SLASH: How Important Drugs And Alcohol Were For My Creativity

Slash

Slash was recently asked by Loudwire whether his newfound sobriety in the past decade had any impact on his creativity, to which he replied:

“That’s a good question. A lot of that material from the old days – I can pick particular songs that were definitely written under the influence, but I can pick other songs that were written under the influence of a couple beers. Not that big a deal, right?

“But I found out that when I got sober, sort of looking back from the time I started playing to 2006 – my partying thing was really a matter of killing time in between gigs. I wasn’t really using on the road, I wasn’t really using when I was in the studio. I was always focused on music.

“So when I got sober, all that effort that I had put into what had turned into a massive addiction at that point, I took that and just put it straight back into the music. And it wasn’t really relying on me being buzzed or inebriated to create stuff.

“I was fortunate. I really just put everything into writing and felt really comfortable sober. … For the most part, I wasn’t trying to bury anything because I had like a massive insecurity or something I was trying to bury in my past. I was really just partying because it was fun.”