Slash has no recollection of his early concerts due to being addled by alcohol.
The Guns N’ Roses axe-slayer, 58, formed the blues cover group Slash’s Blues Ball in 1996 with Teddy “Big Bag Zig Zag” Andreadis, Johnny Griparic, Alvino Bennet, Bobby Schneck and Dave McLaurin.
And although the blues gigs were inspiring for him, he was too drunk to remember anything that went down.
He told PEOPLE: “It was such a drunken kind of thing, and it was just for the fun of it.
“I do not recall any of those gigs.”
He added: “When I first met them, a couple of the guys, they were playing in a band called The Screaming Cocktail Hour, which was a great blues band that used to play at the local Rogie’s and Baked Potato and Cozy’s and all these small little blues dives around L.A. And I would go and hang out with them and get there 10 or 11pm and jam until two o’clock in the morning.”
“I got a couple of other guys.
“And so we started doing the same circuit, but then that turned into an actual tour, and we did it on and off for a couple of years, even managed to make it to Europe.”
Their setlists would go on to inspire Slash’s recent blues project, ‘Orgy of the Damned’.
Slash will be embarking on the touring ‘S.E.R.P.E.N.T Festival’ tour this July, which will see him joined by special guests Warren Haynes Band, Keb’ ‘Mo, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Robert Randolph, Samantha Fish, Eric Gales, ZZ Ward, Jackie Venson, and Larkin Poe.
Comparing his new jaunt to his formative years, he said: “I can’t remember that much about the Blues Ball, but [S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival] is not the same as just a drunken club band that was just touring around for beer.”