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Long Slash Interview (4)
LIVE SOUND
There is quite a tone change when you swap your Les Paul for your B.C. Rich.
Yeah. The Rich has got a bar on it. I love the look of that guitar-it reminds me of the one I had a long time ago that sounded so killer. The one I'm using now sounds cool, but because of the bar, it doesn't have the sustain of my Les Pauls. I only use it for certain songs. When I got it, it had a KahIer and sounded like crap. So took the Kahler off and put on a Floyd Rose, which helped a hell of a lot. I love using a bar for textures and vibrato stuff I can almost do with my fingers. I don't do divebombs-not much, anyway, or those high-pitched harmonic things, all that jerky stuff.
You have several wahs-wahs.
They're custom-made. There are certain things I don't like about them, but they're completely original-sounding. I used one on "Civil War" [illusion II]. It doesn't sound like a [Dunlop] Crybaby, and it doesn't sound like fuckin' '90s metal tinsel-town wah. It's real thick. There are four of 'em onstage. I lean more towards the Crybaby sound; that's what I used on the first album. Even on this album I use a Crybaby for a couple of songs.
Do you use any other effects?
I've got my talk box~ For the guitar solos, I use a little Boss EQ pedal 'cause I need that gain. We have a great rig. It's complicated, as far as I'm concerned-I don't even know how to turn it on! But it's one Marshall head for the dirty sound and one Marshall head for the clean sound.
How do you switch amps?
In concert, Adam [Day, Slash's guitar tech] switches for me. At rehearsal, I do the footswitching for a while, and then Adam picks it up. That's really hard, because I don't like to stand in front of my amps. I always move off to the side to get a little ambience because they're completely dry-no delay. And I like to hear the entire band; I can't stand to hear guitar by itself.
THE GN'R SOUND
With both you and Izzy playing rhythm, there's a lot of guitar in each song, yet some-how the music doesn't sound cluttered.
We don't work out our parts. If it's Izzy's song, I might turn the riff around a little bit and add something. But he'll play his part the way he wrote it-very loose, very Stonesy. When it comes to my tunes, I write riffs that are a lot more intricate that's my style. So he just takes his style and adds it to my riff. Usually, for every five notes there's one chord on that side [points left and chuckles]. We don't consciously work out parts, whereas Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing probably get into that. I did most of the harmonies on the record. I try to emulate them live by getting my fingers in weird places. I never really got into what you'd call true harmony; I usually layer the same notes in different octaves. On "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" and "Live And Let Die," it's just two guitars-the melody high and low.
The bottom is really tight on this album. Duff your bassist, and Matt Sorum, the new drummer; fit hand-in-glove.
Yeah. That was an important factor in choosing Matt. It's different from the way, say, AC/DC works, where the guitars play together and the bass just keeps a line that goes straight through the song. Izzy plays really simple; me and Duff play all the intricate stuff-it's almost like one thick part. Duff takes whatever riffs he and I play and does them with the drums. And everything has to be in sync. So if Duff's playing with somebody who's not hip to what's going on, he knows in an instant.
There's an impromptu quality to your solos.
I don't believe in making everything polished. This record sounds almost too polished on some songs. It's not anybody's fault; that's just how we play-as opposed to certain songs where we sound really brash and loose. Duff, Matt, and I are so tight that the main chord thing is really together. Izzy keeps it loose; he's got a great rhythm style.
AMP TALK
Do you hunt for amps the way you do guitars?
That's one thing I haven't gotten into. I learned a lot doing Appetite, as far as tone goes. My guitars and amps sounded great live, but not good enough for the studio. I had some used Marshall cabinets with God-knows-what kind of speakers, but I needed a really good head. SIR [Studio Instrument Rentals] must have brought down a hundred fucking Marshalls, and I just couldn't find one that sounded right. They even tried to turn me on to these Soldano amps that go to 11. Finally, SIR brought down one particular Marshall that was magic-I used it for the whole album. I tried to steal it: After I recorded the album, I told one of our roadies, "Listen, as far as SIR knows, we lost it or it's been stolen." But I get to rehearsal and the head is missing; they took it back. SIR and I didn't have a real good relationship after that.
What about lllusion?
It was the same situation. I went through all these different rental people trying to find heads. Finally, SIR turned up with one really great-sounding Marshall. This time we just bought it. So I have one studio amp, and that's it.
You don't take that on the road, right?
No. Live, I use Jubilee Anniversary amps. They sound great, but Marshall doesn't make them anymore. In the St. Louis incident, all my cabinets were completely trashed. Luckily, we had one original Jubilee stack left in the warehouse, so we brought that out in a panic. I have four stacks onstage, but I only play through two. One stack has new cabinets, but they don't sound the same. So right now my whole live sound is teetering on one fucking stack. If that goes, I'm in trouble.
LIFE IN THE SPOTLIGHT
It's amazing to see you jumping off those ramps in concert. At first, I was afraid you'd crash and burn-the band has a rep for playing wasted
We grew out of that. Before the show I have a couple of cocktails, to loosen me up. I wouldn't chance a show on any kind of chemical; it's just not conducive to accurate playing. I used to play in cowboy boots, but now I'm in my Adidas. We have a chiropractor on the road; right before the show, he'll crack me up and make me a bit more limber. And we have a masseuse. My left hand cramps up some-times, and she gets right in here and loosens it up. There have been shows when between songs I'm going, 'Axl, I can't play"-my fingers are like this lmakes fist]. Now at the hotels, regardless of whether I want to or not, for breakfast I'll eat cornflakes and bananas for the potassium. AxI's always been very health-conscious; I'm the complete opposite, I used to do as much damage as humanly possible. Now that we're headlining, all of a sudden I'm really aware, as aware as my personality wlll allow~of my physical status.
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