October 21, 2015 / 1800 reads
In a recent interview with RollingStone.com, Slash remembers his auditions for Poison.
After Poison's original guitar player, Matt Smith, quits the band to return to Pennsylvania, he suggests Slash try out for the position. The guitarist packs up his gear and heads down to Poison's rehearsal space - actually the back half of a dry cleaners on West Washington Blvd. and South Palm Grove Ave. In Slash's own estimation, he kills the audition. "I played the shit out of those songs," he says. "And I got called back - twice." But at the final tryout he realizes it wasn't meant to be. "As I was walking in that last time, C.C. [DeVille] was coming back the other way. He came in with his hair all done up and was wearing stiletto heels. I had on a pair of moccasins. The Poison guys looked at me and asked, 'What do you wear?' I was like, 'This is... it,' you know? When I got the phone call that C.C. got the job, I wasn't surprised."
Michaels, for his part, concurs, "Slash really did kill it. And, actually, C.C. came in and he had barely learned our songs. He started playing his own stuff, like, 'I got these other songs! You gotta hear 'em!' So we immediately butted heads. But it all worked out for the best."
