Success all areas

These days, at 49, he has assumed the responsibilities of fronting his own group, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, and running his own label, the mirthfully named Dik Hayd International, as well as a film-production firm, Slasher Films — all without reneging on his responsibilities as an axe-­wielding inspiration for another generation of devotees. BBC Radio 2 listeners last month voted his chiming riff on Sweet Child O’Mine the second greatest of all time.

“I think, all things considered, with Guns N’ Roses, I was always pretty...” he starts — no trace of his English childhood in his accent. “No matter what I was under the influence of, I was always pretty responsible, and understood that doing the work to get the word out was important — even when it was just ­promoting the band in the local clubs. No matter what the job was, I would take it on. So I still do that, but especially now that I’m completely responsible for my own existence.”

He says he embraces the ­challenge. “It’s empowering to an extent. I’m a busybody ­anyway, so I have a method to my madness, a reason for being neurotic about micromanaging that comes naturally to me. It fits in this setting.”

The latest fruits of these endeavours is World on Fire, an album of typically robust but nuanced modern guitar rock that sees Slash really bedding down with his new conspirators. After the implosion of Velvet Revolver, the supergroup of which he was part for two albums and a world of trouble in the early Noughties, he’s obviously relishing some metaphorical peace and quiet.

“I didn’t set out to be a solo guy,” he recalls. “What initially happened was that I wanted to get away from the chaos that was Velvet Revolver. We’d just fired Scott [Weiland, the band’s chemically wayward front man]. It had been a hellacious four years from the time the first record [2004’s Contraband] came out. So I just needed to decompress, I didn’t want to have to answer to anybody. I started to do a solo band, working with a couple of musicians and accumulating material.

“Some of that turned out to be Velvet Revolver stuff, because maybe I was a little scared to be on my own at that point, so that band was perfect. But it was hard, and there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and a lot of chemical issues that developed from that and made it that much more insane. So I got clean, finished a last tour with the band, then went on my own.”

The self-titled album that ensued in 2010 was solo in name, but sported a roster of Slash’s superstar friends as ­contributors, including Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, Lemmy, Kid Rock and Dave Grohl. It was a heck of a statement of independence. “Just being in control of what I was doing, that was the main thing. I put together that record and in doing that, with all the singers, I met Myles ­Kennedy.”

Kennedy, he says “was f****** brilliant”, so, “without having any long-term plan, I asked him if he wanted to do a tour to support that record. I knew he could sing everything, and I was going to do my back-catalogue stuff. It just seemed like a relief, and it was fun. I was doing things at my own pace.”

The new release carries a sense of extended interband harmony that’s quite new to their leader. “I just guide the ship,” he says. “I take care of the business stuff nobody else wants to do, and I provide the bedrock of music for everything to come from. So it’s not, like, ‘My way or the highway’. We’re very collabor­ative about everything.”

The band spent the summer on a US tour co-headlining with Slash’s old friends and fellow reformed libertines Aerosmith, whose 1976 album Rocks had practically been his home schooling. “I toured with those guys with Guns N’ Roses back in the 1980s, when they were first getting sober and we were at the peak of our debauchery. But from a rock’n’roll point of view, it was perfect.

“There were no casualties, but it was an interesting contrast between where those guys were at the time and where we were. Now, all these years later, I’ve ­followed the same path that they eventually did. So we’re both sober entities, but still very much rock’n’roll.”

Anything he does today is, he’s well aware, freighted with his past, and that includes the acrimony that enshrouded the later days with Guns N’ Roses. Slash remains discreet about exactly why he left the band, and makes only one matter-of-fact reference to Axl Rose by name. Of the band’s heyday, he says: “It would have been fine if it weren’t for certain things that made it impossible to enjoy.”

Yet sources suggest that the band dynamic broke down after their rhythm guitarist, Izzy ­Stradlin, quit in 1991. Slash and Axl’s lack of direct dialogue, with some talking of Rose’s “messiah complex”, made the guitarist’s eventual departure inevitable. “It’s just something you have to deal with, and I’m not trying to erase it, either, or sweep it under the rug. I’m proud of where I come from, so you have to accept that and see if you can rise above it independently.

“Granted, we had some really questionable habits. But I’m proud of the whole thing because it was ­sincere. There was no ­forethought or gimmick. Even the Stones came from a ­gimmick. So I admire it now.”

Away from the work, sober and not even smoking any more, he lives quietly in Los Angeles with his wife, Perla (with whom he reconciled after filing for divorce in 2010), and their two children, London, 12, and Cash, 8. He has developed an improbable but passionate ­interest in dinosaurs — he seems far too vital, thankfully, to become one — along with a more traditional enthusiasm for cars; he drives an Aston Martin.

Artistically, meanwhile, his new-found stability comes from the momentum he’s gained with his current group, coupled with an undying motivation. “I never did this for the money,” he says firmly. “It runs in my family, too, we’re all artists. It was an unstable existence that I’ve had since I left England. I was very stable in Stoke. Everything was just the way it’s supposed to be, then I moved to Los Angeles for a lifetime of instability.

“When it did happen that we were making money, I had nothing that I needed. I didn’t know what to do with it, and I spent it all on drugs. I still can’t change that mentality of not really giving a shit about ­financial goals. It doesn’t turn me on to be around people who are money-minded. But,” he adds, with his hard-won ­wisdom, “I admire people who know how to succeed.”

World on Fire, by Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, is released as a “fanpack” with Classic Rock magazine on Sept 15 and as a regular album by Dik Hayd/Roadrunner on Oct 13