SLASH Says MYLES KENNEDY 'Turned Down' VELVET REVOLVER Singer Gig

Jon Wiederhorn of AOL's Noisecreep recently conducted an interview with legendary guitarist Slash (VELVET REVOLVER, GUNS N' ROSES). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On the June 10 incident when he was nearly tackled by a man who had climbed onstage during Slash's performance in Milan, Italy:

Slash: I got hit, but I didn't get tackled. After the security guard broadsided the guy, he bounced into me. But had the security guy not jumped in, the velocity that this guy was coming in with, he would have taken me over the stage, and that would have been a drag because the stage was pretty high up. But luckily, that's not what happened. So I just continued playing and it was one of the best shows on the tour. I'm a rock guy. This kind of shit goes with the territory.

Noisecreep: After you get back from Australia, you're launching a U.S. tour in September. Will Myles Kennedy be doing all the vocal parts for you?

Slash: He's been great. He's got a great voice. He's one of the most fantastic rock singers and he's a great guy. It's a lot of fun to tour with him. The band sounds amazing.

Noisecreep: Any chance he'll become the next singer for VELVET REVOLVER?

Slash: No, he's already got a band, ALTER BRIDGE, and he's not leaving. We offered him to sing in VELVET a year ago, but he turned it down then. So we're still looking for a singer. As soon as we establish the singer, we'll be able to set the time to actually go in and start working on the record. We've held a bunch of auditions, we just haven't found the right guy yet. We stopped for the tour, but we've been listening to demos from different singers. But right now I can't say there's someone who we're leaning towards. We haven't found that guy yet.

Noisecreep: Have you written songs for the next VELVET REVOLVER album?

Slash: When we came back off the tour after Scott left we came back in and wrote half a dozen or more really cool songs. It's really heavy stuff and I think it could be the best VELVET REVOLVER album yet.

Noisecreep: You've got a new guitar coming out through Gibson, the Appetite.

Slash: Yeah, I played it recently. I was on tour in Europe and I played it through my own rig so I could check it out and approve the prototype. And I was floored at how great the guitar sounds and plays. And if you look at the specs they're almost identical to the U.S.A. model. So it's very satisfying to me that the guitar is reasonably priced, yet you get as much quality out of it as you get from the higher priced models. So it's sort of a steal. I feel that anybody who picks it up, from a beginner to a pro, it's something that will do the job perfectly and last for a very long time.

Noisecreep: Why call it "Appetite?"

Slash: It's a replica of the guitar I used to record "Appetite for Destruction" and really every record since then, including the record I just did, for which I used this guitar in its entirety. That's where the Appetite name came from. There were a lot of diehard fans that were really in key on the guitar that I used on that record because it has such an iconic status at this point. That guitar sound seems to be appreciated by a lot of guitar enthusiasts. So this guitar is really a replica of that guitar.

Read the entire interview from Noisecreep.