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- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: SLASH: Next Solo Album To Arrive In March/April
Slash is playing the best guitar of his life right now. And musically his songs are awesome, but, only an awesome singer can take him to the next level.
Re: SLASH: Next Solo Album To Arrive In March/April
I'm not expecting much, but I'll check it out if/when it comes out. I wasn't too impressed with the first album. I think Slash writes solos and riffs fairly well to awesome, but the overall songs are just not that impressive to me. His live playing was tight and probably as good as I've ever heard him, so it's not his playing.
I think it may just be time to accept his limitations as an artist. He's great at what he does, but he's not a great songwriter. I notice a huge difference even between VR (where Duff appears to have played a huge role in writing) and his solo stuff. Just because someone can play doesn't mean they can write (and vice versa).
The absolute definitive end-all be-all definition of Saul Hudson.
Monkey you were curious as to my lukewarm reaction to Slash 2010 - Buzz said it.
I just don't think the guy is a great songwriter. Slash 2010 had flashes of good, sometimes great stuff.
I have euphoric, drug-high like dreams of Axl and/or Izzy sitting down and writing lyrics to "Watch This". It would've been a GN'R comeback song that would've crushed people's skulls in with shades of being GNR's Kashmir.
Ghost is a total UYI song. Back From Cali would've been a great 3rd single on a GN'R comeback album. Beautiful Dangerous is catchy as hell, great rock-themed POP song. Starlight is forgettable (sorry, don't see the fascination around that song). Nothing To Say was decent, and Crucify The Dead was a grower, and also looked alot better in hind sight considering half of Ozzy's Scream album was forgettable crap.
Now on to the taters n' gravy...
The truth of the matter is, after 25 years or so in the business - Slash ain't a writer. Never gonna be. Just the way it is. The really big lack of his songwriting ability becomes increasing glaring as time goes on and more and more time is seperated from the Illusion albums.
I wonder if Izzy would consider an offer to come in and write an entire album? It's somebody in Slash's inner circle that a full-time prescence could greatly benefit what he's doing artistically.
One that that helps Axl greatly in his lack of Slash & Izzy post-1991, is that despite that loss, Axl is a great songwriter in his own right. So when he combines his forces with a Tommy or Bucket instrumentally, he can still pull off great songs. And most likely this will be the case with DJ & Tommy, if and when or ever GN'R decide to do new records with the current band.
Axl's gained some escape clauses in that with CD, post-UYI. Slash does when he combines himself with Izzy & Duff.
But when Slash doesn't have Axl, Izzy or Duff to fall back on for songwriting... whew... it's a glaring hole, and honestly it's been a bit too much for me to take since Slash left Guns. I'd much rather have Izzy's solo catalog.
And I hate to break the news - Myles Kennedy ain't gonna be the guy to pick up the slack.
I thought since Guns, including Snakepit, VR & his solo career, has always been a guy who's albums have a few good cuts on them, but then the rest of the record goes flat.
Slash 2010 is probably better than both Snakepit albums, and honestly even though I think Contraband is okay, I struggle to get into anything VR, because of Weiland. It's like fucking a chick with a diaphragm, Weiland just keeps me from totally getting off. And Myles is very very quickly getting there with his weak sauce 2002 Axl voice.
Slash needs a guy like Axl or Chris fuckin Cornell on vocals. Those kind of vocals just meld with his guitar. Myles & Weiland, the whole thing is off. Corey Taylor would've been great, but Slash is got something against the guy or some shit. I guess he's deaf.
I actually didn't originally intend this post to turn into an Axl-esque tirade. But it's truely my opinion on Slash. I think if you culled his absolute best material over the years post-GN'R, you might actually have one album (kind of like Axl) worthy of listening to.
- Intercourse
- Rep: 212
Re: SLASH: Next Solo Album To Arrive In March/April
Gents,
Brilliant mails. We should manage Slash!!!
Axlin, your comment on 'Watch This' is totally on the money. I was listening to it the other day and as the song opened with that monster riff I was just thinking about how exciting it would be to know that Axl would be coming in in a few seconds to life the song even higher.
Slash's guitar sound is so big that Chris Cornell realistically is the only man that's out there right now that I think could do him justice artistically and in terms of the business possibilities.
Myles sounds too nasal and 'pure' for me. Slash is a blues player at heart and his singer needs a voice that's as big and lived-in as Slash's guitar sound. Weiland sounded asthmatic on some of the VR songs because the band sound was so muscular. Live they were spectucular but recorded material fell short.
I didn't want to agree to this but having listened to Slash's album a lot, I also agree that he has flashes of utter brilliance but his total output is choppy qualitywise.
