It's one of the most iconic sequences in rock video history: Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, bare-chested beneath his leather jacket, a cigarette clamped between his teeth, striding purposefully out of a white wedding chapel, Gibson Les Paul in hand, to wrench out November Rain's soaring and wonderfully melodic guitar solo. Filmed from a low-flying helicopter whipping up mini sand storms in the desert bordering New Mexico's Highway 41, it's a scene which worked out even more strikingly cinematic than the video's English director Andy Morahan had initially imagined.
"You start to see [footage] on the monitors as you're filming it, and you go, Fuck, I've never seen anything like this, this is amazing," Morahan told Guns N' Roses fan podcast Appetite For Distortion in 2020.
It appears that Morahan wasn't the only one taken by surprise during the shoot, for in a new interview with The Times, Slash reveals that he hadn't been forewarned about the director's plan to commission aerial shots of his solo showcase.
