Slash: It Seems Excessive... but That Doesn't Mean It Didn't Happen

Is it true that you kept ridiculous hours during this project?

It’s true. Slash and I did almost all of our interviews during a three month period where I would show up at his house in L.A., at his request, anywhere between 11pm and 1am and stay there talking until about 4am. There was no schedule - he’d let me know some time around 6pm if he was ready to talk. He’s a night owl and always has been. When it came time to edit, we stuck to that schedule, even when I was in a different time zone. For most of it, I was on the East Coast, so we’d start at midnight for him, 3am for me, and go as late as 7am when we were in the thick of it. Due to some circumstances in his life, we had a significant delay during the writing of that book, which meant a serious crunch time for me toward the end. Slash was in England with Velvet Revolver at that point and I remember thinking I’d get a bit of a reprieve from our early morning editing sessions considering that he was six hours ahead of me. No such luck. He’d call me at around 9am his time, which, again, was 3am my time. He wasn’t doing it on purpose as far as I know but it sure as hell felt like I was being hazed.

Do you have a favorite chapter in the book?

I have a few. It took me two tries to really nail his voice. I wasn’t happy with my first attempt and neither was he. I decided to try something I’d never done, and chose to write a chapter further on in the story first. That worked, and I knew right away that I’d nailed it. It’s chapter 6, in which Guns n’ Roses original line up comes together. Slash was worried by my first attempt, but once he read that chapter he was completely happy and felt that it reflected what he wanted the book to be. Once I got that down, I went back and dove into writing the early chapters, which are favorites of mine as well. His childhood was just incredible. Visualizing teen-aged Slash terrorizing Hollywood on his BMX bike and recreating it on paper was a pretty cool assignment.

Did Slash ever let you try on his top hat?

No, he didn’t. People steal them all the time so I’m not quite sure he trusted me with it. He’s had people steal them and try to sell them back to him - and that happened not too long ago. How ridiculous! Top hat kidnapping. His top hat is his trademark, so wouldn’t it occur to the thief that he probably has a few of them? In any case, he trusted me enough to share the intimate details of his life with me, but the top hat is something else altogether.