Guns N’ Roses
Guitarist Slash: “There will always be rock ‘n’ roll”
British-American guitarist Slash believes in the future of rock n’ roll. Photo: Herbert P. Oczeret/APA/dpa
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Looking at the lineups at hip festivals like Coachella, you’d think rock n’ roll was on the decline. Cult guitarist Slash is optimistic: the genre will never die out.
Guitar legend Slash from Guns N’ Roses (“Paradise City”) believes in the future of rock music.
“A huge undercurrent of young rock ‘n’ roll bands is developing, it’s really buzzing,” said the 56-year-old of the German Press Agency in London. “It’s all going a bit under the radar because it hasn’t entered the commercial mainstream consciousness yet. But I notice it and it happens.”
The fact that hardly any rock bands are performing at the huge Coachella festival in California, where Slash headlined 2016 with Guns N’ Roses, leaves the cult guitarist with the top hat cold. “Because from the beginning Coachella was actually more geared towards indie, unusual and trending stuff,” he said. The fact that classic rock bands have “fallen out of favor”, as the British newspaper “Guardian” suspected after the announcement of the Coachella lineup, is “bullshit”.
“There will always be rock n’ roll,” said Slash, who released his new album “4” with singer Myles Kennedy and the band The Conspirators on Friday. “It’s a kind of attitude and attitude that people don’t find anywhere else, and I think that’s important. Rock ‘n’ roll has always been popular because it’s an outlet that other genres of music don’t offer. And I think it always will be.”
After a US tour with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, Slash wants to catch up with Guns N’ Roses next summer for the 2020 European concerts that were postponed due to the corona pandemic. Then the rock giants will perform in Hanover and Munich, among other places. According to Slash, a new album with Axl Rose and Co. is also planned in the long term. “When someone says rock bands are dying, that’s just a narrow-minded view,” Slash said, “from someone who only cares about current trends.”