What would rock ‘n’ roll be with a bit of craziness here and there? The three pillars that the entire movement was built on was sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, and bands seem to follow that route like it’s the yellow brick road. They have an affinity for partying, playing music and getting into all sorts of trouble, and one of the absolute worst for it was Guns N’ Roses.
Guns N’ Roses came around at the right time, as rock music seemed to be growing quite stagnant. While the ‘60s and ‘70s had been huge for the rock community, there were a lot of bands in the ‘80s who lacked creativity and instead just went through the motions. They were all about the drugs and the sex, but wanted little to do with rock ‘n’ roll. Then Guns N’ Roses came along and injected some much-needed venom into a scene that was losing its edge.
While Appetite For Destruction has some issues by modern standards (like some questionable lyrics), there is no denying that the whole record is a masterclass in hard rock. From the opening guitar run in ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ all the way to the final slide solo in ‘Rocket Queen’, there is no escaping the fact that this album is one for people who adore rock music.
The venom that the band had in their music, however, was very much reflected in their attitude as a whole. Axl Rose was a hot-headed frontman, someone who you could never predict and didn’t stick around at gigs if they weren’t going as well as he would like. The rest of the band, while they might have been slightly more punctual, they still had their problems, as there was plenty of arguing within the band, and each member relied upon some form of illicit substance.
It didn’t come as much of a surprise to people when Guns N’ Roses split up. Because of the hot-headed nature of each member, gigs were cancelled at the last minute, creative disagreements erupted into full-blown wars, and the entire band seemed to be hanging by a thread constantly. This ushered in a new window of opportunity for band members as they could work on solo projects and with bands that better reflected their needs; however, for Slash to see that, he first needed to reach his lowest low.
There was a period when people didn’t know what Slash was going to do when Guns N’ Roses disbanded, but he quickly decided to form a group called Slash’s Snakepit. With this band, he had some veteran musicians on hand, and some new artists helping him out. It was a good mixture of talent adding to the pool, but that mixture ended up being nearly fatal. Slash was overindulging on anything he could, and he was constantly trying to be a parental figure for some of the newer musicians he was working with. The result was a messy concoction and a piece of music that Slash would later describe as a huge mess.
“The last incarnation of Snakepit was just a huge mess; as much as I liked it, I was all fucked up — I almost killed myself drinking too much — and I had a lot going on,” recalled Slash, “And I did this record [2000’s ‘Ain’t Life Grand’] with a bunch of guys who’d never been around the block before. For me, it was like revisiting what it was like to go out and start your first band; for them, it was their first band! One was strung out, blah blah blah; we were always getting guys out of jail for stupid shit […] It had its moments, but it was like, John Lennon had his lost fuckin’ summer, right? For me, it was like my lost four or five years!”
