(Gibson) In his fast-paced 45 years, Slash has weathered enough ups and downs to pick up some lessons and anecdotes worth sharingso much so that the rock and roll guru wrote a memoir in 2007 about his life and 10-year tenure with Guns N' Roses. Coming from a guy who says he used to plow through "one and two bottles of Jack Daniel's a night" during the '80s, he had to dig deep to remember things clearly enough to write about them. Slash's engrossing autobiography is not the only place to learn about one of the world's best living guitarists. We've also mined his interviews from years past to come up with these 10 nuggets. On serendipity, as stated in his 2007 autobiography Slash: "If it had been any different, if I had been born just one minute later, or been in the wrong place at the right time or vice versa, the life that I've lived and come to love would not exist. And that is a situation that I would not want to consider in the slightest."
On his L.A. upbringing, as told to the Los Angeles Times in August 2010: "In the 1970s, my family moved from England to the Laurel Canyon area, and my parents were very much dialed in to the whole Sunset Strip scene. They were both in the music business, and the whole reason we lived where we did was because of the recording industry. So I have very vivid memories of the Rainbow and the Roxy, and the Whisky was a huge point of interest at that time. And we practically lived at Tower Records. It was all so great; that's where I brought my band up. It was such a scene. I still live close to the Strip, just up the hill, and when people are visiting from out of town, the first place I send them is the Rainbow. I still go to the Roxy and the Viper Room every so often. The Rainbow and Viper Room are almost like in a time warp. They are cryptically unchanged. You see people you haven't seen for 20 years, and they pretty much look the same now as they did then. It's sort of a trip because I'm probably one of them." Read the other 8 here
