"What does death feel like? I didn't feel or see anything. Maybe I was just too high." An epic conversation with Slash in which the Guns N' Roses guitar legend proves he's so much more than just another "rock moron"

In March 2012, Classic Rock sat down with Slash for a conversation that the guitarist likened to "an interrogation" but later described as "the best interview I've ever done."

"It feels good to walk away from conversations with somebody," he commented, "and leaving them knowing that I'm not a rock moron."

In the spring of 1987, Geffen Records invited a handful of rock writers to Rumbo Sudios in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley to meet a new band already being talked up by Hollywood's hype men as The Most Dangerous Band In The World.

A feral, cocksure unit, all transplants to the City of Angels, the quintet made quite a first impression, serving up tales of drug dealing, food stealing, sex with strippers, and running battles with the LAPD. Rock 'n' roll, Guns N' Roses insisted, had "sucked a big fucking dick since the Sex Pistols." Their debut album, they promised, would change that.

"This band," stressed 21-year-old London-born guitarist Slash, "is real. It's new to us this business, and we meet people and they say, do this, do that. And we go: 'Fuck it. Fuck you.' We do whatever we want to. It's fucking paradise this place. You can get away with murder here."

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Twenty-five years on, in a photo studio on the other side of the Atlantic, this quintessential Los Angeles rock star is slouched on a couch, languidly teasing blues riffs on an unplugged Les Paul guitar. Fresh off a plane from Australia, Slash's body language, limp handshake and comically exaggerated yawns, suggests that there are any number of things he'd prefer to be doing at 11am on a Sunday morning rather than entertaining journalists, but he pulls himself into an upright position with minimal complaint. Of his trademark top hat there is no sign today, but in biker boots, black leather trousers, and a sleeveless black T-shirt emblazoned with the words 'Fuck Me I'm Famous', he looks good. A little less lithe and a little more creased than the insouciant youth peering out from beneath corkscrew curls on the back cover of Appetite For Destruction, admittedly, but every inch the louche, 40-something rock star. It's doubtful that anyone else in Bethnal Green in London's East End is wearing mirrored Ray Ban shades indoors at this hour of the day.

When Slash tells you that he's never, ever used the phrase, 'Do you know who I am?' you tend to believe him. Ranked second only to Jimi Hendrix in a 2009 Time magazine list of the 10 Greatest Electric Guitar Players Ever, he's arguably the planet's single most recognisable and iconic living rock star. And as such, on this five day layover in London promoting his second solo album Apocalyptic Love, he's much in demand. In the days ahead he'll be interviewed by everyone from The Sunday Times to FHM, guest as the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car on Top Gear, join old pal Ronnie Wood on the Rolling Stones guitarist's radio show, and record a "blistering" six-part series on hard rock and heavy metal for BBC Radio 2. He'll also get splashed across the nation's tabloids when London's ever vigilant paparazzi snap him dining out with achingly posh TV 'style guru' Trinny Woodall in a chic Mayfair restaurant.

Woodall is an old friend, apparently, and in fairness, it's unlikely that the guitarist was looking for makeover tips. After 25 years in the limelight, the Slash 'brand' is now far too well established to fuck with. The construct suits the man well: taken together, his leather trousers, mirrored shades and Melrose Avenue top hat conjure up an image of deathless rock 'n' roll cool, and also afford him a protective shield to shelter behind. Because if Slash were ever to pose the question, 'Do you know who I am?' then it's doubtful that more than a handful of people in his life could truly offer a genuine answer.

Sure everyone thinks they know Slash: the indestructible, death-defying, swaggering Rock God. But the 'real' Slash - 46-year-old father-of-two Saul Hudson - remains hidden behind this cartoon caricature. Sharper and more perceptive than his easy-going demeanor might suggest, Slash is only too aware of the disconnect.

"There's this image that people put together from back in the day," he says, "and I look at it and think, 'Oh, so that's me? Drugged-out, guitar-slinging, fucking Jack Daniel's-toting, cigarette-smoking wildman? And that's it?' Fine, i'm not trying to affect people's judgements. But when I get into conversations, people usually realise that I have a little more depth than that caricature. It feels good to walk away from conversations with somebody and leaving them knowing that I'm not a rock moron."

