That time Slash chased us down an alley.

So here’s a story. Some time in the mid 2000s we were hired to photograph the legend @slash for Swindle Magazine’s Icon issue. Swindle was Shepard Fairey (@obeygiant) and @rogergastman ‘s magazine that gave us a lot of great shoots back in the beginning of our career.

The location was set at a bar in Studio City in the valley of Los Angeles. We got permission to get there before it opened and set up in the back room and waited for Slash to arrive. After an hour or so and no word from Slash the bar started getting crowded and we had to pack up our lights to make way for people playing pool. We assumed he wasn’t showing so we decided with the writer (@carolineryderwriter) we would leave and reschedule.

When walking out of the bar we saw Slash walking in. This is where if we were a little more seasoned or at least a little more mature we would have said hi and figured out where we could now since the bar was way too crowded for us to shoot anything good in there at this point. But we didn’t, we just ran to our car to quickly get out of there. As we were about to put our car in gear that’s parked in the alley behind the bar we hear “Hey guys, Its me Slash!” and we reversed and started taking off down the alley. I know it makes no sense but hey, we figured if we avoided him we’d just get to shoot him again in better circumstances.

Anyway, he started chasing our old Subaru down the alley knocking on the windows yelling “Guys stop, are you the photographers? It’s me, Slash”. We had no option but to stop now, we had a rock and roll icon chasing us down an alley banging on our windows.

He apologized for being late and explained that he was waiting for us at the wrong bar up the street. We told him this bar wouldn’t work anymore for the shoot and he suggested we follow him up the hill to his house and we’d figure it out. We raced up canyon roads trying to keep up with his Range Rover as he flew up the hill. We made it but the writer did not and no cell service up there.

He invited us in and introduced us to his family and we talked cars for a bit. His wife offered us a drink but explained it was a dry house so they don’t have any alcohol but after we got into his office he moved some fake beers out of the way and quickly opened up a bottle of red wine that we shared while swapping stories and smoking Gauloises for a couple hours.

And we got no good photos.

We were lucky enough to go back up to his house again with the writer this time saying we needed the iconic Slash look for the photos, not the backwards trucker hat look he had the night before. He welcomed us back and we got the cover photo.

Bonus, we talked about the pirate radio show I did for years in LA (GTFU Radio) and he said he’d love to come and we swapped numbers. A couple weeks later I get a call and its him telling me he’s lost somewhere downtown trying to find the weird bunker we broadcasted the show from. We got to hang out again for a couple hours while @aaronfarley and I were on the air. Years later we got hired to shoot his band Velvet Revolver in the studio and when we showed up he yelled out “Claire and Jeremy, didn’t know this shoot was with you guys!” That shoot didn’t turn out well either but that’s a whole other story.

Thanks @slash for being the most humble awesome dude and giving us a story we’ll never forget.