Slash Tips His Hat to Les Paul

As folks decide to dress up as Slash for Halloween this year, no doubt the two most essential accoutrements for the outfit will be a top hat and a Les Paul guitar. For the real Slash, the top hat may have come and gone but the Les Paul will never change. "I've picked up a couple stragglers over the years leading up to when I was in Guns N' Roses," Slash tells Spinner. "But I always kept gravitating to the Les Paul. If I could get one and hold onto it for any length of time, I was good."

Eventually Slash would become just as much a poster child for that Gibson-made guitar brand as his hero Jimmy Page. In fact, the guitar company has long been manufacturing Slash's own signature line of the guitar. Of course, none of it would've happened had it not been for Les Paul himself, the 93-year-old guitar wizard who not only invented the solid body electric guitar, but also much of the technology still used to record it: multi-track recording, tape-delay, reverb, etc.

"But aside from all of that, Les is just this really amazing guy with a fantastic fuckin' mind," says Slash. The two guitarists met in 1991 for a live jam session and they've jammed together many times since. "Because he plays primarily jazz and old standards and stuff, I was way out of my element," Slash recalls of their first jam. "I always use playing with him as a barometer to see where my skill set is at that point."

Don't worry, you're doing just fine, buddy. Slash performs a track on the recently released disc 'Les Paul and Friends -- A Tribute to a Legend,' in such company as Joe Perry (Aerosmith), Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi), Edgar Winter, Peter Frampton and others. For his track, 'Vocalize,' (an instrumental tune, obviously) Slash poses as a linear jazz fusionist. The barometer reading? High.

Complimenting this, on November 15 he'll show up in Cleveland, OH for a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tribute to Les Paul. "There's not really much I can tell you about the concert itself," Slash says, "because no one has informed me of anything that's going on. I just know that I'm going down there; I'm just going to bring a guitar. That's basically it."