Slash

Born Saul Hudson in Hampstead, London, and raised between England and Los Angeles, Slash emerged from the mid-1980s in the California hard rock scene with a guitar style rooted in blues rock, heavy metal, and glam metal. After stints with Road Crew and Hollywood Rose, he joined Guns N’ Roses in 1985 and contributed to the band’s writing and sonic identity on Appetite for Destruction (1987), G N’ R Lies (1988), Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II (1991), then The Spaghetti Incident? (1993). His melodic phrasing, nerve-wracking riffs, and intricately crafted solos became a hallmark of hard rock in that era. After leaving Guns N’ Roses in 1996, Slash developed other formats with Slash’s Snakepit, active around the albums It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere (1995) and Ain’t Life Grand (2000), then co-founded Velvet Revolver in the early 2000s, in a harder, more massive and contemporary hard rock vein, with Contraband (2004) and Libertad (2007). As a solo artist, Slash released Slash (2010), before stabilizing a band with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators on Apocalyptic Love (2012), World on Fire (2014), Living the Dream (2018), and 4 (2022). In 2016, Slash reunited with Guns N’ Roses for a new phase of international touring, while pursuing parallel projects, including Orgy of the Damned (2024), focused on blues repertoire.