Few other rock stars seem to better capture the spirit of the genre than Slash. Seeing his silhouette with a guitar strapped around him and his signature top hat on is about as iconic as any guitarist this side of Jimi Hendrix. Despite this, he has been one of the quietest guitar gods in rock history. Slash had been in the business for a long time. Therefore, he was able to recognize when someone wasn’t living up to the standards of the rock world. In his opinion, Buckethead wasn’t the kind of musician that belonged in a band like Guns N’ Roses.
Guns N’ Roses gave off the impression of being a street gang right away. No matter how much enmity developed between the participants after they left the band, they could still kick your ass on any old city street in Los Angeles. This was true if you even slightly turned your head in their direction.
However, Slash appeared to be among the world’s most laid-back musicians when it came to behind-the-scenes work. Even though he took his work very seriously, Slash was the kind of guitarist who could add his trademark schtick to just about anything that Axl Rose threw at him, whether it was delivering a standout performance on “November Rain” or playing something erratic towards the end of “Paradise City.”
Slash recalled that it stopped being enjoyable after Rose declared that he should own the entire GNR venture. Although he was not planning to be a solo artist anytime soon, Slash left Guns in the middle of the 1990s. This decision was partly because he could no longer put up with Rose’s antics and insistence on perfection.
After all, what happens when one of the world’s greatest guitarists passes away? In the exact opposite way, that is. Buckethead was the type of musician who could make almost any guitar sound good. In contrast, Slash was sometimes rough around the edges. He contributed a certain level of sonic sheen to half of the songs that would eventually appear in Chinese Democracy.
Although there’s nothing inherently wrong with a guitarist who can play that exact, Slash told Howard Stern, “I don’t know his work, but I know he’s a very accomplished guitar player,” knowing that the sound he was playing was derived from the sleazy sound that served as the foundation for Guns N’ Roses. He’s not a rock star, though. Some of the stuff I’ve heard from him is technically sound, but it lacks heart.
Although it’s difficult to argue that a guitarist who plays at such a fast speed is bad, Slash came from a very different background. Slash made sure that every note he played during a solo mattered. This was true regardless of how many notes Buckethead could jam into his solos. He typically came up with melodies for his solos that listeners would be singing along to for years.
Fans appeared to prefer Slash’s band Velvet Revolver based on how they reacted to Chinese Democracy. Rose’s recently formed, highly polished Guns N’ Roses tribute band did not fare as well. Even so, Buckethead is a hell of a guitarist, and he might not be the greatest fit for one of the rawest bands to come out of California.
