I have a way of sitting down with the guitar and coming up with these hard-to-play riffs; they're unorthodox fingerings of simple melodies. It's my way of getting into playing or finding something interesting to do as opposed to just practise scales. To this day, I still do it; rather than doing obvious "exercises", I invent runs of my own design that both loosen up my fingers and keep my ears engaged, because if practicing doesn`t sound good, why bother with it all?

That is what I was doing one night as Izzy sat down on the floor to join me. "Hey, what is that? he asked. "I don't know," I said. "Just fucking around." "Keep doing it." He came up with some chords and since Duff was there, he came up with a bass line, as Steven planned out his drum beat. Within an hour my little guitar exercise had become something else. Axl didn't leave his room that night, but he was just as much a part of the creative process as the rest of us: he sat up there and listened to everything we were doing and was inspired to write lyrics that were complete by the next afternoon. They became an ode to his girlfriend and future first wife, Erin Everly, daughter of Don Everly of the Everly Brothers.

We'd found a rehearsal studio in Burbank called Burbank Studios, which was nothing more than a warehouse owned by this old Asian couple, which is where we really started to work on the production for Appetite, perfecting the songs we'd already demoed. At our next session, we worked our new song into a complete movement: we wrote a bridge, added a guitar solo, and so it became 'Sweet Child O' Mine.'

That was all fine and well, but we still didn't have a producer. Tom came up with the idea to try out Spencer Proffer, who'd worked with Tina Turner, Quiet Riot, and W.A.S.P., who Axl liked a lot back in the day, so we went for it. We took our gear down to Pasha Studios, which was where Spencer operated out of at the time and we agreed to work on "Sweet Child" together as a test. Spencer was a great guy; he was actually the one who suggested that the song needed a dramatic breakdown before its ultimate finale. He was right...but we had no idea what we wanted to do there. All of us sat around the control room, listening to it over and over, devoid of a clue.

"Where do we go?" Axl said, more to himself than the rest of us.

"Where do we go now?...Where do we go?"

"Hey," Spencer said, turning the music down. "Why don't you just try singing that?" And so became that dramatic breakdown.

[Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York. p. 155-156]

Sitting down with his guitar, he
plays some traditional exercises to
warm up.
1. true
2. false
Practicing has to sound good or
else there is no point in
bothering.
1. true
2. false
One night, Izzy and Slash had been
practicing together for a while when
they found a new riff for a new song.
1. true
2. false
Duff, the bass player,
improvised with a bass line to the
new song.
1. true
2. false
As Axl heard what was going on,
he got out of his room to join them
downstairs.
1. true
2. false
Axl wrote the lyrics as an ode to
his future wife.
1. true
2. false
An old Asian couple owned Burbank Studios, which looked pretty much like
a warehouse.
1. true
2. false
Burbank Studios is where the
band started work on the
pre-production of the songs for their album.
1. true
2. false
At their next session at the studio,
they recorded the song Sweet Child O' Mine which
they had already finished.
1. true
2. false
Who came up with the idea for the dramatic finale?
1. Axl
2. all the members of the band
3. Spencer, the producer.
4. Slash and Duff