{"id":8531,"date":"2012-05-17T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T22:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=8531"},"modified":"2012-05-17T09:51:25","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T23:51:25","slug":"slash-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2012\/05\/slash-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Slash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis time around I just wanted to have a good time just making a record with these guys and I think there\u2019s a lot of different feels and stuff but its all pretty rock and roll and that\u2019s pretty indicative of what it is that I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

He needs no real introduction, he\u2019s undoubtedly one of the most recognizable people in Rock and Roll today, and he is Slash, with the trademark hair, the top hat, the sound, the whole package.\u00a0 Well, take note, Slash is back with a new album called \u2018Apocalyptic Love\u2019 and this time he\u2019s recorded the whole thing with vocalist Myles Kennedy along with his new band The Conspirators featuring bass player Todd Kerns and drummer Brent Fitz.<\/p>\n

In town in February where we had the privilege of hearing songs from \u2018Apocalyptic Love\u2019, we sat down with Slash to get more of an insight into the record and the band.<\/p>\n

R & F\u2019n R\u2026<\/p>\n

We had the opportunity to hear nine of the tracks and we loved them, they\u2019re so heavy, is that what you were looking for this time around?<\/strong>
\nOh thanks. I don\u2019t set out to be like \u2018I\u2019m going to make this kind of record\u2019 really, you know, the last one I knew I was going to put together this thing with all these different singers and sort of get all these people to perform on my record as opposed to performing on theirs which is what I normally do.\u00a0 This time around I just wanted to have a good time just making a record with these guys and I think there\u2019s a lot of different feels and stuff but its all pretty rock and roll and that\u2019s pretty indicative of what it is that I do.<\/p>\n

Is it fair to say that the last album was more of a project and that this one feels more like a true album?<\/strong>
\nI think so ha ha, yeah, there was definitely a concept to the first record and then this one was just going for the sort of, I knew Myles\u2019 vocal style and I was just writing what I was writing and Brent and Todd just have a certain kind of impactful way of playing and just putting that all together and just making a good record.<\/p>\n

Having \u2018The Conspirators\u2019, as a band now is that something that you hope to continue, or say if Fitzy for instance decided to move on, would you bring someone in, or is this a band you\u2019re planning on trying to keep solid for a while?<\/strong>
\nWell that\u2019s how it came together, it was thrown together sort of haphazardly when I knew when I was making the last album there was no way I wasn\u2019t going to do a tour, so I had to go out and, the first thing that happened was I nailed Myles down and then once he committed to the tour I was like Ok I know all the musicians, all the rock musicians especially in Los Angeles so I just started rounding up the drummers I knew and that I\u2019d played with and so on.\u00a0 While I was doing that, some people had contacted me, and I say some because there was a bunch of them and they were all unrelated saying that you should check out this guy Brent Fitz, and he just happened to be in Vegas and I heard it so many time and I was like \u2018fine already, I\u2019ll go and check out this guy Brent.\u2019 I was in Vegas and I got in touch with him and we met and got on really well and so I flew him out to LA and we did a rehearsal kind of thing, an audition I guess you\u2019d call it, and out of all the drummers that I\u2019d worked with at that point, he was the one that was behind the beat a little bit which is a way sexier way of making rock happen, very few drummers do it these days.\u00a0 So I got him and I had a bass player that I\u2019d picked up who was a great bass player, but in the first rehearsals it just seemed like he wasn\u2019t really right for what we were doing, so Brent turned me on to Todd.\u00a0 So anyway, this all came together and we rehearsed for two weeks, we rehearsed for a week, then Myles came in for another weeks and we did our first shows and it was pretty instantaneous from the rehearsals that there was this certain chemistry that was happening.\u00a0 That\u2019s a feeling that doesn\u2019t happen very often, sometimes in a lifetime it happens once, so that was really encouraging so we went on and did some shows and came over here to Australia and did the MTV Classic launch and went on to do some festivals and we just kept on getting better at what it was we eclectically did.\u00a0 Then I thought if I was going to do another solo record then I would just do it with these guys, that\u2019s where we\u2019re at, and going back to your original question, if Brent were to leave and do something else, it wouldn\u2019t be easy for me to turn around and just get somebody else because we\u2019ve really established a chemistry with the four of us.<\/p>\n

So on this album did you write the songs for the band or with the band?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s initially still driven by me, I\u2019ll come up with ideas, but I never sort of orchestrate a whole song and the arrangements all done and I go here play this and here\u2019s the drum part and so on.\u00a0 I just come up with the nucleus, the basic idea, like here\u2019s a riff and here\u2019s sort of the basic aversion of this idea and record it, send it to Myles wherever he is and see if he likes it, if he\u2019s in to it.\u00a0 If he likes it he might start writing some lyrics or come up with some chord changes and whatnot, and we\u2019ll go back and forth like that and all the songs sort of get their start that way.\u00a0 In this case as we were all touring, if it was us touring or if Myles was touring with Alter Bridge, when the tour was over we\u2019d get Brent, Myles and Todd together and we\u2019d just start going through the arrangements and that\u2019s really where it starts to become a band effort, like here\u2019s the changes that Myles and I came up with and they make up their own parts you know what I mean?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Tell us about the title Apocalyptic Love…<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s the name of actually the first song off the record and when I first started thinking what are we going to call this thing, it\u2019s always the last thing that you have to come up with is the title of the album, and I couldn\u2019t think of any titles that really justified a label for the entire body of work, there wasn\u2019t one line that really summed it all up.\u00a0 So then it was going to be \u2018Slash 2\u2019 and I thought if worse comes to worse that\u2019ll work but hopefully we can come up with something and in the back of my mind, Apocalyptic had always just been sort of a cool title, you know just as a song, so for the first time ever, no not the first time, second time, just take the song and make that the title of the album.<\/p>\n

