Guitarist reveals band has written ‘a ton of material’ and confirms focus shifts to original songs after releasing final Chinese Democracy-era tracks
Slash joined Loudwire Nights on Thursday (Jan. 29) to discuss Guns N’ Roses’ two new songs, “Atlas” and “Nothin‘,” and revealed the band is getting close to starting work on its next studio album.
“We’re obviously going toward making a whole new record of original stuff,” Slash shared. “It’s not something we really discuss too much, but we have a ton of material and so we have to go in and sort of hone in on that and see what’s going to happen.”
Slash admitted that one of the hardest parts is “deciphering everything that we have and figuring out what is going to go on a record.” In a separate interview with Audacy, he elaborated: “We’ve already written a ton, so now we just have to get together and really get into the process of going through all the material, deciding which ones are going to be the songs, recording them and all that stuff.”
Despite the wealth of material, Slash seemed confident the process wouldn’t drag on. “It’ll probably happen sooner rather than later, because we’ve gotten everything else out now and we’ve been on tour for basically most of the decade,” he said. Though there’s no clear timeline, he expressed confidence: “It’s coming. It’s one of those things, once it takes off, it’ll take off pretty fast.”
Revisiting the Chinese Democracy Era
Slash also opened up about “Atlas” and “Nothin’,” which have roots in the Chinese Democracy era when he wasn’t in the band. “At some point after we got back together, Axl (Rose), we talked about this idea of going in and revisiting some of the songs that he had. You have the drums and you have the vocals and we redid all the guitars and bass.”
The band tackled the songs piecemeal. “I think ‘Hard Skool’ and ‘Absurd’ were the first two, and then some more after that. And ‘Nothin” and ‘Atlas’ were the last two we did.” With these final two releases, the Chinese Democracy era is officially closed. “Yeah, it’s sort of the end of that,” Slash confirmed.
Slash shared that “‘Hard Skool’ is one of the songs that we play in the set that I always look forward to playing. I’m really excited about doing ‘Nothin” and also ‘Atlas.’ I think that’s one of the reasons why we saved them because (there’s) something really cool about the arrangements on them.”
The Magic of Spontaneous Setlists
Slash explained how the band’s approach to setlists keeps every show fresh. “It changes from night to night, what I look forward to. It just depends on the mood. We play a long set and one of the reasons why it’s so long is because we just love playing all these songs.”
“On any given night, a bunch of songs might seem particularly interesting or spontaneously inspiring,” he said. “We just throw songs in the way that we feel at the moment and it really makes for a set that’s charged by the crowd and how we’re feeling.”
The process involves rehearsing a long list of likely songs plus alternatives, then picking and choosing on stage based on the previous show’s setlist. “If we had to do the same set every night, it would be miserable,” Slash concluded.
With a wealth of original material already written and the Chinese Democracy era behind them, Guns N’ Roses appears poised to deliver their first full album of new, original songs with the classic lineup in decades.
