The Guns N’ Roses hit that Slash tried to sabotage, according to Duff McKagan

There are artists who develop a somewhat tumultuous relationship with their biggest hits. It is the case that slash with “Sweet Child O’Mine”probably the biggest success of the Armas e Rosas.

Originally released on the album Appetite for Destruction (1987), the track was precisely the band’s first to have a real impact, when it came out as a single, in June 1988. Its music video — which even got a second version — played a lot in the MTVwhich already played a fundamental role in the music industry.

But if it were up to the guitarist, none of this would have happened. In an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock (via website Igor Miranda), the bassist of Guns, Duff McKaganrevealed that his colleague tried to boycott the composition, born from an exercise on the instrument.

From start, McKagan says that the other guitarist in GN’R at the time, Izzy Stradlin, I already had in hand the three chords that characterize it — D (D), C (C) and G (G). How the melody fell to taste Axl Rosethe vocalist started to develop it, including working on the lyrics.

It was there that, according to Duff, Slash came up with the idea for the guitar phrasing that opens the song — and which became so iconic that it defined the band’s career. The problem was the musician’s intention when presenting the excerpt.

“In the introduction of ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’, slash he simply didn’t like the progression of notes in D, C and G. At one point he came to me and said: ‘We need to get rid of this music somehow’. He composed something distorted, simply atonal. And of course that part was about trying to get rid of the music.”

The phase was so good for the Armas e Rosas that the band got it right even when it tried to get it wrong. Duff comments:

“It ended up serving as an incredible introduction. This shows how we were in a moment where everything fell into place.”

What does Slash say?

At different points in his career, Slash expressed not very good feelings about “Sweet Child O’Mine”. It’s not that the guitarist hates the song: he simply doesn’t like it as much, as he prefers heavier songs.

However, one of his reports on the composition ends up not matching the version given by Duff McKagan. In his autobiography, of the same name and released in 2007, slash says that the song began to be created precisely from its initial phrasing, which he says is a “circus” melody. At the time, he was accompanied by the drummer Steve Adler.

According to him, only after listening to the excerpt did he Izzy Stradlin arrived with the sequence of chords and the other members got involved.

Timeline issues aside, the guitarist told an Australian TV show:

“I was the guy who, at first, wasn’t a big fan of ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’, not because of the introduction, but because of the type of song. At the time, we were a band that played something heavier and this song is like a ballad, with a calmer rhythm. But over the years I started to like it.”