Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash has been open about his previous battles with drugs and alcohol. Being a focal point of one of the biggest bands on the planet usually doesn’t come without a few trials and tribulations along the way. But recently, Slash revealed the vice that was hardest for him to quit, and it came about after being “dragged” to a Cher concert by his ex-wife and her friends.
“I had to leave for every song and go outside and smoke,” he said. “And I think I’d worn myself down from smoking so much, and Cher just took me over the top. Every time she revisited one of those periods [during the concert] … She had a closet on stage and she’d go in the closet and she’d come out and she’d be the Indian. Every single thing that she’s been over her career … When she started with the Sonny & Cher thing, it just killed me — I couldn’t take it. So I would smoke… I just didn’t have any fond memories of that show or any of the other stuff.”
Slash ended up catching pneumonia at the concert, and it ultimately led him to stop smoking. “When I did it, I had pneumonia, and pneumonia is what helped me quit smoking,” he told “WTF With Marc Maron”. “That, and I saw Cher the night before, and that’s when I caught the pneumonia. So Cher helped me quit smoking. Anyway, I couldn’t smoke. I tried — I couldn’t breathe — so I had two weeks on my back. So I quit, and then I used the patch to sort of get the edge off. Then I started doing the snus [smokeless tobacco] thing, and I was doing that for years. My significant other talked me out of doing it, and so I started doing the [nicotine] gum. And I sleep with the gum.”
In a recent interview, Slash continued on his battle with ciggarettes: “Quitting smoking is the hardest thing I’ve ever quit. I can think of a lot of stuff that was hard to quit and smoking was the hardest. You just have to make that decision and then stick to it.” Slash once had a 60-cigarette-a-day habit and described himself as a “compulsive smoker … I couldn’t handle not being able to smoke wherever I wanted.”
Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators just released a new album, “4,” via Gibson Records. It’s Slash’s fifth solo album.
