Biography - N.I.R.

Slash was born as Saul Hudson in Stoke-on-Trent in England on July 23, 1965, but moved to Los Angeles when he was eleven. You could say that he was born into the music business, with his mother being a clothes designer (most known is probably David Bowie's outfits in "The Man Who Fell To Earth") and his father designed album covers. When he was 15 he started playing the guitar. "I grew up around music and stuff and I knew what I liked and what I didn't like. /../ I knew what a guitar was, but I didn't know anything about it. I just knew what the Who sounded like. And so when I went to go started, it was because our old drummer, Steven Adler had a guitar. He put a Kiss record on and took the guitar. He would just bang on it." ¹
   One of Slash's biggest early musical influences was Aerosmith, and in particular their 1976 album "Rocks": "I was infatuated with this older girl when I was in junior high school. She was like the impossible catch; she had another boyfriend. I finally managed to get over to her place, and that's the record she played. So after working so hard to procure this woman, she puts on this record - and that's all we did! We listened to it four or five times, and I rode home on my bike, and that was it for me. "That record was right up my alley - my discovery record as an individual as opposed to something my parents played for me."²
   Slash and Steven started playing together, and on their own in different bands on the Los Angeles club scene. After a couple of years without finding anything steady, the two of them ended up in Guns N' Roses in the summer of 1985. Success came pretty soon after the release of "Appetite For Destruction" and when Slash and the others came back home after supporting the album, they found out that their life-style pre-Appetite was forever lost:
   "When they dropped us off at the airport after the tour was over, I had nowhere to go. /../ If I'm not busy and focused, I get loaded to pass the time. So that's what happened. /../ I got so wrapped up in dope and coke and all the fucking scum that goes along with it that finally it just got out of hand. So I cleaned up and bought a house. Then I sat in the house for a while and hated it. I'd lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. There was nothing to do. And then I got back into it and got strung out in a serious way, where everybody was really worried and I had some close run-ins with the police. But then the Stones gigs came around - which I really wanted to do to bring the band back together; that's why after the Stones gigs I went and cleaned up".³
   The Gunners all, except Steven Adler who was fired due to his heavy drug use, shaped up and got into the studio to record their follow-up to "Appetite". Slash talked to Metal Hammer in 1995 about the recording process and the result: "That is, to us personally, such a special record. Granted there was too much material, there's too much production, there's this, that and the other, but it's a result of something that most people will never see into, which is a bunch of guys going through a really fucking ridiculously self-indulgent period of trying to get the band back together as a result of being successful."⁴
   Slash has never been one to sit around doing nothing, so when Guns got off the Use Your Illusion tour and "The Spaghetti Incident?" was finished, Slash started working on new material. This turned out to be not what Axl had in mind for the next Guns N' Roses album, so Slash took the material back and started working on it with Matt Sorum and Gilby Clarke throughout 1994. Eventually Alice In Chains bassist Mike Inez got involved and the project got a little more serious. A singer was found in Eric Dover, and Slash's Snakepit's (as the band's name became) album "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" was released by Geffen Records in February of 1995. After that they went on a world tour that would last till August.
   In 1996 Slash was invited to headline a festival in Hungary. He put together a band with Teddy Andreadis (who played keyboards with GN'R on tour from Dec, 1991 to Feb, 1993) and musicians that Teddy knew. The gig was a success. They did covers of old blues stuff. Since they had such a good time they started booking gigs, and did so for a year. They took the name Slash's Blues Ball. 1996 was also the year when Slash tried to come back to Guns N' Roses. It turned out that the split crack between him and Axl had grown too deep, though... "When it came time to return, Axl and I still couldn't see eye to eye, so I ended up quitting Guns."⁵ On October 30 Axl sent a fax to MTV saying Slash was out of the band. Slash talked a little about the reasons behind him splitting with Total Guitar in 2001: "One of the main reasons I actually ended up leaving is because the ideology behind Guns N' Roses all of a sudden took up a more preconceived turn than what we originally set out doing. I'm still working on being a rock 'n' roll band and when I realised that I didn't have much control over the outcome of the way Guns was gonna sound, I went on to do the next thing."⁶
   Slash spent 1997 playing with Blues Ball, mostly at small clubs around the US. However, he had no intention of making this a permanent band, and in 1998 it gradually evolved into the second Snakepit. "You know what? We've been doing this to kill time. I need to do Snakepit now. I have to start getting this rolling."⁷
   In the summer of 1999 the band was ready, and they went into the studio starting the recordings of an album. After different problems surrounding the big record company merger in the beginning of 2000, Slash left Geffen and signed to Koch after a while. Snakepit also got an opening slot they could only dream about. Throughout August and September they toured with AC/DC. Then the album, "Ain't Life Grand" was released. Although it neither was very well received nor sold much, they still toured for almost a year (including stints in Europe and Asia. After the tour it was mostly silent around them until an interview in the January 2002 issue of Classic Rock when Slash said the band had split up.⁸
   After this Slash has continues doing occasional guest appearances. This is something that he's always done. During the "crazy" Guns days he often did it to keep his feet on the ground. He's played with everyone from Rory Gallagher and Les Paul to Lenny Kravitz, Puff Daddy and Michael Jackson. There have been rumours about a solo album with lots of guests featured, and a project together with Izzy and Duff, but nothing has seen the light of day yet.