Sweet Child O' Mine: the pattern Slash played without a pitch
Slash was messing around at the house where Guns N' Roses lived when the opening of "Sweet Child O' Mine" took shape. He did not sit down to write a hit, and he might never have presented the idea to anyone. Izzy Stradlin started playing behind it, Axl Rose began inventing words, and the song took off from there.
Slash described the moment on the Eddie Trunk Podcast, as Guitar World reports. "I was sitting around the house where Guns used to live at one point, in '86 I guess it was, and I just came up with this riff," he said. "It was just me messing around and putting notes together like any riff you do. You're like, 'This is cool,' and then you put the third note and find a melody like that." Some guitarists have guessed that the figure began as a warm-up, since it is a workout for the fretting hand. Slash rejected that. "Somebody else said that and it just became one of those things," he said. "It wasn't a warm-up exercise."
He told Total Guitar something similar years earlier. "Initially it was just a cool, neat little riff that I'd come up with," he said. "It was an interesting pattern and it was really melodic, but I don't think I would have presented it to the band and said, 'Hey, I've got this idea!' because I just happened to come up with it while we were all hanging around together." What happened next was the band's doing. "Izzy was the first one to start playing behind it, and once that happened Axl started making up words, and it took off that way."
Nobody planned a hit. Slash told Trunk that the song was simply one the band put together before making Appetite for Destruction, and that it went on the record as it was. Only after the album had been out for a while did the song take off. "We're sort of blessed that we have something that's become as memorable as that," he said.
Guitar World's 1989 interview with Slash and Stradlin gives a picture of the conditions the band was working in. At one point the whole group shared Stradlin's cramped studio apartment, with members sleeping on the floor, and the writing came from that. "Some of the best stuff can be written out of dire times," Stradlin said. "Slash and I would throw riffs back and forth, which is certainly one of his major strengths." Stradlin wrote on whatever was around, recording rough ideas on a small cassette recorder while a drummer beat out a pulse on a suitcase.
The recording itself had a rocky start. LA Weekly reports that Slash was unhappy with the guitar tone on the basic tracks for Appetite, which were cut at Rumbo Recorders in Canoga Park using two Jackson guitars and a B.C. Rich Warlock. He grew more frustrated as he tried to rerecord his parts with producer Mike Clink at Take One Studios in Burbank. The band's manager, Alan Niven, found a solution. He asked Jim Foote, the owner of the Music Works shop in Redondo Beach, whether he had anything Slash could try. Foote brought out a replica of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul built by a luthier named Kris Derrig. Niven bought it as a gift for Slash, for what he thinks was around $2,500.
When Slash played it at Take One for the first time, Clink remembered, "We knew instantly that was the tone for the record. It wasn't, 'Oh, let me think about it.' It was, we finally had found the sound for Slash." The guitar is also the one heard in the opening of "Sweet Child O' Mine." Derrig died on May 17, 1987, at the age of 32, two months before Appetite came out on July 21, 1987. Slash used the guitar on early tours and retired it from the road around 1989. In 2010, Gibson released a signature Slash Les Paul based on Derrig's 1959 replica.
The solo shows a similar economy of means. In the Guitar World interview, Slash said he knew he had to come up with something good, because the chord changes were simple and straightforward. He does not like using effects, he explained, not even a boost, and relies on his pickup selector instead. "So for the first part of that, I was on the neck pickup, and then I clicked into the bridge position for the crazier part." The magazine describes the first half as a connected run of melodic ideas that sounds almost like an acoustic Spanish guitar, before it blasts into a frenzied wah-wah ending. The second part was an overdub, and Slash said you can hear the transition. "I don't mind that," he said. "It's a record."
Clink gave the band only two weeks to record the basic rhythm tracks, with everyone playing together in one room. Stradlin's rhythm guitar sits in the left speaker, according to Slash. His own overdubs and leads were recorded alone in the control room, separated from his amplifier, and a few of the solos were written right there on the spot.
Today it is Guns N' Roses' only number one hit in the United States, as LA Weekly puts it, and Appetite for Destruction has sold more than 18 million copies.
- Guitar World, Slash on how the Sweet Child O' Mine riff developed — www.guitarworld.com
- Guitar World, Slash and Izzy Stradlin on Appetite for Destruction — www.guitarworld.com
- LA Weekly, How a custom guitar saved Appetite for Destruction — www.laweekly.com