“Turns out he’s a huge f**kin’ Howlin’ Wolf protégé”: Slash on how he tapped Brian Johnson for his upcoming blues album

When Slash recently announced his new blues album, Orgy of the Damned, we weren’t all that surprised to see he’d invited a smorgasbord of guest musicians along for the ride.

On the record, the Guns N’ Roses legend is to be joined by the likes of Gary Clark Jr., Billy F. Gibbons, Iggy Pop and more to reimagine blues classics by Howlin’ Wolf, T. Bone Walker, Albert King and others.

• READ MORE: Slash announces travelling blues festival, S.E.R.P.E.N.T. – with a rotating lineup of guests including Eric Gales, Warren Haynes and Samantha Fish

Its first single, Killing Floor – originally made famous by Howlin’ Wolf – arrived last week, and gave us a taste of the album’s collaborative feel with contributions from AC/DC’s Brian Johnson and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler.

And in a new interview with Audacy’s Check In, Slash recalls how the appearance from Brian Johnson came about.

“I had the song and I was trying to think who would be great to do it,” he says [via NME]. “And Brian came to mind. And I’ve known Brian for a pretty long time now. And he just has that great kind of grit to his voice. And I called him up and it turns out that he’s a huge fuckin’ Howlin’ Wolf protégé.”

He continues: “He was telling me that he’s doing something at present where he’s putting together sort of a blues-orchestra thing. Don’t quote me on that, but something to that [effect].

“Anyway, and so he was excited to do that particular song. And that’s the key thing that you’re looking for, is that when you call any of these great artists up and you have a cover song that you want to attack and if they would be willing to participate, that the song speaks to them, that it has meaning to them too, not just me. And that’s how it was with Brian. He was, like, ‘Oh, fucking great. Yeah, let’s do this.’”

Slash also recalls Steven Tyler’s harmonica parts on the track came because he just “happened to have a harmonica with him”.

“It was like, ‘This is great.’ So it was very spontaneous. It was very just sort of inspired in the moment, which is a great thing to be able to capture, especially nowadays because people just, by and large, don’t make records like that now. Everything is very well thought out and cultivated and homogenised and produced, and this was just very, very off the cuff.”

Slash’s new solo album Orgy of the Damned arrives May 17 via Gibson Records. You can pre-order it now, and find tickets to his upcoming travelling blues festival – S.E.R.P.E.N.T. – via his official website.