Guitarist, Slash has revealed that his early gigs with Slash’s Blues Ball are a hazy memory due to heavy drinking. The 58-year-old musician, who formed the blues cover group in 1996 has admitted that he was often too inebriated to remember the performances.
Slash joined forces with Teddy “Big Bag Zig Zag” Andreadis, Johnny Griparic, Alvino Bennet, Bobby Schneck, and Dave McLaurin to create the blues outfit. Despite the gigs being a source of inspiration for him, the rock icon told PEOPLE, “It was such a drunken kind of thing, and it was just for the fun of it. I do not recall any of those gigs.”
Recalling how the band came together, Slash shared, “When I first met them, a couple of the guys, they were playing in a band called The Screaming Cocktail Hour, which was a great blues band that used to play at the local Rogie’s and Baked Potato and Cozy’s and all these small little blues dives around L.A. And I would go and hang out with them and get there 10 or 11pm and jam until two o’clock in the morning.”
The impromptu jams led to the formation of Slash’s Blues Ball, which toured the same L.A. circuit before embarking on more formal tours, even making it to Europe. “I got a couple of other guys,” Slash said, “And so we started doing the same circuit, but then that turned into an actual tour, and we did it on and off for a couple of years.”
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He discovered the gem when he was 12 years old and still has it now, claiming it to be why he fell in love with music. He likes to play disc golf when he's not writing about music. He is a one-of-a-kind individual who is always the first to bust out his air guitar on the dance-floor.
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