Asked for one word to describe his life to date, Slash plumps, with characteristic understatement, for "colourful". On the cover of his self-titled 2007 autobiography, the word 'excessive' is picked out in bold type. That also works, he concedes. A fast-paced rock 'n; roll memoir to rank alongside Hammer of the Gods, or The Dirt, Slash is frank and funny, but also, in places, terribly sad. Slash hasn't read it since it was published, but he insists that nothing in the story's breathless highs and hellish lows was sensationalised. To borrow Ronnie Wood's famous description of Mick Jagger, in the book Slash comes across as a nice bunch of guys - a preening, priapic golden god one moment, a frightened, insecure little lost boy the next. Today, he shrugs as he's told this, and spreads his hands wide.

"You are who you are and you do what you do," he says. "Things come and go and change, and I'm too busy living in the moment to watch the ebbs and flows. I'd hate to come off as an asshole, or arrogant or a prima donna, but it's not important to me that everybody gets beneath my skin."

Mind if we give it a go?

He emits a mirthless chuckle.

"Feel free to try."

Your T-shirt says 'Fuck Me I'm Famous'. Is it fun being famous?

"Well, this T-shirt is from a club in Ibiza, it's not a personal statement. But no, I don't think being famous is as fun or glamorous or as exciting as people think it's going to be, or is. Some people work hard to be famous, but I find it sort of tedious. I'm not looking for that much attention. When I go out in public, to some fucking red-carpet thing which I cannot stand, then of course I'll be 'Slash', I'll be that person. But going to the liquor store, or going to Starbucks or the library, I try to slip in and out without people knowing I exist."

Do you have a disguise you wear when you go out in LA?

"I don't have a disguise, no. You'll never catch me wearing a top hat and leather trousers, but I hate to pretend that I'm something that I'm not, so it's not like I take my earrings out, or my nose ring. I just put my hair in a ponytail, pull my cap down and cruise. And no one pays that much attention."

So it might be that Slash the rock 'n' roll 'brand' is what people truly identify with when they look at you: that without your hat and your leather trousers and your Les Paul you're kind of invisible?

"I don't really think about it, I don't dwell upon it. I've never thought of myself as a brand. I'm not so self-centred as to worry about such things. I'm not trying to impress anyone. I just be who I am, and you can take it or leave it."

Do you think many people know who the real Slash is?

"Probably not. I don't really get that heavy with anyone. I don't have a lot of what you'd call close friends."

Have you ever been to see a therapist?

"Are you kidding? Haha. Yes, I have. But I don't have a regular therapist I see every week, and when I have been, I find that I don't have much to talk about. Anyone who knows me real well - my wife especially - will tell you that I don't talk very much. I don't have a lot of feelings that I want to express verbally, I don't have a lot of deep thoughts that I would like to put out. That's just the way I am. I have people I love very much, but they will all tell you that it's hard to get anything out of me. This conversation is forcing me to look a little bit deeper, but I don't like people to get too close.

Here are some facts about Slash you may well know. He was born in Hampstead, north-west London on July 23, 1965, the eldest of two boys born to his English artist father Tony, and his African-American clothing designer mother Ola. The family relocated from Stoke-on-Trent to Los Angeles in 1971. Two years later, Tony and Ola separated. Slash was given his first guitar at age 13 by his grandmother. The following year he freebased cocaine for the first time, and derived a quiet thrill from the knowledge that, even within his parents' bohemian peer group, such behaviour was considered outré.

In 1984 he answered an advert in LA's free classified ads paper the Recycler for a band seeking "a Heavy Metal Punk Glam guitarist", through which he was first introduced to William Bailey and Jeffrey Isbell, two 22-year-old musicians from Layfayette, Indiana, now better known to the world as Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin. The rest is history.

Less well-publicised are the facts that Slash is a Graham Greene fan, that he's been teetotal for the past seven years, and that he hasn't smoked a single cigarette since his mother passed away from lung cancer on June 5, 2009. He was introduced to his wife Perla by porn star Ron Jeremy, and has his name tattooed on her left forearm (and his own name tattooed on his right). He drives an Aston Martin V12 Vantage, owns just one snake now, and tries to schedule poker games with near neighbour Robbie Williams in LA as and when time allows. Oh, and no one calls him Saul anymore.

