5 things to know about Slash as Guns N' Roses star plays Beijing

Image: Stefan Brending via Wikimedia Commons

Excess all areas as the hairy rock deity arrives to melt faces in the capital

The Guns N’ Roses guitarist, serpent lord and owner of what is arguably music’s greatest ever head of hair screeches into Beijing this weekend with vocalist Myles Kennedy and backing band The Conspirators. Here are just a few rock ’n’ roll moments from the iconic fret-buster.

He's actually British

Henley, in Stoke-on-Trent, looking like it's full of rock 'n' roll megastars. Image: fotodiscs4u via Wikimedia Commons.

We know, it’s not exactly the most rock ’n’ roll starting point, and it might seem improbable for a dude whose band and lifestyle would become synonymous with ’80s LA’s debauched party scene, but Slash was actually spawned in the UK, born Saul Hudson in 1965. The young Saul would spend his first five years in Paradise City – or Stoke-on-Trent, as it’s more commonly known – before his family upped sticks for California. He didn’t take up American citizenship until 1996, and told The Daily Telegraph in 2010 that he has ‘always felt most comfortable in England’, so should we expect to catch him backstage with a cup of tea and a scone?

He was classmates with Lenny Kravitz

Maybe there's something in the water fountains of Beverly Hill High. Image credit: Toglenn via Wikimedia Commons.

After making the move to LA, Slash would go on to attend Beverly Hills High School – an institution with an alumni roll call as glitzy as you’d expect from such a location and a knack for rolling entertainers off its conveyor belt. Slash rubbed shoulders with a few, most notably as a classmate of ’90s rocker Lenny Kravitz, though graduates from other years include Angelina Jolie, David Schwimmer, Carrie Fisher and the biggest rockstar of them all – Nicholas Cage.

He once checked into a hotel with his pet mountain lion

Not the actual Curtis, but we imagine he looked something like this. Image credit: National Park Service, USA via Wikimedia Commons.

In the early years of the ’90s, after years of touring and hedonism since Appetite for Destruction through to the Use Your Illusion double album, Slash sought quiet refuge in a new LA home, into which he welcomed the calming influence of venomous snakes, a horde of cats and lizards, and a mountain lion cub called Curtis. Now that’s rock ’n’ rolling! After the disastrous Northridge earthquake damaged his serene sanctuary in 1994 – no animals were harmed – Slash then took refuge at a luxury hotel down the coast at Marina Del Rey. And sneaked Curtis in with him.

He’s technically died – three times

Image credit: Scott Penner via Wikimedia Commons

In a quickfire interview with Us Magazine in 2011, which featured 25 enthralling insights such as ‘I’m a cat lover’ and ‘I don’t eat anything from the sea’, Slash also revealed that he has ‘flatlined three times (that I know of)’. He didn’t expand much more than that, but a tale in his autobiography does tells of how, at the height of GNR partying, he was found by drummer Matt Sorum passed out in a hotel room; his heart actually stopped for around eight minutes before he was revived. He was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in 2001, caused by his years of drug and alcohol abuse, but has been clean and sober since 2005.

He once ran naked through a hotel being ‘chased by Predator’

Which one is Predator again? Image: Film Legends Museum via Wikimedia Commons.

Something about hotels and Slash doesn’t mix too well, and one of his more infamous scenes saw him wreak havoc at a golf resort, running naked through its lobby, hallucinating, claiming to be chased by a Predator-like creature with rubbery dreadlocks, machine guns and a harpoon. Fortunately, he was saved by the police – who arrested him.

The incident came at one of the lower points of his long battle with heroin in the early ’90s, an addiction that would put a strain on relations among the Guns N’ Roses members. Not as big a strain as Axl Rose just being a complete asshat though, of course. Thankfully, Slash beat his drug demons, and while Rose may not yet have fully recovered from being an asshat, the duo and bassist Duff McKagan buried the hatchet earlier this year to reform for a GNR world tour – which even stopped in Hong Kong. Expect Slash to be firing on all cylinders as he takes to the Beijing stage this weekend, then.

Slash plays at the Beijing Exhibition Center on Sunday 20 January. Tickets are 680-1,680RMB. Extract the QR code to purchase yours now. 

For links to other great tickets you can get, hit 'Read more' below. 

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