Slash insists Guns n’Roses debut album Appetite For Destruction is not one of his favourite records.
But looking back on the band’s iconic release on its 25th anniversary, he recalls how the songs almost wrote themselves, and they often found themselves performing tracks just hours after they’d been written.
Hailed as one of the greatest first albums by any band in history, the 1987 release has gone on to sell over 30 million copies.
Blabbermouth reports Slash saying: “Appetite is not what you’d call a favourite record. It’s a good record, but, to me, it’s still that record we made at the time what all that shit was happening.
“When we recorded those songs it was just what we were doing. I still look at it that way – I don’t see it as the big record other people see. I’m too close to it.”
Despite that, the guitarist believes its longevity is a result of its honesty. “It’s a snapshot of life from 1984 to 1987,” he reflects. “It was talking about stuff that nobody really talked about at the time. It was delivered with an attitude so sincere that a lot of people really related.
“We said things that people would have felt uncomfortable about saying, but felt those same things. We were living on the edge and singing about it, and people were like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty brutal.’”
Slash says the material came together incredibly quickly. “They almost wrote themselves. With Axl, I know he was very conscientious with the lyrics, and might have spent more time with them. But the arrangements and the music would come together within an hour.
“We might have fine-tuned some stuff later on, but we’d be playing a new song in a club after only having worked on it for a couple of hours.”
Meanwhile, former Nazareth guitarist and producer Manny Charlton has recalled how he was invited to man the desk for Appetite For Destruction – but couldn’t make the schedule work.
He tells Legendary Rock Interviews: “Axl Rose said to his label, ‘Get me the guy who produced Hair of the Dog by Nazareth. What Axl wants, Axl gets.
“I went to LA to meet them and we went into the studio where we recorded their whole live set. They were great. We left it saying if we could get our schedules together, then great. But I was in the middle of recording Cinema with Nazareth and it didn’t happen.
“I found out later they’d auditioned a dozen or so other people for the gig.”
source: classicrockmagazine.com
