Slash singing a new song after hearing voices in his head

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/09/2010 (5582 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Considering Slash’s history with vocalists, you might expect the guitarist would put out an instrumental album.

Instead, he enlisted 12 of them to handle lyrical duties on his first solo album, Slash.

“I had this idea I wanted to do an album with people guesting on it, and didn’t even realize what that looked like going in with all these singers after an amazing roller-coaster ride with other singers in my past,” he says.

“All these guys were a joy to work with. It was all super professional and easy. It was amazing and seamless. It established in my mind a more positive point of view of singers. It was getting dated — not just the singers I’ve worked with and dealing with their idiosyncrasies — but searching for singers.”

Then pity the top-hat wearing axe-slinger, because after his tour in support of Slash, which stops at the Burton Cummings Theatre for a sold out show Friday, the 45-year-old known as Saul Hudson to his mom will again be on the hunt for a vocalist to front Velvet Revolver, the hard rock group he’s in with his former Guns N’ Roses bandmates Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum.

The group released two albums with Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, but ended their relationship with him 2008.

“I’m still in Velvet. We’re still looking for a singer and we’ll go on until we find one. We’ve got a half a dozen songs already. I’m on tour until October then we’ll sit down and figure out what we’re going to do next,” he says.

On his current tour he has enlisted the services of Myles Kennedy, vocalist for Alter Bridge, a band featuring Creed sans Scott Stapp, who left the band for a while before hooking up with them for a reunion album and tour last year (Stapp plays a solo acoustic show at McPhillips Station Casino on Oct. 20).

Kennedy is the only singer with two songs on Slash’s album, which also features performances from Ozzy Osbourne, Ian Astbury, Lemmy Kilmister, Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson, Chris Cornell, Kid Rock and Iggy Pop.

Slash sent each of the singers music without vocals and got them to write lyrics. He won’t pick a favourite, but was impressed by some of the songs that fell outside of his normal boundaries.

“Adam Levine (Maroon 5) gave an amazing performance of that song (Gotten) that’s left of centre of what I’m known for. And probably the guys I didn’t know, M Shadows (Avenged Sevenfold), Andrew Stockdale (Wolfmother) and Rocco DeLuca, who was a huge surprise for me. I was turned on to him looking for a high falsetto for this acoustic thing,” Slash says.

The strength of Kennedy’s work on his initial song, Starlight, prompted Slash to get him to do another one (Back From Cali) and ultimately hire him for the tour after learning he had some time off from Alter Bridge because of the Creed reunion.

His search for a drummer led him to Brent Fitz, a Winnipegger who has played with the likes of Vince Neil, Alice Cooper and Theory of a Deadman since moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s.

These days Fitz, 40, calls Las Vegas home, but Slash tracked him down after hearing about him from several trusted friends.

“I kept getting different emails from unrelated people all about this guy Brent Fitz. He seemed like a nice guy, so I had him come down and play and he was the only drummer that could play hard and heavy and behind the beat, and that did it for me,” Slash says about the John Taylor Collegiate graduate.

Slash’s original bassist couldn’t tour, so Fitz turned him onto ex Age of Electric leader Todd Kerns, who is now handling four-string duties on the tour, which has travelled throughout Europe, Asia and North America.

“There’s certainly a heavy Canadian presence in the band, they’re half the band,” Slash says with a laugh.

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca