Formed in Los Angeles back in 1985, Guns N’ Roses released their groundbreaking album “Appetite for Destruction” two years later and in the following decade became one of the biggest bands in the world. Although Slash and Duff were out of the group for almost two decades, the band continued with only Axl Rose as the original member until 2016 when the bassist and guitarist returned to the group.
They are finally friends again and in an interview with Classic Rock back in 2016, Slash recalled how he first met Duff and Axl.
How Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash first met Axl Rose and Duff McKagan
“I knew Steven (Adler) first. Originally he was a guitarist and I was going to play bass, but then he went to drums. He moved back home and learned to play drums, moved back and that’s when I met Izzy Stradlin.”
“And he came into the music store I worked in to see if I was the guy who’d drawn this picture of Aerosmith he’d seen. He played me a tape that had Axl on it. So Steven and I went along to see him play at Cazares one night. We were trying to get Axl as I didn’t think we needed another guitar player at the time. Eventually I got in a band with Axl and Steven while Izzy took off. That broke up and Duff (McKagan) answered an ad we placed for a bass player,” Slash said.
In 2021, the band released the tracks “Absurd” and “Hard Skool”, which were then featured on their live shows. In 2023, the songs released were “Perhaps” and “The General”, which were also played live at their shows, but they are all reworked tracks from the “Chinese Democracy” album, which is the most recent one released by the group.
It took more than a decade to make the record, a huge number of artists played on it and it was finally released under mixed reviews in 2008.