Standing in the wings of a venue like The Fillmore, you don’t just hear Slash; you feel the air displacement from a wall of Marshall stacks. It is a specific kind of sonic violence that has defined rock radio for nearly four decades. But when the man with the top hat crosses the border into the Great White North with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators (SMKC), he is not just another touring act. He is practically a local fixture, as much a part of the cultural furniture as a cold bottle of Molson or a Labatt ale.
His history with the country is long, messy and loud. It stretches back to the sweat-soaked clubs and arenas of 1987 when a nascent Guns N’ Roses was the opening act for The Cult. Those early swings through the provinces cemented a bond that most American rock stars only pretend to have for the sake of ticket sales. For Slash, the Canadian connection is functional. He does not just play here; he hires from here. Bringing Todd Kerns and Brent Fitz into the fold was not a diversity hire. It was a tactical strike to secure the best rhythm section in the business.
“I love Canada,” he says, leaning back during a tour stop in the US. “I love Canadians in general and I have some great Canadian stories. All the best ones though, really come from my first trips to Canada on the first tour that I ever did. That was with The Cult back in 1987, and really, that was my first sort of Discover Canada tour. I met a lot of really amazing women on that tour, so, yeah, I’ve always had a special soft spot in my heart for Canada. And I have two Canadians in the band. I met Brent in Las Vegas and he became our drummer. He also knew Todd and knew that I needed a bass player, so Todd became the bass player.”
The current iteration of SMKC—rounded out by the vocal gymnastics of Myles Kennedy and the steady hand of guitarist Frank Sidoris—is a lean, mean touring machine. But even the biggest names in rock are not immune to the bureaucratic headaches of a post-pandemic world. Border restrictions and health protocols recently forced a pivot that had fans scrambling. A planned date at Caesars Windsor was scrapped, forcing local die-hards to make the trek across the bridge to Detroit on Mar. 4. It was a logistical nightmare for some, but the music does not care about zip codes.
Slash is keenly aware of the fans he missed on the northern side of the Detroit River. He is already plotting a return that covers more than just the usual Toronto and Vancouver stops. He wants the full experience.
“I would like to do a whole Canadian Tour when we start doing international stuff, beginning of next year, so that’s what I’m going to strive for,” he says.
The motivation behind the next trek is the band’s latest offering, the aptly titled *4*. It is a 10-track assault that sounds like it was recorded in a garage but carries the weight of a stadium. The recording process was a literal fever dream. The band decamped to Nashville to work with producer Dave Cobb, only to have the pandemic crash the party mid-session.
“We actually finished the record before everybody got sick,” he says. “Then once everybody got sick, we just had to quarantine in Nashville until everybody got better. After all that, we went back and mixed the record.”
Most modern rock records are built like Lego sets. You record the drums in one city, the guitars in another and the vocals are polished until they lose all human character. Slash hates that. For *4*, he insisted on a live-in-the-room approach. That means the solos you hear and the grit in Kennedy’s voice happened at the exact same time. It is a dangerous way to record because there is nowhere to hide.
I will probably continue to do live recording from now on, but certain aspects of it might change a little. There were certain parts of it that were forced by the COVID thing - like Myles only getting to do first-take vocals for the whole record... I will always record the basic track live now.
“I will probably continue to do live recording from now on, but certain aspects of it might change a little,” Slash says. “There were certain parts of it that were forced by the COVID thing—like Myles only getting to do first-take vocals for the whole record. It sounds great, but I know he’d probably feel more comfortable having a little bit more freedom to be able to get certain things the way that he would want them. I think the next time around, we’ll still record live, but we’ll spend a little bit more time in posts getting certain things right, adding things or layering some stuff and getting the vocals just the way he wants them. But I will always record the basic track live now.”
The opening track, *The River Is Rising*, is the best argument for this "warts and all" philosophy. It features a vocal performance from Kennedy that is uncharacteristically raw. It is raunchy and desperate. It sounds like a man trying to outrun a virus, which, as it turns out, he was.
