Slash took time out to look back at his first rehearsal with Axl Rose and Duff McKagan prior to the key members of Guns N' Roses regrouping in 2016. Slash admitted to Ultimate-Guitar.com, “It was pretty surreal being back on this (reunion) tour because the first time that Axl, Duff and I were back in the same room in person, there was this unquestionable, powerful chemistry that I hadn't really thought about because it had been 20 years. I always knew that we had this thing. It just happened as soon as we plugged in and started playing, and it was really like an overwhelming feeling of, 'Oh yeah. . .'”
Slash went on to remember the sound of the first Guns rehearsal in the band's pre-fame days: “The first time that we jammed together was at a rehearsal place in Hollywood and it was intense. We started working together at that point, we did some shows and it was always very unpredictable and wild. Like, 'OK, let's see what happens.'”
With the band's 1987 debut album, Appetite For Destruction topping the U.S. charts for five weeks and going on to sell over 18 million copies, Slash remembered that becoming a superstar seemed more overwhelming than anything else: “I would say I was blindsided by the success . . I didn't have any big expectations for the first record. I was just happy to have done a first record. We went on the road as the opening band for God knows. . . everybody at the time, and when 'Sweet Child O' Mine' connected, the whole thing blew wide open.”
Slash was born in England but moved to Los Angeles when he was five, telling us a while back that he spent his formative years in the Hollywood area: “Y'know, when I moved to Los Angeles, I was like five, and I'd been raised in that area, sort of Laurel Canyon area and the Sunset Boulevard area. And I've always lived there and everything significant that ever happened in my life as far as like putting one step in front of the other all happened in that neighborhood.”
