A big happy birthday to Slash! 51 today and still the man!
Saul Hudson (born July 23, 1965), better known as Slash, is a British-American musician and songwriter. He is best known as the lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N’ Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During his later years with Guns N’ Roses, Slash formed the side project Slash’s Snakepit. After leaving Guns N’ Roses in 1996, he co-founded the supergroup Velvet Revolver, which re-established him as a mainstream performer in the mid to late 2000s. Slash has since released three solo albums: Slash (2010), featuring an array of famous guest musicians, and Apocalyptic Love (2012) and World on Fire (2014), recorded with his band, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. He returned to Guns N’ Roses in 2016, nearly 20 years after he had left.
Slash has received critical acclaim as a guitarist. Time named him runner-up on their list of “The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players” in 2009, while Rolling Stone placed him at No. 65 on their list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” in 2011. Guitar World ranked his solo in “November Rain” No. 6 on their list of “The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos” in 2008, and Total Guitar placed his riff in “Sweet Child o’ Mine” at No. 1 on their list of “The 100 Greatest Riffs” in 2004. In 2012, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Guns N’ Roses’ classic line-up.