Anyone listening to Apocalyptic Love for deeper insights into Slash's psyche will be disappointed. A more cohesive collection than 2010's self-titled Slash - understandable, given that it was recorded with the same band who toured that album for 18 months, rather than with a dozen guest musicians, as was the format on the first one - its rock 'n' roll imagery (wanton women, heroic men, lost souls adrift in the gutter but staring at the stars) comes not from Slash's own imagination, but from the pen of vocalist Myles Kennedy, on loan once again from Alter Bridge. Kennedy describes Slash as "a stand-up cat", but freely admits that for all the memorable experiences he's shared with him, he has yet to truly pierce his bandmate's protective shell.

"We've had conversations where I get glimpses as to who he is," says the singer, speaking to Classic Rock on the phone from Los Angeles, "but he's not the kind of person you meet who within a week is laying it all out there. He definitely wears the veil. He's a hard-working, intelligent, talented individual, but his cards stay close to his chest.

For his part, following the well-documented personality clashes which defined much of his time in Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver, Slash appears genuinely thrilled to be working with Kennedy, bassist Todd Kerns, and drummer Brent Fitz again. He describes the three men as a godsend.

"Maybe after all these years I've paid my dues and I've earned a band that I can just have a good time with," he muses. "Everyone gets along, everyone plays great, and we have a blast.

He insists that he's no control freak - "I'm supposedly the boss, but I'm not a dictator" - although he admits he likes the responsibility of leading the band.

"I think it fits my personality," he says. "It's nice to be able to pick and choose my own destiny without having to ask anybody or look over my shoulder to see if anyone approves. But at the same time I'm very much a band guy. I'm a bit of a workaholic, one of those people that likes to be active, and hands-on. Because if I don't do that, i go the other way, which is not good. Because that's when the trouble starts, when bad things happen."

"Bad things" clouded much of Slash's early music career. He first shot up heroin in 1984, while partying with Izzy Stradlin. In his biography, he remembers thinking: "This is the best thing I've ever done." On the evening of September 24, 1992, following a Guns N' Roses show in San Francisco, he 'died' for the first time - following a heroin, crack and cocaine binge. It would not be his last overdose.

"Heroin was like the ultimate complement to my personality," he told Piers Morgan in 2010. "It fitted perfectly. Everyone else was doing coke and speed, and it made hyper people even more hyper. Heroin just made me more reclusive and quieter. It was just me and my drug."

When Appetite For Destruction became the biggest debut album by a rock band ever, Slash retreated further into heroin use. It took him to some dark places.

"If you're using drugs and alcohol to hide the fact that you're not happy, life goes downhill pretty fast," he later noted.

It would take him until 2001 to kick his habit. In the end, he says, his drive to play music simply exceeded his need for drugs. But, around the same time, his dependency on alcohol had become so severe that he was given between six days and six weeks to live.

Guns N Roses - Mr. Brownstone (Live in Tokyo 1992) (HD Remastered) (1080p 60fps) - YouTube

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What was the hardest drug to give up?

"I think alcohol was really the hardest thing to give up. I come from, not an alcoholic background, but my dad was a drinker, and people in my family were drinkers, and being born in England, that was just part of pub culture. So that was definitey the hardest. And next was smoking. Heroin was physically hard, but I was always in and out of that. I'd be into it when nothing was happening, and then I'd get focussed on work and I would stop. I'd work for a year or two years, and then work would stop, and I'd fall back into it. It was really just an excuse for not knowing what to do with myself when I had nothing to do. "

I once asked Steven Tyler about that famous Trainspotting tag-line, which compared taking heroin to your best orgasm, multiplied by a thousand. He said, '"Oh no, it's better than that."

"Yes, it is. It really is. I had dinner once with Ewan McGregor actually, and Trainspotting was all we talked about. That's one of the iconic drug movies for anyone who has experienced that. There's nothing that beats fucking dope. Especially when you're first doing it. That's what junkies are chasing their entire lives, that first buzz."

How do you stop doing heroin?

"There's a lot of different ways. It really is to each his own as to how you get to that point. I was fortunate, because I could wrap my head around the idea of getting off the drugs so I could continue what it is that I was doing music-wise. So my priorities were in check. But even then I went through periods where drugs sorta take over, and you forget what your fucking purpose is. It's tough."

