Slash in 1988, “You do pot and coke and barbiturates, and then someone offers you something else and you say, ‘hey, this looks interesting’”

May 1, 1988: A 22-year-old Slash is interviewed for the Grand Rapids Press about the band’s “bad boy” image:
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Guns N’ Roses: raucous rock

If there’s a book about how to be a rock ’n’ roll bad boy, it was probably written by Slash, the pseudonymed guitarist for the progressive metal band Guns N’ Roses.

Slash and his fellow Guns — vocalist W. Axl Rose, guitarist Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff “Rose” McKagan, and drummer Steven Adler — have raised a Grade-A ruckus on the road to scoring platinum with their debut lp, “Appetite For Destruction.”

Notorious party warriors in their native Hollywood, Guns N’ Roses earned near-legendary status for their seemingly endless capacity for drugs, drink, and on-the-fly sex. They backed-up their raucous persona by producing innovative, assaultive, balls-of-fire rock.

Slash, 22, admits that his band’s reputation is well-deserved, but during a phone call from a hotel in Rockford, Ill., (a stop on their current tour) he said it’s not a reputation he enjoys.

“I’m not one of those guys who relishes the bad boy image,” said Slash, rousing himself from a mid-afternoon nap. “I don’t like to talk about how bitchin’ we are and all that stuff like other bands. It was just the way we lived.”

The band’s hard-ticket lifestyle — rooted in L.A.’s consumptive street culture — included periodic drug busts, at least one dismissed r*pe charge, and ultimately, heroin addiction for Slash.

“It was a natural progression,” observed the guitarist. “You do pot and coke and barbiturates, and then someone offers you something else and you say, ‘hey, this looks interesting.’”

Slash has avoided hard drugs for the last three years.

“Right now we’re all clean,” he said. “I don’t know anybody who hasn’t stopped using drugs or it hasn’t ruined their life.”

Being drug-free has done nothing to keep the band out of other scrapes. The Guns recently went head-to-head with Warner Brothers, the parent company for their label, Geffen Records. Warner felt the cover art for “Appetite For Destruction” was out of line. The Guns disagreed.

“It was just a postcard I found on Melrose (Ave.) in Hollywood,” explained Slash with a practiced sigh. “I thought it was a bitchin’ painting, and I said ‘hey this would be a good album cover.’ But what happened was that people like to find more meaning in it than it really has, that it depicts r*pe and is antifeminist, and bla, bla, bla, bla bla. But none of that’s true.”

Warner and The Guns finally agreed to disagree, with the company proffering a second cover, and the band giving it their stamp of approval. Slash observed with pride that there are copies of the original cover still in circulation.

Warner had plenty of motivation for coming to terms with their resident bad boys. According to a Geffen publicist, “Appetite For Destruction” is one of the largest selling albums in the company’s catalogue. The record, now nestled in the No. 9 slot (with a bullet denoting upward movement) on Billboard’s Top Pop Albums chart, has sold more than a million copies.

With money, fame, and critical acceptance mounting, Slash and The Guns have been forced to consider their ongoing viability as a rebel band. Their conclusion: Fame is fine, on your own terms.

“The nice thing about going platinum is that we did it our way,’’ said Slash. “We didn’t give in and do it the way the record company wanted, and we didn’t do what the industry leeches did. We stayed real.”

Topping Slash’s list of “industry leeches” is the multi-platinum medium metal band, Whitesnake.

“They’re just out to make money.” Slash groaned. “It’s so predictable, you know exactly what they’re doing.”

Slash accepts the possibility that high-toned success could bring similar charges against his band.

“There might be a point where people might say that about us,” he observed. “But there’s a big difference between us and our peers, and how we do things and what our values are. We still share a hotel room and we don’t complain about it. And I still freak-out when I see our faces on newsstands.”

The band has also remained vehemently attached to L.A. street life. Slash maintains no permanent address and hangs his hat wherever he can find a home.

“I’m still living the same way I lived when I first left home, as a vagrant,” he said. “I just live at friends’ houses and crash at parties.”
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by William R. Macklin via the Grand Rapids Press