with record labels and management and attorneys.  He says the one thing all of these guys (the band) had in common was surviving chemical abuse and they all wanted to make music with people who wanted to do the same kind of thing.  He says in the 90s, and into the millinieum, it was hard to find people with the background that wanted to do what they wanted to do.  "All of a sudden we got together and it was just like 'thank you'".  He says a lot of material began pouring out and it was a great growing experience for everybody.  He also says everybody went through something really dramatic to reach that point.  "But here we are, we found a new lease on life in a band, as usual."

Bruce gives the release dates for "Slither" (Duff: "...But youre gonna be playing the shit out of it on April 5th") and Contraband.  "Its a great band," Slash says.  "We had one gig out in L.A. to really cement the reality of it and were gonna continue on as a group...it was awesome."  Bruce asks them to pick a Guns track to play to which Slash responds, seemingly without hesitation or thought: "Garden Of Eden".  Bruce ends on an odd note saying "And theres no bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken on here" to which Slash just kind of snickers.

[Falcon]

Thanks Book.

great stuff.

[matt88]

Yeah that was cool thanx

[Voodoochild]

Cool Booker, thanks a lot!
I wonder if someday we'll hear those "new" GNR songs with Slash, Duff and Matt... This should be sound awesome!!!

[Hammy]

Pretty cool cheers, just seen Slash & Duff on Scuzz giving away a guitar signed by them all you need to do to enter the compo is answer the question of which UK town Slash comes from (it's Stoke-On-Trent btw for anyone entering )

[Ignatius]

Thx. Cool interview.

I wish Axl got his shit together so he could find some peace of mind.

[jarmo]

Thanks for posting that.  

Some new things in it, like the accountant story.



/jarmo

[Top-Hatted One]

Excellent!

[Doc Emmett Brown]

Slash says that right before Guns broke up, there was no fluid creativity and definitely not a meeting of the minds, and when they quit they had a whole new reality check.  "I kept myself together by just jamming constantly.  I ran into a brick wall when the whole business started to change."  Says his eyes were opened when he experienced problems with record labels and management and attorneys.  

Very interesting - this was like '96 right?  Around the time of the birth of manufactured musical groups like the Spice Girls.  The RIAA and record labels just wanting to create a cash cow instead of risking the real deal.  

I'd really like to hear more from a musician's point of view about how the industry began to change. Gone are the days when David Geffen would personally call up MTV to ask them to play WTTJ.  Now it's manufactured American Idol crap.

The part about Duff in the hospital was frightening, and the part of about Izzy was just.... sad.  

[jarmo]

It's just not the music that changed, the record companies changed too. Geffen was bought and I guess some of the people the Gunners worked with there lost their jobs.


/jarmo

[blues_rock_axeman]

That was a hella cool interview. Some great quotes in there I reckon...  

[K-Rock]

That was awesome.  Thank you Booker!!!


I'm getting psyched for this album.  This is the GN'R style rock album I've been waiting for since '91, not Chinese Democracy.

[Sarabi]

Thanx great interview

[Lineker10]

I thought it was intersting when Duff said he did "the whole floating above the hospital bed thing" - when he nearly died from his pancreas exploding.