Slash’s Conspirators bandmates Brent Fitz and Todd Kerns were recently interviewed by Linea Rock. Ultimate-Guitar transcribed their comments.
Is it hard to work with huge artists with such strong personalities as Slash and Myles?
Brent: “It’s not difficult at all. I mean, honestly, we’re very fortunate because it very quickly became a band. It started off as ‘supporting Slash,’ even Myles is in a position of supporting Slash’s solo album, but we sort of gelled very quickly and became a band, almost overnight.”
Todd: “Slash is an awesome guitar player and an awesome dude. He chose us to be in his band, and it kind of makes it easy. We’re all pretty easy going guys, we all really like to play a lot, so it’s hard to keep up with Slash…”
Do you remember when you first met Slash and how your involvement in the band actually happened?
Todd: “I do remember talking. I always joke, the first thing both of us noticed was, ‘Hey, Slash isn’t smoking a cigarette’ because he quit smoking a year before. That was the first thing I noticed – he didn’t have a cigarette in his mouth.
Brent: “My experience was a random phone call I got and we had never met, he wanted to talk to me about, he was gonna do a solo band and he wanted to know if I wanted to get together, and so we did.
“We got together in Las Vegas – where I live – he was in town doing something like a charity event, so my first experience was meeting him in a hotel room, getting together and then we went to LA a week later, jammed.
“Todd wasn’t there yet. The great part of this story is that we jammed with Bobby Schneck at the time and a different bass player, and a couple of days after that of putting the band together, Slash was like, ‘Yeah, I want you in the band.’
Todd: “Technically, I met Slash in ’91 on the Sunset Strip at The Rainbow, which is the most Hollywood sentence I could ever say, but that was a random night – he doesn’t remember that, and then yeah, fast-forward all those years later, I’m sitting in a restaurant with my father and he [Brent] texted me or called and he said, ‘Can you be here tomorrow around noon to jam?’
“And I was, like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ Very, sort of, casual, ‘Sounds like fun.’ The next day I went down there and now here we are.”