What’s the concept behind the cover art?<\/strong>
\nI just wanted to put a bunch of shit that I liked on the cover ha ha that\u2019s all it was. \u00a0I had an initial idea involving two girls which was a little bit too risqu\u00e9 to make the album cover, even I was like it was a little bit too much, so then I got this idea to sort of do a sort of 70\u2019s pop art kind of thing.\u00a0 So I just put a bunch of crap on there that I dug, so there\u2019s some cars on there, some snakes, some dinosaurs and girls and a guitar and all that kind of shit and I stripped some of that stuff away and just left it with what you have now which is the two chicks, the guitar, the top hat and had a great artist named Frank Maddocks actually do the rendering.<\/p>\n

You worked with Eric Valentine again as a producer, what is it that he brings to the recording process?<\/strong>
\nThat\u2019s a good question; it\u2019s almost an interview unto its self.\u00a0 Eric was the guy when I was doing my last record, I\u2019d been given a box of CD\u2019s of all these current producers trying to figure out who I was gonna go with to make the last record, and he had done four or five albums that were all completely different, so it just showed that he had a lot of chops for different styles and so on.\u00a0 One of the records he did was a Queens Of The Stone Age album called \u2018Songs for the Deaf\u2019 which is a fuckin\u2019 great sounding record, so I called him up and I told him what I was doing and I was doing an album with all these different singers and stuff and he came down to this little demo studio that I was working in and I sort of played him all these crappy little demos that I put together.\u00a0 He was the guy that really got the concept of all these different songs with all these different vocalists and I just felt comfortable that he would be able to put the right sonic touch to it. So we went and we put together the last record which was potentially a hard record to make, it could\u2019ve been disastrous, but he was just fuckin\u2019 great to work with, he\u2019s technically a genius and on top of that he\u2019s musically a genius and that\u2019s a combination that\u2019s rare in producers and musicians where you can find somebody that understands the workings of equipment that you\u2019re working with and also understand chord structures and all that sort of shit.\u00a0 He\u2019s completely committed, 180% passionate about it and lives and breathes it which is exactly how I am so we get along really great, we have the same kind of musical tastes, we have the same kind of quirkiness about tuning and this, that and the other, so we just get on really well.<\/p>\n

Watching the recording techniques on the studio updates, I saw you set up and play live.\u00a0 Is that something you had to do on this album, was it the only way to essentially do it?<\/strong>
\nYeah, it\u2019s the way I\u2019ve always set out to do it and in most cases I usually do, but the one difference in this record from all the other albums that I\u2019ve done is usually what happens is you go in the studio and you play live with the bass and drums, and what you normally do is you do it with headphones on as that\u2019s just the technique as you don\u2019t want the amp in the room as there\u2019s going to be too much bleed on the other tracks.\u00a0 So you do it with headphones, the amp is in a separate iso-booth and headphones to me always sound like shit and I think they have a dramatic effect on the way that I play.\u00a0 So I do a dummy track with the bass and drums just to have that raw energy, right, then I go and redo the guitars in the control room where I can have it coming out of the monitors on fuckin\u201911 you know?\u00a0 But I\u2019ve always wanted to be able to play live with the band and keep it, so on this record we built a room in the studio that had monitors in it, that had glass on the door so that I could see the guys and we could play together but the audio I was hearing wasn\u2019t coming from headphones, it was coming from a real source.\u00a0 That\u2019s how we did it, we just played everything live, we kept all the guitars and very few overdubs.<\/p>\n

Touring plans, I have to ask, any plans to come back and see us anytime soon?<\/strong>
\nYeah we\u2019re talking September \/ October.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nothing set yet?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019ll definitely be somewhere in there, isn\u2019t that vague enough for you? Ha ha ha.<\/p>\n

Lastly, is there anything you can let people know about the album that you want to give them an insight to?<\/strong>
\nYou know, the album sort of speaks for itself; I\u2019m really bad at verbally trying to describe the record, I think that\u2019s very limiting.\u00a0 Like you said, it was a hard rock record which that it is, best played at high volume, just like and good rock record, and sort of it\u2019s somewhat of a journey and you just get in to it, and that\u2019s basically it, I think it\u2019s a good record though.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Good record?\u00a0 Great Record\u2026<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t go there ha ha ha.<\/p>\n

Essential Information<\/span><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n

From:<\/strong> Los Angeles, CA, USA<\/p>\n

Band members: <\/strong>Slash \u2013 Guitars, <\/strong>Myles Kennedy \u2013 Vocals\/ Guitar, Brent Fitz \u2013 Drums, Todd Kerns – Bass<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.slashonline.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Latest release:<\/strong> Apocalyptic Love (Sony Music Australia – May 18)<\/p>\n

Check out our review of ‘Apocalyptic Love’ here<\/a><\/p>\n

Australian Tour Dates<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

THURS 23 AUGUST \u2013 BRISBANE, THE RIVERSTAGE<\/strong>\u2013 LIC A\/A
\nwww.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

SAT 25 AUGUST \u2013 SYDNEY, ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 LIC A\/A
\nwww.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

SUN 26 AUGUST \u2013 MELBOURNE, HISENSE ARENA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 LIC A\/A
\nwww.ticketek.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

TUES 28 AUGUST \u2013 ADELAIDE, THEBARTON THEATRE<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 LIC A\/A
\nwww.oztix.com.au<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0www.venuetix.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

THURS 30 AUGUST \u2013 PERTH, METRO CITY<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 18+
\nwww.oztix.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n\n

\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t