SLASH Raised on the Blues
By Ashley Perez-Hollingsworth photo by Gene Kirkland
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20 illinoisentertainer . com august 2024
ver four decades , Slash has established himself as one of the greatest guitarists in the world . It seems he ’ s done it all . Aside from laying down iconic riffs for Guns N ' Roses , he ’ s worked with just about anyone you can think of : Lenny Kravitz , Alice Cooper , Bob Dylan , Michael Jackson , Miles Kennedy , Carole King , Iggy Pop , Ray Charles , Rihanna , Ozzy Osbourne , and Ronnie Wood to name a few .
He ' s been inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame , has earned tons of accolades , has been named the second greatest guitar player ever , has sold millions of records , he ’ s even starred in video games ( that Guitar Hero 3 battle against him still gives me nightmares ). But there was one thing that kept nagging him . Something he ’ s been begging to get out of his system for years : a blues record . Though everyone thinks of him as the go-to rock guy , he ’ s a huge blues fan .
Growing up in England , he listened to bands like The Yardbirds , The Moody Blues , and The Kinks , who were all influenced by American blues . When he and his family moved to the States a few years later , his grandmother introduced him to traditional blues artists like B . B . King , Albert King , and Howlin ’ Wolf . From there , he was hooked . When it was time to pick up the guitar , he used blues as a big influence .
“ I ' m a blues guitar player , to begin with . Everything I do in the hard rock genre has always been all blues guitar , and then you mix it ,” he says . “ There ' s a lot of different influences in , say , Guns N ' Roses , so it comes out sounding a lot more eclectic than just straightforward blues . But if you were to isolate all my stuff , that ' s all my playing is . The biggest influence on me when I first picked up the guitar was all blues guitars and blues music . I used to jam a lot and still do sit in with bar bands and blues cover bands all over America and in other countries . Just go out and scratch that itch to play some laid-back blues with somebody .”
This isn ’ t the first time he ’ s dipped his toes in the genre . In 1996 during a break from Guns N ’ Roses , he felt the blues tugging at him , so he called up some friends and formed Slash ’ s Blues Ball as an excuse to play blues covers and have a good time . “ It was just for the fun of it where we played all these really great covers . We actually toured around and had a great time doing it . I thought , you know , it ' d be great to record this , but at that moment in time , it wasn ' t my first and foremost priority because I had other things going on . So , I never recorded it .”
That familiar itch crept up again last year while on tour with Guns N ’ Roses . He couldn ’ t ignore it any longer . It was time to make a blues record . He called up his old Slash ’ s Blues Ball bandmates bassist Johnny Griparic , keyboardist Teddy Andreadis , and drummer Michael Jermone to pick up where they left off over two decades ago . “ I had a break during
the last Guns N ' Roses tour in between legs , so I called up my bandmates from Slash ' s Blues Ball , who I ' ve been friends with all this time , and said , let ' s go in the studio and make that record . So , we got together and put together ten influential songs I grew up listening to and learning . Then I had the idea of getting different singers , which was going to be a lot of fun . Having the different singers helped make it a little bit more eclectic .”
The result is Orgy of the Damned , a collaborative blues cover project that finds the musician working with a variety of musicians from the Blues world and beyond . The tracklist includes songs Slash used to play with his blues buddies . He even went back to those old setlists to help outline the album . After cutting out songs that were fun to play in bars , but are maybe “ too cliché for the record ,” Slash turned to songs he loved growing up . “ I didn ' t want it to be a straight-up blues record . There are so many of those . I narrowed it down to the songs that had a direct influence on me . Songs that were really important to me growing up and are still majorly influential to this day . Then I narrowed it down to just ten of those .” Though the tracklist features blues standards like “ Hoochie Coochie Man ,” “ Born Under a Bad Sign ,” and “ Cross Road Blues ,” it also has a few surprises like Fleetwood Mac ’ s “ Oh Well ,” Stevie Wonder ’ s “ Livin ’ for the City ,” and Steppenwolf ‘ s “ The Pusher .”
“ We got the songs together and went into the studio for a week and just banged them all out . We did some of the vocals live in the studio . For the rest of them , I would take the tapes and fly out to wherever the artist was and record them in a studio over there . We did the record a year ago , and I just couldn ' t release it [ until ] now because I was on tour with Guns followed by a Conspirators tour that just ended last month .” Alongside his old bandmates , Slash called up other famous friends to help him out , like Iggy Pop , Demi Lovato , Gary Clark Jr ., Chris Stapleton , Brian Johnson , and Beth Hart , to name a few . The album ’ s star-studded lineup spans multiple genres : blues , rock , pop , and country , but this wasn ’ t intentional . Slash just wanted to get the right singers for the right songs .
“ Every song [ on the album ] made me think of a singer I thought would fit it . I wasn ' t trying to be like it has to be within this genre or that genre . It was just what I thought would be good for [ the song ]. In some cases , it was a little bit more predictable , like Paul Rogers doing an Albert King song was very fitting . Chris Robinson doing ‘ The Pusher .’ But then , you know , Chris Stapleton doing a Fleetwood Mac song was probably left of center to most people . But I thought it was a really good idea because his voice would be a great fit for that particular song . I never thought of anybody else but the singers that were on the record for each song . I didn ' t realize how eclectic it was going to be really until it was done .”
A standout inclusion is Demi Lovato , who
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