Slash reveals he’s been wanting to make a blues album since he left Guns N Roses in 1996: “I finally had two weeks off”
The guitar legend released his blues covers album Orgy Of The Damned today.
Slash. Credit: Matthew Baker/Getty
Slash has just released a blues covers album, Orgy of the Damned, on which he delivers his own take on various blues standards with a stacked list of collaborators. However, he has now revealed that the record has been in the pipeline for decades as he had first got the itch to make a blues record when he left Guns N’Roses in 1996.
Indeed, after he quit his day job, one of his first tasks was to assemble a blues side project with the characteristically X-rated name Slash’s Blues Ball, made up of bassist Johnny Griparic and singer/keyboardist Teddy Andreadis.
“It was just us getting together and we would just play in all these LA dives,” Slash tells Classic Rock. “There was a lot of drinking going on, but we were having a real good time, playing all these covers and jamming around. And we actually took it to the point of touring around the US and we even did some touring round Europe. Anyway, I always wanted to make a record out of that.”
However, life got in the way, and with the number of projects he was involved in, it seemed like Slash barely had time to breathe, let alone make another record. “But then there was Snakepit, then I was in hospital, then Velvet Revolver, then the Conspirators, then back to Guns N’Roses… it’s just been very busy,” he continues. “Anyway thirty years later I had two weeks off, and I thought I’m going to do this record now.”
Both Griparic and Andreadis were involved in making Orgy of the Damned, along with new collaborators Tash Neal and Michael Jerome. They appear alongside A guest artists including Gary Clark Jr. Billy F. Gibbons, Chris Stapleton, Dorothy, Iggy Pop, Paul Rodgers, Demi Lovato, Tash Neal, Chris Robinson and Beth Hart.
Later this summer, he’ll be taking the album on the road as part of a a mammoth 27-date “travelling blues festival” tour called S.E.R.P.E.N.T. The name S.E.R.P.E.N.T is an acronym for “solidarity, engagement, restore peace, equality ‘n’ tolerance” and a cut of the proceeds from every ticket sold will be donated to a variety of charities, including The Equal Justice Initiative, Know Your Rights Camp, The Greenlining Institute, and War Child.