SLASH Discusses Upcoming 'LAYN Rocks' Benefit Concert

Rick Florino of ARTISTdirect.com recently conducted an interview with legendary guitarist Slash (VELVET REVOLVER, GUNS N' ROSES). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ARTISTdirect.com: How did LAYN Rocks come together?

Slash: My wife, Perla, and I support LAYN. She's actually on the board. We're trying to raise money to keep it going, and we've been doing these "Slash & Friends" gigs recently. Basically, we get a bunch of people together and put on a concert. Perla had asked me if I'd be interested in doing it to support LAYN, and I was fully into it! This will actually be the first "Slash & Friends" gig I've done in Los Angeles. Basically, I wanted to put together something that would be a really big blowout, and that's what we've done! We've got all these different artists, and it should be an amazing event.

ARTISTdirect.com: Does performing on stage with other musicians tend to breed studio collaborations later on for something like your solo record?

Slash: No, this show actually has nothing to do with my solo album. One doesn't feed the other. However, having done a couple gigs with Chester Bennington makes me think about him if I'm writing a song. If there's a song that's right for Chester, I'll be like, "I've jammed with him, he would be perfect for this!" Performing together on stage inadvertently fuels future collaborations. The correlation isn't totally direct though. But, if there was an idea, we may come back to it. The more people you know that are singers and musicians, the bigger pool you have to pull from when you want to do some sort of collaboration.

ARTISTdirect.com: Andrew Stockdale's playing with you on Sunday. Are you going to do your song together?

Slash: We're talking about it [Laughs]. That seems to be the plan. That's a cool thing too. There's a song that I recorded with Ozzy, but we're not going to have a chance to learn it. I've actually done two songs on the record with two of these guys performing at LAYN Rocks.

ARTISTdirect.com: There's a '70s vibe to the whole event. It's very classic. In many ways, you're like a filmmaker from that particular renaissance. You're like the Scorsese of the guitar! There's an outlaw vibe but an epic sense of refinement…

Slash: [Laughs] That's a huge compliment! I love Scorsese! I was obviously raised in the '70s, and I come from the outlaw rock n' roll background as far as who I was raised with, what my parents were all about, what kind of music I listened to and so on. I would imagine I've gotten some influence from that which has spilled over into what I've been doing since I picked up a guitar. I like that old, '70s vibe where people just get together and jam for the sake of making music as opposed to everything being the way things are today. Now it's money-driven, image-driven and that corporate sort of thing. It's nice to be able to make a minute and do something that has nothing to do with any outside interests except for jamming — especially if you're doing it for a cause.

ARTISTdirect.com: Is that vibe spilling over into your solo material?

Slash: The solo stuff is really cool because it does have a similar vibe. It wasn't created for any kind of cause, benefit, fundraising or anything like that but, at the same time, there's something to it. The last couple bands I've been in — VELVET REVOLVER, GUNS N' ROSES and even SNAKEPIT — there were so many concerns coming from the record company about so many different things. The pressure can be a little bit of a drag at times especially if you've got ego problems within the band. That's what being in a rock n' roll band can be about. I wanted to do a solo record so I could do something that I'd dictate myself and would be my responsibility. Whether it sinks or swims is all up to me. To get a bunch of people together who I think are really talented and have them sing is amazing. The singers were all great because they didn't have to worry about pressures from their record labels about whether or not the song was going to be a huge hit single. I got amazing performances because the whole thing was so laidback. That's one of the similarities between my record and this concert that we're doing on Sunday. It's really done for the pure joy of it, as opposed to trying to prove something, trying to sell a certain number of copies or whatever it is that motivates everybody these days [Laughs].

Read the entire interview at ARTISTdirect.com.