Guns N’Roses’ Duff McKagan has revealed that Slash tried to sabotage the band’s iconic hit Sweet Child O’Mine.
McKagan made these comments while appearing on the Songcraft Podcast, where he spoke about how the song came about.
The song became a major hit in the world of rock music, appearing in Guns N’Roses’ 1988 album Appetite For Destruction.
Sweet Child O’Mine also topped the US Billboard Chart 100 in September 1988. It also reached one billion streams on Spotify in August 2021. More on that here.
On how the track came about, Duff McKagan explained, “Izzy [Stradlin] had the three chords,” he explained. “OK, well that’s… What do you do with that? Axl liked it. OK, well let’s try to make this work somehow”.
“got to get rid of the song”
According to McKagan, the band’s guitarist Slash was not so keen on the track.
“The intro for ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine,’ Slash just did not like the three D, C, G (note progression) thing,” McKagan stated, before adding that the guitarist told him, “We’ve got to get rid of this song somehow”.
McKagan then revealed that Slash came up with the infamous intro to the track, as an attempt to derail the tune.
“He wrote this twisted, just atonal thing”, McKagan said. “And of course that part to try to get rid of the song, totally worked,” the bassist continued. “It was this amazing intro to the song, and suddenly we had this ballad”.
Duff McKagan also claimed that the bizarre arrival of Sweet Child O’Mine was indicative of how the band were at the time.
“It just goes to show that everything was clicking with that band at that point”, McKagan explained.
McKagan’s comments also come just a day or two after the trailer for the Despicable Me 4 arrived, featuring Sweet Child O’Mine.
Check it out here.
