Slash

02/04/2009

Ex Guns 'n' Roses and Velvet Revolver guitarist, and all round rock God

If I knew then..What would you say to your 16-year-old self if you could go back in time? We ask another well known celebrity to offer their younger self some words of wisdom.

I was pretty reclusive at 16. I didn’t like school – I didn’t mind the concept, thought it was a fine idea, but I didn’t fit in with anyone there. I didn’t see school as a priority - that was my guitar. I was ditching school, doing a lot of drinking on my own and playing guitar on the high school bleachers instead. I took my guitar everywhere. I was a complete sponge for Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, ACDC, Aerosmith...

I had a good sex life at 16. I had an on/off girlfriend and she was my active sexual partner. It wasn’t as easy then as it is now for a 16 year old to get laid by lots of people but I did alright. If I’d known then that I would make a living out of playing guitar – and about the limousines and the screaming girls and the drugs that would come with it - I’d have been very happy.

I’d tell my young self that success isn’t always what it looks like. Often when you’re at the top of your career (in 1987 Guns’n’Roses debut album Appetite for Destruction sold 15 million copies in the US) you don’t always feel so up on the inside – a lot of it is just survival and struggle. When that changed for me (Slash left the band in 1996) I was really relieved to get out of it. It was a huge high to escape it and to get away from the internal wrangling. I liked the scrappy struggling part more than I liked cruising.

I’d reassure my 16 year old self that I wasn’t going to change much. There were definitely periods when I started falling into the abyss (Slash’s autobiography is called ‘Smack, Crack, Groupies and Firearms’) but I think my sense of reality and my dedication to the music got me out of that, and those haven’t changed since I was 16. I don’t think I ever became a prima donna. I was always pretty easy going and quite nice to people. As long as I could get my cigarettes and my booze I was fine.

I’d be freaked at 16 to think of me as a father but I have two little boys of 3 and 5 now so my life has a whole different dynamic. Really more than anything I got bored with the drunken smacked-out Slash thing, I eventually got jaded with it in Guns’n’Roses so I felt fine about leaving it behind. I enjoyed it at the time though.

Interview: Jane Graham