If Slash rejoining Guns N' Roses after 20 years seemed impossible in 2016, the guitarist and his longtime frontman Axl Rose have come a long way in just a couple of years.
Such a long way, in fact, that Slash might have adopted some of Rose's qualities over the last two years — namely, he's taking no breaks from touring.
The year 2016 was not only a historic one in rock music with Slash and Duff McKagan reuniting in Guns N' Roses but also because Rose found himself fronting two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame bands at the same time: GNR and AC/DC.
Two years later, Slash is about to release his fourth "solo" album, Living the Dream (available September 21), tour as Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators for a month, and then jump back on GNR's Not in This Lifetime tour, then get back on the road with the Conspirators at the beginning of 2019!
Slash admits in a new interview with Q104.3 New York's Out of the Box with Jonathan Clarke that finding time to do another album during GNR's whirlwind tour was a challenge, so he's not wasting any time supporting it over the next six to nine months.
Slash says that he and the band began pre-production for this latest release and working through some ideas in a rehearsal room in late-2015.
"But then the Guns thing started and everything stalled," he says.
It wasn't until this past January that Slash got his band back together after more than two years, revisited those older ideas and began writing new stuff. Eventually they found time to actually record the album.
The guitarist didn't say whether Rose's work ethic inspired him to push forward with what became Living the Dream, but it certainly didn't discourage him. Slash says he couldn't have been more impressed with his singer than he was in 2016.
That year, Rose shuttled back and forth between headlining gigs with GNR and AC/DC. He persevered through a broken foot and sang for hundreds if not thousands of hours total. Despite all that punishment, he never lost his voice and he was never late.
“When he took off to do AC/DC, I went to one of those shows and it was phenomenal," says the guitarist. "But one of the first things he said was he had a way of [singing AC/DC] where it wasn’t taxing on his voice. I was in awe the whole time."
On getting back with GNR, Slash says the viability of the rekindled partnership was apparent almost right away.
“We got [rehearsal] going and Duff and I have a very definite chemistry that happens right off the bat," he says. "But when Axl showed up at rehearsal and we started doing the set, it was one of those very palpable feelings of the three of us together — just what happens when that happens. And we didn’t talk about it or anything, but it was something I was very aware of. I was like, ‘Wow.’"
The wildly successful Not in This Lifetime tour at the end of its most recent European leg, had grossed over $500 million!
Watch the full Out of the Box interview above!
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Listen to the current single from Slash ft. Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators "Driving Rain" from the new album Living The Dream below: