Popular YouTube guitar teacher Marty Schwartz claims that Slash from Guns N’ Roses learned blues techniques from his videos.
In a new upload to his channel, where he has more than 4.5 million subscribers, Schwartz recalls meeting Slash following an interview with guitar manufacturer Gibson for a documentary, around the time of the guitarist releasing his 2024 blues cover album Orgy Of The Damned.
He adds that Slash recognised him, stopped him and told him he picked up some blues tricks from the YouTuber’s content.
Schwartz recalls (via Guitar.com): “Slash [had] someone with him, a handler or someone from Gibson was chaperoning him, and [we met] eye-to-eye, and he is a hero of mine, especially when I was a kid.”
He continues: “I’m only saying this because it’s absolutely true, it sounds like a flex but I’m only telling it to you because it is the truth, it’s still one of the greatest professional days of my life.
“I was just like, ‘Whoa, hey Slash,’ and he says, ‘Whoa, Marty, oh my God!’ And I’m getting chills right now even just saying that. He was like, ‘It’s really cool when you watch someone a lot and then you get to actually meet them in person.’”
It was during this encounter, in the hallway of a Gibson office building, that Slash told Schwartz about the influence he’d had on his playing.
“He said he had some of my instructional stuff saved on his computer and there were some really cool blues-style techniques that he learned from some of my stuff,” the instructor adds. “He was so nice and complimentary… That was one of [those] moments in my life where everything felt validated.”
In an interview with Classic Rock last year, Slash spoke about how his playing had been moulded by the blues, with some of his childhood idols being influenced by the greats of the genre.
“When I first picked up the guitar, the guys that I was inspired by were all heavily inspired by Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson, B.B. King and Albert King,” he said. “So that is really the root of where my guitar playing came from. At the same time, I was totally into brash hard rock stuff.”
He continued: “But the bands that I was really influenced by in that realm were AC/DC, Aerosmith and bands in that sort of area of hard rock. Not so much metal, but more of a blues-based kind of a thing anyway. So it’s always been about roughly the same kind of feel. Just different dynamics of how it’s delivered.”
As well as a solo career, Slash has a band with Alter Bridge frontman Myles Kennedy and “the Conspirators” (bassist Todd Kerns, drummer Brent Fitz and rhythm guitarist Frank Sidoris – rhythm guitar). However, the guitarist is in Guns N’ Roses mode in 2025. The band are currently playing across Europe and will embark on a Latin American tour from October to November.
