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Despite Axl Rose’s snarling accent and Guns N’ Roses’ zany, West Coast aesthetic, the band is steeped in plenty of British DNA. Long before he met his Guns N’ Roses brethren, Saul Hudson, the guitarist better known as Slash, was born and raised in London to an English father and an African-American mother.

Though he travelled to California with his mother in his early teens, discovering the beauty of Aerosmith and their classic album Rocks, Slash’s father brought him up on a strict diet of classic British rock music. “My dad especially raised me on British rock music – you know, The Kinks, Cream, The Yardbirds, The Stones and The Beatles,” Slash once recalled. Meanwhile, his mother, Ola J Hudson, was a famous fashion designer famed for collaborations with Ringo Starr, John Lennon and David Bowie.

Throughout the 1980s, Guns N’ Roses led a classic rock revival. While artists like Depeche Mode, OMD and Ultravox popularised synth-pop, Slash and Rose championed guitar rock with a sound associated with the 1970s. Steven Tyler’s vocals were an obvious influence on Rose, but before both came the towering projection of Robert Plant. Likewise, before Joe Perry was the British guitar hero Jimmy Page.

Since age seven, when he first listened to his father’s copy of Led Zeppelin II, Slash dreamt of playing the guitar like Page. Once he had decided to become a rock star, he set his sights on the iconic Les Paul to copy his hero. “I attributed that sound – from what I felt was the coolest record I’d ever heard at that point in my life – to the Les Paul,” he told Rolling Stone. “I knew it was a Les Paul making those guitar tones because I saw pictures of Jimmy Page holding one – so that’s what made me associate the Les Paul with that kind of sound.”

Led Zeppelin II was a massive breakthrough for the band, following just nine months after the debut and featuring classics like ‘Ramble On’, ‘Bring It On Home’ and ‘Moby Dick’. However, the centrepiece of the album and Led Zeppelin’s signature song to this day was ‘Whole Lotta Love’. “There is a song that even before the Rocks, Aerosmith record came along that definitely had a big influence,” Slash told Raised on Radio in relation to the classic single. “I think I can name classic records that (I loved) when I was a kid. But one that really had an impact on me was the Zeppelin II record. The song that means the most to me because it had such an impact on me would be ‘Whole Lotta Love’.”

Although ‘Whole Lotta Love’ didn’t immediately inspire Slash’s musical aspirations, he began to envisage himself on stage tearing it up with killer hooks as such. Page’s memorable riffs and solos stuck with Slash into early adulthood and informed his own approach in the early Guns N’ Roses catalogue. “I think that sort of speaks to a subliminal thing that later on when I started to play guitar… what I was drawn to,” Slash continued. “So a lot of the music I was really into as a kid, without ever having thought playing guitar, turned up later as having a really big influence on me.”

Concluding his point, the Guns N’ Roses guitarist remembered the 1969 song as a landmark in musical history that provided not just a blueprint for his own success but for the evolution of heavy rock music throughout the 1970s and beyond. “‘Whole Lotta Love’ was just this really sexy, sleazy, guitar-driven thing that I just loved,” he added. “That actually ended up being sort of the catalyst for my first experimentation with distortion, Les Paul’s and that kind of thing. Oh god, it was so cool. It was just such a great introduction to the 70s, where 70s was going to go.”

Over time, Slash incorporated a wealth of guitar royalty into his inspiration pool, from the ardent blues rock prowess of Jeff Beck and Rory Gallagher to the melodic pop stylings of Elliot Easton and the slow, emotive voicings of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. To this day, Slash celebrates the rock tradition across innumerable collaborations and as the enduring guitarist of Guns N’ Roses.