After being with the hugely successful rock band Guns n’
Roses, song writer and guitarist Slash appeared with his new band at the 2012
Download festival headlining the Zippo encore stage on the Friday night. He and Axl Rose both worked together throughout the 80’s and 90’s in Guns n’
Roses and collectively released hugely successful songs and albums the most
well known and received album being the 1987 album titled “Appetite For Destruction”
which featured hits such as ‘Night Train’ ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and ‘Paradise
City’ all which have peaked in the top 100 and even got to number 1. After the
band split up, and left front man Axl Rose on his own, he formed the ‘new’ Guns n’
Roses and Slash teamed up with various artists to bring out his first self
tiled album “Slash” which was released in 2010 and which features artists such
as Fergie, Lemmy and Iggy Pop. After this album went down well with critics and
the fans slash joined up with Alter Bridge’s lead man Myles Kennedy to record a
second album, just released a few months back. Slash and Myles started their
musical relationship while recording the song ‘Starlight’ which was featured on
the “Slash” album, said Myles at Download festival and they have taken it from
there.
After having bands on the Zippo stage all day the crowd were
getting restless and wanted to see what they had stood all day for... and in
the rain! Bands that also featured on the Zippo stage were The Quire Boys, the reunited
Little Angels, Nightwish and, if they had turned up on time Europe, but a
delayed flight into Donington meant that their set got cut from the whole
festival. The crowd had expectations from Slash and he certainly delivered to
them playing all of his greatest hits and even putting in some new material
from his latest album, as he should. He opened with ‘One Last Thrill’ and then
proceeding onto the Guns n’ Roses song ‘Night Train’ to wish Myles had put his
own mark on the vocals and which left Axl’s version in the dust! There was no comparison,
Myles was just an overall better man for the job he even comes with the added
bonus of actually turning up on time and sober! His voice has an edge to it
that makes him perfect to sing the new material he has wrote with slash to
singing some early Guns n’ Roses stuff that he didn’t sing on.
I had never seen Slash live before but listen to him
constantly on both my music player and his live stuff that shown on TV and I
was really excited about hearing these flaming solos I have only ever heard but
never witnessed. I have to hand it to him; he knows how to work that guitar!
Every note he played had electric running through it and even while dancing
around on stage like a headless chicken, still managed to pull off some amazing
stuff on his famous Les Paul axe. All the other band members turned their
instruments down when he was soloing which was good as we heard them clearly
(which is what we were there for, after the entire act is called Slash). You could
say that’s harder for him as with his guitar being the centre of attention he
has NO room for error and there wasn’t any. All the solos were just how they
sounded on the studio albums if not better as they had that input of some improve
on Slashes part.
After about an hour of pleasing the crowd with some fast hits
and wild solos the band on stage slowed the pace down a bit and played the song
that brought Myles and Slash together ‘Starlight’ to which lighters were
brought out and hands were swung in the air. It was a magical moment to watch
and even more to see the Download crowd sing their hearts out and to watch
Slash play some soft riffs, a well needed break for the band... and the crowd
for that matter!! After that they soared through more hits of both Slash’s and
Guns n’ Roses including ‘Mr Brownstone’ and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ before ending
on a killer ‘Paradise City’. I never thought I would get to hear this played by
Slash as I didn’t know that he still played this, and from the crowd’s reaction
neither did they! The crowd were once again warmed up to go crazy and Myles had
them under his control telling them to sing and they did. If you ever get to
hear 20,000 people singing at the same time it is a wonderful moment. The final
solo that Slash pulled off was crazy, I'm surprised that the band could keep
up. He was on FIRE! He ripped through the solo going crazy all over the stage
before finally thanking Donington for being there to support him and his band
and finally walked off.
Every band that day played amazingly and pleased the crowd,
the only downside was not to see Europe play put instead having to hear the
fans in the crowd sing ‘The Final Countdown’ which I have to admit was pretty funny.
Till next year Donington...
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