Slash recently revealed in an interview with Eddie Trunk that the story of the iconic guitar riff for the Guns N’ Roses‘ classic “Sweet Child O’ Mine” did not actual originate from a warm-up exercise. “It wasn’t a warm-up exercise. I was sitting around the house where Guns used to live at one point in ’86 I guess it was and I just came up with this riff. It was just me messing around and putting notes together like any riff you do.” says Slash.

The band never anticipated the song to get the level of attention it did. Slash said: “It was just a song that we put together that was cool before we actually made the Appetite for Destruction record. So we put it on the record like that and then the next thing you know at some point after the record had been released for a while, that song all of a sudden just took off.”

The guitar that Slash originally played the song on is featured in the recent coffee table photo book The Collection: Slash with Gibson guitars. Slash revealed that around the same time he was shooting the photos for the book, he also took the guitar and used it in a Capitol One commercial where he also plays the “Sweet Child O’ Mine” riff. (Loudwire)