SLASH Interviewed At CANADIAN MUSIC WEEK; Audio Available

Former GUNS N' ROSES and current VELVET REVOLVER guitarist Slash took part in an interview Thursday morning (March 11) at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Ontario as part of Canadian Music Week.

An audio recording of the question-and-answer session is available for streaming in six parts below.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

During the interview, Slash talked about the late Michael Jackson, for whom Slash laid down some guitar parts on the album "Dangerous". Slash said, "When all that stuff happened in 2001 or whenever it was, he got all of those (accusations) and stuff, the one thing that Michael really wanted, and the one thing that made him happy, was he wanted everybody to like him. And so all of the sudden he was completely ostracized, pretty much by North America, for all these accusations (even) though he was acquitted, and it sort of just killed him."

Slash also offered his thoughts on his ex-bandmate, GUNS singer Axl Rose, during the interview. According to the Toronto Sun, Slash was more complimentary toward Rose that he's been in the past during the chat, despite Rose lashing out at Slash as recently as last year in several online chats and interviews.

Slash said about Rose, "You have to attempt to understand him as a human being and where he's coming from. I see things very black and white. That's just me. And that doesn't necessarily mean that that's right. And he sees things in a very colorful kind of way, and I can't really knock it, 'cause that's just him. So I try not to sit there and say derogatory things about his personality, because it's his personality that makes him so fucking great, and just difficult to deal with."

Slash left GUNS N' ROSES in 1996 and told The Pulse of Radio a while back why he finally found it too difficult to work with Rose. "Something with Axl was very insecure and it just kept the band from sort of functioning properly," he said. "Although he was wanting to do things, I never to this day really understand exactly what he was getting at, and because it took so long to ever get anything done, I always attribute it to some sort of fear factor."

Slash also spoke in the interview about being sober for only three-and-a-half years despite having two sons aged five and seven. He said, "When Perla (Slash's wife) announced that she was pregnant, I was loaded on Oxycontin going to an AEROSMITH gig, and I was out-of-my-mind high that night. And I was like, 'Okay, so now it's time to start taking care of this issue,' but I thought I could juggle it, which I did up until about three-and-a-half years ago."

Slash releases his self-titled solo album on April 6.