Tue, 10/08/10 – 15:46PM | Filed in blog by scott | Views: 295 | Comments: 0

This past week has been nothing short of amazing for music lovers in Kuala Lumpur. On Saturday there was Heineken Green Room featuring The Rapture and MTV World Stage featuring the likes of Tokio Hotel and Katy Perry. On Sunday, we had By Demand: Coheed & Cambria, the highly-talented Orianthi on Wednesday; and on Thursday we had the honour of welcoming legendary rock n’ roll guitarist Slash to Malaysia for the first time ever, in conjunction with his world tour to promote his new self-titled album.

Crowds were beginning to converge at Sunway shortly after lunchtime, with several hopeful fans spotted toting guitars and cameras in hopes of bumping into Slash himself. (The writer actually bumped into Myles Kennedy but didn’t realise it until much later) There were actually a few decked out in top hats and/or leather jackets too, despite the fact that the concert was going to be held at an outdoor venue.

Opening for the top-hatted guitar god was our local rock legend Amy Search, as well as the winner of the “Bintang Rock Hot FM”, Blister, who won the right to open for Slash.

Despite having played four shows in the past week before his maiden showcase in Malaysia, the man himself showed no signs of fatigue, starting the show with the first track off his new album, ‘Ghost’.

With Myles Kennedy on lead vocals, Slash & co. played a combination of songs from the new album and bands that Slash has played in, with tracks from Guns N’ Roses (‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, ‘Nightrain’, ‘Paradise City’), Slash’s Snakepit (‘Mean Bone’) and more recently, supergroup Velvet Revolver (‘Dirty Little Thing’, ‘Slither’). The surprise inclusion on the setlist was the AlterBridge song ‘Rise Today’, as a large majority of the fans in attendance were there for Slash.

After receiving a lukewarm response to playing an AlterBridge song, Myles Kennedy began introducing the other members of the band, before Slash in return introduced him to the crowd, resulting in a witty exchange between the two – after Slash went, “See dude? They love you!”, Myles replied, “Well at least I know someone loves me,” sparking much laughter from the fans.

Shortly after, Slash broke into a little shred-a-thon, wowing the fans while making a joke of the general preconceived notion that he’s best at the slow, emotionally powerful solos. With the fans still amazed after his virtuosic display of skill, he cheekily began playing the opening notes to that classic rock anthem that brought his old band Guns N’ Roses to the forefront of the music world, ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’. And to no surprise, everyone present went crazy.

The entire crowd began jumping and singing alon – it was honestly quite hard to hear anything, until the song reached its climax, with Slash dishing out his trademark face-melting solos, to which some enthusiastic fans began doing the air guitar routine, following the exact motions of the curly-haired, top-hatted guitar god onstage.

After playing ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, the band went off stage, prompting the crowd to call them out for an encore. Chants of “We want more!” and “One more song!” rang out, as the crowd demanded their money’s worth.

Emerging from backstage for their encore, Slash & co. went on to perform the 2005 Grammy Award-winning song ‘Slither’ originally played by supergroup Velvet Revolver, triggering mosh pits and jump pits all through the crowd, before Myles Kennedy called out to the crowd in the lead up to the last song of the night. “Paradise what?” he asked several times, each replied with a unified scream of “City!!!”. What a tease! Slash began playing the memorable intro to the song as a fitting final song for the night.

WORDS Matt Liew PHOTOS Joshua Chay