SLASH Talks Social Media Pros And Cons

Erin Broadley of LA Weekly spoke with legendary guitarist Slash (GUNS N' ROSES, VELVET REVOLVER) about his recent L.A. Web Award win for "Best MySpace Music Page". A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

LA Weekly: What's the weirdest thing you've come across via Twitter, MySpace or Facebook?

Slash: The weirdest thing so far, and it just happened in the last year, is all these very, very fanatical fans who are like gangs... Twitter or Facebook or MySpace gangs. They all link together. In one group there could be like 18 girls, there's a lot of South American people that are all associated together, and they group up and I get inundated with all these e-mails from the whole gang and it's all connected, you know? If you respond to one then you're responding to all of them and if they send you something then it's all together. It's very, very unusual. And I have to say, some of the kinky sexual connotations that go on are... it's cool, though, it's all good. I think the thing about social media is that it's relatively safe [laughs].

LA Weekly: But there are those crazy stories about when people share too much or get too personal and it becomes dangerous.

Slash: Right. Yeah, I haven't hit that yet. But there is some stuff going on with people stealing stuff from my wife's Facebook, like pictures of our kids, and putting it on their pages, which is bizarre. We're going to figure out how to protect ourselves from that. It's just been the newest development in the whole social media thing for us. Like I said, we're pretty new to it. The one thing I really dig about it is that it really gives you a chance — I don't want to sound corny — but it really gives you the chance to respond to your fans and interact with them in a way that you normally couldn't do anywhere else. If they've got questions and they're reasonable questions then you can actually answer them.

LA Weekly: You can also update people so much easier about the projects you're working on. Updates from the studio...

Slash: Oh, yeah. Everything that you want people to know.

LA Weekly: It eliminates the need for press releases all the time.

Slash: That, and it eliminates the need for me to do interviews that are usually going to get misconstrued. They can actually get it from the horse's mouth if necessary. Now they can go direct to the source.

Read the entire interview at LA Weekly.