Slash Discusses Next Guns N’ Roses Studio Album, New Songs + Tour

“It’s one of those things, once it takes off, it’ll take off pretty fast.”

On Thursday (Jan. 29), Slash joined Loudwire Nights to dive into Guns N’ Roses‘ two new songs, “Atlas” and Nothin’,” and revealed the band is getting close to starting work on its next studio album.

Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.

“We’re obviously going toward making a whole new record of original stuff,” Slash shared with the Loudwire Nights audience and host Chuck Armstrong.

“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’s one of the hardest parts about thinking about a new Guns N’ Roses album, “deciphering everything that we have and figuring out what is going to go on a record and blah, blah, blah.”

Though there’s no clear timeline, Slash seemed confident in the release of the next studio album.

“It’s coming.”

Slash Is Looking Forward to Playing New Songs on Tour

As Slash looked ahead, he also opened up a bit about the two latest songs that Guns N’ Roses have released, “Atlas” and “Nothin’.” Though these songs have roots in the Chinese Democracy-era of the band when Slash wasn’t around, he said there was nothing weird about diving into them (or any of the other songs released in the last five years).

“Guns has always been super collaborative,” he said.

“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, so it was really fun to sort of write new parts for these pre-existing songs.”

Slash said that the band did it all piecemeal, doing a couple of songs here and a couple of other songs there. The final two unreleased songs from the era are “Atlas” and “Nothin’,” thus the renewed focus on original material for the next album.

“Yeah, it’s sort of the end of that.”

Slash didn’t seem too open to picking a favorite from the last few years of songs from Guns N’ Roses, but he did share one that stands out to him.

“‘Hard Skool’ is one of the songs that we play in the set that I always look forward to playing,” he said.

“It’s got some interesting parts in it. 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 and the vibe is a little bit different than your sort of typical Guns N’ Roses thing.”

Slash Discusses Guns N’ Roses’ Unique Approach to Setlists

While Slash couldn’t say one particular song was his obvious favorite of the recent tunes from Guns N’ Roses, he had an even harder time picking a singular track from the band’s entire catalog.

“It changes from night to night, what I look forward to,” he admitted.

“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 that we want to just — we could pretty much do it all night. There’s not like one favorite song. It would be pretty sad if there was only one favorite song in the set.”

When Slash mentioned how much he and his bandmates love playing all their songs, he shared that it’s that passion that influences the looseness of their setlists.

“On any given night, a bunch of songs might seem particularly interesting or spontaneously inspiring,” Slash said.

“So that’s what makes a Guns set so fun, it’s not like you have to do this and you have to do that. We just sort of, we roll out with whatever the opening song is and maybe we might know what the third song is going to be, but other than that — and I’m just throwing that out as an example, that’s not the formula. But 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 and all that.”

When asked if the band has a pool of songs they know they’ll pick from, Slash explained the process for the onstage spontaneity.

READ MORE: Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy Says New Album Captures ‘What We’ve Been Known For’

“What we do is we’ll go into rehearsal and we’ll have a whole list of songs,” he said.

“We have a long list of songs that we would most likely play and then we have a really long list of alternatives and we mix that up. And what happens is we’ll put together a setlist from the last show, what we played the last show, we use that as reference for the new show plus a list of alternates. So there’s a lot of information on stage and we just pick and choose from that.”

Because of this undertaking, Slash looks forward to every single show the band plays.

“If we had to do the same set every night, it would be miserable.”

What Else Did Guns N’ Roses’ Slash Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

• The chaotic nature of their flexible setlist: “Everything’s a fuckin’ audible, man. There are moments where we’re like, ‘What are we doing?’ And we’re all on different sides of the stage, a big stage, trying to yell out. We’re on in-ear [monitors], so Axl’s got a little button where he can talk into a mic and we can all hear him, but I don’t have one of those. I think Duff [McKagan] does…trying to communicate, like Axl says, ‘Hey, what do you want to do?’ I’ll tell him, but then he’s got to tell the other guys, or it might be me and Duff decide and have to tell Axl. It has its moments.”
• Reflecting on the night Charlie Sheen flew to Ireland to catch a Conspirators show: “He just showed up. We weren’t expecting him and he was just all of a sudden there. That was a few years ago. It was great, Charlie’s awesome. He’s always been a big supporter of the Conspirators. Like, I would see him and I go, ‘Whats up,’ and he goes, ‘Man, I was just working out to your guys’ record.’ And it would be like every time I saw him, he would tell me that.”
• What else he’s working on right now: “I’m always doing a lot of stuff. I’ve been doing some stuff with Bear McCreary for his record that he’s got coming out…we’ve been jamming a lot together and I just finished mixing the new Conspirators record that’s going to come out next year. I’m very excited about that. And there’s a couple other things that I just did, I can’t remember exactly, but there’s a B.B. King song, a tribute song, coming out [that] I played on. I’m always up to something. We’ve got a show, a British TV show called The Crow Girl that I produced, and so, writing music for, we’re now on season two, so writing music for that.”

Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below

Slash joined Loudwire Nights on Thursday, Jan. 29; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.