Why Slash Didn’t Want Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ in ‘Interview with the Vampire’
Guns N’ Roses covered The Rolling Stones‘ “Sympathy for the Devil” for the movie Interview with the Vampire. Notably, Slash had strong feelings about Anne Rice, the author of the book Interview with the Vampire. After watching the movie, he didn’t want his music to be in it.
How Slash reacted to the idea Guns N’ Roses should cover The Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’
According to the 2009 book Slash, musician Tom Zutaut come up with the idea that Guns N’ Roses should cover “Sympathy for the Devil” for the movie Interview with the Vampire. Slash was happy with this proposal. “Anyway, I was up for the idea of doing this cover because I was very familiar with the Anne Rice books; I thought they were great, which is why I had a hard time imagining Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise playing those roles,” Slash wrote.
“Anyway, Axl and I went to screenings of the film separately, and completely disagreed on what we saw,” Slash revealed. “I hated it; I thought it was crap.”
Slash wanted The Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ to appear in the film, not Guns N’ Roses’ cover
Subsequently, Slash said he talked to Cruise over the phone. Slash told Cruise the movie was terrible. Then he said the producers should use The Rolling Stones’ version of the song instead.
Rose had a different reaction to the movie. “Axl, on the other hand, loved the movie; he thought it was brilliant and he wanted to do the song,” he said. “I couldn’t have been more disappointed, pissed, frustrated, and confused. The only upside I saw to signing off on it was that it would accomplish what we’d been unable to do to any degree in the past seven months: it would actually get all of us into the studio.”
How Hollywood adapted Anne Rice’s vampire books following the release of ‘Interview with the Vampire’
Slash’s and Rose’s conflicting opinions seemed to be echoed by critics. The film has a 64% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While this is a “fresh” rating, it’s still not very high.
The movie Interview with the Vampire was not the end of screen adaptations of Rice’s vampire book. 2002 saw the release of Queen of the Damned, which is based on Rice’s books The Queen of the Damned and The Vampire Lestat.
In 2022, a television series titled Interview with the Vampire premiered. The series received a highly impressive 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Rice’s series The Vampire Chronicles and its adaptations continue to fascinate the public even if Slash didn’t like the film version of Interview with the Vampire.
