Slash

The Guns N Roses guitarist on his new solo album and the bands wildly successful reunion

- Brian Hiatt

Sheep . . . sheep . . . Axl. You can see some amazing things out the window of this mansion-turned-hotel in rural Eng land, where Slash is currently hanging out in a backward Thrasher cap and talking up his new album, Living the Dream, with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. But he and his other bandmates have traveled to this vast green estate because he’s playing the nearby Download Festival tomorrow with Guns N’ Roses — and he hasn’t, until this interview, talked much about their fantastically successful reunion. He doesn’t want to detail exactly how he and Rose mended their relationship after two decades of estrangement, and he snaps when I mention how punctual Guns N’ Roses have become. “All right,” he says, “I’m getting sick and tired of talking about this shit.” But he keeps talking.

Your first solo LP was a sign of doom for the original GNR. This time, were you just finishing something you’d started?

I started preproduction on this new material, and then I went back on the road [solo]. At some point, Axl and I hooked up on the phone, and then we met for a little bit and started talking about doing Coachella. Just for the fun of it, because we were sort of back on friendly ground again. That turned into a whole fucking extended tour, which is still going. So all that material sat on the back burner. On our last big break, I got back together with Myles and everybody, and we revisited those songs.

How does it feel to be trying to write big rock riffs with the genre so far out of the mainstream?