Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash might once have had an appetite for destruction, but an appetite for gamechanging portable music players? Not so much.
Speaking to the Metro, the oft-behatted riff maven confessed: “there was a period where I had an iPod, which I would take on the road with me for convenience, but the quality of the sound drove me crazy because it was so fucking digital.”
When asked to name his favourite portable music device, Slash said: “Those little flat Sony cassette players that had a tape on one end and the speakers on the other. I used to walk around with that when I was first starting to play guitar.”
In fact, it seems that Slash isn’t really a digital man all; while he’s happy to admit that Pro Tools is “a genius piece of technology,” he also explains that “I’m not a huge fan because it tends to be overused”.
Explaining in more detail, he says: “It allows you to edit every single note, which means that people actually put records together not knowing how to play a single note.”
Of course, this is true of every DAW, not just Pro Tools, but it’s fair to say that Guns N’ Roses have always been dubious about the merits of digital technology.
The original Appetite For Destruction CD liner notes, for example, said: “Compact digital disc was originally recorded on analogue equipment. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording. Because of its rich resolution, however, the compact disc can reveal limitations of the source tape.”
Slash’s new album, 4, featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators, was released last week.
