Slash

0:44Miles actually was a, he was a product of the last record. When I had all those singers come in and sing, I went through this whole process of working with all these different people and towards the end of it, I still had two songs left over that didn't have any vocals and I couldn't think out of all the sort of popular singers or at least singers that I'm into, anybody to fit these two tracks. And I'd been hearing for really for quite some time about Miles Kennedy and I seemed like the only person that didn't know him. So I contacted him and I said, I told him I'm doing this record with all these singers and so on and so forth, would you be interested in singing on a song, just a shot in the dark. And I sent him a piece of music and he sent the demo back with his vocal on it and I was just like blown away at the whole thing, just his voice in general.

1:32So he flew out to LA where he met for the first time and so I thought, well do you want to do a tour? Because I'm about to go on tour for, support this album. And he just happened to be on a break with Alter Bridge so he signed on. And I met Brent Fitz in Vegas and he introduced me to Todd Kerns, two Canadians. And we just all of a sudden had this really great band. I was, you know, like throw together bands, the chemistry doesn't always happen, you just sort of do what you do and everybody's professional enough not to make any mistakes and you go out and play. But this was like the best pickup band I'd ever been involved with. So we went out on the road and the tour just started snowballing, you know, so it went on and on. And so during the tour I thought if I was going to make another record I would just do it with these guys. So I talked to Miles about it and we started working on material and here we are.

2:23How come you don't play acoustic more? I ride on acoustic a lot but, you know, we actually, for a rock band I've done a lot of acoustic stuff. Not on this record though. No, no, I didn't want to do any on this record because I didn't want any. I did the one acoustic thing because I had an idea for an intro but the way that this record was done, it was all I wanted to do was just kick out the jams. I didn't want to be sitting around with an acoustic guitar. I just wanted to plug in, crank it up and just blow through it. It sounds, yeah, if we wanted a record from Slash it sounds like what we'd expect, right? That's what we would, yeah. Is it always a Les Paul? Or do you ever pick up like a Telecaster or something? I only played one guitar on the whole record. I have Teles, I have Strats, I have B-Surches, I have Gretches, I have all kinds of stuff. And I did one album with Vollver, the second record, where I broke out a bunch of guitars

3:11and I also did it for User Illusions. There's something not very satisfying about picking up a different guitar just because you necessarily want to sound like that guitar. I'd rather take my guitar that I always use and try and make it sound like that. It's a little bit more challenging. Some story that I had heard briefly about a tour in Australia with Justin Bieber. And you taking him to strip club or something like that? No. What happened there? I went to Australia at the same time Justin was going. We both got there at the same time. Went after the other. Did you know who he was? I knew who he was, yeah. I'd met him before. But he tweeted something about wanting to go have dinner.

3:58And I didn't know that he'd done this and all of a sudden my phone just blew up and I had like 200,000 tweets from kids about going to dinner with Justin Bieber. And I was like, it was really sort of a bizarre thing. And so my phone died, right? So I went back to the hotel, I was with my wife and kids and I was doing press in Australia. And so I charged my phone and it was like this constant barrage of tweets. And I was like, well, so I tweeted out that I don't know about dinner but I'll take you to a strip bar or something to that effect. And that was like, whoa. So we do something called Five Questions, but because it's you I'm going to do seven questions. She just said... Quick questions, one more to answer, so that's why. Road or studio? That's not fair. I'd say road though, yeah.

4:44Lennon or McCartney? Lennon. Sabbath or Zeppelin? Don't put me in that kind of... I'd have to go with Zeppelin on that one. When you hear a song that hits you most, lyrics, melody or rhythm? Melody. What's the saddest key? D minor. What song you've written you're most proud of? I don't have one. No? No, not really. What's your favorite song to play live? Probably still Paradise City just only because it's a solo for days at the end of it. And then one word slash. Thank you. Appreciate it.