Slash says YouTube and Instagram tutorials have accelerated young guitarists, and recalls the five-note blues lick that started him.
Slash was asked on the “Jim Kerr Rock & Roll Morning Show” on New York station Q104.3 FM whether beginners have it easier or harder than he did four decades ago. His answer drew a direct line between the material available online and the standard he now sees in players who have barely started.
“Are you kidding? People are incredible now. They pick up an instrument and there’s so much information out there on YouTube and Instagram, all the social networking stuff, where you can really learn how to play, as opposed to having to look in a book or sitting down and listening to records and going to concerts and sort of watching from a distance. You really get tutorials, and people are getting so good so fast. Little kids are blowing my mind,” Slash explained (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
One of the hosts noted that he often tells musicians that learning “November Rain“, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and classic rock parts by Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd, including David Gilmour‘s work on “Comfortably Numb“, equips a player for anything. The Guns N’ Roses guitarist agreed on the principle rather than the specific songs.
Slash said: “Well, the way I see it is, you learn a few of those licks, and I don’t know about the ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine‘ and all that, but David Gilmour, if you can do that and put it in context of other music, other songs and not just play ‘Comfortably Numb‘ only, yeah, you can do a million things. I mean, when I first picked up the guitar, it was, like, literally five notes that was sort of a blues lick. And it was like the heavens parted… So once you get that structure and start applying it to different pieces of music, it’s wide open.”
“Comfortably Numb” appeared on The Wall in 1979 and carries two Gilmour solos, the second of which is routinely placed at or near the top of readers’ polls in guitar magazines.
The same show produced Slash‘s recent comments on the band’s setlist and the legacy of Appetite For Destruction, in which he said Guns N’ Roses work from a pool of around 50 songs with no fixed running order.
Guns N’ Roses opened the North American leg of their 2026 world tour on July 23 at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina, an 18-date run through stadiums, arenas and amphitheatres that finishes on September 19 in Atlanta. Along the way it takes in MetLife Stadium, Allegiant Stadium, BC Place, Globe Life Field, Snapdragon Stadium, Busch Stadium and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, where the band have not played since 1992. Ice Cube, The Black Crowes, Pierce The Veil, Public Enemy and The Barbarians Of California appear as guests on selected dates.
The band released the standalone singles “Nothin’” and “Atlas” in December through Geffen, their first new material since 2023’s “The General” and “Perhaps“, and reissued Live Era ’87-’93 in a remastered deluxe edition.
Touring alongside Slash, Axl Rose and Duff McKagan in 2026 are keyboardist Dizzy Reed, rhythm guitarist Richard Fortus and drummer Isaac Carpenter, formerly of Awolnation, who replaced Frank Ferrer in March 2025. Keyboardist Melissa Reese, a member since 2016, is not part of this year’s touring lineup; the band announced in March that she would not be joining the tour “due to unforeseen personal reasons.”
