Slash confirms that he didn’t like this iconic Guns N’ Roses song: “I have to admit I did have a thing with it”
Musicians often become sick of their own hits – Robert Plant even claimed he’d “break out in hives” if he’d have to sing Stairway To Heaven at every show.
Guns N’ Roses’ Slash is a little different however, admitting to Guitar World interview that he didn’t like Sweet Child O’ Mine even before it was a hit. Before its writing, Slash considered Guns N’ Roses a “Motörhead-type hard rock band”. But in hindsight, he thinks this ballad helped them to reach fame, being their only US number one single in 1988.
READ MORE: Metal guitarist calls this Guns N’ Roses classic “terrible” – but also admits it’s his “main inspiration”
Some of Slash’s distaste for the track might boil down to how challenging the song’s solo is to play. Particularly live – and drunk – as he reminisces: “We played it one time opening for Ted Nugent, and when it was time to play the song, I was like ‘Oh fuck’. And of course, I had to remember how to play the riff accurately by myself in front of everybody every time.”
These days, Slash feels more neutral about its inclusion, saying “it’s become one of the big tentpole songs in the set. So it is what it is.”
When it comes to writing solos, Slash finds this more of a stream of consciousness flow rather than something he sets out to do. “All the solos were very spontaneous and at-the-moment the song was written. You figure out what the chord changes are going to be and then just do what you feel.”
Sweet Child O’ Mine was written in this exact way: “it was just a riff I came up with, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, but it inspired the whole song.” Their 1991 release November Rain’s solo also came about the same way: “It sounds so structured to me now, [but it] was just what happened in the moment.”
This isn’t the first time that Slash has felt at odds with the band’s creative output. He told Yahoo in 2022 that November Rain’s wedding concept music video went against his values as a “stripped down rock guy”, but being his diplomatic self does think “it came out pretty awesome”. At the end of the day, he “always knew it was a really great song”.
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