Another fantsay line up for me would be Izzy, Slash, Robert DeLeo & Chris Cornell would be a writing team that I would eat a bowl of my own shit to get together.
Re: SLASH: Next Solo Album To Arrive In March/April
Yeah Myles voice just doesn't fit Slash's guitar. I've heard re-arrangements of GN'R songs, VR songs, new solo songs, and i've even seen Myles & Slash live... and Myles voice just DOES NOT FIT Slash's guitar style. It doesn't work imo.
Myles voice isn't raspy or earthy enough to really fit a blues guitar. Myles sounds exactly like what he is. A nasily post-grunge singer trying to pose as a hard rock singer for an hour. Hell, Slash would sound better with Scott Stapp than Myles.
It's just all wrong for my ears. When it was just some guest appearences on one record, it was one thing. But when it became a total full blown live show and a follow-up record, it was like... whatev.
Myles needs to take it down a register or two on the next album, and see what happens. The songwriting will still probably be a hole...
As for VR, I totally agree that it was night and day live vs. studio. Live they were an absolute awesome force, and Weiland had TONS of stage prescence (not Axl-territory, but good). The writing still blew, but something just didn't transfer from them on stage to the studio albums. The studio albums, they ALL sound so fuckin' hollow, but Weiland is the worse.
Re: SLASH: Next Solo Album To Arrive In March/April
I actually didn't originally intend this post to turn into an Axl-esque tirade. But it's truely my opinion on Slash. I think if you culled his absolute best material over the years post-GN'R, you might actually have one album (kind of like Axl) worthy of listening to.
It was somebody here (I'm looking in Neemo's direction, but I don't know that for sure) who I first saw say not long after Chinese Democracy came out that "Chinese Democracy is better than any album Slash has put out since GNR, but if you let me pull together one single Slash album from all that time it would be a different story"
I've quoted/paraphrased that a ton of times in conversations. Although I usually preface it with "I'll be lazy and make the Axl vs Slash arguement", it's the perfect example to defend and criticize both Axl and Slash for some of their biggest shortcomings as artists.
Myles needs to take it down a register or two on the next album, and see what happens.
^This. Or I'll have tuned out by halfway through the album and they won't get my attention back.
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: SLASH: Next Solo Album To Arrive In March/April
Slash has grown so much as a guitar player since UYI, its not even close... 1992 Slash would be unable to play what 2011 Slash can play. So where do we go now? Slash isn't a good songwriter some say, well, he has written awesome songs (Coma, Civil War, Back and Forth Again, Neither Can I, Fall to Pieces, Messages, Ghost, Beautiful Dangerous, Watch This) those are some really, really good tunes. But Slash is a guitar player, and can only take the song so far. If he did all instrumental like Watch this and Vocalise, or even the Spanish song he did, we would say different. Slash isn't just going to spit out a bunch of modern rock type hits, cause those songs require some catchy hook or chorus. I think Gotten was a damn fine song, as we Mother Maria, good songs, not just Slash Riffing away. Just good tasty stuff.
Axl released one album, but there is a ton of filler on that damn thing too... You got CD, Street of Dreams, Sorry, TWAT, Better, and If the World... The other half is "meh" to me and really missing the Slasher.. IRS is so repetive, TIL has potential, but NEEDS SLASH, Scrapped and RNB are filler as it gets. Catcher in the Rye, again, you need Slash.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: SLASH: Next Solo Album To Arrive In March/April
Great thread this...shows me how we all have so much in common yet wildly different views too.
One thing...is this Izzy thing...I mean the guy wrote some damn great songs I don't deny that...but the way people always rant his songwriting above Axl and above Slash...it doesn't make sense to me.
What are the izzy tunes without the benifit of the others? Are Izzy's solo albums really so much more impressive than Slash/ VR or Chinese Democracy?
I'm not saying he isn't an awesome songwriter...I'm just saying he was only part of the GNR magic...and everyone in GNR sounds different alone than they did with the others.
I think slash's riff abilities shouldn't be discounted, along with his ability to play the right thing at the right time almost more than anyone, his emotional skills, and that his general guitar skills are seriously more bad ass today than in the 1980s.
As for myles...his upper register doesnt work on GNR tracks cos he lacks Axl's anger - but it's fine in starlight and his own songs - I say go for it - sing that shit so high it shatters some glass - that's what wieland was always missing!
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: SLASH: Next Solo Album To Arrive In March/April
Izzy's two big songs are Patience, and Don't Cry with 14 Years and You Ain't the First bringing up the rear.. All his others have a tone of others involved, weather it be Brownstone or something else.
