Slash has fashioned some of the most memorable guitar riffs and solos in modern rock. But few people would have had him down as a born-again bluesman. For his latest project, the Guns N’ Roses star dived deep into a world of music that had its first flowering 60, 70 and even 80 years ago.
“I’m a hard-rock guy at heart,” he explains. “But this kind of blues guitar playing for me has always been the basis for everything.”
It turns out that old songs such as Hoochie Coochie Man, Stormy Monday, Key To The Highway and Born Under A Bad Sign were foundational in Slash’s initial mastery of his instrument.
“When I first picked up the guitar, the guys that I was inspired by at that time were all heavily influenced by Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson, and I just went full circle,” Slash says. “So that is really the root of where my guitar playing came from.”
Not only that, but the blues remains the common musical language of the jamming scene – and Slash has always liked to jam. He even got to play with BB King a couple of times (“He was really generous to me”).
“The initial idea for Orgy Of The Damned, the origins of it really go back to the late 1990s when I used to jam with a couple of the guys on this record [bassist Johnny Griparic and singer/keyboard player Teddy Andreadis] in an impromptu blues covers band called Slash’s Blues Ball. It was just us getting together, very drunken, and we would just play in all these LA dives.”
With the help of A-list friends including Brian Johnson, Billy Gibbons, Beth Hart, Paul Rodgers and Iggy Pop, Slash once again found his way back to the original motherlode.
But it wasn’t just the new album that kept Slash busy in 2024, although it was the jumping-off point. He spent the summer on tour, not just on tour, but leading his very own branded music extravaganza – the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival.
An acronym for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N’ Tolerance, the tour saw Slash and his band – former Blues Ball members Griparic and Andreadis, along with drummer Michael Jerome and singer and guitarist Tash Neal – headlined a nightly celebration of the blues that featured, depending on the date, a lineup of performers that included the Warren Haynes Band, Keb’ Mo’, Larkin Poe, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, Samantha Fish, ZZ Ward, Robert Randolph, Eric Gales and Jackie Venson.
The result was, well, an actual blues ball, with each show presenting a range of acts that reflect the breadth and scope of the form.
“It’s going to be a whole day of really cool music,” Slash said ahead of the dates. “And maybe reminiscent of a period gone by that used to happen a lot more often, where people would go out in the summertime and have these outdoor amphitheatre gigs with a bunch of different bands and players would just jam. And you know, I’ve sat in with guys doing blues songs here and there, but I haven’t done full sets like this, and in a festival-like setting, since the 90s. So I’m really excited.”
The idea of the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival came to fruition shortly after the guitarist had finished Orgy of the Damned. “The next thing is always figuring out a tour. And my manager told me that a promoter that he was talking to was interested in doing a blues festival and putting something together like that with me. And I just thought it was a great idea. So I jumped at it and started putting together some suggestions for blues artists I thought would be great to have on the bill. The artists involved represent so many different expressions of the blues.
“All the players are really, really cool. And they’re all people that, with the exception of maybe Eric Gales and Warren Haynes, are relatively new to me. I mean, some people have been around – like, Kingfish has been around a lot longer than I realised, but because of social media, all of a sudden I became very aware of him, more than I had through regular word of mouth. And some of them are fairly young, new artists, which I think is very cool to have. But overall it’s a really nice mix.”
“I’d been hearing whispers about Slash doing a blues-oriented record,” adds Samantha Fish. “And then I think I first heard about the tour from my management. And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll get to go do stuff with Slash, sure…’ You know, very sceptical. [Laughs] But then it actually came through and I thought, it’s a cool concept and such a cool lineup. All the acts are really incredible performers and it’s a really great thing to get to be a part of. I was stoked.”
Another cool aspect of the tour was that Slash partnered with various charities – the Equal Justice Initiative, Know Your Rights Camp, the Greenlining Institute, War Child – to support them with proceeds from ticket sales.
“I thought it’d be great if we could help make this into something a bit more communal,” he says, “and make the gigs more inclusive and more about bringing people together as opposed to driving everybody apart, which has been sort of really what this country has been doing for the last five years, you know?
"Like, we’ve been seriously focusing on division. So we started looking into some different charities that would be in line with important causes, like racial injustice and mental health, organisations that help people on the fringes, who are kept on the fringes because of certain discriminations and things like that. All around, it just seemed like another really good way to bring people together, in addition to the music.
“The blues has always functioned as a release for people that are having hard times – both the people playing it and the people listening to it. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people are having a hard time these days.”
