Rock guitarist Slash says one record in particular convinced him to play guitar, and it may not be a surprise which album it was.
The Welcome to the Jungle guitarist has been a member of Guns n’ Roses for decades, but it was an Aerosmith record which convinced him to pursue music. Slash confirmed the band’s fourth studio album, Rocks, is what gave him the license to go ahead and learn the electric guitar. This move makes Slash one of the many members of rock and roll history who was influenced by Rocks. He said: “I first heard Rocks when I was 13 or 14.
“There was this girl, Laurie, and I’d been trying to get into her pants for what seemed like forever. She was the hottest chick in school and just exuded-no, excreted-sex appeal. One day I rode my BMX bike over to her place. We smoked a bunch of pot, and she started playing me records.
“From the moment she put it on and ‘Back in the Saddle’ started playing, I was glued to the album. She just vanished into the shadows, and I completely forgot about her.” Slash went on to say he loved the “aggressive” tone of Rocks, and it formed part of his playing style.
“Aerosmith delivered the songs with such urgency, and the music had an almost punk attitude, with its powerhouse rhythm section and guitars that were all over the place,” he said. “Rocks was loose and frenzied, and I could relate to the emotional angst-filled vocals of Last Child and Combination.
“It wasn’t pristine and perfect, but it gelled together perfectly. It’s an amazing record. Rocks was aggressive, loud and swaggering. It fit my personality perfectly.
“After I had digested the album six or seven times at this chick’s apartment, I just got up, grabbed my smokes, jumped on my bike and went home. I never did get laid. But not too long after, I picked up my guitar, and I’ve been doing this ever since.”
Metallica and Nirvana also cited Aerosmith’s Rocks, with the album’s producer, Jack Douglas, still highly impressed with the work the band provided in the studio. He said: “Rocks was done in Waltham, Massachusetts, in a warehouse. The keys the songs were written in were all dependent on the environment we were in.
“After a couple of weeks of rehearsal, the room started to sound really good. The very thought of moving it out of that room seemed like it would destroy everything about where we were. It was 100 percent written in the room—not including the lyrics because the lyrics always came last—but Steven’s melodies.
“That record, when I put it on, sounds like truth. To this day, I still feel that that album is closest to a really true statement and it was because the environment in which it was written was the same environment in which it was recorded.”
