Slash Quotes

There is a subconscious, emotional level that informs playing, and since I’m the kind of person who carries his baggage around internally, nothing has ever helped me tap into my feelings more.

The guitar players that inspire me today are basically all the same guitar players that inspired me when I first started. That hasn't really changed, but additionally I think that Tom Morello, Jack White & Jerry Cantrell are great and are some of the really inspiring lead guitar players that have come out in the last 20 years.

When we weren't being transcendent we specialized in self-inflicted disaster.

If it had been any different, if I had been born just one minute later, or been in the wrong pace at the right time or vice versa, the life that I've lived and come to love would not exist. And that is a situation that I would not want to consider in the slightest.

As we mixed down the song “Rocket Queen,” Axl felt that the bridge needed something; some other element to elevate the drama. He suggested that Adrianna Smith, who was with us in the studio that day, fuck him in the live room so that we could record her vocals and layer them over the breakdown. We’d been drinking Jack pretty heavily all day, so it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I was all for it; I knew too well what she was capable of vocally — she had kept me up for the past three nights. So we lit up some candles for atmosphere, then she and Axl went out into the live room, got down on the floor by the drum riser, and we recorded Smith’s performance in all of its honest moaning and groaning. Enjoy it — it’s right there in the final mix. That breakdown said it all; I couldn’t think of a better song to close the album and I couldn’t think of a more telling slice of our lives at the time to hand to our fans.

I'd like to dedicate this song real quick, and I'm not going to say anything offensive so that we can make it on TV. This song isn't dedicated to drinking or drug addiction [...]. It's basically about a walk in the park. This is something called 'Nightrain'.

Experiencing yourself out of context, divorced from your usual point of view, skews your perspective – it’s like hearing your voice on an answering machine. It’s almost like meeting a stranger; or discovering a talent you never knew you had.

No one expects the rug to be yanked out from underneath them; life-changing events usually don’t announce themselves. While instinct and intuition can help provide some warning signs, they can do little to prepare you for the feeling of rootlessness that follows when fate flips your world upside down. Anger, confusion, sadness, and frustration are shaken up together inside you like a snow globe. It takes years for the emotional dust to settle as you do your best to see through the storm.

Being a rockstar is the intersection of who you are and who you want to be.

You can't wait around for destiny to give you what you think you deserve, you have to earn it, even if you think you've paid your dues.

He had reduced rock stardom to its roots: being a rock star is the intersection of who you are and who you want to be.

It makes sense that the bands first show took place in Seattle because as much as L.A. was our address, we had as much in common with the average "L.A." band as Seattle's weather has with Southern California.

GET YOURSELF TOGETHER DRINK TILL YOU DROP FORGET ABOUT TOMORROW AND HAVE ANOTHER SHOT

I recognized my own creative voice filtered through those six strings, but it was also something else entirely. Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me.

My big awakening happened when I was fourteen. I'd been trying to get into this older girl's pants for a while, and she finally let me come over to her house. We hung out, smoked some pot and listened to Aerosmith's Rocks. It hit me like a fucking ton of bricks. I sat there listening to it over and over, and totally blew off this girl. I remember riding my bike back to my grandma's house knowing that my life had changed. Now I identified with something.