Guns N’ Roses Guitarist “Booked” Into Toronto

GUNS N’ ROSES GUITARIST “BOOKED” INTO TORONTO:

November 19, 2007

He plays heavy metal notes with a passion few others can match. But it turns out those aren’t the only notes veteran axeman Slash kept all those years. He’s assembled enough of his experiences as the guitar god for Guns ‘N Roses to put them into a book. And this road warrior isn’t afraid to tell all.

The real Saul Hudson’s tome, “Slash”, is filled with tales from his beginnings with G’nR to his new incarnation in Velvet Revolver. The man looks the same – the characteristic mane and the ever present cigarette, hat and sunglasses. But he admits he’s changed over the years of seeing so many strange things happening in his life. And it’s his only chance to set the record straight.

“There was a lot of rumours about Guns ‘N Roses going around that was really getting to me, you know,” he confesses. “It was like stuff that I usually, you know, sort of just dismiss and don’t pay much attention to, but it got to be really saturating and I got fed up and I said, ‘okay, the only way I’m going to be able to get some accurate information out there, from at least the way that I see it, is to actually do the book.'”

But about those notes. It turns out Slash is actually working from memory because he didn’t really write anything down. “You get sort of a structure together,” he reveals. “You go, okay, I’m making a book. It’s an autobiography so it starts at the beginning and we’re going to make it where we’re making the Velvet Revolver record.”

But despite all those hard living rock and roll years, he insists what’s on the page is the real deal. “The way it is in the book is exactly how I remember it,” he chuckles. “No one’s come to say anything any different.”

Not that he can deny much of his own story. Slash has been through rehab, lawsuits, notoriety and debauchery and has literally lived to tell the tale. That’s something that was far from guaranteed.

His years of excess have left him with a slash in his chest. That’s where doctors put in a defibrillator about six years ago, after they warned him his hard partying lifestyle had left him just six weeks to live.

He didn’t believe the doctors’ prognosis and says his presence – and his book – are both proof that he’s a rock and roll survivor who’s defied the odds. Slash was at the John St. Chapters Monday night signing his book for his adoring fans. Some may have brought roses. But luckily, no one brought the guns.

Courtesy of www.citynews.ca