Slash #65 on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists

Rolling Stone
He may have spent much of his Guns N' Roses prime shirtless, drunk and surrounded by snakes, but Slash brought good taste and restraint back to hard-rock guitar. "It was a stripped-down rock & roll sound compared to what everybody else was doing," says Slash. He could riff like Joe Perry, and intertwine, Stones-style, with Izzy Stradlin. And lyrical solos like the from-the-mountaintop grandeur of "November Rain" were permanently laced into the songs' fabric. "It's hard to play those solos any other way," says Slash. "It will sound wrong."

Key Tracks: "Sweet Child O'Mine," "Welcome to the Jungle"