Ever wondered why rock bands today lack the balls of bands from the past? Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash discussed today’s bands lacking attitude and being too safe and politically correct in a new Yahoo interview.
The flip side of the current climate, unfortunately, is that rock ’n’ roll has become too PC, too safe. The appeal of Guns N’ Roses back in the day, after all, was that they seemed so dangerous — that “You don’t even want to f*** with us” attitude, as Slash puts it. Do any rock acts exude that thrilling sense of menace today?
“That’s a great question,” muses Slash, whose 16-year-old son, London Hudson, actually drums for a rock band called Classless Act. “That sort of spirit, it’s still around. It’s still inherent in metal bands. It’s still inherent in young bands who have something that they want to express that maybe they’re not having the easiest time dealing with. But that attitude really is not something fabricated, and so right now at this particular point in time, a lot of bands or a lot of artists are doing a lot of different things — and not much of it is really rock n’ roll.
There’s nothing to rebel against. … I think trying to figure out how to have the attitude in your music, and songs, and so forth, is probably difficult for a lot of young bands because now it’s about politics again. So we’ll see what that turns into.”
The metal ’80s were obvious a very specific point in time, in ways both good and bad. And Slash admits that “some of the bubblegum nature of the music at that time was a little bit like, whatever — but it was also what fueled Guns N’ Roses to be the antithesis of that.”
