“We Have Billy Strings At Home”– Slash Is Getting Dragged For Sloppy Acoustic Guitar Solo

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain and it appears the famed Guns N' Roses guitarist has completed this inevitable story arc, at least when it comes to this one video. No one is going to say that Slash isn't a talented guitarist. He's one of (if not the) the most recognizable lead guitarists on the planet and countless kids have asked their first axe in hopes of being a rockstar just like him. He's always included in "Best Guitarist" lists and was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 2012, so there's no way to deny that the guy has some serious skills, but a certain video of Slash playing a different style of guitar than his usual Les Paul is picking up some steam online, and let's just say it could have been better... The clip was taken from a performance of at The Grammy Museum in LA back in October. Slash and Mike Clink, the producer behind bands such as Whitesnake, Mötley Crüe, Eddie Money, Heart, and of course Guns N' Roses, sat down for An Evening With Slash And Mike Clink, where they swapped stories and played some songs for a small live audience. One of the songs they played was a version of "Crossroads", which was inspired by the original "Crossroad" or "Cross Road Blues" written and released by Robert Johnson back in 1936, though it had been in his repertoire for years before he sat down to record it. It's become a blues standard but at the time was considered to be earth shattering, leading to the theory that Robert Johnson actually met the devil at the local crossroads and sold his soul to be able to play music so well. If you haven't gone down the Robert Johnson rabbit hole yet, get to it because the guy's life is truly an insane story of booze, drugs, music, mystery, and murder that seems to unreal to be true. Netflix has a documentary called ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads that's very much worth your watch. Here's his original version of "Crossroad", which honestly doesn't completely hold up in it's original form all that well (remember it was written and recorded in the 1930's) but its essence is truly foundational and genre shifting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A Well, Slash and company sat down to play their version (which seems to be based of Eric Clapton's version) and, well, you can make your own opinion. I'll link the entire performance at the bottom but here's the shorter clip that's gaining some traction on X/Twitter. https://twitter.com/historyrock_/status/1872373379698999627 Could I play that well? Not at all. Could any of the people commenting play that well? Probably not but there's certainly a lot of unsuspecting folks out there that can really shred and many know what good acoustic guitar playing sounds like, so the public was quick to voice their displeasure with Slash's acoustic abilities. https://twitter.com/JoshuaHedley/status/1872423429884043341 https://twitter.com/DiskoStew420/status/1872702629232742661 https://twitter.com/sonofabeachy/status/1872592651259932787 https://twitter.com/StormThorg/status/1872427619100291168 https://twitter.com/MusicSophia345/status/1872486768341377084 https://twitter.com/Goethe914/status/1872625476373741788 https://twitter.com/RattlesnakeTex/status/1872688579304145241 While there were some comments praising his abilities (and a surprising number of Spanish speakers getting themselves involved) it seems like the overall sentiment of the performance was quite negative. The Billy Strings comments really got me chuckling though. Obviously Slash can't keep up with Bill on an acoustic guitar because Billy many be the best on the planet but I sure expected Slash to put up a little more of a fight just given his name. He basically played it like an electric which just does not work on an acoustic, plus the sound engineer didn't do him any favors with the recording. Was it bad? Of course not, it's not bad by any stretch of the imagination. But was it good? Also no... and proof that we need to put some more respect on the country flat pickers that we listen to day in and day out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VymgaVICNPQ