Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash discussed being paid so little when he worked at a guitar shop, that in lieu a payment, he worked for nothing to get a guitar. Slash also revealed a rock icon secretly joined Guns N’ Roses in a recent interview.
He told Rock Cellar Magazine about getting a Les Paul.
“Oh, yeah. Everything’s out of reach. But by the time I was really interested, I worked in a guitar store. That was really helpful in being able to put my future paychecks away towards something. ‘Don’t pay me, and I’ll just take this.’ So I could get it right away and pay it off over six months. But it was definitely difficult.
It’s funny, you forget how difficult — how hard — it is to be a kid trying to get decent equipment and guitars. And when Guns N’ Roses started, I didn’t even have a Les Paul, at that time. Then finally I got a hold of, again, a Les Paul copy. But this one was a really nice one.
There’s two guys that made really memorable Gibson copies, Gibson ’59 reissue before Gibson put out reissues. One guy, his name is Kris Derrig, and the other guy was Peter Max Baranet. Peter made this particular Les Paul, and apparently Steve Hunter from Alice Cooper’s band had it before I did. So that became my guitar. That was my thing. And in Guns N’ Roses, not really knowing it at the time, but looking back on it, it became predominantly my image, in a public way, with Guns N’ Roses and the Les Paul.
And then, because of a lot of different things that you hock equipment for (laughter), I was without a Les Paul, which was regrettable. I was using guitars from whoever. I had a Jackson, and whatever else. And when Guns N’ Roses went to the studio to record, those guitars in the studio did not sound like what it was that I wanted to sound like. And that was my first real recording experience.”
Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash discussed his Gibson guitar being a ‘copy of a copy’ in a new Guitar Interactive interview. Alternative Nation transcribed his Gibson comments.
The interviewer mentioned he was a Gibson ambassador ‘even though your most famous ones aren’t Gibson.’
“Yeah, but they did make a copy of it, a replica.”
“Has that ever been an inside joke about that?”
“It definitely is an inside joke. When they said they wanted to do that particular Slash model, I said that was a copy of a copy.”
