Slash: True Blues
“I was first turned onto the blues when I was a kid by my grandmother on my mom’s side,” Slash says of the genre at the heart of his new studio record, which finds him covering songs by Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, T. Bone Walker and Albert King, with guest vocalists including Brian Johnson, Billy Gibbons, Iggy Pop, Paul Rodgers, Beth Hart and Chris Robinson. “She turned me on to B.B. King and a whole plethora of blues and R&B artists. When I started picking up the guitar, I was totally blues-influenced, but I was a hard-rock guy, so I had all these bands that were hybrid blues bands turned to 11—AC/DC, Aerosmith, Zeppelin, Jeff Beck Group, Hendrix and all that kind of stuff.”
He later explored this music in the ‘90s, during a period between his initial run in Guns N’ Roses and his time with Velvet Revolver. “I had a cover band called Slash’s Blues Ball with some really good players and me,” he recalls with a laugh, as he tracks the trajectory that led to Orgy of the Damned. “I was sort of the odd man out, but really into the blues. It was a fun thing but it didn’t really take precedence over the bands that I was in professionally. I still go into dive bars and sit in with local blues bands, though. So, slowly but surely, it started to get in the back of my head that I wanted to record all the blues covers.
“Then last year, when Guns was on a short break between legs, I called up a couple of the guys from the Blues Ball and said, ‘Hey, let’s go into a rehearsal room, bring the setlists from 1998 and we’ll record some of these songs. Then I’m going to get all these different singers to come in.’ We did it for the fun of jamming the songs, but now it takes me back to my grandmother and the idea that this record might turn some kids onto B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters and all of that.”
While I could envision your decision to record a blues album, Iggy Pop’s participation was a bit of a surprise.
It had not crossed my mind until Johnny [Griparic], our bass player, told me he’d read that Iggy had always wanted to do a blues recording. So I called Iggy up and he said, “Yeah, that’s true, I just never had the opportunity.” So I asked him what song he would want to sing, and he said, “Awful Dream” by Lightnin’ Hopkins. He didn’t even have to think about it.
So I listened to the original, and a week later, I got together with Iggy. We sat across from each other with acoustic guitars and basically made it up because the Lightnin’ Hopkins version is so loose that you can’t emulate it. We made up our own version of what we felt it sounded like. It was a cool moment because it meant a lot to Iggy to have that outlet. There’s something about the song that really meant something to him, and it was cool to have that moment with him doing his first real blues recording.
Brian Johnson’s vocals on “Killing Floor” are interesting because he doesn’t necessarily sound the way he does in AC/DC.
When we did “Killing Floor,” Brian was the first person I thought of, but I didn’t know much about his backstory. We all knew him from AC/DC and Geordie, and that’s about it. I had this idea of him singing it, so I called him. He got really excited because he was in blues cover bands when he was a kid, and one of his favorite artists is Howlin’ Wolf. So when we went into the studio, his inclination was to do Howlin’ Wolf justice as much as he could. So he didn’t want to do it like AC/DC. He wanted to do it as an old-school, lower[1]range blues thing. I thought that was awesome.
The Allman Brothers Band’s performance of “Stormy Monday” from Fillmore East resonates with so many of us, but your version of the song with Beth Hart offers another fascinating way to hear it.
I was influenced by the Etta James live version. I was sort of taking my marching orders from that one, and that’s what made me call Beth. Then she said, “Hey, how about if we do it in a minor key?” The song is traditionally in a major key, so I thought, “Wow, that would be dark.” It just changed the flavor of it altogether and made it pretty unique.
You appeared at Christmas Jam this year. What were your highlights of that event?
I’ve been a Warren Haynes fan forever. We know each other but not really well. We’ve seen each other in passing and I’ve been to a million Mule gigs. So it was great to get the call.
He and I had jammed at the Country Music Awards prior to that and he was great. He doesn’t fuck around—he just gets in there and does the work. I’m the same way.
For Christmas Jam, we were texting back and forth, and we loosely threw together a couple of songs that we thought we should do. Myles Kennedy also came to it, which was great because he and I hadn’t worked together in two years. So we were winging it when we got up there, and it was a lot of fun.
You’ll be supporting the new record on your S.E.R.P.E.N.T Festival through August [with a rotating lineup that includes Warren Haynes Band, Keb’ Mo’, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Robert Randolph, Samantha Fish, Eric Gales, ZZ Ward and Larkin Poe]. What are your expectations heading into that?
I’m just super excited about it. It’s really the first opportunity for me to go and do a two-hour set every day for a couple months where I’ll be playing some blues songs and jamming with some great people. I’ll be playing with all these other blues artists who I think are dynamite.
We’re putting together a setlist right now, and it covers the record, but that’s only half of the set. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff that we’re putting together that I think is very blues, but it also covers a little bit more ground than just traditional blues stuff.
I can’t express how cool it sounds to me that I’ll be going out and doing a summer festival. As a blues thing, at first I imagined a different audience from what I’m used to, but our regular fans are probably going to come, too. So they’ll get to see Eric Gales for the first time and have their minds blown. I think it’s going to be a great day of music. Everyone will have a blast.
