Slash - interview

You're about to hit Sydney on your world tour. What's the touring life like now compared to the old days? Right now I'm really excited because I don't have to deal with anybody who can't carry their own weight. Normally I've been in bands where one guy is extremely difficult. 

Like [former Guns N'Roses bandmate] Axl Rose, you mean? Yeah, well, I didn't say anything. [Laughs]...

You say quite a lot about him in your autobiography. How would you describe your relationship with him now? There is no relationship. I haven't spoken to him in 14 years. I tried to reach out to him [recently] to put an end to a lawsuit that we were going through. And that didn't really go over so well, so I haven't really tried to speak to him since. 

He's had his say about you recently - calling you a cancer, a celebrity whore, saying you've lost your edge and so on. I know! Someone sent me those blogs he wrote. It doesn't hurt me now. It would've done when we worked together. But now I'm obviously just a thorn in his side because I am continuing to do my thing musically and he isn't.

Do you think you will ever reform? I'm not like everyone else around the band who wants to somehow recreate it because there is so much money to made.

How much have you been offered? I can't remember exact numbers, but it's excessive.

Like what? Tens of millions? More than that.

Hundreds of millions? Yeah.

How much money have you blown in your life? Who cares? I never killed anyone. I nearly killed myself a few times...

How close did you get? On the road, it was crazy. Just drinking from morning to night. And heroin was like the ultimate complement to my personality. It was escapism. It never stopped... until 2001 when I was told I had six weeks to live.

You're completely sober now, right? It's been like three years. And this last three and a half years has been amazing, because I've really been able to put all my time and energy into music.

How good is this solo record of yours? Very good, I think. I play the guitar, and I wrote all the songs, and I recruited a load of different singers to sing each track. Everyone I asked said yes.  

What piece of advice would you give a budding rock star? Never get a blowjob before you go on stage.

How many women have you had sex with? Probably less than people think. It wouldn't be in the thousands. More in the hundreds, and probably not over 500.

Is it true you used to have several different girls all in different rooms at the same hotel? Yeah, I wasn't able to just bang them and kick them out so I sorted them all their own rooms. Everyone was happy. It was an expensive way of doing it, though.

Is it true you met your current wife through porn star Ron Jeremy? Yeah, Ron and I did a lot of partying together in the late 80s and early 90s and that remains the most hedonistic stuff I've ever experienced.

Like what? I remember one night, I was sitting on the edge of my pool with Ron and there were dozens of naked girls running around. One of the girls started blowing us both, and I remembered hearing once that Ron could suck his own dick, so I asked him to do it again, just to see if he could. And he did, and it was amazing.

You were in Guitar Hero 3. What's your take on the game? When I first heard of Guitar Hero, I thought it was fucking gay. [Laughs]. But when I saw the cool music that they put in there, I started to think it was a great vehicle for kids to discover cool rock'n'roll that they probably would never hear otherwise. Somehow, I got hooked on playing it, and got really stuck on it. I got really good at it.

Well, naturally. Yeah. But then I got back to playing real guitar, and I went and picked it up again two years later, and I couldn't play it for shit. I was so humiliated, I haven't picked it up since.

Slash Hordern Pavilion, Mon 16 Aug. His self-titled solo album is out now.

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