In a recent interview with The Abe Kanan Show, Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash discussed reuniting with the band’s singer Axl Rose after two decades.
The two recently came back together for the ‘Not In This Lifetime’ reunion tour. In the chat, he explained how it felt to be back on good terms with Rose and mentioned the pressure of having animosity with him:
“Yeah, it was great. I mean, God, it’s a long story, but it was great when Axl and I started talking again, ’cause I missed him. We had so much developed so much animosity that it just got worse and worse as time went on.”
He said the problems between them were getting worse over time, but felt a huge sense of relief once they started speaking to each other again:
“So when we finally spoke and I started talking about playing, God, it was a huge kind of weight lifted off of our shoulders and it was exciting to get back together. And there was that chemistry that happens that you sort of forget about — how intense that is when you get on stage together or just working together. So, yeah, it’s really cool, and I’m really happy that we managed to get past all that.”
How Axl Rose Affected Slash
In another interview from 2021, Slash discussed working with Axl Rose and shared that Rose was the only musician who had such a huge impact on him:
“I’d worked with different singers, on and off, for a while, and then when I met Axl and we started jamming together, he was the only singer that ever brought an emotional content to it that affected me on an emotional level, on an energy level. A song all of a sudden went to a whole new level, and I felt it. And that’s when I realized where music and vocals really meet.”
He also explained how no other musicians affected him the way Rose did:
“Because prior to that, everybody that I’d worked with sucked and I had no use for it, and I would just rather play instrumentally. But that’s when I first really arrived at that poignant feeling that you get when things connect on a lyrical and the vocal level and the music level.”
Watch the interview below.