Slash Shares Story Behind “Sweet Child O’ Mine” Riff

The long-time myth regarding the story behind the iconic riff of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” has been answered by the guitarist, Slash. Yes, sometimes there are stories that take on a life of their own, but during a recent interview with Eddie Trunk, Slash revealed that the song did not come from a warm-up exercise as believed by many.

In the podcast with Eddie Trunk, Slash said:

“Somebody else said that and it just became one of those things.”

He quickly clarified that:

“It wasn’t a warm-up exercise. I was sitting around the house where Guns used to live at one point in ’86 I guess it was and I just came up with this riff. It was just me messing around and putting notes together like any riff you do. You’re like, ‘This is cool,’ and then you put the third note and find a melody like that. So it was a real riff, it wasn’t a warm-up exercise.”

The guitarist also recalled:

“That’s how it started, and then Izzy [Stradlin] started playing the chords behind it and then Axl [Rose] heard it and it started from there.”

When Slash reflected on the song, he said:

“At the time, it was just a song. Nobody had any designs for it to be a big hit or anything like that. It was just a song that we put together that was cool before we actually made the Appetite for Destruction record. So we put it on the record like that and then the next thing you know at some point after the record had been released for a while, that song all of a sudden just took off.”