Do you have a constant fear that you might relapse into bad behaviour?

"I'm not really worried about it. That's not a part of my present consciousness. But I do need to keep busy, just for my own sanity. The whole process of getting off that stuff was a very long and tedious process, and it got to the point where I was really sick and tired of it, to the point where it didn't interest me any more. But I also know that if I thought that I could casually have a drink or casually do whatever, that would leave the door open. I know how that works, because I've done it before, so I just abstain from it altogether."

So if I was to rack out two lines of coke right now, and invite you to take one...

"I have that all the time, trust me. I'm not one of those people who's like: 'Okay, everybody quit all that around me or I'll break down.' I had to get over it on my own. So if I see it or I'm around it, it really has no effect on me. It'd be hard for me to sit around if you pulled the works and started rigging up to shoot up. That might be a little unnerving for me. But I've had many times where somebody has laid out some blow on the table, or on the bathroom counter, and said: 'Hey do you want some?' And I'm always like: 'No'. I know where that path leads."

And what does a drug-related death feel like?

"I didn't feel or see anything. Maybe I was just too high."

A voracious reader, Slash recently finished The Dwarf, by the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish author Par Lagerkvist. A dark, violent parable about evil (embodied in the principal character, an amoral, 26-inch high aide to a Renaissance-era Italian Prince) and man's incapacity to escape the past, it's a sobering, even depressing read, set out in diary form. Slash himself doesn't keep a diary, and never has - "I don't like putting shit down on paper and getitng personal" he says - but in some ways he too remains inextricably chained to history.

Before our interview today, Slash's management requested that no questions be asked about Guns N' Roses' forthcoming induction into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, an occasion which could theoretically see the five founding members of the band back in the same room for the first time since drummer Steven Adler was sacked in the summer of 1990.

The request is understandable: at a time when Slash is promoting his own album, it must be infuriating for him to have to answer question after question about a band he quit 16 years ago, not least because much of the talk before the induction ceremony on April 14 has centred on whether or not The World's Most Dangerous Band will reunite for a one-off performance.

Today I get as far as mentioning "an important date looming" before he anticipates the question. No, he hasn't spoken to anyone else in GN'R about the event. Yes, he's honoured to be inducted. No, he doesn't see a reunion happening. Asked whether he'll extend warm hugs or handshakes to his former band mates on the night, he sighs deeply before answering: "A mixture of both, depending on the person." Given that in 2009 Axl Rose described Slash as "a cancer", noting "one of the two of us will die before there's a reunion", it has the potential to be an awkward evening for all involved.

"It's a humbling accolade, but at the same time, that was so loing ago,"Slash says quietly. "There's no band now to share that with. I talk to Duff pretty regularly, and I've talked to Steven a couple of times lately. But I haven't talked to Izzy in a while, and Axl I haven't spoken to since... 1996. Now that we've been inducted I'm like, do we have to go through the fucking dinner and all that shit? I hated it when I last went to the ceremony. I don't like awards shows or any of that stuff, but if I don't go it's seen as some big statement and there'll be all this bullshit. So, I'll go, but a part of me is like, Okay, thanks, now let's move on."

One can't help but wonder if Slash gets frustrated by the fact that his past is always the elephant in the room in every interview he does.

"I can understand why you're asking that," he says, shrugging,"and how that would frustrate some people, but I'm proud that I have a history that's important enough to bring up. At the same time, it all depends on what particular angle people want to take on that subject. I'm proud of who I am and where I come from, but sometimes I feel like I've done enough over the last 10 years that people don't need to dwell so much on a subject that's like, 20 years old.And I don't like people forcing me to think back to experiences that may not have been so positive. There was a period when Velvet Revolver started where it was the first time that any of that shit had been directed at me. And I only had really bitter feelings about the whole thing, so I just kept venting. Thinking about it later, that was kinda damaging. I've too much to look forward to now to dwell too much in my past."

In the past, do you think that people thought you were a soft touch?

"I've always been too fucking easy-going, and I'm always getten taken advantage of. Fortunately the guys I'm working with now are really laid-back and are not looking to control anything. This band isn't like Guns N' Roses or Velvet Revolver, where I'm one of five guys unanimously making decisions. This time everyone is on board to do what I want to do. But we're all on the same wavelength."