“We did the vocals live and then he got COVID, so we never went back to retool any of the vocals,” Slash says. “I actually think was a really great thing. I think it’s what gives the album a lot of its character. But I think that, for Myles, it was a little bit limiting, because he didn’t have the choice to go back and fix anything.”
That lack of choice is exactly why the song works. It is the lead single for a reason. It captures the frantic energy of a band that knows the world is shutting down around them. It was born in the silence of lockdown and finished in the heat of a Nashville studio.
“The River is Rising was just one of the first songs that we started working on in pre-production,” Slash says. “It was one of the last songs I wrote before pre-production and it was definitely a piece of music that was born out of the frustration of being in lockdown. I think, for Myles, it was also a vehicle to vent some of his frustration about global events at that time. When we recorded, it just seemed like a no brainer for the first song to lead the record, and then it ended up being the first single.”
The pandemic’s shadow looms large over the tracklist. *Fill My World* is another standout that grew from the boredom of isolation. While the world was busy baking sourdough, Slash was in his home studio trying to write his way out of a funk. He stumbled onto a riff that felt lighter than the usual doom-laden blues he produces.
“That was another song that was born out of the black cloud of the pandemic,” he says. “I was sitting around by myself in my studio and came up with the riff to sort of, I think, offset the doom and gloom of what everybody was going through with COVID. I didn’t plan on showing it to the rest of the band at the time, but it was stuck in my head for a week. I couldn’t shake it. So, I thought, ‘Well, I should at least send a copy of it to Myles.’ So, I recorded a demo and sent it to Myles. He came up with this amazing melody and a lyric idea.”
Slash’s resume is a bizarre map of pop culture. He is the only guy who can share a stage with Michael Jackson, record with Beth Hart and then pop up on a Rihanna track without losing an ounce of street cred. He is a mercenary of the six-string.
“A lot of the non-Rock stuff I’ve done has been really fun and really educational,” Slash says. “I’ve met some really cool people and I learned a lot about working in different studio environments. You brought the Rihanna one up—that was a sort of bizarre one-off that I actually did in my friend’s garage. So, that was actually a very memorable recording. But yeah, they’re all interesting.”
When it comes to gear, Slash is surprisingly low-maintenance for a guy with a signature line of Gibsons. If he is working on his own material, he is a perfectionist. He wants his specific sound. But if he is guesting on someone else’s track, he is happy to play whatever is lying around.
“When I’m doing my own recordings, I bring particular equipment—I’m very specific about what I’m going to use,” he says. “When I play with other people, I just grab a good guitar and amp that I know works—or sometimes I use what they have. I’m not as precious about my gear when I’m doing other people’s stuff. I’m more flexible with guitars and with amps and stuff when I’m doing recording for other people. But when I do in my own stuff, I’m very particular.”
His influences are the usual suspects of the 1960s and 1970s—Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. But he is not a dinosaur. He spends his downtime scrolling through social media looking for the next generation of players who can actually make the instrument talk.
“There are a lot of great guitar players out there,” Slash says. “There is a lot of stuff on YouTube and Instagram and I don’t even know all of their names. There’s a girl named Samantha Fish—she’s fucking amazing—that’s out there right now. Somebody I’ve known for a long time, but is starting to get a lot more recognition is Chris Buck, who’s an awesome blues guitar player. There’s also this guy Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram who I just came across online—he just blows my mind. I don’t know him at all, but he’s definitely badass. There is a whole world of amazing guitar players out there. It’s very humbling.”
Slash has been at this for over 40 years. He started by MacGyvering a bass out of a one-string flamenco guitar his grandmother gave him when he was only 14. That hunger for the sound has not dissipated. He still talks about the guitar with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a kid in a pawn shop.
“I love guitars. I love playing guitar. I love the way the guitar sounds. I love music. It’s something I just will never grow out of. The more I do it, the more I like it, the more I learn, because playing guitar is a never-ending learning process. There’s always new stuff to discover—it never ends—so I’m still inspired by the whole idea of making it do things that I like to hear.
