Richard Fortus Explains The Reason Behind Slash’s Approach Of Playing Guitar To Death

During a recent conversation with Slash bass guitarist Todd Kerns, Guns N’ Roses guitarist Richard Fortus talked about Slash’s passion for playing guitar.

In the conversation, Todd and Richard remembered the time when Slash wanted to jam with Richard immediately after his South African tour, and Richard stated that Slash wants to play all the time.

Furthermore, Richard mentioned that he loves the work ethic of Slash because he is ready to play at any time and said that they were playing all the time, and it doesn’t matter if they jammed or played on the stage.

Additionally, Richard wanted to explain why Slash wanted to play all the time by saying that Slash wanted ‘playing guitar’ to be muscle memory for him and doesn’t want to think about anything when he was on the stage.

Todd Kerns said:

“I’ll never forget one time Slash coming home from you guys – I think he’s coming home from South Africa, and he goes, ‘Hey man, you want to get together and jam?’ And I go, ‘Yeah, OK, sure.’ And he goes, ‘How about Saturday?’

And I go, ‘OK, cool.’ And then I look in the tour dates and he’s literally coming home from South Africa and he wants to go jamming! He’s nuts! He just wants to play all the time!”

Richard Fortus replied:

“He wants to play all the time, yeah. And as you know – and I love this about both him and Duff – their work ethic is like… They come in, we hang out, chat, and then once he puts on the guitar, it doesn’t come off. And I love that.

I love that it’s like, ‘OK, we’re here to work, let’s go.’ And it’s just playing, whether or not we’re just fucking around and just jamming, or we’re running through the set, or we’re working out a new thing… I love that!

Because I think his whole thing is that he wants it to be muscle memory, he wants to not have to think about anything when he’s on stage. And I’m this exact same way.

And it doesn’t matter how much you sit in your bedroom and practice, it’s different than when you’re in a room and you’re locking in with somebody live, and you’ve got to get that tight, and then you got to do it over, and over, and over again.”

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