Most musicians who lead their groups say bands can't work as a democracy.

"In theory that's true, but it all depends on who's steering the ship."

You played a one-off Velvet Revolver reunion show in LA in January. Did that feel good, like drawing a line under unfinished business?

"No, it didn't feel anything like that. It didn't have any of that special magic that one sometimes wants to romanticise about. We were doing this particular gig for a particular reason [as a tribute to composer John O'Brien, who passed away during August 2011] and we got up and we did it. It was good to jam with Dave and Matt and Duff, and Scott was in there too. Credit where credit's due, Scott did a good performance and he seemed very together, but it didn't really change my feelings about how that works."

Velvet Revolver REUNION - Live at House of Blues - West Hollywood, CA 1-12-12 - YouTube

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So how unlikely is another Velvet Revolver album looking?

"I think it would be to my disadvantage to speculate at this point. At some point I want to do another Slash record with these guys because it was a really great experience. As far as a Velvet record goes at some point... you never know what can happen. I don't like to guess.

It's hard to survive in this business without having something of the bastard about you. Is there a bastard inside you that you can call upon if needs be?

"No, not really. But sometimes there are certain things you have to face. One of the great things about alcohol and drugs is that you get to sweep everything under the couch. But with my name on this band, I can't run away from shit I don't want to deal with. I've made mistakes, and I'll make some more I'm sure.

Among the mix of low-slung anthems and widescreen ballads which make up Apocalyptic Love, there's a low key-key rocker titled One Last Thrill. "I had it all when I was wild and free," sings Myles Kennedy. "Those were the best of times." It's tempting to read the song as a lament for glory days gone by. But ask Slash when and where he was happiest in his life, and he gets slightly irritated by the question.

"I'm happy right now," he says, a little too sharply. "Except for this conversation, I'm happy."

It's the one point today where his placid exterior slips. But if he has a yearning at all to revisit a youth gleefully misspent, he hides it well. His face lights up when he talks about his sons - nine-year-old London and seven-year-old Cash - and quiet nights at home with Perla, flipping between the Military Channel and various cooking channels on cable. But the couple's life hasn't always been so harmonious. In July 2010, Slash filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences" with his partner, although by the following summer they'd kissed and made up, renewing their wedding vows in Ibiza in August 2011 to mark their tenth anniversary together.

"Twitter was the catalyst for that break-up," he confesses. "I'm not going to get into why that is, but somebody in our inner circle used the distance between us to play us against each other. And it was a really sad state of affairs that I never would have seen coming. So yeah, we did have a rough patch. But if you knew Perla and I, we've had a really crazy, tumultuous, fun, insane kind of relationship that managed to get through thick and thin, stuff that people would find unbelievable, and we've managed to get through that. We've just been surviving in our own kind of crazy way."

I interviewed you on the phone once, and you broke off mid-conversation to have a little argument with Perla because she'd just found a bag of sex toys in your wardrobe.

"Hmmmm, well, er... I don't recall that exactly, but it was probably just an issue of not wanting the housekeeper to find all that shit out in the open."

Does Perla go on tour with you?

"Yeah. I spend the greater part of my existence on the road, and she pops in and out every couple of weeks, and sometimes brings the kids. But road life is something I'm extremely adapted to, whereas she's looking to get something fun out of it, and finds that it's often frustratingly not fun. She's pretty great, she can make fun out of anything. But it can be a lot of work just to hang out.

What do your kids make of daddy's job?

"It's hard for me to say. When I was a kid I was in and around the music scene, and it's just life as it is, you don't know any different, really. They're more aware of it when they see how other people react around me in public, but at home I'm just dad. But they like seeing me play every so often, because that's the only time they get to see me really animated.

Would the 21-year-old Slash who made Appetite For Destruction wonder how your life got so free of chaos and drama?

"Well, I might express to you how low-key and drama-free my life is, but by most people's standards, my life is pretty damn exciting. There's always craziness and drama and chaos in the world I work in and even though I don't get sucked in, I don't think it's mundane. Would I be happier if the shit I've dealt with in my past was still in my life? Fuck no. If you stood in my shoes for a few days, you wouldn't think my life was mundane."

This feature first appeared in Classic Rock issue 171, in June 2012.