Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash was asked by Loudwire in a new interview whether his newfound sobriety in the past decade had any impact on his creativity, to which he said (transcribed by Ultimate-Guitar):
“That’s a good question. A lot of that material from the old days – I can pick particular songs that were definitely written under the influence, but I can pick other songs that were written under the influence of a couple beers. Not that big a deal, right?
“But I found out that when I got sober, sort of looking back from the time I started playing to 2006 – my partying thing was really a matter of killing time in between gigs. I wasn’t really using on the road, I wasn’t really using when I was in the studio. I was always focused on music.
“So when I got sober, all that effort that I had put into what had turned into a massive addiction at that point, I took that and just put it straight back into the music. And it wasn’t really relying on me being buzzed or inebriated to create stuff.
“I was fortunate. I really just put everything into writing and felt really comfortable sober. … For the most part, I wasn’t trying to bury anything because I had like a massive insecurity or something I was trying to bury in my past. I was really just partying because it was fun.”
You grew up with a lot of famous people because of your parents [father Anthony Hudson, an artist who created album covers for Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and mother Ola J. Hudson, a costume designer for David Bowie]. David Bowie was around the house a lot, your dad always had artists, David Geffen was at your house before you got signed…
So, an average day for you was really exciting to the everyman. Do you think that when you were out on your own, you were used to your average being that level of excitement and you were trying to seek that?
“That’s a good point. When I was a little kid, it was exciting, it was a massive turn-on to be around people who were creating music – being in the studio for a Joni Mitchell recording or whatever was going on – it was exciting, but I didn’t recognize it as being exciting when I was a kid. You know what I mean? It was just the environment that I was raised in.”
