Buckethead Responds to Slash Reposting Video of Him on Instagram

Buckethead has responded to Slash reposting a video of him playing guitar on social media on Wednesday (Oct. 1).

If you follow Slash on Instagram then you know how risky it can be opening one of his posts in public. But the rocker also reposts a lot of videos from other pages onto his own profile. In this particular case, he shared one of Buckethead, who served as Guns N’ Roses‘ lead guitarist for a time in the 2000s, playing guitar with Les Claypool.

“This is some of the FUNKIEST music you’ll ever hear,” the account that originally shared the video, @bucketheadexperience, wrote in the caption. “The bass lines are absolutely insane and Buckethead’s guitar work is next level as always.”

It’s important to note that Slash typically doesn’t write the captions for these posts — he copies and pastes what the original account wrote in their caption. However, Buckethead still saw it as a compliment that Slash shared the video at all.

Buckethead shared a heartfelt response to Slash’s repost on his Facebook page.

I was really touched to see this was on Slash’s page. Obviously Bernie [Worrell], Les and Brain [Bryan Mantia] are involved and I’m just a small fragment in this. Those are some of the funniest people ever. Just wanted to say that Slash is one of the greats of all time, as everyone knows. He was involved in writing music and his guitar playing transcends decades and to reach such a wide amount of people playing really incredible guitar is such a rare thing. In the time I was involved in attempting to play his parts never really could I have captured the essence of him. So much of who he is comes through his playing. I’ll always be in awe of how great he is.

When Was Buckethead in Guns N’ Roses?

Buckethead was a member of Axl Rose‘s revolving lineup of musicians during the Chinese Democracy era. The guitarist played in the band from 2000 until 2004 and is thus credited as having played on all but two tracks on the 2008 album.

READ MORE: All 24 Musicians Who’ve Been in Guns N’ Roses

His experimental style of guitar playing is quite different from Slash’s and contributed to the diverse sound of Chinese Democracy, which features a lot of industrial and electronic flavors.

What Has Slash Said About Playing Buckethead’s Guitar Parts?

Slash and Duff McKagan have played many Chinese Democracy tracks since returning to Guns N’ Roses in 2016. Two years after the reunion tour kicked off, Slash praised Buckethead’s guitar playing on those songs.

“It’s very different … it’s really cool stuff, but it was played by guitar players that are very different from me style-wise,” Slash told Guitar World. “I’ve sort of adapted my own way of playing those songs to where I feel comfortable with them, but without losing the integrity of how the guitar parts go.”

He added: “I also want to give credit where credit’s due — the guitar players that played on Chinese Democracy, Buckethead being one of the main ones — are fucking amazing guitar players. I have to give those guys a shout-out because that stuff was cool. Very different from what I normally do. So it’s been interesting learning some of the stuff that was on that record. I definitely had to figure out ways to adapt to it.”