Slash Originally Wanted to Ditch This Signature Guns N’ Roses Track: “We’ve Got to Get Rid of This”

When most people think of Guns N’ Roses, one signature track will come to mind—unfortunately for Slash, that song is one he desperately wanted to get rid of before they finally released it on their 1988 album, Appetite for Destruction. To the guitarist’s credit, we can see where he was coming from. He felt like their genre of rock ‘n’ roll was too heavy for the song that was born from a jam session at GNR HQ in southern California. And honestly, Slash was right. It doesn’t sound like a song that belongs on an album of that name.

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“I did have a thing with it,” he admitted in a 2025 Guitar World interview. “It was a riff I came up with, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, but it inspired the whole song. To me, we were like a Motörhead-type hard rock band, so any kind of ballads were sort of uncongressed. But it really became part of our set.”

Indeed, the song became integral not only to Guns N’ Roses’ live sets but to their musical legacy as a whole. It’s virtually impossible to hear the distinctive opening riff and not immediately think of the American rock band. Or Step Brothers, depending on your affinity for late 2000s Will Ferrell comedies. Know the song yet?

Slash Wasn’t a Fan of This Signature Guns N’ Roses Track at First

The song in question is, of course, “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. It’s far and away one of the most ubiquitous songs in the Guns N’ Roses catalogue. The track peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and enjoyed Top 10 placements in the U.K., Ireland, New Zealand, and Canada. But all that success came at a price.

In a 1990 interview with Musician, Slash lamented over Guns N’ Roses’ transition into the mainstream, thanks to their new signature track. The fact that “Sweet Child O’ Mine” turned into such a massive hit, Slash said, “Makes me sick! I mean, I like it, but I hate what it represents. We started out as a hardcore band, and we toured our f***ing a**es off. Next thing you know, we’ve turned into pop stars. And now certain people are ripping us off. I won’t mention any names. We started this scene, you know?”

Besides thrusting Guns N’ Roses into the pop-sensible mainstream, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was also vexing for Slash because it was plain hard to play. “It really disturbed my drinking,” he joked in an interview with Total Guitar. “Whenever we did a show, I’d have a fair amount of whiskey beforehand. But when the song came up in the set, that riff was really hard to remember.”

Still, he added, “The saving grace for me was the solo section. I always looked forward to that part of the song in the set. It was completely different to the rest of the song.”

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