Slash reacts to Metallica Vegas rumors
In a recent interview with SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk,” Slash spoke about the possibility of Metallica and Guns N’ Roses doing residencies at the Sphere in Las Vegas. While other big acts have successfully put on shows at the unique venue – including U2, Phish, Dead & Company, and The Eagles – Slash admits he is unsure if Guns N’ Roses would be up to the task.
“I haven’t been [to the Sphere] yet, but just everything that I’ve seen, or most everything that I’ve seen of it, looks amazing. I’m real trepidatious about playing there, because… It’s a great visual show. I think that in almost every case for a band, it becomes a visual show as opposed to seeing a rock and roll show. So there’s that,” Slash explained.
“And also, from talking to Joe Walsh about it, ’cause obviously The Eagles have been doing a residency there since forever, is that it’s not really sort of rock and roll friendly, the way that it’s set up. So it’s just one of those things where it seems like a really cool thing, and conceptually there’s probably a lot of cool things that you could do, but I don’t think it would be the right environment for a proper rock and roll show.”
As noted by host Eddie Trunk, the venue has yet to host a hard rock or metal band. Metallica, however, are reportedly in talks for a 2026 Sphere residency.
The guitarist went on to say that he’d be interested to see a heavier rock band perform at the venue before Guns N’ Roses consider performing there.
“And I heard about Metallica doing it,” Slash continued. “I could see them doing it because I can imagine them… Because you have to prepare your mind to put on not just a band performance, but 50 percent of what you’re doing is going to be the projection, or whatever you call that — the outer wall [laughs], what you’re putting on as content. And so that is something that’s gonna be the main focus of your show and the main focus of what everybody’s gonna be looking at. And so you have to sort of getting to that mindset, and I think that’s hard for us to go that far into it. But we’ll see. Maybe down the road.”
Slash discusses Rush reunion tour
Slash also recently discussed Rush’s reunion tour in a new Loudwire Nights interview, “Alex, who I’d never met before, just a couple years ago, he did a cameo in a movie that I produced called ‘The Breach’. And it was shot in Ontario. And my producing partner knew somebody that knew Alex or whatever, and he called me up and he goes, ‘What do you think about Alex for this character?’ Small part but important part in this movie, but a lot of dialogue.
And I was, like, ‘Well, if Alex is up to it, cool.’ And so after the movie was shot — I wasn’t there for the shoot; it was during COVID — and so I was in L.A. scoring and those guys were all in this hotel, this abandoned hotel in the woods in Ontario, and they couldn’t leave because of COVID. It was a really crazy production. But Alex shot his part from somewhere in his house, and he filmed it there. And when we were doing a screening, the first screening of the movie, Alex was there, and I flew in. And so we hung out and had a great time. We went to dinner and talked about all kinds of different stuff. But I could tell that he was really itching to go out and play, and he didn’t wanna go out and play in just whatever throw-together thing.
He wanted to do something, but he didn’t seem to know what he wanted to do. Anyway, but I got that feeling, and I sort of felt bad for him ’cause I could tell that there’s a… I know how I would feel. There’s a certain amount of frustration in not being able to just do what you wanna do. So with this announcement, I thought, ‘Man, that’s so cool, that they’re gonna go out there and they’ve got a great drummer and they’re gonna go out there and play.’ And she is going out there and honoring [late RUSH drummer] Neil [Peart]. And I think it’s wonderful.”
