Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash has commented on the possibility of new music from the band as they enjoy a break from their Not In This Lifetime world tour.
"It's been talked about,” the rocker tells Eddie Trunk in a new interview. “I think everybody wants to do it, and we'll just see what happens. We've been busy doing this running around the planet."
Slash’s remarks follow similar ones made recently by Axl Rose, who told Iceland Magazine after the group’s July 24 show in Reykjavik: "Right now our focus is on touring and the shows, but everyone seems to be getting along so you never know."
The reunion trek by Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan – which was launched with a rare club show at The Troubadour in Los Angeles on April 1, 2016 – is now in its third year and is among the top five biggest-selling concert tours in music history with sales of more than $500 million.
Slash revealed to Trunk that the original concept for the reunion was to only play five shows.
"That's initially what it was gonna be. We didn't have a big, long-term thing [planned],” explained the guitarist (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “Axl and I got together, and we talked for a while and so on, and we thought it would be cool to these Coachella dates, because we [got] offered to get back together and do Coachella every year for years, and we obviously didn't do it [before]. So now that we were on good terms, it seemed like a good idea.
“So that was the basic focus — just to do those two shows and a couple of warm-up shows, so we did the Troubadour, one show in Vegas, in Mexico and the Coachella gigs. And that went so well, and everything just fell back into place. So we said, 'Okay, we'll do this U.S. run that they're offering us,' and then everything just snowballed from there."
"The last shows that we did was '94 in South America, so we were at that place where we were playing stadiums,” Slash continued. “So when this came back around, the first offers were to do stadium-type gigs. So I was, like, 'Okay. That's great.' I think, more than anything, I was just excited about the enthusiasm. Considering, for me personally, being out of it for so long, coming back into it and seeing these insane crowds…
"It was, in my opinion, better received this time around than it was in the last years of the '90s that I was in it. It was really, really cool. And it's one of those times you can appreciate playing in a stadium, because you're playing for anywhere from 30 to 80 thousand people that are so dialed into your s**t that it's like playing in a club — it's got that kind of personal toe-to-toe feel to it. So it was really, really a blast."
Before Guns N’ Roses resume their 2018 schedule with a series of dates across Mexico and the Far East this fall, Slash will release a new album with Myles Kennedy And The Conspirators, “Living The Dream”, on September 21.
He and the band will launch the project with a month-long fall tour of North America that will begin at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles on September 13.
See also:
Former Guns N’ Roses guitarist DJ Ashba arrested for DUI
Axl Rose comments on possibility of new music from Guns N’ Roses
Slash streams new single Driving Rain
Slash previews Driving Rain video
Slash streams Driving Rain single from new album
Search Guns N Roses at hennemusic
