Slash Talks New Album, Future of Guitar Music and India Memories

The guitar great’s latest record, ‘4’ with rock act Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, released last month

-  ANURAG TAGAT

Right from the sizzling guitar lines on “The River Is Rising” on Slash’s new album 4, it is impressed upon you that this is a thundering, no-holds barred rock record. The fourth album from the legendary guitarist and made with vocalist-guitarist Myles Kennedy (from rock/metal band Alter Bridge) and the Conspirators exudes a grittiness as well as warmth in its tonality, something that rock artists have more recently traded in for polished, squeaky-clean riffs.

Not Slash, though. The axeman for Guns N’ Roses and the erstwhile supergroup Velvet Revolver ensures that every second on this 10-track album is wild and deadly. The band – Slash, Kennedy, drummer Brent Fitz, guitarist-vocalist Frank Sidoris and bassist-vocalist Todd Kerns – took the decision to record live in the same room at RCA Studio A in Nashville with Dave Cobb (best known for his work with artists like Chris Stapleton as well as Rival Sons). It didn’t end there. Slash says over a Zoom call, “We mixed the record manually, as opposed to using automation, which is how people do it now, where you program all the faders to do certain levels and changes on their own, it’s programmed ahead of time.”

Instead, Slash, Cobb and the band did things old school. The guitarist explains, “We put the song on, run the tape, and then we all stand at the board and move the individual faders that everybody wants to move. You have to do it right in your take or you have to do it again. The whole record was sort of done in that kind of spirit.”